10 Things You Should Know About Pinterest
1. What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is s social photo sharing, or social bookmarking website. Users create pinboards to plan weddings, decorate homes, collect visual inspirations and organize favorite recipes, amongst others. Users can also browse pinboards created by other people.
2. Who is using it?
82% — 97% women aged 25-34, depending on the source you read. Did you know that women are actually the top 85% consumers of EVERYTHING?
3. How many people are using Pinterest?
Pinterest grew from 40,000 users to 3.2 million users in one year from Oct. 2010 to Oct. 2011. This rate of growth is faster than Facebook and Twitter experienced in their formative years. For some major brands, Pinterest is now driving more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and MySpace COMBINED!
4. How much time are users spending?
American users of Pinterest spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes on the site, well ahead of Twitter (36 minutes), LinkedIn (17 minutes) and Google+ (6 minutes).
5. What brands have found success with it?
Here are some of the top corporate Pinterest boards:
Etsy (53,784 followers) Real Simple (34,517 followers), HGTV (17,824 followers), Nordstrom (9,886 followers), West Elm (11,547 followers); ModCloth (11,813 followers), Whole Foods (14,217 followers), Better Homes and Gardens (15,127 followers), Kate Spade (16,371 followers)
Discover techniques big brands are using on Pinterest to engage their audience here!
6. Why do people LOVE it?
Pinterest has quickly become one of the top 100 websites for a lot of different reasons. Here are four of them:
- It’s visual. Apparently we don’t like reading! Users don’t have to spend time reading status updates or clicking on shortened links to see if an article is of interest. You’ll know immediately if something has caught your eye and you want to see more.
- There’s less pressure to keep up a conversation like on Twitter or Facebook. Users can like, comment or tag another user, but these features are secondary.
- It’s a fun, beautiful place to be. Pinterest is purely eye candy, like flipping through a magazine. Instead of the potential chaos of cutting out and saving photos from magazines, you can add images to your pinboard with just one click.
- User control. If you have Facebook friends who post things that don’t interest you, you’ll appreciate Pinterest because you don’t choose the person to follow, you choose the boards that interest you. It’s the ultimate user-curated content system.
7. What’s in it for you?
But keep in mind, If you’re not promoting a product, idea or lifestyle that is visually compelling, Pinterest may not be the right fit.
8. Are there marketing opportunities on Pinterest?
YES! Pinterest can be an inbound marketing haven for the right brand…
Use the images on your website by having a Pin It button on each product item, allowing users to share your product on their own pinboards.
Get yourself a profile and pin images that inspire you. People will get to know your brand, your inspiration and how you interact with your community, not just what you sell.
From there, you can track referrals to different products from Pinterest.com and see if that referral traffic results in an increase in purchases.
Check this out to get more awesome Pinterest marketing tips.
9. Should your business jump onboard?
Here are 3 questions from Horizon Media to help you decide if you should drop everything and start pinning:
- Is your audience there?
- Is the conversation that’s happening one that you want to participate in?
- Are you equipped to participate, when it comes to content, resources and people, to keep the presence active?
If the answer is yes to all 3, go for it!
10. How do businesses measure their ROI from Pinterest?
Honestly, the analytics are still being figured out, but here is a great resource to get you started, examining custom reports, referral reports and tracking landing pages through Google Analytics.
Follow ZenHouse Media on Pinterest!
Further reading:
http://www.arikhanson.com/2012/02/21/18-compelling-stats-to-help-sell-your-boss-on-pinterest/
http://mashable.com/2012/03/20/why-is-pinterest-so-addictive/
About Shireen Nabatian
As Operations Manager at ZenHouse Media since 2008, Shireen handles project management, copy writing, account management and public relations for ZenHouse Media. Shireen’s work experience also includes tour guiding in the Rockies, property management and market research. Shireen is trilingual in English, French and Spanish and speaks a smattering of Farsi.
