Though fairly well-understood by American brands after a few years of use, Pinterest remains something of an enigma for British brands and those in other markets globally, including Japan and continental Europe.

Last night, at the inaugural PRCA Digital Group’s DigiBites event, UK country manager for Pinterest, Sarah Bush spoke about the ways in which brands can make the platform work for them. The discussion will be the first in a series of events hosted by the Digital Group.

Bush discussed the ways in which Pinterest content differs from most other social content. She says pinnable content should cater to the journey users take when using Pinterest as they move from aspirational pinning to instructional or purchase-based pins. As pinners share content by default, pins have a longer lifespan than do tweets or Facebook posts. Thus, evergreen content suits the medium most aptly. “Every piece of content is an opportunity to reach new people,” Bush says.

Though Pinterest is most obviously appealing to consumer-facing brands with goods to sell or depict, it has uses in the B2B space as well. Bush points to boards shared by teachers to swap lesson plans as a format that could be adopted by designers, architects or the like. Any brand’s communications should tell a story, the challenge with Pinterest remains to make that story visually appealing as well as engaging.

Danny Whatmough, PRCA Digital Group chairman and associate director digital at Ketchum, says, “We launched DigiBites to give PR professionals in the UK access to the very latest digital thinking. By sourcing speakers that are at the cutting edge of social media and digital PR we hope to further digital education across the industry and bring real benefit to agencies and brands, while also offering an environment for professionals to meet and network together.”

The next DigiBites event will be held on 30 April and will feature a live crisis comms simulation.