Ahhhh,

Pinterest...

It's like having a filing cabinet just for pictures-- only not as clunk ugly --full of folders sorting everything by category. It's like a collection of playlists on your iPod; a category for workouts, for rainy days, for Summer, Winter, Autumn. All that and more, is Pinterest... but again, for pictures (click on the big red 'Pinterest' or Pic above to visit my page and see what I mean). Best thing? literally NO ONE can have an ugly Pinterest page. And few can actually manage to have an UNinteresting one.

I've had mine for close on a year now, and I've not managed to post much recently, but for those of you who don't have one of these free accounts, or do, and think it can only be used for collecting pictures...?

Think again.

Imagine going to your favorite restaurant's website. On that site they have what they're calling their 'online menu'. It's basically a boring table (for those of you conversant with HTML, you know what I mean) with boring, meaningless-to-a-new-patron descriptions. But imagine you're in the car with friends and you want to convince them to try this new restaurant you've discovered which IS using Pinterest as the format and platform for their online menu... One of your friends has her iPad with her and she looks up the menu online. Each meat or food category has it's own 'board,' each with it's own cover photo, and within each board each entree comes complete with a photo that links to a larger version, PLUS, many people who have eaten a particular dish have left comments describing how much they loved the dish, giving you their own personal review. Is that not a great marketing tool?

So why is it then, that the restaurants I'VE suggested this to looked at me with blank, lifeless stares? The idea is to grow your business, expand your client base, right? Then why not take advantage of every tool at your disposal... ESPECIALLY when they're free? And especially as Pinterest is fully integrated with Facebook AND Twitter?

Is it the build time? The work taking, uploading, and arranging photos? of structuring a Pinterest account? I'd be happy to do it for them... not for free, mind you, but I'd love to be service to, and help build my favorite restaurants business.

I want to be eating their fare ten, twenty years from now! So my motives are not entirely unselfish. I want some scratch in my wallet for the effort, and a long and mutually satisfying relationship with the Indian restaurant down the street, or that amazing Baja-style Mexican Restaurant on the other side of town.

Sometimes it takes an asteroid crashing to earth to get anyone to look up. Same is true in business, I suppose. Some folks have been doing the same thing for years, or decades, and see no need to change, until they find they're the only steak house in town that looks like a shack among all the new structures built up around it. It may still have great sales, but imagine what it could do if its owners only invested some time and effort into keeping up with the times and trends of a fast evolving community.

I learned very quickly in television sales that marketing, as I was taught, is more than simply walking in a business and asking if their interested in advertizing on TV. If all you're going to do is go in with the rate card memorized in your head and a standard pitch you're being made to thrown at everyone you meet... well, you'll get some fish to bite on that; some fish, after all, will bite at anything... but you may not hold on to that client for very long.  Clients, after all, are not fish-- they typically tell the difference between a pitch and a genuine desire to see and make their business grow. Some would-be clients don't see a need for all the new-fangled toys, you could throw at them. Some of them don't actually see the need for a website! And for those who think they know what they don't need? who don't think they need what you can do for them? Some of them may be right... they don't need you. And for the others, with ugly, poorly built websites getting next to zero traffic?

Just walk away.

You're not going to convince them. Your job, as a salesman, is to help new and existing clients keep up with the digital Jones. And you've got commissions to earn.

Pinterest is only one tool in your marketing tool-box, and there is so much more you can do with it. And your clients, assuming they want to earn even more sales, should be clambering all over each other to get you to help them remain relevant in this ever-changing marketplace.