Pinterest Announcement

(Edited on 2013-02-22 07:12:18 by kelvinjay)

I will try to keep an open mind on this. It is a little scary in light of recent issues, but will give images a great deal of exposure with links back to the site and individual images on istock. I do like the topic groupings. They are a great way to draw traffic in and have them drill down to images.


 

Pinterest definitely doesn't have the best record when it comes to re-hosting other people's content at high resolutions with no payment or attribution, but, the specific plan that the folks in Calgary have come up with to use Pinterest to market our work sounds good to me. Watermarked files with links back to the image? That's the ideal situation, really.  If only we could get all the other "deals" to work this way...

Watermarked content at Pinterest does drive sales, provided it's pinned by either the content creator or a reputable agent, links easily to a "buy" page, and again, is watermarked. I've seen traffic from my pinned images lead to sales. It absolutely does work. The trouble is in trying to make sure that my images are pinned by me or an agent. When they're pinned by someone else, they can link to anywhere. Another stock site (which isn't bad, although I prefer to drive traffic to the higher-paying sites) or in some cases, an image can be pinned and linked to nowhere or (worse yet) to a piracy site.

Pinterest isn't popular among stock artists, and I know I'm in the minority of folks who have embraced it. But I can say for sure, when put to good use it can and does drive traffic that leads to sales. I had a couple of big sales this week alone that I can attribute to Pinterest traffic.

May we put on Pinterest our watermarked content ourselves (linked in the same way)?

I just went to pinterest for the first time and signed up. Amazing! This looks like a super marketing tool! Love that we are keeping up with the times. It will be fun to see how many pins we get in each photo.


On that score are we getting back the buttons under our image that sends them straight to facebook and twitter? I miss those instant post buttons right from the site, they were a great way to market our pictures.

You mean these buttons?



They should be working.

^^can you please look and see if I have buttons, I can't find them.


I use firefox

(Edited on 2013-02-22 10:35:41 by JodiJacobson)

Sorry if I missed it, but is there a way to find out if my images were 'pintrested', or how can one check?

I don't see why not. It's your content.

I just spent a month getting all my work taken down from my art sites off of Pinterest and now you are allowing them to pin our work?  Also got an email last night from them advising me their site has been hacked and my personal information off of my correspondence to them to get my work off their site has been compromised and is now out there.  I'm not happy about this affiliation at all!  Yes... I guess if you can't beat them...you just join them!

I've been pinning some of my stuff from here. All seems to work well with the images linking back here just fine. The iStock announcement reminded me that I have been meaning to spend some time getting into Pinterest. It's one of those things which I know I am also going to get ideas back from. I created a board just for my own stuff from here - it's a nice way of putting together a selection. I like how it lays out our pictures. Planning to pin some of my print and archival stuff too. ETA: it already made me stop and think about what sort of pictures I actually want to be making. I think we forget that sometimes.

(Edited on 2013-02-25 13:14:36 by bunhill)

Hey Lobo, it's spelled Pinterest, not Pintrest. Just saying.

Oh, I get it now. BTW, there are plenty of bonafide links back to buy stuff on Pinterest. A pile of Etsy shops are using it as a way to promote wares in their shops. Especially hard to find items.

Can you tell me/us what the Tips and Tricks board is going to be or include? I am already on Pinterest with over 1700+ pins. I have been invited to several group boards (including several Tips & Tricks boards) so I am unsure of the methodology. I would define the Tips and Tricks board from istock a bit better. There's just too many Tips & Tricks boards on Pinterest that istock's isn't going to stand out very well. It's got 15 willy nilly type pins at the moment. At minimum, add a description.

Are contributors going to be invited to a group board(s)? Are we expected to create our own as an option to promote our own work (and then istock would follow that?) or will the creation of such be by istock as "official" for curation by istock admins only?

Some of the files which iStockphoto have pinned on the Free Files board are not free. Perhaps they were but are no longer free. Surely this has the potential to annoy people. It would likely be perceived as bogus.

Also - have the iStockphoto Pinterest people lost interest. They do not seem especially active.

(Edited on 2013-03-03 05:24:39 by bunhill)

As this was actually a soft launch with no marketing materials released to the Client Base we can expect a few refinements over the next week or so. I should have more news on how things are going in the next little while. I believe it was out intention to get this out the door for before March 1st but we have delayed to launch so we can address a few of the concerns the contributor base pointed - such as the link errors and some minor issues we found.

Anyhoo, I will get back in here this week with some additional information and potentially let you all know when we are going toformally releases this new piece of marketing fun.

I'm not a fan of pinterest, in general, but if Istock feels it needs to participate in pinterest, this sounds like the safest and most effective way to do it.  I like that the posted images will be small, watermarked, and link back to the download page. 

So what happened ? It still seems a very half-hearted effort at bringing people in.

Also - what is going on with iStock's other efforts in terms of the social media and communications. The Fuel blog seems to very seldom have new content - perhaps once a week at most. That really is not going to engage an audience. The last editorial item was 3 months ago for example. The last post about illustration was 2 months ago.

Pinerest is still on hold BUT we have been updating things occasionally. We are also gaining a handful of followers weekly. We will have more news on that soon enough.

As for Fuel: It was updated last week. We have people at SXSW right now that typically update and manage that section. Considering this thread is dedicated to Pinterest it would be nice to have it stay focused.

As soon as I have news you will have news. I guarantee it.