I quite literally stumbled upon Pinvolve last week while browsing around some Facebook pages. Me being me, always keen to see what someone has that I haven’t (which must come from spending so much time around toddlers currently) I had to find out more.
Pinvolve is actually the offshoot of a forthcoming fashion catalog for the iPad called Bazaart. To quote the team
‘….we felt the pain of having to maintain online marketing presence in Facebook as well as in Pinterest, so we decided to build a small Facebook application to help us …
and thus Pinvolve was created.
Personally, I love the fact that the application was not intended for widespread use but that Facebook users found it, clearly liked it and utilised it. I don’t know about you but those natural organic growth and success stories really appeal to me.
Furthermore the Pinvolve team are super friendly which in this day and age of (generally) appalling customer service has to be a winner. I emailed the generic email address regarding a query and the CEO, Stas Goferman, replied the next day.
Stas himself told me:
Pinvolve is already an amazing marketing tool, and many businesses (and celebrities) use it and just love it. Actually I can tell you that we’ve almost reached 12,000 pages that installed Pinvolve.
That’s 12, 000 pages since it’s development in March which is incredible.
So why do I love this app so much and what does it do? Well, in the first instance you can now pin from Facebook to Pinterest which previously was impossible. If you look at the
MamaBabyBliss Facebook Pinvolve page what the app does once it is installed (which is incredibly easy to do) is to pull all your image posts into one page which to me is very visually appealling and easy to ‘read’. Furthermore, hover over the images and up pops 2 buttons. The ‘Share’ button allows your likers to post the image and any related links onto their Facebook timeline and similarly the ‘Pin It’ button to Pinterest boards.
What this means for you as a business is potentially increased exposure as a click on the Facebook share and Pinterest Pin by an interested party and hey presto they are viewing the image on your Facebook page. Let’s face it, with Facebook ranked as the top social media network and Pinterest the third this can only be good news.
The real beauty behind this app and the reason the team designed it is to bridge the gap between Facebook and Pinterest. Social Media on any platform takes time and what Pinvolve succeeds in achieving is an easy way of pinning your visual Facebook posts to your own business Pinterest page. Now I’m not usually a supporter of any linking of content (ie Facebook updates to Twitter, Twitter to LinkedIn) but this one works well and gets a big thumbs up from me.
There is a ‘White Label’ upgrade available which can show your pins from Pinterest as well as from Facebook and allows you to customize the look and feel of the app but you do have to pay for this.
The one aspect lacking in Pinvolve is any form of ‘notification’ regarding who or how many pins you have and supporting analysis but Stas has told me:
We are working to make Pinvolve even more efficient for marketing purposes. One of the important features we are working on is a suite of analytic tools that will provide you with insights of how many pins/repins you get, demographics, which content is more popular, etc. Also we are working on integrating other social platforms within Pinvolve, like Instagram. Another feature we are planning to develop, is extended customization of white-plan apps.
….and let’s give the Pinvolve guys their due….it’s only really been running for 2 months.
I’ll finish by saying that if you have a visual business and Facebook page install the Pinvolve app, you won’t be disappointed and ideally
get yourself a Pinterest page too.
