As a creative, Pinterest has always been one of my favorite social media platforms. It’s filled with unlimited amounts of inspiration; whether I’m designing a brochure, looking for the perfect side dish or hoping to complete a DIY project, it’s one of the best tools for sparking ideas.
Last year, I noticed that one of my clients had people repinning posts from their Instagram page. I began researching Pinterest strategy, and I realized that Pinterest is basically a giant search engine that helps you find what you’re looking for in an enjoyable, visual way. And when you master how this strategy works, it can have so much potential for your brand!
Although I’m not going over how to use Pinterest in this post, I’m hoping to convince you to incorporate it into your marketing strategy. And if you already use it, these facts may encourage you to invest more resources into it!
Did you know that 55% of pinners are specifically using Pinterest to shop?
Whether it’s a custom font or wedding decor (and I’m guilty for both), there are customers out there who are using Pinterest as search engine — to find your product or service. In fact, 66% percent of pinners said that they bought something after seeing a brand’s pins!
Not only do people find products via Pinterest’s search engine, but many discover pins through Google’s image search function as well. If your products or services aren’t in the Pinterest wilderness, you may be missing out on some powerful revenue.
Most of my clients believe that Instagram is the most important platform for their social media strategy. And they’re not totally misguided — IG has 400 million monthly users, almost 2.5 times more than Pinterest’s audience alone. But when it comes to referral traffic for shopping sites, Instagram doesn’t even break the top four social platforms; Pinterest actually sends 33% more referral traffic than the second most popular platform for referral traffic, Facebook, which also happens to be the biggest social networking platform in the world.
Even if you don’t sell physical products on your site, Pinterest is powerful for driving traffic to your site.
I was pinning for a client the other day when I noticed a pin that I had published 13 months ago was still one of their three most popular pins. In fact, it had been repinned more than 3,000 times, with more than 500 link clicks in the past 30 days alone!
You might already be thinking this, but you usually don’t have the same results with other platforms. Looking back on my experience with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, posts seem to disappear into the void after a few days.
If you’re going to spend time creating a graphic, you should take advantage of Pinterest’s magical powers and use a platform that has longevity and is effective for your strategy.
So how are you supposed to know if your products or services will get traction on Pinterest? Well, one way is to study what’s already popular…
The Top 7 Pinterest Board Categories (as of 2019)
If what you’re selling falls into any of these categories, there’s a good chance that Pinterest is an effective strategy for your brand! And if you’re a blogger, you now have a good reason to create content that falls into any of these categories.
If you’re still unsure if Pinterest is right for you, check out this amazing article, 23 Business Statistics That Matter to Marketers in 2019, posted by Hootsuite. There are so many more reasons to use Pinterest in addition to what I’ve listed above, and this article gets into them in more detail.
And if you decide to invest in your Pinterest strategy… well, you know who to call!