What are the Benefits, Risks of Using Pinterest?

To pin or not to pin? That is the question.

At first glance, Pinterest looks a site with random pictures posted by people you don’t know – aka dumb drivel you don’t have the time or patience for.

But in reality it could be one of the – if not THE – top traffic driver for your website. According to recent research, Pinterest is the third largest social media outlet in the United States as of February 2012.

The growth isn’t stopping any time soon, either. It’s the fastest website to reach 10 million unique visitors. Now, for those who quickly learned how to tap into the potential of Pinterest, some sites have a new top traffic referral resource. Sites such as CookingLight.com now list Pinterest as the second highest traffic driver (second only to Google), which is a dramatic increase of 6,000% from just six months ago.

The news gets even better if your business targets women: 97% of its “likes” on Facebook are women, and Pinterest is now officially the top traffic driver for women’s lifestyle publications (Being the publisher of Cincy Chic, that’s what originally caught my attention and why I started using it). Because of the predominantly female audience and the visually focused format, niche industries seeing the most success are fashion, home decor, cooking, beauty and bridal. In fact, Pinterest is the top social referrer for MarthaStewartWeddings.com and MarthaStewart.com, sending more traffic to both sites than Facebook and Twitter combined.

So, now you’re thinking… “Ok, ok. I’m interested. But what is Pinterest?”

In short, it’s a “virtual pinboard” for photos you find, like, and want to keep for later use. For example, if you were redesigning your living room (pre-Pinterest), you would print out a few ideas you find online, take a few color swatches from Home Depot, and tear out a few inspiring ideas from a home decor magazine — pinning each item to a corkboard in your office. But now with Pinterest, you can do all of that electronically, creating new virtual pinboards to collect and organize ideas for anything you need, want or just want to dream about.

What’s great about Pinterest is that the virtual nature allows you to pin via computer or mobile device (you can even upload photos!). Also, when you click on the photos within your pinboards, you’re taken to the webpage where the photo originates so you can learn more. Thus, the impressive web referral rates.

To begin, you need to request an invitation (email me at ascalia [at] cincychic [dot] com and I’ll invite you). In the meantime, you can browse around and see how other people are using Pinterest. Here’s my page, for example: pinterest.com/amyscalia where you’ll discover my affinity for shoes, food, quotes and crafts I’ll never actually have time to make. Ha!

Now you’re probably thinking “Crafts and shoes are great and all, but I really just want to drive traffic to my website.” Here’s what you do: First, make sure you have visually appealing, professional photos on your website. Most photos on Pinterest are professional photos, so invest in some if you plan to pin. Next, read this great article, which walks you through creating boards, pinning, and creating “key word rich” captions. Then, just for good measure, learn the five points of Pinterest etiquette.

Just be careful to not take #3, “Avoid Self Promotion,” too seriously though. Not only will your self-promotion leverage the power of Pinterest to attract the viral traffic referrals you joined the site for in the first place, but it’ll also avoid copyright issues.

Copyright infringement is actually the major hiccup Pinterest faces right now. You can learn more about the whole debacle here. In a nutshell, though, some people recently raised concerns about how Pinterest is infringing on various sites and copyright holders. So, to resolve the issue, Pinterest created an “opt out” option for website owners who would like to prevent pinning from any of their web pages. Pinterest also set up an entire page on their site about copyright infringement and how to report an issue.

I personally think this is a non-issue. These days, online censorship problems are just a right of passage for any major online resource – ala Google, Wikipedia, YouTube – and the public ultimately doesn’t stand for any such censorship legislation.

The most important thing to know about Pinterest is that it has the power to drive significant traffic and potential customers to your virtual doorstep. You just have to pin a pathway so they can find you. Happy pinning!