Anytime a major social media platform releases a new feature that threatens to change how users manage their accounts, the news will be met by an even amount of praise and criticism. However, Pinterest’s new “Secret Boards” feature is one upgrade that both brands and consumers seem ready and willing to embrace.
In a recent blog post, Pinterest’s Software Engineer Evrhet Milam announced the new social platform feature, saying the Secret Boards option complements the holiday season well – a time, Milam states, is for “being with family, sharing great meals, and, of course, surprising your favorite people with a special gift.” Secret boards, as the name suggests, are built for private viewing. Users have the option to keep the boards to themselves or share with select users. Currently, the new option will be released gradually and in a controlled way, and each user can create up to three secret boards. Additionally, no public board can be made secret because other users have already viewed and repinned content from those open digital pinboards.
While the new Secret Boards feature might seem like another way users can hide their activity from marketers, the option has its own benefits for professional services. As Brafton reported back in October, 70 percent of consumers use Pinterest to “get inspiration on what to buy,” compared to 17 percent on Facebook. This rather significant percentage of people regard Pinterest as the ideal product research resource, and when brands dedicate more time to their Pinterest campaigns, they might see an even greater uptick in lead generation and conversion rates.
Pinterest’s private pinboard helps marketers develop, plan and put last minute touches on well-designed campaigns before releasing the content to the public. Marketers can put together a board that grabs (and holds) the attention of consumers, using the draw of the social platform to guide viewers to make purchases on an ecommerce site.
With secret boards, marketers can spend longer periods of time creating a thorough content marketing campaign full of product images, branded infographics and complementary research. Instead of releasing updates to a pinboard periodically as branded content is developed and published, marketers can put the overall campaign together beforehand, and debut the promotional board to their audience in one fell swoop.
