Pinterest is certainly fun to use and once you are in the swing, it is very compelling, inspiring and frankly hard to stop. Thankfully for my business it has a number of positives so now I can schedule pinning and know it's actually part of my working day - and that pleases me no end!
My business Project Isabella creates graphics, so before I sit down and start on a new batch or a certain subject I start a pin board on that subject. If you took a look at my board Fairy you would know that I pinned over three hundred - yes 300 images from all over the internet on the subject of fairy. I searched Pinterest for pins that contained the word "fairy" and also searched for boards that used the word "fairy".
So how does all this pinning of images of other people's fairies help my business? Surely that is just promoting other people's artwork? So to put pay to that attitude I would like to share the ways this activity helps me.
1. I have established that images of fairies are very popular. There are many boards, pins and pinners for this subject.
2. The subject matter remains active, I know this because when I pin Fairy things they are quickly repinned.
3. The Fairy topic includes vintage and modern material, this interests me as the subject is not a fad of a fleeting fashion pinning frenzy so it should stick around some more - definitely long enough for me to put together my collection of fairies and get them to store.
4. I have been able to study the popular images of fairy that can help me understand some artistic elements such as poses, lighting, colours and attitudes.
5. I can follow where fairies on my board get pinned to - for example is it to a board named "I love these" - or "Things not to touch with a mile long stick"
6. Basically I get the opportunity to study my subject matter and observe the traits of the most successful images as wells as observe the demand for such images. That is pretty good market research and it did not cost me anything other than a small amount of time, time I belief I can happily justify.
I don't think we have ever had to hand such a powerful tool to utilise in Market Research for artists and illustrators and I can confirm that for me it worked - a fairy figure was the first I sold in my new business - and here it is on my clients t shirt.
Brilliant!
You can visit this T Shirt at its store at Who Has Your Back?
So I have done my research on Fairies and now I have images of fairies that I have created for sale and a Pinterest board followed by fairy hungry followers - I wonder what could happen next?