Jokes aside, it’s no surprise that political campaigns are chomping at the bit to utilize social media sites in every way possible right now. A new up and comer for this is Pinterest, which has had exponential increases in traffic since its creation in 2010. With an estimated 68% to possible 97% statistic of women users, it has become a target outlet for female voters. Take Mitt Romney’s “secret weapon” wife, Ann Romney and her Pinterest account. With her 9,500 followers, she contributes to the campaign effort by humanizing her husband with each recipe pin she makes. Then there's Obama and his campaign's unavoidably cute board depicting pets representing his campaign logo.
But not only is the visual pinboard site being made use of by politicians and their campaigns, but other popular political accounts have joined in as well. The U.S. Army show their soft spot with boards centering around its soldiers and family life and Newsroom and The Daily Beast team up to cater to the more comical side of politics with their trending (pun intended) board on Santorum’s sweater vests.
Whether Pinterest will join the social media ranks of Twitter and Facebook for politicians is debatable but with its overwhelmingly majority of women users, it will no doubt be yet another channel used to target the female vote. If anything, politicians should be motivated to join the estrogen dominated site for the sake of identity control just in case. Because although extremely unlikely, who knows? The site may become a beacon for political social media in the future.
In any case, IVN has their own Pinterest board to follow.
Infographic by: http://www.adverblog.com
