How to Drive Engagement and Social Brand Advocacy on Pinterest

Social media has led to a radical reshuffling of the nature of brand relationships. Rather than simply accepting the content that brands deliver to them, consumers are pushing back and driving two-way conversations through social media or other venues.

User-driven brand engagements are front and center on Pinterest, the latest social media site to capture the imaginations of today's consumers. Despite most brands having heard about Pinterest's popularity with consumers, few have a handle on how to optimize their social marketing strategy for Pinterest users.

Why Pinterest Matters to Brands
Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, Pinterest is primarily image-based. Engagement is all about leveraging visual images to establish quick connections between brands and consumers while promoting social sharing and ultimately driving traffic to the brand's website.

Considered by many to be the hot social media platform of 2012, Pinterest is experiencing phenomenal growth, especially among women. Approximately 95 percent of Pinterest's more than 11.7 million users are female, which gives the social media site a brand-conscious and rapidly growing user base that falls squarely within many retailers' core demographic.

One of Pinterest's most important benefits is its ability to reinforce consumers’ expectation of control in the brand relationship. By encouraging social dialogs concerning products that are highly visual in nature, retailers can promote proactive, positive engagement around a set of aesthetics and forge deeper connections with their core customer base.

With the right strategy, brands and retailers can harness the sense of personal control that draws consumers to Pinterest, enhancing the customer experience and leveraging Pinterest to achieve targeted social channel objectives.

Optimizing Your Brand for Pinterest
There are several strategies retailers can use to forge meaningful, digital connections with consumers on Pinterest. From a strategic perspective, the overarching goal is to promote the sharing of image-based content in a manner that drives brand awareness and advocacy, customer loyalty, site traffic, and conversions. Here are four steps to get you started:

1. Create a social CEM strategy. Social CEM (customer experience management) is the process of delivering an optimal customer experience by using social interactions and tools which focus on the key drivers of active advocacy. Rather than targeting ad impressions or other traditional promotional metrics (e.g., brand images), social CEM seeks to drive consumer behavior through the creation of authentic, ongoing consumer dialogs — a critical priority for retailers who incorporate Pinterest into their social strategies.

2. Develop "value-rich" content. Pinterest users typically aren't interested in brands that simply post images from their online catalog. Pinterest is a lifestyle aggregator in many ways, a central location for consumers to collect, share and archive images that communicate various aspects of their personality or style preferences. To maximize social CEM outcomes, brands and retailers must post product images that transcend simple "catalog" visuals. Retailers’ images must compel consumers to connect products with their actual or desired lifestyles.

3. Listen. In addition to posting their own images, retailers need to actively engage with followers on Pinterest, "listening" to the images they pin on their pages and carefully discerning the many ways consumers interact with their products. Brands can strengthen the customer experience by engaging with users through their various Pinterest boards and actively commenting on their pinned interests.

4. Drive social brand advocacy. A robust social marketing strategy recognizes the interconnectedness of social cross-promotional assets. To fully optimize their online presence for Pinterest users, retailers shouldn't only promote their Pinterest pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social platforms, but also include "Pin It" buttons on their websites. Social brand advocacy management has the power to convert satisfied customers into active brand advocates within Pinterest and other social platforms.

By strategically integrating Pinterest into their social marketing strategies, retailers gain a valuable tool in their quest to optimize consumers’ social experiences with their brand. With the growing popularity of user-driven brand engagement, retailers that create a social CEM strategy, develop "value-rich" content, listen to their followers and drive social brand advocacy on Pinterest have a new window of opportunity to forge meaningful connections with consumers online. Strategic use of Pinterest and other social media outlets offers retailers a leg up on their competition.

Bruce Warren is vice president of marketing at Empathica, a customer experience management provider. Bruce can be reached at bwarren@empathica.com.