I don’t claim to be a Pinterest expert, but one things I do know about it is that you can very easily spend way too much time on it. That easy addictiveness of Pinterest is what makes it a very powerful marketing tool. That easy addictiveness is also what can make Pinterest a cause for concern, especially if you include a Pinterest feed on your website.
Just like most other social media, there really isn’t a lot of sales that happen on Pinterest. The various social media platforms are there to engage your audience and social community and then eventually drive them back to your website to make a sale. I’m all for providing links to your social media accounts on your site, we do that on most of the sites we build. But providing a full feed of your posts, especially on something that is easily captivating like Pinterest, can have a negative effect pretty easily. If someone sees something in that feed and then follows it to Pinterest, there is a fairly decent chance that they might not be back for a while. What’s more concerning is that they very well may forget all about you because they left your site so quickly and got to Pinterest right away. Once they’re at Pinterest, they could very easily come across any number of other competitors. If those competitors are using the platform to drive users to their site to complete a sale or transaction, you could very easily lose out on the opportunity.
I’m not at all against Pinterest or any other social media platform. They are a tremendous marketing opportunity, but as Uncle Ben said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Social media should be an avenue for building and engaging with you social community, then bringing that community back to your website to complete a transaction.