Do You Like Free Advertising? Or, How to Make Pinterest Work for Your Business

The hot new social site is Pinterest, alternately referred to as a threat to Facebook and Twitter and the biggest threat to copyright since Napster. I hardly need link it, as by now you have surely seen the blog post by distraught attorney-and-photographer Kirsten Kowalski, who deleted her account after reading the site’s Terms of Service.

I won’t weigh in on the controversy over Kowalski’s understanding of Pinterest’s Terms of Service, or how they compare to other sites’ terms. It hardly matters; she has ignited the public interest in, and fear of, the potential for violating copyright by using the site. The real question is, what will you, as a business owner and content creator, do about it?

Pinterest, like so many other social media sites, is great for small businesses. It is yet another method of getting people—the people who make the purchasing decisions—interested in and looking at your products. You should be especially interested in the site if your products fall within one of the major categories (Architecture, Art, Cars & Motorcycles, Design, DIY & Crafts, Education, Film, Music & Books, Fitness, Food & Drink, Gardening, Geek, Hair & Beauty, History, Holidays, Home Décor, Humor, Kids, My Life, Women’s Apparel, Men’s Apparel, Outdoors, People, Pets, Photography, Print & Posters, Products, Science & Nature, Sports, Technology, Travel & Places, and Wedding & Events). If your product falls into the Other category, the site may be slightly less useful to you, but it is still an avenue for free advertising. If you, like many businesses, are less concerned about protecting the copyright in the photographs of your products than you are about selling the products themselves, Pinterest is probably a great move.

I, however, am not a marketing expert, so I cannot tell you how best to use the site. I’ll leave that to the experts. What I do know is that if you want people to “pin” your products, you may have to reassure them that you do not intend to chase them down a la RIAA. To ensure that you aren’t sending mixed signals:

• Make sure that your own site’s Terms of Use are not preventing people from sharing your content. Your linking policy should be clearly link-friendly, within reason. You do not want people linking your content in a way that implies a relationship that does not exist, for example, but your policy should clearly allow a Pinterest pin with a note about how much the user loves your new software product, clothing line, or music album.
• Join Pinterest and pin as many of your own products as you have time to pin, in as exciting and attractive a format as possible. This will reassure people that you do not mind pinning, and give them the opportunity to re-pin from an unquestionably legitimate source.
• Put a link to your Pinterest page on your company’s website. Again, this will reassure people that you are fine with social sharing.
• Make use of Pinterest’s “Goodies” and put a “Pin It!” button on your company website.

If you are not sure whether your website’s current Terms of Use are pin-friendly, but want to make sure to get it right, feel free to contact me for help.

Update March 24, 2012: Pinterest has updated its site Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The new documents will be effective as of April 12, 2012. These changes to not affect the information provided in this blog post, as Pinterest cannot grant users a license to your business’s content; only your business can do that.

Pinterest logo courtesy of the “Goodies” section on Pinterest. The Pinterest logo was designed by Michael Deal and Juan Carlos Pagan.