This is an article about using Pinterest to market to women and compares engagement with Twitter.
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Fascinating study showing little or no Pinterest decay thanks to list replenishment and the generational nature of repins. Think of a stone thrown into a pond, as the ripples move further from the splash their wave length gets longer and longer. Throw another stone in and the first generation of waves may still be rippling. As new people come onto y0ur Pinterest boards they pick up and repin older pins continuing the lifespan of the first generation ripples.
Returning visitors visit and see new pins and repin creating new generations of ripples and so on into infinity. The study says Pinterest has the generational longer life idea down better than Twitter. Ever try to re-engage on an old Tweet?
You can repost an old, popular tweet, but you better put "from the archive" or you will churn your most valued members off your list - those rare birds actually paying attention, but this study says twitter's decay rate is steep (true) and that the environment is less supportive of a tumbling generational effect (also true).
This study points to a larger issue - Visuals vs. Textuals.
So much of our brain is allocated to visual processing it makes sense a Pinterest board would be more memorable and so more robustly supported by new and returning visitors than the less spell binding Twitter. Twitter is stream is a constant NOW.
Pinterest, because it is so visual, can bring the past (nostalgia is very strong on Pinterest) or future (think about a Sci Fi board). Pictures engage and words explain. It is no mistake that some of most popular pins on Pinterest are words as paintings, words as posters ad words as illustration.
Words as poster and illustration make a cliché or fable easier to remember. Rereading Made To Stick by the Heath brothers today I got back in touch with the idea of the schema. Brands are schema or visual symbols that may evoke a deep well of meaning. The image the link wanted to put on this post was a graph. I changed it to the Pinterest logo because any viewer will get more messages faster from the red P than from a graph requiring close examination.
Pinterest is sharing an important lesson with every Internet marketer. Choose your words carefully and images even more so :).
Marty
Thanks to Kelly for her Pinterest expertise.
Via Kelly Lieberman
