Put a Pin in It

“Remember that thing called Pinterest? Yeah, What happened to that?” appeared as the status of one of my Facebook friends recently. My answer: Pinterest hasn’t gone anywhere. Though some people see it as a passing fad, Pinterest is still here and a force to be reckoned with in the marketing world.

Pinterest uses the high levels of engagement with photographs to its advantage. Our post What’s in a Photo That’s so Engaging? states that 70% of all social media interaction contain an image and 89% of Facebook activity involves photographs. To give images an edge, Pinterest embeds links in them to connect the image to its respective origin. The links contained within the images can drive web traffic. According to Social Barrel, the average Pinterest user spends 77 minutes on the site daily, compared to 12.1 minutes on Facebook and 36 minutes on Twitter. In those 77 minutes, we can only estimate how many times a user will click an image and be driven to a website.

This past September, Pinterest passed Yahoo! in the ranks of biggest driver in organic traffic to now be the fourth largest in the world. Through the use of Pinterest, brand’s have the ability to increase traffic to their sites exponentially as it already drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

A high quality of traffic is a key characteristic of Pinterest. Social Barrel reports that a Bottica.com study found that Pinterest users spend roughly twice as much as Facebook users. With this type of high quality traffic, a higher revenue is also generated. According to Convert CEO Jeffrey Swelling, Pinterest accounted for 17.4% of social media revenue in the first quarter of 2012 for e-commerce sites. In fact, Pinterest drives more revenue per click than Facebook or Twitter despite it being ranked behind them.

With Pinterest having the ability to be a large generator of revenue, businesses need to hop on the wagon and start pinning away. With each “repin” to a follower’s board, a web of connections will be created expanding the reach of potential consumers. When a follower repins something, their followers see it in their feed and have the ability to repin it themselves to continue the cycle. Pinterest has also connected to Facebook and Twitter harnessing even more potential to increase revenue, web traffic and even brand awareness.

Pinterest is also an effective tool in promoting the lifestyle of your brand. Consumers connect to a brand when they see what they could have by using the product, a depiction of their potential and coveted lifestyles. BzzAgent’s Pinterest features several boards of ideas from Agents during their BzzCampaigns that can be implemented by other Agents. Pins can depict a certain scenario while integrating your products, drawing in the consumer and creating a connection.

Creating a connection with consumers and how to optimize your Pinterest page is all explained in Pinterest’s educational guide specifically for businesses. The site now offers business accounts that appear the same as any user’s. Despite appearing similar, businesses have the advantage of the guide to give them an extra hand in marketing themselves. The educational guide describes ways to tell your brand’s story, build a community, drive traffic and, most importantly, how to learn and grow from your consumers.

Pinterest is not dead. Instead, it is a platform that, if cultivated correctly, will help grow a business in multiple key metrics. For those of you that think Pinterest is of the past, take your accounts out of hibernation and start putting a pin in it.

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