Pinterest was introduced to me by my fiance. Of course. There is no secret that #pinterest has been adopted mainly by women. When I first logged on to play with it, I was getting nothing but dresses, wedding plans, motivational quotes for-and-by women.
Yeah… no wonder why men bounce quickly from the site.
So.Much.Ribbon. (and pink with lace!)
But I was intrigued because of the massive adoption. I am a marketer at my core, so I saw this as an interesting way to approach a segmented audience. The audience is mostly women who post “pretty” things. At the time I was working for GannettLocal as their Chief Marketing and Product dude. My focus was always innovate new ideas and adapt to trends. Well, you can not say Pinterest was not a trend! So I played around with the obvious to see what traction I could get. What is the most obvious…. #cuteoverload pics of course. So I optimized my StumbleUpon and my Tumblr for “cute” photos of animals.
Starting pinning and noticed the only folks re-pinning, commenting, and liking the pin’s were my own network. Well, I could do this on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. Why is this different. I quickly found out that I needed “categorize” my Pin Boards to public boards.
Once I did that… I saw significant and quick engagement:
That was just a few house and one cute post!
Well this is easy! Women like to share pretty things on this site. So what kind of things would they want to share that would result into marketing win’s for our clients. We started with furniture stores and their inventory. Then went to girly geek gadgets. This was great link bait! Shares and click through were happening and we were driving traffic to our clients sites.
So there is an obvious lead gen play here to an audience that self segments. In fact, many brands are now getting this. Here is a list.
But is the community turning off the men with all that ribbon?
Well recently a few noteworthy social media dudes have joined in on the #pinterest fun:
- Scott Stratten‘s board: http://pinterest.com/unmarketing/
- Jason Falls‘ board: http://pinterest.com/jasonfalls/
- Thomas Knolls’ board: http://pinterest.com/thomasknoll/
- Gary Vaynerchuk: http://pinterest.com/garyvee/
- and of course Jay Baer is rocking his tequila board: http://pinterest.com/jaybaer/
- You even have some political dudes playing in on this.
You can see they are still trying it out. Their volume isn’t high, but the quality is. They have not gone crazy like me, just yet.
There is a UX flaw IMHO with Pinterest. By default, when you “follow” a user, you follow ALL the boards of that user.
So I follow the girly room decor stuff and the dresses and the shoes. Gah! But when you choose to follow just the boards that matter to you from your friend who happens to be female, then your feed is optimized. I started following art, gadgets, photography, and yes… even I like pretty home things… so I kept a few of those as well.
By default, I followed ALL the board of my male friends just to see what they are pinning. I have yet to unfollow any of their boards and my feed is more balanced with the dude and girl stuff.
Men… it can be done, and be fun, and drive traffic.
Pinterest is heavily trafficked by women, yes. Does that mean hands off to men?
Nope.
And if you are a marketer… it gives you another ecosystem to play in and understand new forms of engagement strategies.
Are you a dude on Pinterest? If so, leave your link below so other dudes can follow and not be alone! Or hit up #dudesonpinterest
UPDATE: Got a lot of interest in this blog post. Thank you! Here is one mega #dudesonpinterest board that came to my attention because of this blog post. The board of man: http://pinterest.com/drewhawkins/board-of-man/
And there is my Pinterest boards 
Related articles
- The Top Brands on Pinterest (mashable.com)
- 5 Ways Brands Can Use Pinterest to Boost Consumer Engagement (mashable.com)
- Using Pinterest for Business: 5 Must-Reads (firebellymarketing.com)
- Is Pinterest the ‘next big thing’ in social media? (news.cnet.com)
