I have been a fan of Pinterest for quite some time now, and it seems many smart brands are now embracing this platform too. Pinterest still has a long way to go to reach the level of users and engagement as the major platforms like You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Yet the signs are now there it is heading in the right direction, and it might just be worth developing a strategy for your brand or business too.
Here are 10 interesting statistics about Pinterest worth considering.
- 70 Million plus users are now on Pinterest
- 500,000 plus are businesses
- The Median age of Pinterest users is 40
- Activity on Pinterest grew by over 110% from 2013 to 2014
- Over 80% of Pinterest users are women
- Over 80% of active users will follow a brand before a celebrity
- Over 70% of active users prefer to follow beauty and hair care brands before well known make up artists or hair dressers
- Over 50% of users will consult Pinterest before making a purchase decision “in-store”
- Over 50% of active users earn more than USD$50,000 per annum
- Over 40% of active users watch less television, read magazines or catalogs
The number of men and businesses are not yet huge, however they are on the rise. If you operate in the top categories it is well worth building your presence immediately. Though I would highly recommend building a presence on Pinterest even if you do not operate in the top categories, as it is not difficult to target your ideal customers.
So what are the top categories currently!
- Food
- DIY Projects
- Home Decor
- Holidays
However if your market is specific to men these vary slightly.
- Food
- Technology
- DIY Projects
- Humour
- Gardening
So how do the best of the best use Pinterest to engage and inform their followers? you really cannot go past US retail giant Nordstrom for inspiration. Their profile demonstrates one of the key differentiators of Pinterest. As you can see overall they have almost 4.5 million followers, yet open up any of their many different boards and you will see the number of followers vary dramatically. This is the real value of Pinterest, people tend to follow boards they are specifically interested in more so than profiles overall.
Multiple Pinterest Boards
Here then lies one of the keys to success on Pinterest, ensure you have multiple boards that are highly specific in each facet of your business. If you were a travel agent, you could have boards for many categories such as Beach Locations, Eco Holidays, Cruises, 5 Star Hotels, Camping locations and the list goes on and on. Research shows that pinning around 10 to 15 times per day is best and of course this should be spread out over the day, but within the ideal viewing times for your clients or customers.
There are a number of content scheduling software applications for Pinterest, one of my favourites is Viralwoot. You can schedule pins and even repins to multiple boards as far into the future as you require, making a great presence on Pinterest time efficient and effective.
Pinterest Community Boards
Pinterest’s second big differentiator is Community Boards, these are boards set up to allow multiple people or brands to pin to the same board. And here lies the way you can turbo charge a brand new profile with almost zero followers within a week. As an example I will use a company I work with who recently set up their profile. They have a top rating podcast in the food category, by getting their profile onto multiple food based boards, their new profile with no followers was able to market to 200,000 people in their ideal target market within days.
Finding Community Boards is very easy too, just go to a website called PinGroupie. You can search boards by category, number of followers, number on contributors and much more. This is how we found so many good boards, so quickly for the podcast company above. Many businesses and brands are using Community Boards as a part of their strategy, I have Community Boards set up on my profile, if you scrolled through the thousands of contributors you would find some well known names such as Canva and many of the worlds top social media icons who have requested access to specific boards.
Of course overall you should build a quality following on your own profile, and build boards that are just yours to pin to and control the content your followers see. However having access to some high quality Community Boards is a smart first step into the world of Pinterest.
What Content to Pin?
That just leaves the type of content to pin – it is a no brainer that high quality image based pins are best. However you can also pin video content and soundcloud files too – these will automatically pick up the image attributed to the file on You Tube or Soundcloud. Rich Pins are an advanced but very cool feature you may consider, here is the link on Pinterest you should view to learn more about these. As you will see there are essentially 6 versions you can choose from, and they include extra information right on the pin itself.
- App Pins
- Place Pins
- Article Pins
- Product Pins
- Recipe Pins
- Movie Pins
These pins do have some extra set up requirements for your website, and have an approval process by Pinterest, so you may need a little assistance to get started if you are not IT savvy. They are well worth the effort for their ability to really stand out and engage for followers.
There more great features Pinterest provides and are adding to their arsenal of tools and features currently. The key point here is, get started. Don’t over complicate it in the early stages, get used to this powerful platform and create your strategy. No different to everything social media, test and measure is critical. Use the analytics built right into your Pinterest profile to see the type of content that is resonating best. Keep at it and you will soon enough you will be a Pinterest professional and likely addict.
Images: “WIELICZKA, POLAND – 25 JUNE 2014. Pinterest logo on computer screen./Shutterstock.com“
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