What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a pinboard-styled social networking site which primarily allows users to create, manage & organize themed-based image collections. Pinterest is a with a visually-pleasing interface. Users collect photos and link to products they love, creating their own pinboards and following the pinboards of other people whom they find interesting. I would describe it as, a group of friends or office mates sitting in a room sharing beautiful & interesting pictures out of magazines.
People use Pinterest as a way to keep all sorts of ideas in one easily accessible place & sharing them on the web. Among others, most people have boards for photography that inspires them, quotes that amuses them, tasty looking foods they wish to cook over the weekend, house exterior & interior decorating pictures, etc.. And this is how I see it being useful and advantageous to whatever industry or business specifically Real Estate.
Realtors should be pinning the most beautiful images of their listings with notes about the design or unique nature of the architecture. Imagine your listing photos getting shared by 1,000 people with a link back to your website. Does that sound like it could have a positive impact? This kind of marketing is actually fun and easy to do.
We all know that home purchases decisions are made on emotion. An image is sure to trigger an emotion or impression of a “Lifestyle”. So really when you are selling homes, you are selling a “Lifestyle”. Approach Pinterest from a Lifestyle perspective of selling homes. Set up your Boards on Pinterest to focus in on the different Lifestyle aspects of what you are selling. Have a board dedicated to photos of home with new kitchens and a board of home exteriors, living rooms, bathrooms, landscaping, etc.
Once you have gained a small following, continue that practice and begin to occasionally add photos from your website of your listings to Pinterest. Do this by re pinning from your website, not uploading directly to Pinterest. By doing it this way, there will be a link to your website that follows that photo no matter how many times it is re-pinned.
Chrome has an extension that will allow you to right-click on a photo on your website and select “Pin to Pinterest” – this will allow the link to your website to follow that photo as it gets re-pinned hundreds of times. Over time, you will become known as a Real Estate resource in your area while having fun and marketing at the same time.
The site is currently invite-only, and it has experienced rapid growth in recent months. You can just go to the website and request for an invite & start pinning!
