Branding with Pinterest

Have you ever heard about Pinterest? Well, as you see, Pinterest, pin what you interested in. Offically, Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows you to creat and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, hobbies, and more. Pinterest's goal is to "connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting" via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing. At the end of 2011, Pinterest already has over 11 million unique users and became one of the top 10 largest social network services in US. Since Pinterest is such popular, many marketers started use Pinterest as a new social media marketing channel to branding themselves.

However, branding with Pinterest is more complicated than with Facebook or Twitter. In Pinterest, marketers need to think about how to stand out your brand from thousands of photos, and how to attractive Pinterest's users to "pin" or "re-pin" your brand.

In the book "Pinterest for Business: How to Pin Your Company to The Top of The Hottest Social Media Network", it pointed out that when staring on Pinterest, marketers should keep in mind that a company is only as strong as its understanding of its own market and customer base. Marketers should think of their brands in different ways. For example, if your company were a car, what would it be on Pinterest? The book suggested maketers think of their boards as different car lots, and their pins as different cars. It will help marketers understand the reasons why their pins will exist, and why their followers should care about their brands. To be specific, is your car traditional, fun, or outlandish? Is your car rusty or affordable? Family-friendly or stylish? Just remember one thing-don't allow your brand to identify with a plain, boring car when you show off on Pinterest because with Pinterest, your images tell the story. Here is a successful case how promote your brand in Pinterest. Let's see how Volvo uses Pinterest to re-branding itself through a customer-driven social media contest.

Business is all about purpose, and so is social media like Pinterest. Understanding your brand and how it affects your potential clients is necessary to accessing all possibilities of Pinterest. For example, many hotels have the opportunity to sell themselves by pinning photos of their rooms, facilities, and surrounding areas. By pinning and organizing photos on your hotel board, you are able to reach out and grab the attention of an audience that may or may not know about your hotel. In addition, the social aspect of Pinterest enables other users to repin photos of your hotels, pin their own photos to other boards, and write reviews for others. Pinterest offers a best way for you to attract a wider audience.

Here are some best Pinterest Brand Pages. Let's see how they branding themselves in Pinterest.

Chobani Pinterest Page doesn't just feature its different yogurt types, but it also shares recipes of how users can use its products differently.

Oreck has taken its industrial cleaning product and made you forget that a vacuum cleaner brand is behind the pinboards you're looking at.

In particular, with Pinterest, it's important for marketers to understand and define their competition. In Pinterest, marketers have an opportunity to take direct advantage of their competition's pins, promotions, or contests, while directily reaching customers.