Resort Marketing
Pinterest for Resorts 1 of 3 Introduction
(Video Transcript)
Welcome to Resort Marketing Vids. I’m your host, and resident marketing expert, Michael Grimm. Here for the Resort Developers Association to help you navigate the world of online marketing.
If you’ve haven’t heard of Pinterest yet, it’s the fastest growing social marketing tool around. At it’s core Pinterest is a digital pin board where people can post images they like that are then shared with other people. Once other people share the images they get shared again and it creates a snowball effect of popularity for frequently shared images. The viral nature of the site has made it one of the fastest growing websites in history.
There is a dark side to Pinterest though, but I’ll get to that later.
The reason this site matters to you is that each time these images get clicked by the person viewing it, Pinterest redirects that person to the website that image was “pinned†from. This means that Pinterest drives a ton of traffic. In fact, Pinterest now drives more traffic than Twitter, Linked In, Google +, and even YouTube.
So if you’re dedicating time to any other social platform in the hopes to drive traffic to your site, and Pinterest is driving more traffic to sites than any of those other social sites, you’d be crazy to ignore Pinterest.
Because the site is image based it appeals, naturally, to visual people. But also, being image based means it works better for some industries than others. For example, a restaurant would have an easier time being successful at driving traffic through the site than a law firm. It’s a lot easier to share pictures of food and recipes than litigation and contracts. So being in the resort and travel business, this tool was practically built for us. But maybe not in the way you may think.
You can use Pinterest as a relationship management tool, or you can use it as a traffic source that can eventually produce leads for you. If you already have a solid stream of leads and a great referral base, don’t bother with Pinterest, at least, don’t drop what you’re doing to get started with it. If you have the resources to dedicate time to sharing interesting content online that is paired with visually compelling images, create an account, set up some pin boards, and start sharing content.
Whether you get started today or wait a while, and whether you use it to manage relationships, drive traffic, generate referrals, or all of the above, you can’t ignore Pinterest forever. Over the last two years it has taken the internet by storm. It’s growing in popularity exponentially. It’s primary demographic is women between their early 20’s and their late 40’s who are focused on family, half of which already have children. It’s top interest groups include parenting, home, and family. As developers we work primarily with families, we are their home away from home, we connect parents with their kids when they drive through our gates. These are our people, this is the newest, hottest tool to connect with them. Oh, and did I mention a large portion of the Pinterest users that our industry appeals to are in the more affluent income ranges? I thought you’d like that part.
Next week we’ll start walking through how you can profit from Pinterest by driving traffic. In the mean time, if you still haven’t visited the site, go to www.Pinterest.com. At the moment new accounts are invite only, so if you don’t know anyone who’s on (which you probably do, even if you don’t know it – just ask around), but if you need an invite, send me an email and I’ll shoot you an invite when I have the time. Until next week, I’m Michael Grimm for the Resort Developers Association, I’ll see you later.