April 24, 2012 by 3 Comments

Pinterest – Why it’s Not Just for Girls

Editor: This is the third in our series on Pinterest and men. In this article, Sharon Howard looks at how the demographics of Pinterest vary by country.

You’re a guy — why would you want to look at kittens and cakes?

Your target audience is male. How can you draw them into Pinterest?

After all Pinterest is a girl thing, right?

Wrong.

Sure, there are plenty of bored housewives posting pictures of home furnishings, recipes and cute and cuddly things.

And, true, overall worldwide the largest demographic using Pinterest currently is women (74%) aged 35-44, earning $25,000 – $49,000, the top interest being Fashion Designers & Collections.

In the USA, women make up 81% of Pinterest users.

But elsewhere that trend is being bucked.

Males are out-pinning females in a number of countries around the world…

Male dominance of Pinterest (% of users by Country)

Australia 55%

Brazil 81%

France 78%

Germany 86%

Italy 79%

Japan 57%

Spain 79%

Switzerland 82%

UK 64%

(Data from : Google Ad Planner)

The top interest for UK male users is Public Relations, while the earning capacity of these users is in the higher end – £50,000+.

What does this mean for business?

Well, first of all the spending capacity of these high-earning males is much greater and with the knowledge that Pinterest is already generating more referral traffic than Twitter and Google+ the likelihood of converting a referral to income for your business is much greater if you are targeting this audience with your pins.

So, if your target market is young, wealthy males, here are the top 5 things you need to be pinning about:

  1. Public Relations
  2. Web Stats and Analytics
  3. Scripting Languages
  4. Graphic Design
  5. SEO and Marketing

Not forgetting the other interests that are likely to attract men to your boards such as cars & motorcycles, sports, technology and ‘geek’.

There are a number of interesting boards reaching this male audience already. Here is a list of the top 5 male Pinners. Why not follow a couple yourself to see what they are doing to give you ideas for your own boards?

 (Data from: zoomsphere)

And the wildcard, not in the top 5 but worthy of checking out:

Board of Man – http://pinterest.com/drewhawkins/board-of-man/

Photo by: Kalexanderson

Filed Under: Opinion
April 23, 2012 by 2 Comments

7 Deadly Sins of Pinterest

You’re pinning away, having fun, attracting followers…

Then ‘bam!’ it all comes crashing down. What have you done?

It could be that you have committed one of the 7 deadly sins of Pinterest…

 

1. Greed – The sin of wealth gathering.

Pinning your sales, promotions or coupons is not what people want to see on Pinterest people won’t like it and won’t follow you, worse still you could end up being reported as a spammer, if you are posting interesting things people will come but you won’t make a sale by forcing your marketing down people’s throats.

Don’t expect to become an overnight success; it takes time to build a customer base

 

2. Wrath – The sin of anger, rage.

Watch your tone and content is not foul, insulting or rude demonstrating your own anger or enticing others to get angry with you.

Don’t pin things that promote self-harm or self-abuse, this is against Pinterest terms and conditions.

Be polite when commenting on others pins.

Pinterest does not allow hateful content.

 

3. Gluttony – The sin of over indulgence.

Stop the self-promotion and add a bit of variety to your boards.

Share the things you like and love but don’t over-do it – posting too much, too often or only ever posting about one thing, get a bit of variety on your boards to draw people’s interest in what you have to share.

 

4. Envy – The sin of wanting what others have

Adding someone to your ‘collaborative’ board just because you think they have sway or influence that will draw people to your content is inappropriate, if you want someone to collaborate with you ‘ask’ them before you add them!

Just because someone has a lot of followers doesn’t meant their followers will come to you just because you are connected with that person, you have to be liked for being yourself not because of who you know.

 

5. Lust – The sin of sexual content

Obviously anything too sexually explicit is likely to get you into trouble!

Pinterest has a no nudity policy, so bear this in mind before you share those pictures of hot girls lap-dancing!

You might find such things enjoyable but Pinterest is not the place for sharing this kind of interest.

 

6. Pride – The sin of over self-promotion

Sharing your own products and services is one thing but don’t over-do it, it’s spamming.

Yes, if you have a new product you may want to show it off, but going overboard with selfish indulgence is just going to make people go away, not come back for more.

 

7. Sloth – The sin of being lazy

If all you do is repin other people’s pins and not add any original content of your own people will quickly become bored and more likely to follow those you are repinning than you.

Not pinning often enough (almost as bad as pinning too often) will leave your followers bored and they will stop checking in on what you are doing – maybe set yourself a schedule for pinning so you can get the balance right.

Not checking for copyright/trademark infringements – the biggest sin of all, make sure you credit your sources properly another big thing in Pinterest policy, if you are too lazy to check you could find yourself reported for infringement and your boards closed down.

Think before you pin!

Photo by JanetR3

Filed Under: Tips