Social media is a varied and unique animal, with many different incarnations that target specific needs in the marketer, and engaging in different demographics. Lately, the lines between those demographics are becoming blurred. The videos watched by men in their 40's tend to be similar (or the same) as woman in their early 20's. Facebook games have a wide appeal with people of all ages, genders and social backgrounds taking part. LinkedIn is aimed at professions in any industry.
Pinterest has a more particular groups of users, with most being women between the ages of 18 and 30. But it is an important - and ever-growing tool that marketers are beginning to truly love. Why is that? Because the only point and use for Pinterest is sharing content, and visual content at that. It is an online marketers dream site, and slowly the appeal is spreading to more people than its original fan base. According to Social Implications, Pinterest is one of the most effective viral tools.
There is a feature that not everyone is utilizing, however. Maybe it is because they don't know about it, or they just don't see the potential it holds. These are secret boards, where you can pin images that are only visible to yourself or people you specify.
First, 2 things you need to know about Pinterest private boards before getting started:
- You can have no more than three secret boards
- You will always be able to switch your currently secret board to public mode (e.g. when your exclusive offer or beta period expires)
How can you use the feature for content marketing?
3 Uses For Pinterest Secret Boards in Content Marketing
1. Test your link bait
Yes, viral affect is hard to predict but you can create a group of people who follow you actively and share your ideas with them before you try to promote it. This way you'll at least get yourself prepared to unexpected feedback or comments.
Tip! Mind that you really need a circles of trusted people here because you don't want your content to leak (or even stolen) before you make it public.
2. (Collectively) brainstorm
Pinterest has a great interface and it's really easy to use - this makes it ideal for brainstorming and even collaborative brainstorming.
Tip! By default, contributors of secret boards get emailed each time something new is pinned there, which makes it an awesome "instant inspiration" tool.
3. Create a collection before making it live
Everyone loves lists; we've been using XX-best-type posts to go viral for ages and they keep doing well on social media. With secret boards you now have a smarter and more productive way to prepare the list (and get your team and co-workers help) before turning into a list. Later, when your article goes live, you can make the board public and have another stream to promote your article (think content re-purposing).
Have you been using secret boards for your Pinterest campaign? How has it worked out for you so far? Let us know in the comments.
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I use Pinterest more as a ‘personal interest’ than for marketing my business. I can see how Pinterest can be useful in that way though, and the use of secret boards looks interesting.
Is pinterest just another platform that doesnt add that much value to ones brand though? In the UK it isn’t that big. I think the next big thing to explode is Google +. What are your thoughts?