Hillary Clinton’s digital team has added Pinterest to their campaign's digital strategy toolbox.
The campaign launched Clinton’s official Pinterest account on Tuesday, offering “granddaughter gift ideas and more.” Pinterest’s platform allows users to discover visual content and create curated “pinboards” of images.
The former secretary of state's account currently features seven boards with inspirational quotes from Clinton and other successful women, apparel from Clinton’s campaign store, photos from her wedding to former president Bill Clinton, gift ideas for her young granddaughter, and more. The content is visual — each "pin" includes a photo — and highlights a softer, more feminine side of Clinton. On Pinterest, Clinton proudly displays her identity as a woman and a grandmother — and with a dose of girl power thrown in, too, in the form of motivational quotes from Beyoncé and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Pinterest is known as an overwhelmingly female social network — a 2014 study found that 85% of its users are female. That has inspired many jokes about Pinterest being a place for single women to plan their weddings, but smart campaign digital strategists would be wise to take Pinterest seriously as a platform where they can engage target female audiences.
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In the 2012 election cycle, Pinterest was less common on the campaign trail. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had Pinterest accounts that remained largely unused; each account had a few posts that promoted images from the campaign, but those garnered relatively little engagement. However, Michelle Obama and Ann Romney’s staff both had more active Pinterest accounts, presumably as a way to help their husbands connect with female voters as they ran for president. Rather than simply promoting the campaign, their posts focused on favorite books recipes, family photos, decor ideas, and other lifestyle-oriented content.
Clinton, too, seems to embracing the softer, more female-friendly aspects of Pinterest. Her pins so far include recipes for chocolate chip cookies and cherry pie, baby photos of her daughter Chelsea and her young granddaughter Charlotte, and a popular lyric from Queen Bey: "Who run the world? Girls!"