How Your Business Can Benefit From Pinterest

Pinterest may be a relatively new social network, but it is quickly increasing in popularity. Many brands are currently revisiting their online marketing strategies to add this social channel – which now has over 70 million accounts – and make use of it as a valuable tool to help spread content virally and even contribute to sales.

While Pinterest is yet to overshadow Facebook in terms of social referral traffic, the network has already overtaken Twitter in this regard. It also fares extremely well on the e-commerce front, where it is predicted the site will account for 50% of traffic in the coming years. According to e-commerce solutions provider Channel Advisor, users referred by Pinterest are 10% more likely to complete a purchase than users on any other platform.

A large percentage of users (70%) use the photo-sharing network for inspiration on what to buy and a similar percentage (67%) use the channel to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in their specific areas of interest, an infographic by Omnicore reveals. Another 43% of Pinterest users say that having a presence on the channel gives them the opportunity to associate with a brand or retailer with a strong online identity, and 39% like the platform as it provides them with special offers from brands or people they have pinned. All these findings suggest that users engage with Pinterest not just to find inspiration but also to shop. This makes it critical for brands to think outside the box to optimise likes and repins in order to take advantage of this rapidly expanding platform.