You may have used Pinterest to find a fun new Christmas cookie recipe, or maybe you are excited about a do-it-yourself baby shower craft idea you just scrolled through on their site. The truth is, this social media platform is much more than just a place to discover cute décor and crafty concepts. Pinterest happens to be one of the prime online locations for smart business owners to expand their brand’s reach – a strategy that should be pursued actively.
Did you know that there are well over 60 million active Pinterest users in the United States? Pinterest offers an entirely different set of benefits from the other social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter. Not only is it more effective at directing traffic back to a website than any other platform, it speaks to and integrates with those other platforms, and takes advantage of the fact that online users are gravitating more and more towards visually rich content over plain text.
There are 100 billion pins and one million boards on this site, with two million people posting pins on specific products each day. This provides an incredible opportunity for business growth if you can master the art of pinning, re-pinning, and using rich pins. Do this right, and you can easily increase brand awareness and traffic to your business’s website. Pinterest pins have 100 times the power of a tweet, in that they are 100 times more spreadable. On average, each pin is re-pinned 10 times and drives two site visits and six page views. If you are a Pinterest user, you can probably already tell that the shelf life of a pin is far greater than that of a tweet. About half of all visits transpire three and a half months after the first pin, making for great longevity if the content is well selected and presented.
Let us talk about how all of this translates into real dollars – 93 percent of Pinterest users have used the site to plan for or make purchases, and 52 percent have seen something on Pinterest and then purchased it online. These numbers clearly indicate that Pinterest can be extremely valuable to a business. Over 500,000 businesses clearly agree with this assessment, as they have already set up Pinterest business accounts.
As is often the case with something that is potentially very profitable, there is a catch. The competition is fierce and success comes only with the diligent maintenance of your Pinterest account, active pinning and re-pinning of posts, and acting on the robust analytics reports available (like Facebook, Pinterest has powerful analytics built in). Doing all this right while still addressing the day-to-day needs of a business can be overwhelming. This makes a strong case for engaging a social media marketing agency, such as Social Identity Marketing, who has made social media their business. Pinterest requires a professional’s touch to be successful and allowing an agency to handle all of the details of running your business’s Pinterest account can put you ahead of the competition. If you want to learn more about the art of pinning and what it can mean for your business, contact a social media agency. This just may be the thing that gets your business to the next level.