The mystery behind 15,000 new Pinterest followers

The Interesting graphics board

Let me be clear upfront: If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide to gaining 15,000 new followers on Pinterest in a very short time this is not the blog post for you.

My purpose, from a social media strategy perspective, is to solve a mystery.

If you have wondered why people connect on Pinterest or what attracts people to certain others or their particular boards on Pinterest then I hope my questions here will at the least get you thinking and/or provide some insight.

Some background

On April 11 I was a quiet Pinterest user. I had under a 1,000 people following my various Pinterest boards.

The boards are organized around the things I care about. The board New Zealand!, for example, is images of my home country and the board RIT is about the place I teach (and love) in Rochester, N.Y.

One board Interesting graphics was always my most popular and, as of April 11, in had 286 followers.

But on that day something happened. Starting a little after 9 a.m. EDT I started getting notifications from Pinterest that said, for example, "Sarah Jones and 49 others have started following your board Interesting graphics." 

These notifications began arriving regularly. Every 15 to 20 minutes. Within four days I was approaching 5,000 followers. Within a week it was just over 10,000. As of today (April 25) that board has 15,298 followers.

That’s an amazing 15,013 new followers in just 14 days.

Why is this happening?
For more than a week I have tried everything I know to discover why this might be happening.

• Is it because I posted an amazing infographic that people shared a lot? A search through that board for the past month of activity reveals no unusual volume of sharing.
• I Googled my name and the name of the board … nothing in the search results indicates anyone recommended the board. (That’s too bad because I would thank them.)
• I talked to experts in web marketing and analytics to see if there is any way to find the course of all this attention … and apparently there is not.
• I emailed the Pinterest Help Desk … and got this response: "Unfortunately, we’re a small team and we won't be able to respond to your email." 

So, what now?

I guess I’m hoping someone reading this can help solve the mystery.

Perhaps there are others who have had similar experiences.

Can you help? Please let me know in the Comments area – I would really appreciate it.

Social Marketing: Utility leads to success, says Google’s Avinash Kaushik

What are the most important social media marketing skills that graduating college students need to understand?

 Avinash Kaushik

I’m asking three questions of some leaders in the field of social marketing and this is what I learned.This is No. 16 in the series (see the links below for other posts in the series).

Today: Avinash Kaushik, who is the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, the co-founder of Market Motive Inc., author of the blog, Occam's Razor, and author of two best-selling books: Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0. He can be found on Twitter as @avinash:

The secret to future social marketing success will be a new skill, which Kaushik describes as: "The ability to execute utility marketing – in the purest sense of the word (and to avoid the opposite: shouting and pimping)."

In a blog post, he says utility marketing is "delivering such incredible value that you simply become part of your audience's life!"

He goes on to say that mobile apps are the channel to both deliver great content and collect data (with the consumer’s permission).

He asks: "Is there anything compelling and of value that you deliver, selflessly, to your current and potential audiences?"

Utility marketing is the solution, he says, and is pretty cheap.

"A decent mobile app costs infinitely less than producing a single TV commercial and — done right — delivers a hyper-relevant audience with whom you can build a relationship unlike what is possible via any other channel on the planet," Kaushik says.

"And you'll never have to remember to interrupt them, because you'll be part of their life already!"

How important is social marketing?

It is important at this moment in time, Kaushik says, but "will become crucial over the next couple of years."

And what skills are the most important in social marketing?

Successful practitioners will have "a combination of business savvy, authenticity and restraint."

So, what do you think? How important will social marketing be in the future and what MUST graduating students know?

Previous posts:
10 Experts Weigh In On Social Marketing
Social Marketing: 'The lighter fluid on the marketing bonfire,' says author Ric Dragon
Social Marketing: Don’t be timid, says Ford’s Scott Monty
Social Marketing: Understand how marketing fits in, says Amber Naslund of SideraWorks
Social Marketing: 'Talk to people as human beings,' says Gini Dietrich, marketer and author
Social Marketing: Its 'part of a nutritious breakfast,' says Christopher Penn of WhatCounts
Social Marketing: Make music to an audience’s ears, says Mahei Foliaki (@Iconic88)