Putting the interest in Pinterest
Roughly a 3 minute read by Emily Lunness
So what is Pinterest? It’s essentially a giant pinboard with images, gifs and videos shared by people all over the internet. It’s a social media service designed to enable saving those pins for inspiration and idea generation. The way it works is, that one pin on Pinterest can lead to ten pins, which can lead to another ten pins, and so on.
And it’s not just for those looking to achieve the “Pinterest”* wedding of their dreams, collect outfit inspiration or curate home decor ideas. Pinterest is one of the largest website traffic drivers in the world. It’s 80% more viral and 3x more effective at generating leads than Twitter.
And it’s also used by businesses.
And here are 6 reasons why you should too.
1 - Pinterest converts more browsers into buyers. Pinterest helps to reduce the number of steps from discovery to conversion, making it easier for people to get straight to the source. Visitors from Pinterest are more likely to convert into leads or sales faster than from other social media sources as it’s very easy to link to outward sites.
2 - Sometimes it’s good to think of Pinterest as a big, visual search engine. People often turn to it during the research phase of their planning. They also turn to Pinterest for inspiration. So users are already showing intent for making a purchase and it’s possible to get found no matter how niche your product - yes we’re looking at you vintage, red leather sofa.
3 - Pinterest drives traffic (and lots of it). Pinterest is an excellent tool to help increase links back to your website, which, in turn, drives more traffic and promotes healthy backlinks beneficial for SEO. It is more effective at steering traffic back to a website than any other social media source.
4 - Pins get you more inbound links over time. Forget what you hear about tailored and chronological newsfeeds because Pinterest works on relatability. This means once you post something on there, it will continue to gain pins days, weeks, and even months later. You don’t have to hold out for hitting all your engagements in the first hour!
5 - User engagement is crazy high. Users on Pinterest seem pretty content to simply find and share things with small groups of people. And if you pick the right imagery to upload, this includes your business photography too.
6 - Pinterest helps you learn what your audience loves. One of the beautiful things you can do with Pinterest is to use it to see what is trending right now. Follow your target audience, competitors, or brands you look up to to see what inspires them – you will have a first-person look into their minds. Pinterest gives you the opportunity to see and understand what’s hot today and use that information to position your offers and products.
Top tip for brands… take your TikToks, screenshot them and get them on Pinterest with the appropriate keywords and link back to your channel for some low-effort extra exposure.
So will you pin it to win it?