Pinterest hasn’t been around that long so some of the readers of this post may not know what Pinterest is so let me start with a definition:
Pinterest is an online pinboard. Users can organize and share things you love.
Today’s question is can we use this as a new research technique? Here are three potential ways that I believe we could use Pinterest in qualitative research:
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It seems to me that you could use it as a way to warm-up respondents prior to a focus group.
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I also can see it as a follow-up after a focus group as a way to gather additional insight.
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In addition, I could see building a community and gathering a ton of insights from all of the respondents.
What do you think?
- Are you using Pinterest in research projects?
- How do you think you might use this as a research technique in the future?
I look forward to reading your comments.
stephenie gordon says:
Pam Lintner and I have been playing around with the boards for research purposes quite a bit to figure out the best way to add Pinterest to our “tool box”. I personally LOVE Pinterest and feel it could replace the standard homework collage!
Ed Sugar says:
This reminds me of a wonderful study Wendy Kheel did while she was at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2001. Due to a very tight, post 9/11 budget, she came up with the following methodology:
They intercepted 50 park visitors and invited them to participate in the following study. Each person was given two disposable cameras (do they still make them?), one marked with “green”, the other marked “red”. The respondents were given simple instructions: “Take photos of things that you liked and enjoyed with the ‘green’ camera. Take photos of things that you disliked and spoiled your experience at the park with the ‘red’ camera.”
Tip of the hat to Stephenie and Pam, as it sounds like they are continuing to blaze the trail started by Wendy ten years ago, using Pinterest and social media.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Here is a little more information reagrding Pinterest. This was written by Eric Swayne who ileads our social team:
WHAT IT IS
Pinterest has taken the social media space by storm, growing to over 10 million monthly unique visits in the past 9 months; a pace comScore says is the fastest to hit that milestone of any social network in history. Pinterest lets its users create virtual “pinboards” using images and sites from across the web, to share the things they find interesting. Users can also “follow” other users’ boards, and “repin” items from others’ boards onto their own.
Each pinned item prominently displays the image captured, with an optional brief description from the user. The image pinned also links back to the original site, a function that has many web content producers catering heavily to Pinterest to cultivate premium search engine optimization.
Pinterest is currently in a “closed beta,” and new users must request an invite to the site by submitting their email address. This viral growth, along with the image-heavy pinboard concept, has strongly attracted females – over 97% of the site’s Facebook “likes” come from women.
Because of this growth and advantageous demographic, brands have taken to Pinterest with gusto, and you can now follow pinboards for Whole Foods (http://bit.ly/ycA1Gm), Nordstrom (http://bit.ly/Aed59G), West Elm (http://bit.ly/AAkpCl) and more.
HOW IT WORKS
On their desktop browser, users can add a specialized bookmark to their browsers (often called a “bookmarklet”) that when activated will automatically generate a pop up dialogue to add the page being viewed to Pinterest. Pinterest will also scan the page for images and offer the user a chance to pick which one to pin, if more than one is on the page viewed.
As users are browsing the site, they can also “repin” any pinned item to their own boards using the “repin” button. Over 75% of pins on the site are actually “repins” from other boards, so the site has tremendous ability to carry forward viral content.
Site creators have also taken advantage of a new “pin it” button, and many have added it to their pages. When users click on this button, it launches a similar dialogue to the bookmarklet. One blogger has been able to generate over 6,000 unique visitors to her site from Pinterest alone, fueled by adding this “pin it” button to her site.
Fashion and crafts sites such as Etsy (http://www.etsy.com) and Shoedazzle (http://www.shoedazzle.com/) have placed the button on many of their product pages.
Users can also view the site’s content through Pinterest’s iPhone application, or through their mobile-optimized site at http://m.pinterest.com.
HOW TO GET STARTED
To get started with Pinterest, you’ll need to request an account by submitting your email address, or having a friend that already has an account send you an invite. Most invites arrive quickly, as the site hasn’t yet taken any serious measures to curtail its explosive growth.
After creating an account, users are offered a default set of boards with pre-populated titles including “Products I Love,” “Favorite Places & Spaces,” and “Books Worth Reading.” Users can edit any of these boards or create new ones, and can also rearrange board layout on their profile.
To start pinning, users can enter a URL into the site, or use the afore-mentioned “pin it” bookmarklet, available here: http://bit.ly/wDEkw2
ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
For Social Marketers and Marketing Researchers alike, Pinterest represents a tremendous opportunity to glean new insights from consumers about users’ attitudes and interests regarding brands, topics or themes.
This source is particularly useful for understanding the key demographic making up most of Pinterest’s user base: young, upper-middle class females.
Some techniques for extracting user insights out of Pinterest include:
The Virtual Mood Board – Each board created by a Pinterest user is very similar to outputs researchers have often created within focus groups.
We can use Pinterest in much the same way: for example, a search for “oranges” on the site (http://bit.ly/AA7ozC) quickly shows us that users most identify with orange the fruit, and orange the color – they rarely mention orange juice. The predominance of images showing oranges as a fruit display it cut open, usually in halves or quarters to show the freshness inside the fruit. To a brand in this space, insights like these can be extremely valuable, and could directly affect product positioning or marketing.
Inference of Consumer Attitude about a brand – Brands can also look at their Pinterest footprint directly, and infer insights about how consumers perceive their brand. For example, by looking at web analytics brand managers can track which images or pages have been posted to Pinterest, and can infer which content is most popular among a given user base.
Brands can also look up their own brand name (such as this search for “Corvette”: http://bit.ly/AfCNHJ) and infer attitudes from what branded content users are most likely to share.