Pinterest is in every social media news site right now. “How Pinterest grew 400%”, “How to use Pinterest to get more traffic”, “How Pinterest is making money, and what they aren’t telling people” are all headlines I’ve seen scattered throughout the web recently. We’ve even received a call from the Wall Street Journal asking us to fill us in on how Pinterest is making money and why it’s such a big deal. Obviously Pinterest is a hot topic right now. Everyone is worried about if it’s going to be able to compete with the big social networks or how they can use it (or if they should use it at all) but no one is really talking about the reason behind Pinterest’s growth and it’s impact on the way we digest information on the internet. Sure people are talking about how Pinterest has the potential to change social media, but I see a bigger impact on the horizon.

In the past the web has been very much a written word medium. It began as a coders paradise and has steadily become more and more accepting of visual design. The first two social networks to really kill it, Facebook and Twitter, have news feeds that are predominately text based (Though Facebook is becoming more visual daily with the inclusion of Timelines and larger photo displays in news feeds). Then we have Pinterest, with a very visually stimulating news feed. Instead of people sharing website URLs they are sharing pictures. This is somewhat of a kick in the nuts for bloggers and article marketing. Without stimulating pictures articles will never be seen on this up-and-coming social network!

So what should article marketers and bloggers do? They need to shift their mindset from creating great articles to creating great content. I’ve seen so many bloggers slam the typical White-animorphous-being-holding-some-abstractly-relevant-object stock image into their posts and letting it coast on their words.

This simply won’t cut it from here on out. Not only does the content matter but the way you deliver that content matters too!

When you write your next article make sure you are not only thinking about:

What they are reading AND seeing!

Your articles need to be visually stimulating as well mentally stimulating to fully take advantage of the direction the social sharing is going. If you don’t believe me just look at some of our own referral traffic:

22% from Pinterest! Why is this? It’s because we have a couple of infographics that people absolutely love and they are in a frenzy repining them on Pinterest. Pinterest eats infographics up! They are big and bold and almost inescapable on Pinterest.

Go ahead and try it!

Challenge

Before you post your next article make sure you use one or two images that are highly stimulating and relevant.

I guarantee you will dramatically increase the amount of traffic you get from sites like Pinterest. If you do accept this challenge let me know the results with a comment.