A Pint of Pinterest for Gallons of Interest; a smart Pinvestment?
If I could Pinterrupt your day for a brief five (5) minutes. I want to give you a few reasons you need to be Pinterested in Pinterest if you own a business. Before getting to those reasons, I’d like to explain the different sections of Pinterest, just in case you’re unfamiliar with this new social sharing site.
A Brief Pintroduction
What it is
My dad asked me, “What is Pinterest”? The best explanation I could come up with was, “It’s like a real pinboard that you pin things to, but it’s online; so a virtual pinboard“.
The Pin
Basically, a ‘pin’ is an image added to a virtual pinboard on Pinterest. A Pin can be added from a website or uploaded from your computer.
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The Pinboard
A board is a collection of Pins. You choose what to name the board and the things you pin to that board.
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The Follow
You can follow a user, which will follow all their pins or just follow one of their individual boards.
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If you’re brand new to Pinterest, I encourage you to read this helpful guide for very basic Pinterest set-up and functionality. It’s the best basics guide I’ve found to date. Download/View Pinterest Whitepaper SEOinc.com by SEOInc.com
Why Pin?
Cause It’s a Smart Pinvestment
Let’s look at some Pinterest demographics from Google AdPlanner and a few other reliable sources, then you can decide if this social Pinteraction will be a beneficial part of your online Pintegration.
The growth and reach of Pinterest are quickly gaining momentum. Pinterest grew from 1.2 million users in August 2011 to over 4+ million as of mid-February 2012. From September to December in 2011, Pinterest traffic increased 400% which meant 7.51 million unique visitors in just the month of December. Pinterest has also become a major player in being a referrer for several clothing and apparel retailers. Pinterest is also generating more inbound traffic for retailers than Google Plus (here and here).
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The majority of users are female, age 25-54. Nearly 60% of whom are 25-44 years old. This is the first social network driven by women.
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~85% of Pinterest users have some type of college education. The majority of users have a household income of $25-75K.
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Pinterest users in the U.S. are typically from the Western and Mid-western states.
Research shared by Experian Hitwise
A Marketers Guide to Pinterest: Pin It To Win It
thanks: MGD Advertising
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If these demographics look good to you, keep reading. If they don’t, might as well read the rest–you’ve come this far 
Getting Pintegrated
What it can be
In the social arena, having a presence on Pinterest is trending to become as important as having one on Facebook, especially if your target market is female. You can also add a Pinterest feed to your timeline. Integrating pins to your timeline is a great way to build visual awareness for your Pin boards. Many big brands are currently promoting on Pinterest: Nordstrom, Land’s End Canvas, Mashable, ETSY, and over 100 other brands.
As stated before, Pinterest has become a major source of referral traffic to specialty apparel retailers. Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube combined. A site-owner I know recently re-purposed a pin and it ended up generating more than 5% of their monthly traffic for the past two months–that’s just from one well-pinned pin! He says that they’re still receiving traffic from the pin and it hasn’t died down just yet.
Pinterest can be a great brand awareness and traffic generation tool. All in all, according to the growth trends and referral statistics of Pinterest, the benefit of having a quality presence on Pinterest greatly outweighs the cost.
My next post will include a how-to guide for businesses using Pinterest. Stay Tuned!
P.S. if you’re still unsure if Pinterest needs to be a part of your business model, check out some more stats and information in this infographic by Lemon.ly
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Good luck! and happy pinning!
–Tyson Stevens, Right Hat SEO
Tyson Stevens: Search Engine Awesomization aspirant. I am constantly learning and sharing all that I learn and know...Well, not all, cause I'm currently in-house Enjoy!
