Six brands making good use of Pinterest, and two that aren't

Pinterest has come from nowhere to become one of the biggest social networks in the US, though its popularity in the UK has so far failed to live up to the hype.

Even so, brands can't afford to ignore it, as anecdotal evidence suggests that Pinterest drives more sales than Facebook.

We've previously looked at some ways to use Pinterest as a brand, and the A-Z of Pinteresting brands, and here are six more brands that are experimenting in interesting ways with the social network.

They aren't necessarily those with the most followers, but are good examples of brands using Pinterest to try and engage with their consumers.

And I also included two that need to put in a bit more effort...

IKEA UK

The Swedish furniture store has 15 pinboards, including product ideas and a ‘pin it to win it’ competition. It uses great-looking images to link to individual items or collections of products for different rooms.

Some of the images also include price information so it essentially acts as an extension of its catalogue. One of its more unusual boards is for its True Blue product range that is inspired by Indian Culture.

The images are very striking but it doesn’t appear to link to its homepage, which is a missed opportunity.

Diesel

The clothing brand’s 16 pinboards have clocked up 1,362 followers.

As with IKEA, it essentially uses Pinterest as an extension of its catalogue by using high quality images back to its e-commerce site.

House of Fraser

HoF has created 21 pinboards so it clearly sees the benefits of Pinterest, but it still only has 64 followers so has some way to go before it catches up with some of its competitors.

This could be due to the fact that the social network is still struggling to really catch on with UK consumers. Even so, its boards are a good mix of its own products and repinned images that link to fashion and design blogs. 

ASOS

ASOS has taken to Pinterest with real gusto, creating 35 boards with 6,848 followers. It includes product ideas, lifestyle and celebrity content, and competitions.

Unlike some other retailers ASOS also gets the social aspect of Pinterest and has repinned a number of images that link to other blogs and articles.

L’Oreal UK

L’Oreal’s product range should mean that it is perfectly suited to Pinterest, yet it’s  account only has 58 followers.

Yet it has created five good pinboards that make the most if its association with celebrities to promote its brand values rather than going for a hard sell.

For example, two of the boards are used to highlight its sponsorship of the Cannes Film Festival.

Zara

The fashion retailer’s eight boards are predominantly full of links to products, but it also has a few that contain more general fashion and lifestyle content.

It has four ‘lookbooks’ that for men, women, TRF, and kids that link directly to its global e-commerce platform.

And two not doing it so well…

Nike Football

Pinterest is still a new medium for brands, but Nike Football can surely do better than this.

Assuming it is genuinely an official account, why has the brand created three pinboards but not uploaded any images?

Also, alerting users to the fact that one of the main objectives of the page is to “drive traffic through to nike.com/nikefootball” is probably a bad idea.

Presumably, this is the start of Nike's Pinterest page, but it would have been better to have at least taken time to add a few images. 

Abercrombie & Fitch

Abercrombie has two Pinterest accounts, one that is presumably for displaying its products and another one for “testing only”.

However, the two accounts include eight boards between them with just three pinned images.