Here comes Pinterest and Instagram – Get Ready!

I came across this interesting article about Pinterest and Instagram and how they may well become the new Social Media marketing phenomenon, by Peter Drew

What is this blog post about? Well the last month or so, I’ve been pretty busy investigating two new massive sites on the web and the internet social scene.

Instagram Iphone App (not on Android)  with close to 20 million active users in only 11 months.

Pinterest.com with an Alexa Ranking of only 110.

What is Pinterest Exactly? Well its hard to describe, because functionally its a simple plain old Social Bookmarking site, that uses images instead of links. Nothing to special there right? Well, no.. But this new system and layout they have produced utilises Twitter like trending capabilities within their layout. So within their Categories of content, you only really get to see the quality content rise to the top.. And Quality Galore is there to be found.

Adding the social component to Social Bookmarking has transformed this system into a thing of real beauty.I follow people who I know, when they or others like sites, images, this all influences the availability of me to find this content. The more people like it, they higher up it is displayed for people. So the cream really does rise to the surface.

You can browse the categories of content supplied to the site via users, you only get to see the best of the best in these categories. This being the case, you get to see some pretty awesome content. Considering the amount of traffic taken away from Facebook and Google as noted in Mashable, this new platform really is going to change the way the web is displayed over Time. Note in this blog post.. I had to add that image to the top of this blog post. Why? So people can pin it.. and it looks relatively attractive. Before I didn’t have to worry about that, but now I do, If I want some Pinterest Loving Additionally I had to add the Pinterest Pin plugin to make it easy for you to Pin my blog Post:)

Speaking of WordPress plugins, Here is the plugin I used to add “My” Pinterst content in the column to the right. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pinterest-rss-widget/screenshots/ Very simple to install, in under 5 mins and very flexible in how you want to display your pins etc.

Something very fascinating about Pinterest is that this social site is the only one I know of that has a much larger female following than males. As I remember and I cannot remember the link its like 60% females to 40% males. So a great place to market to females, if that is you have some pretty awesome quality content, that Pinterest is now inspiring from people and companies.

While we are here sharing the love, here’s some links to some very cool articles about pinterest and marketing.

• http://hospitalera.com/why-you-should-use-pinterest/
• http://www.harrisfellman.com/modern-day-pin-up-girls/
• http://www.musingsofahousewife.com/2012/01/pinterest-for-bloggers.html

If you have a website that displays pretty awesome content, right beside the “Like” button that should be on your page already, you now need a Pin Button right beside it, so you make it very easy for people to Pin your beautiful stuff.

Here is the link to get your pin button details. http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

Here is an example of a beautiful page. Why do I think its beautiful, because of its brilliant layout and the ease to which it allows its viewers to comment about, and to share their pretty and cool content. Its a great layout to copy for your site.http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/iphone-slr-adapter .

Instagram is a pretty amazing Iphone only App. Their USP you would think, is the amazing filters in their app to make pretty much any of your photos look brilliant. But No, that’s not the case. There are many Iphone photo apps out there, that do different things to your photos, but Instagram is the only one out there, that has added the Social Network Component to it. E.G. Allowing you to follow cool people, and be followed. Plus the use of HashTags!!! This has really transformed this social network. One amazing example of the use of hashtags here:

• Moby: To release his new album, Moby built a website that displays Instagram photos on a world map. Users are encouraged to upload photos of their hometowns at night and tag them #destroyed, and the photos automatically show up on Moby’s website: http://destroyed.moby.com/
• Source: http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/95808-getting-started-with-the-instagram-api

If that isn’t cool I don’t know what is LOL 

You can display your Instagram Images on your blog using this very simple and easy to install Instagram Word Press Plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pin-it-on-pinterest/ . Additionally, you can display Instagram photo content by you guessed it, Hashtags, which means the possibilities are endless what you can use these for. Most likely need a WordPress Dev to install this one though.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ep-hashimage/

There isn’t all that much information out there about Instagram at present, I had to dig and explore it all myself as no info was thrown out at me via social media like most content is. So I decided to throw it out there socially for everyone now.

Here’s a case study. Some Awesome young Entrepreneurs on Instagram.

Some Young Ladies absolutely Killing it on Instagram. Check out there profile page!

Yep, that’s 72,196 followers on Instagram. Plus you see their domain name right there, if you tap on it, it takes you directly to their website where they are selling their clothing range. Plus they have a Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/SaboSkirt I do not know these people, but I just love what they are doing online.

They are marketing their products via awesome photos from Instagram. Instagram offers this clothing company a platform that,

1. Makes their products look Awesome (Via the brilliant photo filters available).

2. Offers them a market place to display their wares. Why? because its all about Quality. This company displays quality and people love it.  How much of this converts to sales? I do not know, but I can guarantee you, they are generating a lot more sales than before Instagram existed.

On January 29 I posted an image of their profile herehttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150515778481482&set=a.403563776481.180069.706761481&type=1 And they had 63,503 followers, so in 11 days, they have gained exactly 8693 new followers.. Pretty amazing stats!

One thing I did notice, is this company is not on Pinterest? why I do not know, though I think their products may well do as well on Pinterest as Instagram, both sites equally rely on quality and as noted earlier, Pinterest has a majority female audience, so I think the SaboSkirt Brand would do exceptionally well in Pinterest. If anyone reading this knows people in this company, send them this article.

Here is an excellent interview with the founder of Instagram.

Before posting this article I had to add the Pin Plugin to this blog, so people reading this can obviously Pin it. This is the link for it. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pin-it-on-pinterest/ So you can add it to your own blogs.

Massive changes happening on the web right now. Great time to be alive.

Me being me, I’ve been investigating these new products from an Internet Marketer Developers perspective, obviously and I can tell you I am right now developing two vastly different products so we can all benefit financially from these new changes, these two products are both related to Pinterest and vastly different from each other though compliment each other wonderfully.  Pinterest is all about traffic as noted via @Mashable. Any new site that is taking on Google and Facebook traffic wise is something we really need to focus on right now.  If your not in there working it, your competitors will be.

Interestingly, after my investigations and playing around in there, Ive got close to 200 followers already without trying at all and one of my boards called Seo-Software URL here http://pinterest.com/peterdrew/seo-software/ as you can see already has over 400 followers which is neat, considering I’ve done very little.. in 2 to 3 months I can guarantee you my Seo-Software board on Pinterest will have over 10,000 followers.

In a week’s time I’ll be leaving a comment on this post, sharing how much traffic this post gets from the Pinterest domain as referral traffic, from people pinning this article and from my posting it in my Seo-Software Board. I will also share how many “Re Pins” this article gets, a Re Pin, is when a person on Pinterest likes the Pin so much they re pin it on one of their own boards for safe keeping.

So please “Like” this article or leave a comment below, so you’ll be notified when I update this article with the referral information etc. Similarly if you think your friends on Facebook would enjoy this information here, Please “Like” or comment.

Love to hear your feedback.

Cheers

Pete!