With an average of over 12 million unique monthly visitors users and counting, Pinterest (www.Pinterest.com) has become the latest social media darling. In fact, according to Lemon.ly, a visual marketing firm, Pinterest was the fastest independent website to reach 10 million unique monthly visitors—faster than Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
So what’s all the fuss about the site? And more importantly, how can medical practices take advantage of it?
Basics of Pinterest
First, let’s discuss what Pinterest is. Simply put, the social networking site is a virtual pinboard. Members register for free and upload their own photos or post links to photos of products or images they want to share with their followers. This is called “pinning.”
When you pin an image on Pinterest, you can embed a link to the site where you found that particular image. As a result of allowing users to embed website links, a Shareholic study found that Pinterest is now generating more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined.