Who should use Pinterest
At the moment all eyes are on Pinterest, the social network that lets users collect and share images found across the internet by "pinning" them on virtual pinboards. The images cover a massive variety of categories, from fashion, fitness, food, crafts, decor, architecture and more. Users can follow the pinboards of friends and brands for inspiration and "repin" the images onto their own pinboards.
Today, Pinterest is swiftly becoming the fastest-growing social media site based both on its enormous popularity with women, as well as its limitless potential as a marketing device for businesses.
‘Pins’ can help businesses to promote products, develop their brand personality, drive a remarkable amount of referral traffic to their websites, and increase exposure among the Pinterest community!
So should your business be using Pinterest? First of all you need to know who it is that is using Pinterest and whether or not they ‘fit’ your target customer profile. Pinterest is a female favoured social network with a reported 80:20 female to male ratio of users. It also has a distinctive age range of users with the majority, an apparent 80 percent, in the 25 to 54 age demographic. Reports suggest that around 29 percent of users are between 35-44 years of age, 27 percent of users are between the ages of 25-34 and 24 percent are aged 45-54. Many people think of social media being used chiefly by the younger generations, but Pinterest is certainly attracting a more ‘mature’ audience.
What’s more is that, because of this mature audience, pinterest users typically tend to have a larger average disposable income than other social media users. Nearly a third of all Pinterest users have an annual household income of $100,000 (US Dollars), that’s an average annual household income of around £63,000. By contrast, over half of Instagram users are under the age of 35, with 20 percent under the age 17 – an age group likely to have a much less disposable income.
What does this mean? This indicates that Pinterest can reach the most coveted markets. With pinterest you can reach an audience that may not have otherwise been reachable through other social media channels, and more importantly, you can reach an audience that has the money to buy your products! The demographic of Pinterest users is also the one that is the most valuable to mobile advertisers - young, upper-middle class and female.
So who is Pinterest best for? Well based on this information Pinterest is especially suited to businesses that lend themselves to this particular demographic, such as those focused in -
- Fashion
- Beauty
- Interior design
- Photography
- Travel
- The food industry
- Veterinarians and animal lovers
- Events/Wedding planners
Pinterest has been an incredibly successful tool for brands in gaining referral traffic. In fact it creates more referreral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube, combined! What’s more is that with its desirable selection of users, it’s the best kind of referral traffic.
Though it was launched just three years ago, Pinterest has really taken the internet by storm with its clean, image-based interface and fresh take on social networking. It was actually the fastest stand alone site in history to reach the 1 million visitors mark which isn’t all that surprising once you spend some time on it.
It’s great for driving web traffic, increasing web sales, and boosting brand awareness – so basically(depending on your business of course) it’s a perfect web marketing tool! Plus, when you have a business account on pinterest you can use the analytics feature to discover the most popular pins that drive traffic to your website and to track if it’s working for you.
So what are you waiting for? If you think that Pinterest will work for your company you should absolutely get on board! Let me know how you get on at @isd_eimile or tweet me if you have any questions!
Top Three Pinterest tips:
- Add a pin it button to your website. This will allow people to pin an image directly from your site to their pinterest!
- Make your website more visual – bump up the quality and quantity of pictures on your site
- Don’t just promote your products – post tips and news for variety!