There’s ‘buzz’ about Pinterest in the social media marketing world, and it is touting the platform as a good bet for business promotions. Here’s an example from a January 2016 post from Content Marketing Institute (CMI):
“ …. Pinterest has virtually unlimited engagement potential. … it’s undeniable that Pinterest can help you connect with your customers, make more sales, get people excited about your business, and spread the word about your services around the web.”
Their reasons for confidence in the platform might include some of these findings:
- Fastest growing social network
The New York Times “Bits” blog reported in September 2015 that Pinterest reached the milestone of 100,000 monthly active members. While that number is dwarfed by social counterparts Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest’s 97 percent rate of growth far exceeded the others’ rates.
- Uniquely product and sales focused
“Pinterest’s focus on goods is unique in the social media landscape,” reports Social Media Examiner in a May 2015 post, predicting the platform will ‘surge’ in 2016. A prominent audience of Pinterest – women in their 30s with young families – is “a group that does the majority of the shopping,” the post reports. “Pinterest draws this demographic because it conveniently delivers information on a range of products and services women need for their families.”
“Pinterest’s dominant purpose as a shopping tool or all-in-one catalog gives marketers new motivation to explore the platform to sell products.”
After introducing its first Buyable Pins in June of last year, the platform doubled the number of those pins in October, reports smallbiztrends.com.
And from a December 2015 post on Business2Community: “Despite its smaller size, Pinterest drives more traffic to brand websites than any other site bar Facebook. It holds valuable purchase intent data, more commonly held by Google’s search rather than social networks.”
“Pinterest is still maturing when it comes to advertising, but many are excited about its potential,” reports the Social Media Examiner post cited previously. In fact, Forrester’s Nate Elliott contended in early 2015 that Pinterest would one day drive more sales than Facebook or Twitter, and by 2016, its ad offerings could trump those of other social networks.
“This excitement stems from the type of data the platform collects from users. Where Facebook collects ‘affinity’ data based on the interests that users type into the platform, Pinterest collects ‘intent’ data that shows what users are actively searching for.”
- More like a search engine than a social platform
This collection of ‘intent’ data makes Pinterest operate more like a search engine than other social media.
“Pinterest sees itself as more of an existential competitor to Google, a way for people to discover things they want to do in the real world rather than a social avenue,” reports the New York Times “Bits” blog.
A November 2015 Business Insider post shared another search-like feature the platform introduced: “an artificial intelligence tool that utilizes deep learning that will allow you to search items within an image, find it, and potentially buy it.
“To use the function, Pinterest users can tap a search tool that will appear in the corner of pins. From there, users will be able to draw a box around the specific item they would like to search. So, if you’re looking at a photo of a living room and are only interested in the lamp, you can single out that specific item.”
Pinterest’s deep learning technology operates similarly to Google’s TensorFlow, which was made open source in November.
If these new developments have piqued your interest, check out our previous post on Pinterest and these links for ‘how-to’ tips on using Pinterest for business:
http://smallbiztrends.com/2016/01/cool-things-to-do-on-pinterest-for-business.html
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2016/01/grow-pinterest-following/