3 Reasons Why We Recommend Pinterest, And One Reason We Can’t

For years we have not recommended Pinterest as a social media marketing platform. Although Pinterest is popular and has high traffic volume, the conversion to bring traffic to your website has only been successful for a few industries; mostly food and fashion.  Of course, if you have unlimited time and unlimited budgets any social media endeavor will give you a slight uptick in traffic and expand your visibility on the web, but you want to invest your time and money wisely–you want a return on that investment.

Pinterest may be a worthwhile investment in time and money as they now provide Promoted Pins, basically advertising for your brand. Some of you may have heard of Pinterest, but may not be familiar with how it works. Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article explaining how Pinterest is different than other social media marketing:

“On Facebook, you think about friends, and on Twitter you think about news,” said Joanne Bradford, Pinterest’s head of partnerships, who is responsible for building the company’s business. “On Pinterest, you think about what you want to do, where you want to go, what you want to buy.”

Think of Pinterest as a kind of digital corkboard for things you want to collect. A newly engaged couple, for instance, might type “wedding gifts” into the site’s search function, and Pinterest will serve up photos of items like matching bath towels, flatware or baking pans. From there, the couple can “pin,” or save for later, any items they are interested in or want others to buy for them.

In other words, it goes beyond window shopping, it is a form of pre-shopping. You collect ideas for services and products you may want in the future by browsing other “corkboards” and re-pin them to a “corkboard” of your own.

With the addition of Promoted pins there are 3 reasons why you may want to experiment with Pinterest next year. These bullet points are provided from the Pinterest blog of Joanne Bradford, Pinterest’s head of partnerships.

• Promoted Pins perform just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins. Brand advertisers achieved about a 30% bump in earned media (free impressions!) from their campaigns. That’s from people who saw a Promoted Pin and thought it was good enough to save to one of their own boards. Engagement is strong— the average Pin is repinned 11 times, and that remains true for Promoted Pins (if not higher).
• Promoted Pins perform long after a campaign ends. Since Pins are evergreen and last forever, we often saw an extra 5% bump in earned media in the month following the end of a campaign.
• Brands both in and out of our core categories found success. From financial services to food to auto, brands from a wide array of industries saw results.

There is only one reason for why we wouldn’t recommend Pinterest this next year; you may not be in the right industry. Remember, Pinterest is a visual medium and it is a platform that inspires people. In fact their mission is to “help people discover things they love and do those things in real life.” Is a Pinterest board about Plumbing Services the right fit? Don’t get me wrong, with the right content marketer, like Brainjar Media, we could make Bathtub and Shower Diverter Valves inspiring on Pinterest, but you if you aren’t in the food, fashion, or car industry you may want to try other social media channels first.