Here at T+L we believe that a brand’s online presence and activity should always be both useable and useful to its customers. This rule applies to social media as well. While Facebook and Twitter are powerful channels, the needs of your audience may be better served on other platforms.
A great example of this is West Elm who help inspire potential customers on the social scrapbooking site Pinterest. If you are not familiar, Pinterest is a relatively new start-up that allows its primarily female users to build pinboards based on their interests and projects. This group consists of approximately 1.5 million Facebook connected users in addition to a unknown number of individuals signing in via Twitter and unique ID.*
Instead of forcing a message in as an outsider, West Elm created a free account and began to establish themselves as a respected member of the community. Each of their boards feature current home interior trends from their collection as well as pins from design blogs and other users. It doesn’t matter if the featured pieces are not from their store as long as they help to express their theme. This approach is proving to be successful; they have more likes, repins and overall traction than any other user we have seen.
There are 3 things brands can learn from this case study.
1. Receptive Audience
The Pinterest community has tools built specifically for creative exploration. West Elm provides members with valuable help while they are in process of searching for design inspiration. While Facebook or Twitter may have larger audiences, only a small percentage of that audience is going to care that colour blocking is big this year.
2. Ownership
West Elm was the first interior design retailer to enter the Pinterest community. They easily could have stuck to posting albums to Facebook that demonstrate their design taste or tweeting about their products. Instead of competing with hundreds of other voices they found a quiet place to have an engaging conversation with their customers.
3. Low Risk
The cost for West Elm to join Pinterest was $0 and their participation didn’t require monumental organizational change. The reputation they are creating for themselves in the design community is going to create more value than their effort.
* Based on number of Facebook likes. Despite extensive digging we were unable to find information on total number of users.
written by Joan Marentette
Link to West Elm’s Pinterest?
For sure, here it is – http://pinterest.com/westelm/
Great post. A good reminder that social media isn’t just limited to posting status updates.
Just wondering. But it seems that this is quite similar to going into forums and creating good replies to threads…
I think that the spirit is the same but the difference is that West Elm is helping people actively with the tools available through Pinterest. The active nature of the interaction is a notable evolution from listening and responding that is typically done in SM or forums.
Somewhat similar, yes. Being active within forums and a social community such as Pinterest both involve providing the right information/content at the appropriate time and place.
Great! Thanks for sharing this, people need to understand and use these tools for sure. Having a receptive Audience is a major plus, WestElm are doing things right.
How about awareness? How did West Elm got people to their hub? Was it all organic?
West Elm began posting as a regular member of the Pinterest community and appropriately tagged their posts so they were easily found. Other pinners would come across West Elm items when looking for home decor inspiration and begin following boards they liked. In our opinion this was the smartest way to create brand awareness in the space. A non-invasive, relevant brand message at the appropriate time.
Since we created this blog post West Elm has also added a ‘follow us on Pinterest’ icon to their blog ‘Front and Main’. We see many brands beginning to promote Pinterest as a forum for interaction.
You can view ‘Front and Main’ here: http://blog.westelm.com/