It’s no secret that Pinterest is one of the most popular and fastest-growing social media channels. Since its launch in 2010, Pinterest has helped millions of people build digital bulletin boards with everything from 5 minute recipes to global news. While they might be able to find some valuable content, there is far more to Pinterest than dream cars and cat videos.
Pinterest is quickly becoming the best social media site for travel companies, attractions, and destinations. Every day, people pin about 1.5 million places, creating more than 750 million pins of these destinations on Pinterest. This number is continually growing, and doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon. Is your brand taking advantage of this platform? Here are four reasons why you should.
Place Pins: In November 2013, Pinterest launched ‘Place Pins,’ a new tool allowing users to create a map of destinations they want to visit, or connect products to specific places around the globe. Pinterest users can easily add a map to a new or existing board and link pins to corresponding locations. From photos of dream destinations to pictures from a family trip, this feature can create the ultimate travel inspiration page or a mobile scrapbook. Place pins and maps can even be shared with friends to build itineraries or travel wish lists, and a well-crafted pin can help your destination land on these pages. For some pinspiration, visit the Travel Channel’s place pins map of East Coast Beaches, filled with stunning photos and destinations.
Rich Pins: Businesses on Pinterest can now create more detailed pins with information built into the posts themselves. Rich pins—currently available for products, places, recipes, movies and articles—can provide pinners with additional, static information outside of the pin’s caption, which can be changed by any user. For a place pin, this can include a map and address, phone number, even pricing. Hotels, for example, can include room rates and direct clicks right to the reservations page. Using rich pins is a great way to promote special offers, too, like discounted tickets to an amusement park or museum.
Direct Links to Website: Pinterest has created the ideal formula for travel inspiration: beautiful photos and direct link to a website. And with the highest conversion rate compared to its fellow social media channels, the formula is clearly working. For travel brands, this can mean linking to a hotel’s booking site, tour guide’s itinerary, or even a museum’s online store. Pinterest can help to drive people to your website and provide them with the information that you want them to see, and hopefully take action.
The Future: Even though Pinterest is already a great social media site for travel and destination brands, there are a few exciting new features in development. Previously, Pinterest did not use any outside sources to work on analytics. Now, the company has announced that they will be partnering with third-party marketing technology developers to offer more robust analytics to businesses using Pinterest. This will help travel and destination brands monitor traffic from Pinterest, as well as any Promoted Pins campaigns they may be running.
Pinterest is also rumored to be rolling out a new questions feature which would allow users to interact with brands, similar to a discussion forum. This could be a great place for travel and destination brands to engage with their consumers and learn about travel preferences and trends.
As Pinterest continues to grow and offer new features, it will become an even more diverse landscape for brands to engage online. Many of the newest functions on the site can help destination and travel brands achieve a deeper connection with consumers, and we expect it will only continue to get better in the future.