Get Pinned!

If you’re a female between the ages of 25 and 44, you’re in the majority of pinners.  You’re spending an average of fifteen minutes a day on this increasingly popular website, feverishly ‘repinning’ images you find on websites to your ‘pinboard’, where your ‘followers’ can see what inspires you.  Think teen wall collages that grew up and are now on your computer. 

Joining Pinterest is easy: just “Request an Invite”.  It’s not too exclusive of a club; you’ll receive an emailed invite within a day.  Set up your account with your name and/or your salon name and from there, it’s relatively easy to figure out.  Then you can add or rename boards, upload images, called ‘pins’ in the Pinterest world, or add a ‘Pin This’ button to your bookmark bar and anytime you see an image that interests you, click on your ‘Pin This’ button and it’s added to whichever board you choose.

Getting your boards set up is the most time consuming part of it, but then adding a few pins a day is quick.  Multiply that by the number of team members in your salon and the pins can really put you on the map.  Increase your followers and you can start having your salon guests add their fabulous new hairdo photos to your boards, their boards—the possibilities are endless. 

With 1.36 million users pinning everyday, it’s no wonder that retailers are pulling up to the pinboard to get their brands shared and noticed.  97% of Pinterest’s ‘likes’ on Facebook are women, most of them are also mothers, and their average household income is $100k.  So retailers like Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and West Elm have boards. And, salons, like mine—Atelier Salonspa and Atelier Studio in San Jose, California—are jumping on board, too.

My general manager, Rob Willis, says: “We see it as an amazing way to get out in front of our current and future salon guests.  We have boards with photos of the salons, images from past fashion shows and editorial work, products we love, hair we’d love to do, and photos of our team just having fun, donating time to charity—things that let people know who we are and what we’re all about.  Anyone on our team who is on Pinterest is also linked to our Pinterest page, so they can promote themselves and their skills by pinning to the salon’s boards.  These images are seen by their followers, and once the images are repinned, a whole new set of eyes are being inspired by our Atelier team.  It is almost like that line in Toy Story: ‘To infinity, and beyond!’  Pinterest has a really huge reach.”

What’s the attraction, you may ask?  It’s relaxing, some say.  Like flipping through a deliciously divine magazine made up of everyone’s favorite pictures. It’s a great way to plan for a wedding, baby shower, design a new room in the house, share recipes, drool over shoes, and even shop for a new hairstyle or color.  It’s like playing Go Fish, but no one ever runs out of cards.  Use the word 'hair' in the search bar, and the world of hair is at your command, thousands of images of any image that has the word 'hair' in the caption will appear on the screen for your browsing enjoyment.  Repin, like, or comment on any of them, and your followers, and the person who last pinned it, will see that you have done something with that pin.

There’s just one caveat: Pinterest warns users against copyright infringement.  In other words, if you don’t have permission to post an image…don’t.  If you do, you must credit the owner of the image, the website you got it from, the photographer, or you have to be the owner of it.  And some images have been repinned so many times you'll have to go back to the original image to see who the credit goes to.  Be sure to caption your pin properly with your name, or the name of the owner of the image, or the store it’s from, or your salon.  CLICK HERE to read more about online copyright infringement.

There’s always a new way to reach out, and Pinterest looks like the best of them, so give it a try.  Besides, Facebook is so 2004!

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