To pin or not to pin: Should Pinterest be part of your hospital’s marketing plan?
- Posted by Nigel Edelshain
- On May 6, 2015
- Social media

If you’re reading this and you’re not already on Pinterest, you’re probably wondering how on earth you’re supposed to keep track of yet another social network with your busy schedule.
Fortunately, once you’ve gotten the initial setup out of the way, Pinterest is pretty easy to manage, and being an early adopter is a great way to make your hospital stand out from its competition. With 70 million users, Pinterest is far from a new kid on the block—but many brands that are active on Facebook and Twitter have yet to take the leap. That leaves an opportunity for your hospital to open that door and reach an untapped audience in a unique way.
Pinterest differs from the other major social networks in a number of ways. First of all, its demographics skew heavily female—women comprise an overwhelming 80 percent of the social network’s user base and are responsible for 92 percent of its “pins.” Second of all, those users spend more time on the site than they do on other social networks. Third of all, it allows you to share a high volume of content like you can on Twitter but without that content getting buried almost immediately. And fourth of all, it generates more referral traffic than its competitors.
Given all of those factors and the popularity of health and lifestyle pins, it’s easy to see how you could create and share quality content that brands your hospital and lets current and prospective patients know what’s going on there, whether its fitness tips, healthy recipes, or behind-the-scenes peeks at your physicians and staff and the technology that helps them do their jobs.
Learning how to use Pinterest doesn’t take long at all, and you’ll already have created most of the content you want to share for your blog and other social media accounts. All you’ve got to do, then, is optimize that content for Pinterest, which is easier than you think—especially with handy tools like Canva.
Of course, Pinterest is exclusively image-based, so if you’ve been putting off using Canva and apps like it because your Facebook and Twitter posts are doing okay without fancy graphics, you’ll have to take that plunge too when you get started on Pinterest. Since Facebook and Twitter posts with images have been shown to have higher engagement, doing so could have a ripple effect across your entire social media presence.
As for fitting Pinterest into your already-crowded marketing plan, there are a number of tools designed to help you do more in less time. Buffer announced a version of its service for Pinterest last week, and there are other services like it that will let you schedule pins in advance—freeing you from the tedium of remembering to update your profile throughout the day.
If you’re the creative type, managing your brand page on Pinterest might not even seem much like work. And even if you aren’t, you’re sure to appreciate the change of pace from the tight confines of Twitter and comfortable familiarity of Facebook.
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