Grace Rodney, marking communication specialist at The Children’s Medical Center of Dayton (Dayton Children’s) sent us the following email:
According to a recent infographic put out by Mashable, more than 50
percent of Pinterest users are between the ages of 18 and 44—and 83 percent of them are women.
One of our marketing goals is to connect to moms. Adding Pinterest to our social media toolkit seemed liked the best way to do this.
We started in late January of 2012. Within a week of setting up the page, Dayton Children’s had
nearly 100 followers for all of our boards. As of mid-February, we were up to 173 people who were following all of our boards.
When someone signs up for Pinterest, they have the opportunity to connect it with their Facebook page. For brands, this can be difficult because
currently, Pinterest does not have an option to link to brand pages on Facebook.
However, in addition to having a brand page, we also have a personal Facebook page for our mascot, Wally B. Bear. By associating our Pinterest account with our Wally’s page, we were able to follow
Wally’s friends, who were also on Facebook and have them follow us back.
Now, many of our boards have nearly 350 followers.
We wanted to create boards that we thought moms would find interesting and want to repin. We try to have a balance between pins from our own website,
as well as other kid-related pins that we repin from those that we follow. By having pins that come from the Dayton Children’s website and blog, it
helps to cross promote our different online marketing tools and drive traffic to our sites.
Since launching the Pinterest page, pins have driven 77 views to the Dayton Children’s website and nearly
30 views to the “Every Kid Counts.” It has also helped to drive traffic to the Dayton Children’s YouTube channel and increase views on videos that highlight key services and patient stories.
We also ask our mommy bloggers to write posts about Pinterest. Each week, Jessica Saunders writes a blog as the Dayton Children’s “Mommy Safety
Blogger.” As a mother of a one-year-old, she focuses on the joys and challenges of parenting and how she keeps her child safe. She recently wrote an article about how Pinterest can be useful to moms. Here’s an excerpt:
“As a mommy, I love a new way to connect with other moms and people I might not have otherwise and get fantastic ideas for bedroom decorations,
party foods and my future garden,” Saunders says. “Pinterest is also a fantastic way to showcase what makes Dayton Children’s just right for kids.”
Dayton Children’s currently has 16 boards and 138 pins throughout those boards. The boards are all items related to something with kids and the
hospital. Some are tips for parents on important topics, such as nutrition and safety and others provide pictures of the many patients at Dayton
Children’s.
Here are some examples of comments on our Pinterest page:
“You took care of my William for one month when he was born 2 months early back in 2010! He'll be 2 in March! Thanks Dayton Children's!”
“Even though I am a dietitian, I sometimes have a hard time with lunch ideas for my 3 kids. Thanks for the ideas. I am going to go write them down
now!! I especially like the peanut butter lunch and have used that before.”
“I had the pleasure of meeting Emanuel and his parents. I pray that he is doing well. What a fighter!”
We’re excited to keep engaging with moms on Pinterest—if that’s where they are, that’s where we’ll be, too.