The goal of Pinterest is to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting. So, how can travel bloggers leverage Pinterest to connect with people all around the world who share similar travel related tastes and interests?
I first heard of Pinterest from my wife last fall. She had been talking with a friend who was really into pinning all kinds of things on nine different boards that included titles like “House Happiness,” “Take Me on a Trip to” and “Make Me Puuuurty.” I signed up for an invite to see what it was all about. After about three weeks (during which time I noted my wife, not yet a member, continually visited Pinterest to search for recipe ideas during the holidays), I received my invite and away I went.
The first thing I noticed as I scrolled through the main Travel & Places stream was that I had not seen a single male user. In fact, according to Alexa and based on Internet averages, pinterest.com is visited most frequently by females who are in the age range of 25-34. It is also estimated that 73% of the site’s visitors are in the US where it has attained a traffic rank of 42. Therefore, if the audience demographics for your blog are a match, I would say Pinterest presents a very interesting opportunity.
Over an initial two-day period, I signed in once each day for an approximate total of 15 minutes. During that time, I pinned 18 travel related items to three boards which were re-pinned 11 times and liked once. My 18 total pins consisted primarily of juicy travel photos and holiday friendly images of which seven were from sites that I am involved with. Per today’s Google Analytics report, those seven pins have resulted in 47 unique visits.
Pinterest is much more than just another platform to drive traffic to your travel blog though. It can be a very valuable tool to organize bits and pieces of inspiration for your own work. Recently, I was with another travel blogger and Pinterest came up. She was somewhat familiar with it and was really excited to check it out. Above all, she felt Pinterest would be a great way to organize her various ideas, essentially by creating different boards and pinning inspirations to them that could be expanded upon and shared later.
With millions of new pins being added every week, Pinterest is hot, continuously gaining a lot of traction and buzz. Do you use Pinterest? How will you get the most out of Pinterest? Will it be about pinning or more about collecting and organizing your own inspiration? Will you Tweet or share pins on Facebook to help expand your network?
Huge fan. I make an effort to pin my own things (and have enjoyed seeing them re-pinned) but as with every social media outlet worth its salt, it’s not just about my work. I share others ideas and creations as well. It’s a give and take and in that balance somewhere is the sweet spot that makes yet another social media time suck a potential winner.
Personally, I think this is a stronger outlet for brand/self-marketing than Google+ and others that have lately emerged. That could be because I am using G+ wrong, not investing enough in it or because I am a women and as you’ve pointed out Rich, Pinterest’s audience is more balanced toward women than men. Also, that doesn’t take into account the SEO factor. Reportedly, G+ still beats all on this issue alone.
I don’t use it yet, but i’m gonna have a look at it. I am always curious about new ways of learning, sharing and communicating. So I can’t tell you how I will use it, but when I will start I will let you know if you want
I just joined and am enamoured with it already, mostly because of how visually wonderful it is. Very shiny. That said, I’m using it more to find and pin great design and architecture examples, links to learn from and foodstuffs than for my own travel stuff. Sure, I’ve got a board for travel narrative and misadventures as well but in my mind it’s myopic for all the travel bloggers to flock to Pinterest and start flooding it with travel pictures – the beauty of the boards is that you can showcase all your other interests as well. And I know we all have them! Think of it as a way to show the world travel bloggers aren’t just about travel 🙂
Joined two days ago, absolutely addicted!:) As with Kirsten, I find it to be a great place to pin photography:)
I joined months ago and fell in love immediately. It felt like reading a magazine, and pinning was like tearing out pages for future reference and repining like telling your BFF about this great article you’d read or recipe you found in a magazine. I’ve only started adding travel related things, but it’s all of my other boards that are getting the most attention.