Best Practices for Food Brands on Pinterest

Janet Helm is the chief food and nutrition strategist of North America for Weber Shandwick. She is the author of the blogNutrition Unplugged and co-founder of the Nutrition Blog Network and Healthy Aperture. She has been a contributor to Cooking Light magazine and is currently partnering on a book with Cooking Light.

Pinterest has become the fastest growing website ever, now with nearly 12 million monthly users. The site illustrates the evolution from the “social graph” to the “interest graph” – or the shift from friend-based networks to those that connect people based on their shared interests.

Food is one of the major niches or shared interests on Pinterest. In fact, food lovers were among the first on Pinterest; they saw the benefits of pinning instead of clipping recipes. These foodies used boards to plan dinner parties, collect holiday baking ideas, and create their own virtual cookbooks.

Not surprisingly, food bloggers have also become Pinterest power users. The Food and Drink category has become one of the largest and most active in terms of pins and repins.

While the Pinterest terms of use prohibit commercial use of the site, Pinterest’s lack of enforcement means that marketers are rapidly turning to Pinterest to help visually curate their brands. (No doubt the legal issues surrounding Pinterest will be worked through and the terms of use will likely evolve.) In the meantime, there are numerous opportunities for food brands to leverage this easy-to-use, image-sharing social network, although it’s best for marketers to work with experienced legal counsel to minimize risks.

Here are eight tips and best practices to get you started.

1. Add Value

Offer helpful advice and useful ideas that your followers would find valuable. Cooking Light, one of the early stars on Pinterest, has created a series of boards that feature timely holiday recipes, seasonal menu ideas and how-to cooking techniques, along with DIY projects and kitchen resources. Most content originates from CookingLight.com, which has made Pinterest the most important social media referral source for the site, according to Allison Lowery, who manages Pinterest for the magazine. Cooking Light was also quick to add “pin it” buttons to all online recipes to make it easier for readers to pin to Pinterest.

2. Tell Stories

Pinterest was made for visual storytelling. Grocery delivery service Peapod tells a tale with its “Delivery Trucks” board. The pins share images from the road by showcasing the various trucks in transit. One truck got stuck in an NYC blizzard; another donated food in Connecticut as part of Peapod’s Kids Give Back program. A separate Pinterest board provides the back stories of Peapod’s delivery truck drivers.

3. Host a Contest

Several food brands have achieved success with “pin and win it” contests on Pinterest. Saveur magazine created a dinner party pinboard contest, asking pinners to build a dream dinner party on their own boards using at least three recipes from Saveur.com. Participants tagged pins with #saveur and #dinnerparty to help extend the reach (the hashtag searchability function of Pinterest is similar to Twitter). The winner will be featured on Saveur.com. Similarly, Relish magazine created a three-day “Pinathon” to see who could pin the most content from Relish.com to win prizes. Before launching a contest, be sure to consult Pinterest’s terms of use.

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Hispanics More Active on Social Media than Other Ethnicities

Time spent and social sites visited outpace other US internet user groups.

US Hispanics are more active on social media than the average US internet user, and are logging in more frequently to a wider variety of social sites.

The February 2012 “American Pulse Survey” fromBIGinsight of US adult internet usage found that, while greater percentages of black internet users spent larger blocks of time online than the other groups studied, Hispanic internet users spent more of their online time on social media sites.

On an average day, 26.8% of Hispanic internet users spent six hours or more on social media sites, while 20.4% of black internet users and only 8.5% of total internet users spent that much time on social sites.

Looking specifically at which sites social-savvy Hispanics were using, the survey found US Hispanics were willing to participate in some newer and smaller social sites, logging in more often to networks like Pinterest, foursquare and LinkedIn, for example, than the average US internet user.

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Pinterest for Food Brands

It’s social, visual, viral, and easy to use, which are just some of the reasons why brands like Whole Foods, Food52, Chobani, Sustainable Table (GRACE Communications Foundation), Cabot Cheese, and now Food+Tech Connect are flocking to Pinterest. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard that helps you organize and share interesting things you find on the web. TechCrunch broke the story Tuesday that Pintrest reached 11.7 million monthly active users, making it the fastest independent site to reach 10 million monthly uniques in the U.S. and one you will probably be seeing a lot more of in the coming months.

Food brands, non-profit organizations, and media properties are among some of the early adopters, finding the site a new way to humanize their brand and share their favorite resources. The pinboard layout makes it easier for people to consume more content  than is possible on other sites like Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.** Unlike the aforementioned social networking platforms that focus on the social graph, Pinterest focuses on the interest graph- connecting you with people based on your interests rather than friendship. This presents new opportunities to learn about consumers’ likes and interests. The brands mentioned above, for example, have created boards highlighting their favorites, from farms and farmers, recipes, books, gadgets, inspirational quotes, and news sources, among other things.

But brands should beware Pinterest warns, “Avoid Self Promotion: Pinterest is designed to curate and share things you love. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, pin away! However, try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.” Perhaps, this is why it’s difficult to search for brands on the website. Mashable has some helpful guidelines for those creating an account for their brand. Read More