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Seven great ways newspapers are using Pinterest

Monday Apr 09, 2012

NewsCred Blog

Two year olds tend to be a rambunctious lot, and Pinterest in no exception. Since its inception in March of 2010, the site has grown from a sleepy social sharing site for recipes and do-dads to the third-largest social site in the country. In February alone, the site logged 17.8 million unique visitors.

With so much web traffic up for grabs, now is the perfect moment for newspapers to create or augment their Pinterest pages. To assist with this process, the editorial team here at NewsCred sifted through dozens of pages to pick out seven great ways publications are using Pinterest:

  1. Deliver Pinterest staples -- The majority of Pinterest users are women between the ages of 25-54. While the profile of users is rapidly expanding, delivering pinboards around the staples -- food, decorating, and celebrations -- that made Pinterest a household name is a no-brainer for publications. Many do just that: the Los Angeles Times meets Pinterest users where their interests lie, creating recipe boards -- from Breakfast Recipes and Main Courses to Salads & Sides and Vegan Recipes -- complete with photographs; the Oregonian shares ideas for children's birthday parties; and the Philadelphia Inquirer shares wedding photographs.
  2. Serve as a curator -- The New York Daily News put together a pinboard documenting Jeremy Lin's rapid ascent to basketball superstardom. The Wall Street Journal created a similar pinboard dedicated to New York Fashion Week. The Knoxville News Sentinel used a pinboard to aggregate their coverage of Bonnaroo.
  3. Promote transparency by letting readers go behind-the-scenes -- The Guardian uses one of its pinboards to give readers a glimpse inside the newspaper building. The Charleston Daily Herald and the Columbia Missourian take this a step further, offering headshots of every staff member.
  4. Emphasize your strengths -- USA Today created a pinboard with photographs from each of the 50 states, underscoring their coast-to-coast coverage. Conversely, Commercial Appeal, out of Memphis, Tenn., focuses on local interests: barbecue, Elvis, Graceland, musicians born in Memphis, and films shot in the area.
  5. Change the reading experience -- The National Post injected a dose of visual art into their book reviews by creating a gallery of book covers.
  6. Crack open the time capsule -- Many newspapers have thousands of photographs in their archives that rarely see the light of day. As the success of the New York Times's new photo archive Tumblr, "The Lively Morgue," attests, people are interested in what their communities looked like decades ago. To this point, the The Herald, which serves Snohomish County, Washington, posted a pinboard of photographs of the City of Everett, Wash., in the 1970s -- bell bottoms and all.
  7. Promote interaction -- The Des Moines Register created a community board to let readers interact and share their favorite pins.

What would you like to see on your favorite newspaper's Pinterest page?

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