Pinterest: what’s in it for radio?

If you’ve not already done so – I recommend you sign up to Pinterest. It’s an image based sharing social network – here’s a link to everything you need to know about Pinterest. I’ve come across some interesting promotion and branding ideas on the site recently. Yes, its a visual based network but there’s some great finds which come on your feed after following a few relevant “pinners”. For example – this great advertising campaign for a Brazilian radio station to promote their Classic Rock music proposition (image above).

A recent article in Radio Ink (US radio magazine) looks at the website and dismisses its use for radio people. Now while I agree with Stiles that it isn’t as critical as Facebook and Twitter to engage with audiences -I believe it can still have a place in the overall marketing mix for radio stations and personalities as the site grows in popularity in the UK.

As an example – here’s it being used by Virgin Radio Montreal to help amplify its music credentials, represent the lives of its target audience and promote brand messages. After all – its designed as a sticky viral medium so content is easily shared or “re-pinned” to other users.

Stiles makes reference to a link on Tech Crunch which looks at the Pinterest audience and cites “18-34 year old upper income women” as the growing demographic of the site – commercial radio heartland audience! With that in mind – lets look at some pratical ways that Radio stations can use this ever growing social media platform:

• Integrate Pinterest into an on-air feature. For example, use it to crowd source content. Put a topical news story image and ask people to comment on it via Pinterest and read out comments on air. The more topical – the more likely it will get ‘re-pinned’ with the radio station as the source.

• Create a ‘We play’ pinboard. Update your latest playlist to the board or help break local/new bands to your audience. You can ‘pin’ images from album covers, studio sessions or YouTube links

• Use Pinterest to create visual clues for an on-air promotions or a ‘Fugative-esq’ promotion. ‘Pin’ clues of locations and raise the frequency of images ‘pinned’ the more they’re shared.

• Local radio – ‘Pin’ and ‘Re-Pin’ great images of your TSA.

• Create a visual lineup of your on-air talent – put a link to their website profile page in the comments section or use it to leave requests for request shows.

• Tie it up with special days – eg. Mothers Day – ‘pin’ up pictures of DJ’s mums or ‘pin’ up pictures from school days during back to school week

• Bring news articles to life with more visual images – eg. To support this article  – you could ‘pin’ pictures of a male presenters’ cooking results or his favourite food.

If you’ve got some other ideas or some practical examples – please do share with the Earshot community. Why not give Pinterest a go – after all .. a picture is worth a thousand words.

Feel free to follow me over at Pinterest – my boards are located at http://pinterest.com/jonathanjacob/