I’m excited about the new feature Pinterest launched today – secret boards with the ability to collaborate on them with others. While it’s a great feature for planning holiday shopping or that surprise birthday or anniversary party, it also has some great benefits for B2B marketers.
As a marketing consultant, I’ve already been using Pinterest to pin ad campaigns that I like. I also played around with a Pinterest board on which I pinned brands that are representative of one of my client’s brand aspirations. One problem with the latter is that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) expose my client’s identity by using any brands from the industry or certainly their brand. So it was just a generic board.
Benefits of Secret Pinterest Boards
Now, not only can I create a board and put any brand on it I want, I can hide it from all but my team and the client. The fact that others can pin what they want and we can all access the board is fantastic. We have been doing branding exercises in which our clients cut and paste images from magazines to illustrate how they feel about their brand. Guess what? Pinterest secret boards allow us to do this online, more efficiently, and with a collaborative approach.
4 Ways B2B Marketers Can Use Secret Pinterest Boards
1. Competitive Analysis – Pin competitor logos, images, cover photos and banners from Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube “skins” to a board that only you and your marketing project stakeholders can see.
2. Branding Exercises – Create a secret Pinterest board for branding “brainstorming” when creating a new brand for a new company or new product launch, or when doing a re-branding project for an “old brand.”
3. Creative Brief Development – A secret Pinterest board can be part of a creative brief for an ad campaign, a new design for a website or print piece. Or, use several secret Pinterest boards to show several design concepts.
4. Market Research – Pin images or graphic designs to a secret Pinterest board and ask customers or clients, a target audience, or the world (crowdsourcing) to comment and vote on their favorites. With the high adoption rate on Pinterest, this could be very effective and fun at the same time.
I remember back in 2000 designing secure client pages that required a password login on New Incite’s website. It was we could upload new designs, documents and files for client review and approval. Today, thanks to collaborative sites that offer security and privacy, we don’t need these custom website features as much if at all.
B2B marketers – more uses for Pinterest secret boards? I’d love to hear your ideas!
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Jennifer, great post!
I find it surprising (and dismaying) that Pinterests sends me all these notifications but nothing came into my inbox about this exciting new feature.
Talk about whispering in a well!
I am going to test out your terrific suggestions.
Thanks again.
Hi Nancy, thanks for the comment. I’m sure I learned of the new Pinterest Secret Board feature in one of three places: LinkedIn (someone shared a blog post); Mashable’s blog or Techcrunch. I can’t remember where. Then later I saw an email from Pinterest to me. I don’t remember subscribing to them, but I have a profile and I’ve blogged about Pinterest with a link to the site at least twice…. It does sometimes seem like a blur of messaging!