By now we've all heard of Pinterest. You'd be hard pressed to have escaped it in fact. For some of us it's just another one of those Social Media sites floating around in the background and for others it's a big deal. No doubt some of you will have been running around over the last month or so trying to find out all about it, and even more importantly, how to generate leads from it.

There's a lot of blogs out there from people who've been on this from the word go, trying to pinpoint the best strategies for building a brand identity on the site. Pun not intended of course. Now some of these blogs are pretty useful, and at this point there's more than enough information out there to make sure that your brand is forced down peoples throats deep enough that they'll never forget the experience. Some of the strategies are pretty clever too, though they don't vary too differently from that of other platforms.

The question I'm asking is why try to fit a square shaped brick into a round shaped hole?

This site is clearly great for sharing cool images in a simple fashion, and this lends itself brilliantly to B2C companies who want to build hype around a new product or item of clothing. It's a good approach and lots of people will be going on the site purely to look at this kind of thing.

But what is the point I ask you, of using a platform that is clearly filled with women looking at shoes & fashion accessories, to persuade companies to buy a service? I'll be honest, it beats me.

Obviously you'll want to try to secure your company's brand identity on the site, just to make sure no-one cane make a mockery of it. A good number of companies missed the boat on this (check out http://pinterest.com/ibm/) and are no doubt kicking themselves because of it. But as far as this site's value for B2B Digital Marketing goes, that's it.

Now for all the Pinterest advocates out there, who are getting as excited as a teenage girl whose just heard the new Justin Bieber CD, I'm not knocking the site (though I am clearly knocking the singer), I'm just saying there's a time and a place.

For B2C this is a great new tool, and one not to be sniffed at, but for gods sake use it appropriately, the only companies on this site are those who are already trying to sell stuff, they're not about to be inspired by your latest graphic interpretation of your company's service, and they are definitely not about to try and buy as a result.

In short, I'm very much enjoying utilizing this platform for my B2C clients. The learning process has been fun and the platform works well for them. What I won't be doing any time soon is trying to persuade B2B clients that it's worth an ounce of effort, or single penny of their marketing budget.

If you've enjoyed reading this article, and want to keep track of current trends in both Digital and Direct Marketing, you can find a multitude of interesting and perhaps provocative posts on our website www.red-wasp.co.uk.

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