Pinterest can be seductive - and targets your buyers. The Why & How.

Penterest can be seductive. Did you know that it was only launched in 2010 but is already growing rapidly - a meteroic rise from 4.9 million unique visitors in Nov 2011 to 11.7 million in January to 17.8  million visitors in June of 2012.

Pinterest is now the third most popular social media after Facebook and Twitter. One source indicates it is driving more traffic to websites than blogs, YouTube, Google+ and Linkedin combined.

As REALTORS we need to pay attention to this growth because the growth is not being driven by the usual crowd of male geeks. Sixty-eight percent of users are women and over half of these users ar over 35! Isn't that our primary buyer profile?

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is an online bullentin board that allows users to collect images from souces as they search the Internet and post them to their board or boards. Imagine creating a board of fashion ideas, wedding planning ideas and home design and you begin to understand how users are using the service. Put ideas on your board as you find them, re-pin from other boards, have frinds and families help you with pinning. The benefit, great ideas are all in one place to view - without all the distraction of searching for content on a website.

You can have multiple boards for specific categories and when you pin to your board your followers can see it, they can like, comment and re-pin it to their own boards. Like YouTube and Facebook, content can go viral, giving one a huge audience. A cool feature, you can post images from your own library, add a message and as you post it,  automatically post it to Twitter at a click of a button.

How can we as REALTORS use this service?

Think of your Pinterest boards as your viral catalog of services, not just one more way to display listings. Look at the categories offered by Pinterest, this becomes the theme (key word) around which you need to pin.

For example, you can begin to post blog articles about "Cool things Children do in Newport Beach" to a board on Kids, and link images from your blog article to the pin. People seeking out information on neighborhoods and find you as a "Neighborhood Expert", will be captured by the image and your brief message and find a link back to your blog site. And --- it is a targeted audience. We are still exploring but hope to find the magic combination. 

Be creative, talk about the architecture of the homes in your listings, parks and walking trails in your community for Health and Fittness.  Keep me posted on your results.

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