The first time I heard of Pinterest I had zero interest in using it. My understanding was that it was a way to scrapbook things digitally rather than having to deal with the mess of cutting and pasting photos together. Just hearing about the concept of Pinterest made it seem like something that would largely appeal to a female audience. It turns out this was right. Currently, one-third of U.S. women use Pinterest and around 90 percent of total users are women. Admittedly, I’ve never had any interest in using Pinterest to find the newest DIY craft, bruschetta recipe or juice cleanse.
However, after learning how Pinterest is used in digital marketing, I decided to take the plunge and see how businesses use this app. As a first-time user, I had my co-worker, an experienced pinner, showed me the ins and outs of how to pin something, make my own board, etc. Pinterest’s search functionality is surprisingly simple to use and generated a ton of results for things like SEO and social media. Something will come up no matter what you type in. I was excited to see there were many familiar faces from Twitter and Facebook who had pinned content I was interested in. The demographics on Pinterest differs slightly from Twitter and Facebook. For instance, there are 70 million users on Pinterest, and the overwhelmingly majority of its users are women. The most popular categories on Pinterest are for crafts, recipes and quotes, while peak hours of Pinterest begin at 9 pm at night as well as on the weekend.
From a marketing standpoint, one thing that really stands out is the fact that Pinterest generates 400% more revenue per click than Twitter and 27% more than Facebook. For marketers and businesses, it seems like a no brainer to use Pinterest for free advertising. Pinterest has become so popular that it seems businesses and marketers are finally starting to take advantage of its large user base. Pinterest also acts as a search engine, so it’s easy to get your content to people who are looking for it. It’s a useful tool in driving traffic to your company’s site, and I am definitely going to start using Pinterest as a way to gain new readers and share content!
