I opened up my email this morning and found this letter from Pinterest.
Just over a year ago, my wife and I welcomed our son into the world. Since his first day, I've been pinning fun things we can do together, right now while he’s still little and later when he gets older. I know many of you do the same. Pinterest is where you keep your wishlists, vacation plans, dream home ideas, and other things you want to do soon and in the future.
That's why for us, it's so important that Pinterest is a service that will be here to stay. To help make sure it does, we're going to start experimenting with promoting certain pins from a select group of businesses.
I know some of you may be thinking, "Oh great...here come the banner ads.” But we’re determined to not let that happen. While we haven't figured out all the details, I can say that promoted pins will be:
* Tasteful—No flashy banners or pop-up ads.
* Transparent—We’ll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.
* Relevant—These pins should be about stuff you're actually interested in, like a delicious recipe, or a jacket that's your style.
* Improved based on your feedback—Keep letting us know what you think, and we'll keep working to make things better.
For our first test, we'll promote a few pins in search results and category feeds. For example, a pin for a Darth Vader outfit from a costume shop might be promoted in a search for “halloween.” Nobody's paying for anything yet—we want to see how things go and, more than anything, hear what you think.
Thanks so much for all your support these first few years, and we hope you'll keep pinning with us for many years to come!
All the best,
Ben
It occurred to me that this could be a wonderful opportunity to give businesses that create handmade items a fighting chance to compete with the big box stores, if implemented so that these promotions favor such businesses. Those who hold the cards in social media sites can make a difference if they believe in handmade and in giving artists and crafters a leg up, and keeping handmade alive and thriving in the larger pond of entrepreneurship. Since many handmade businesses utilize various forms of social media as guerilla marketing on a daily basis, they/we provide a constant stream of material to keep these systems pumping. I figured I'd put my advocacy background to good use and write in to ask that Pinterest consider my proposition. Below is my letter;
Hi Ben,
I like this idea but have one request. Could you prioritize small
businesses like mine who are sole proprietorships making handcrafted items? As
the economy has gotten tougher those of us in this category have really had to
be up around the clock many nights to compete with the big box stores, yet we
don’t have near the advertising budget that the big box stores have. I see a lot
of commercial mass produced brands also being pinned and often it feels as if I
am John Henry competing against the machine.
If you would do this it would go a long way towards leveling the playing
field for us “little guys” who make things one by one with our own two
hands.
Please write and let me know what you think and if you can make these small
handmade businesses a priority in this effort.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Sincerely,
Pippit Carlington
If you have a small business producing handmade items, if you have an Etsy or similar online shop, you spend long hours promoting your brand, or you feel that this would help your business and/or that of someone you care about I encourage you to write Ben at Pinterest too and let him know you'd like such businesses to be the focus in this new marketing experiment. At least for the time being it's free and could have great potential to put many artists and crafters struggling to get a solid foothold on the map!
