Pinterest ~ The New Vision Board?

Pinning Has Completely Changed the Way We Look at Photos on the Web

The whole Pinterest thing took me for a complete loop.  Not sure what rock I was hiding under, probably YouTube , but this thing came out of nowhere.

It took me all of 2 minutes to see why this will rock the world of online retailers, businesses and innovation in general.  In December 2011, the site entered the top 10 social networks according to Hitwise data with 11 million total visits per week, and according to Mashable drove more traffic to retailers in January than Linkedin, Google+ and YouTube.  WHOA.

Being a very visual person, I cannot begin to tell you how much I love this format and the ability to start visually organizing all of the amazing things I see everyday online.  As an online marketing consultant, I am now preaching the importance of businesses putting much more thought into how their products are portrayed online and the quality of the images.  No one is going to “pin” a crappy photo, but on the other hand, artistically presented products could garner a ton of traffic with one simple click.

Vision Boards are nothing new, but a virtual dream board is something almost futuristic. Business and personal coaches use visioning all of the time to encourage long-range planning and to give motivation to client’s actions.  I see Pinterest becoming just that – the World’s Vision Board.

The opportunities for businesses to tap into this are infinite… travel destinations can see the types of photos that engage travelers, retailers can sell directly from a photo without anyone visiting their website or stepping foot in a store, restaurants can plan specials around trending ingredients and recipes, the list goes on and on.

Once again, I am on my internet pulpit preaching the importance of engagement – here we go again people, you better board the photo pinning train because it is leaving the station with or without you!\