The title asks the question.  I will help you answer it.

So, you either own a business or manage social media for a business, or you are in some capacity responsible for social marketing decisions for your company.  You want to be innovative and stay “ahead of the curve” but you are skeptical about Pinterest.  You have been reading tons of articles and blogs about it but still just don’t know what to do.

You know the site has been creating astronomical numbers for both web traffic to itself but also in driving visitors to other websites.  You want to be apart of this.  But, should you be?

I’m not here to list off the numbers and stats.  The social media news sources can do that.  I will say, however, that Pinterest is huge.  A beast of its own kind and continuing to grow.  While it has been overwhelmingly used by individual people, businesses are starting to get involved.

It’s not an easy and quick decision when thinking about diving into a completely new social media platform.  There has to be a solid reason other than that you just want to do it.  As with any business social presence, there is no point to be on there if you aren’t going to use it constantly, interact and engage with people.  So, you need to ask yourself a few things before diving into Pinterest – this might help you decide if the picture-pinning behemoth is right for you.

• What is your goal?  Is it to drive web traffic to your site through the images you pin?  Then, is it ultimately to sell and drive revenue?
• Who are you hoping to connect with? Is it a different fan base than your other social platforms?  Right now Pinterest is heavily used by women.  Are you looking to tap into a new audience by way of images?
• What do you have to offer to the Pinterest community? Other than just your brand, are you there to share your product by way of pinned images, experiences from using your product, interesting looks into your company, or something else?  Remember, users out there on Pinterest can already be pinning images from your site (unless you have blocked the application) which is like free advertising.  Do you need to be on there doing it too?  Check to see what’s out there from your brand already, first.
• Do you have enough imagery worth pinning? Companies are starting to hear rumblings of copyright problems with images they pin from other companies and organizations.  BE CAREFUL.  To be safe it’s smart to only pin images from your own site or your own social networks that allow it (Facebook does not).  This way you can just avoid this problem, but, do you have enough photo content that merits having a Pinterest page and keeps it interesting?
• Are you able to be constantly re-pinning, liking and sharing? Pinterest lives and breathes on engagement and interaction.  When you are re-pinning others’ images your connections rise.  Time management.  Can you take on another large social platform right now?

Pinterest will give back what you put in.  If you set up a page and don’t touch it for a month, you won’t get much out of it outside of the initial first day on the scene.  If you are all over it at least a few times a week, you should see some growth in numbers to your website as well as followers and interactions on your actual Pinterest page.

The last big piece of this (and the most important), simply put, is that it depends what your business does.  Other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, I believe, have a place for every kind of business in some way, shape, or form.  This is not true for Pinterest, where 100% of the content is visual.  If you are an accounting company, a law firm, or do taxes for people, you probably don’t need to be on Pinterest.  Answering this question is up to you and needs to be given a lot of thought.  Do you need to be on Pinterest?  I can’t tell you yay or nay, but the questions I ask above as well as the biggie down here should help you find the answer.

The best thing to do is to play around on there, get comfortable with it and see what you think.  Who knows, you might find it very “pinteresting.”  OK, that is a terrible, overused joke.  Had to get it in there somewhere…