Pinterest For Men: Infiltrating The She-Ra Club With Smart Marketing
July 24th, 2012 by
A digital corkboard where people can collect links to their favorite recipes, dapper clothing, and adorable cats with their heads stuck in something, Pinterest allows its users to effortlessly share evocative photos of their hobbies and interests. Launched a little over two years ago, this image-focused sharing site has taken the Internet by storm. (Just check out this infographic!) With over 10 million likes on Facebook, Pinterest has quickly inserted itself in to the inner circle of mainstream social media sites. It isn’t exactly a man-eating no-boys-allowed club — but with women making up nearly 70% of its users and a distinctively twee and vintage look to its features, it is unarguably lady-friendly. However, while it’s easy to write its possibilities off in a haze of vintage cloches and desaturated wedding schemes, Pinterest can be used to engage a wide number of demographics. If you’re looking to target male users, then, what to do?
Create A Goal
The first thing we must do as a business is to create the message we are trying to convey. It does not need to be overcomplicated, but something that lets our followers know where we are coming from. 
This can be accomplished through a theme of our posts or certain boards that show what a particular company does, sells, or is interested in.
Keep in mind that the average person spends about 15 minutes at any given time on the site, so our boards have to be concise and engaging. In addition, the boards have to keep the target audience in mind. Whole Foods accomplishes this with tantalizing images of recipes that add to the food-porn addiction of many male Pinterest users. This can also be accomplished by making more male-dominant boards for male clients. By doing some demographic research and creating boards about less-trafficked topics such as cars or gadgets, a business can connect better with its male clients through shared interests.
Personify Your Company
Social media is filled with generic company pages or profiles that really only sell their products. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but these companies overlook the fact that social media is supposed to be social — it’s in the name! So it’s important to take some time when setting up a company profile on Pinterest to imagine if your company was a person. What would that company-person do with their time? What is it interested in or passionate about?
When the Pinterest profile is humanized, audiences have an easier time identifying with the message of the company. For example, if you are a men’s clothing store, you wouldn’t want to saturate your posts with images of kittens; instead, use things relevant to your consumers, such as types of formal suits or images of vintage men’s fashion.
Interact With Your Fans
Pinterest is a social site. I would be lying if I didn’t pursue it at least a few times a day to look up things like delicious Old Fashioned. (Click the link. I have a fantastic one already pinned for you.) Pinterest consists of about 90% repins, which translates to a lot of people sharing what they’ve found on someone else’s board. Because of this, it is especially important to take the time to see what people are pinning about and give them incentive to share your brand. For instance, Confused.com designed a contest to have its followers pin a picture of them driving with high-heels on for a chance to win a pair of high heels. This type of competition can be easily converted to fit any target: power tools for men, toys for kids, or rubber chew toys for pets.
With the generation of traffic to your site, it is especially important to remember to keep your boards concise and organized. This will entice viewers to take a look and repin your posts, spreading your name your name all over the site in the process. In addition, remember to try offerings something for everyone. Even if you’re trying to appeal to a non-majority demographic, there’s no need to offend the site’s main user base by being gratuitously crude or racy.
Be Creative
Feel free to let your creativity shine when you design your boards. After all, you are competing with numerous collections of food and wedding planning, so feel free to do something simple that will appeals your male demographic. Think Geek, a nerdcore eCommerce site, does this with boards of their products and also other boards showcasing things they love — Star Wars, Dr. Who, and all things nerdy. This further proves that Pinterest can be used to appeal to your customers’ dorky sides, no matter what gender or walk of life.
Don’t just stop at the contents of your boards! Peugeot Panama went as far as to cleverly design their boards to puzzle piece their cars to create an engaging board covers. This is successful because not only does it creatively engages the viewer, but also it appeals to its male demographic.
Uniqlo gave the viewer an experience of a motion graphic that encourages the viewer to scroll down and watch as their pins animate to showcase their dry fit wear. This is a great way to create a gender-neutral board that appeals to both sexes.
So no matter what kind of business you are in, Pintrest can help you better connect with your clients, whether they are male or female. Also, there’s no better way to discover some interesting ways a shipping pallet can be converted into a coffee table
