Photographers, get over the hype! Pinterest is not the answer!

You’ve probably already heard about Pinterest and all the buzz about it, and how it’s a great marketing tool for photographers.

We beg to differ, though many people suggest embracing the new world and start participating in Pinterest.

Take a look at some of the revealing statistics we’ve found about Pinterest:

• Pinterest drives a ton of page views
• 82% of visitors are female
• 79% fall between the ages of 25-54
• Under “sites also visited” are such places as chef-in-training.com, foodgawker.com, the-girl-who-ate-everything.com, apartmenttherapy.com
• Under Audience interests are “Fashion Designers & Collections”, “Fashion & Style”, and “Crafts”

What this all means is that the Pinterest audience is busy pinning clothing, fashion, crafts and interior design items, rather than being charmed or mesmerized by your photography. Although they may pin your photography, the target audience there are not interested in photography for business. They just like your photos and will quickly go onto finding other interesting items to look at and pin.

As described in other photography blogs, Pinterest is an awesome marketing tool for retailers. But for photographers, it simply isn’t a good referral source because it doesn’t lead to sales. Pinterest hasn’t shown itself to be a good referral mechanism for service-based offerings (e.g. hiring you for a wedding). And if you compare the number of re-pins for the fashion category vs. the arts category, you’ll begin to understand that spending time on Pinterest as a marketing activity simply doesn’t pay off for photographers.

Pinterest can work, and may work to bring in some photography business, but we wouldn’t spend so much time on it and get sucked in by all of the recent buzz.

Tags: Pinterest, pinterest marketing, pinterest photographers