THE ASTOUNDING POWER OF PINTEREST, ITS RAPID GROWTH IN USERS, AND HOW BRANDS CAN USE IT TO TARGET WOMEN

PINTEREST HAS SEEN SO MUCH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH THAT THE NATURAL QUESTION IS: WHAT NEXT? PAY ATTENTION TO THE DATA, AND YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO GUESS.

In our upcoming October design issue, one of the many fascinating feature stories we’ve lined up is a lengthy profile of Pinterest and its elusive CEO, Ben Silbermann. That story goes live later this week, but until then, I wanted to offer a teaser, in the form of an infographic about Pinterest, created by Fast Company's staff and designed by our own Ted Keller.

In this profusion of figures, you find out a few, key things about the image-sharing service. For one, it’s dominated by women. Second, something about its layout and culture stokes an enormous buying impulse. And third, major brands are getting in on the act. It’s not a stretch to say that soon, at least on retail sites, a Pinterest button might become as ubiquitous as a Facebook Like. Check out the infographic below, or tour the major findings in the slide show above.

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Due to a fact-checking error, this article previously included Dribbble in the chart of companies inspired by Pinterest’s grid layout. Dribbble in fact launched before Pinterest, and has been deleted from the chart in question. Fast Company apologizes for the error.--Ed.

Sources: ComScore (user growth June 2011–June 2012); Google DoubleClick AdPlanner, June 2012 (monthly page views; average visit; gender; affinity for aesthetics; age); AddThis (events drive activity); ComScore, February 2012 (vacation; preferred brands); Campalyst, July 2012 (most-followed retailers); AddThis, June 2012 (mobile sharing); Apple App Store, August 15, 2012 (days to No. 1 for iPad app); ComScore (top 15 Pinterest categories); Shopify, May 2012 (price-tag power); RichRelevance (selling power, based on a study of 374 million browser-based shopping sessions, which took place on U.S. retail sites between May 1 and May 30, 2012)

COMMENTARY:    If you are social media savvy, you would have to be living on Mars not to be aware of Pinterest.   According to Compete, Pinterest increased its unique visitors by 155% from December 2011 to January 2012 and the latest referral traffic and active user statistics as reported by Media Bistro claim that Pinterest has surpassed Linkedin as the 3rd most popular social media network in the world with an increase in daily users of 145% since January 2012.  With 31 million visitors per month, Pinterest is reported to now drive more referral traffic than Google+ and Twitter.

Pinterest’s USP is that it uses pictures rather than words, as its users’ curate tool. Users can share and discover new interests by “pinning” (the obligatory unique specialized lingo required by social media platforms) images or videos to their own or others’ virtual mood boards or “Pinboards” in Pinterest speak. Pinboards are arranged by common themes and users can either upload things from their own computer or pin things they discover on the web using the Pinterest pin it button or the URL. The viral magic happens because users can browse other pin boards and repinning items they find to their boards or like them or leave a comment and then interact with other social media networks by sharing their “pins” on them.

Pinterest capitalizes on the visual, encouraging users to pin things they are attracted to and that represent their lifestyle or the lifestyle they aspire to. The focus is on finding like-minded people who share your taste and interests; which is much faster and easier to capitalize on using images as opposed to text, hence the popularity and rapid growth of the platform.

Until recently you had to wait for an invitation from an existing user and then for it to be accepted in order to join. However, Pinterest now allows anyone with a Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail account to join directly.

Rapid growth and rapid sharing are normally good performance indicators of traffic generation, therefore should busineses that are serious about driving traffic to their site using social media seriously consider joining Pinterest? The simple answer is it depends if your audience is there.

By far the largest users of Pinterest are women. Figures vary between the US and the UK but statistics suggest that the number is between 68.2 percent and 90 percent of Pinterest users. Consequently, this suggests that Pinterest will probably work best for businesses with products aimed at women.

The biggest challenge for businesses seeking to use Pinterest to gain brand recognition and drive traffic to their websites is identifying visual content to pin that is directly related to their brand. This is a particular challenge to businesses that are in sectors that sell products or services that aren’t that visual. So here are some suggestions of what to pin to get started.

If there was ever any doubt just how much traffic Pinterest is referring to brand sites, this question may have been answered.  According to Shareah Lic, Pinterest now sends more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined in January, Twitter in February and StumbleUpon, Bing and Google Referral Traffic in June. 

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Here is the breakdown of the percentage share of visits for each traffic source:

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Courtesy of an article dated September 12, 2012 appearing in Fast Company Design and an article dated August 21, 2012 appearing in WindMill Networking

Comments

[Chais Broun]

The viral magic happens because users can browse other pin boards and repinning items they find to their boards or like them or leave a comment and then interact with other social media networks by sharing their “pins” on them.

[Chais Broun]

Great Information, very interesting! Great stuff. Thanks!

[Chais Bron]

its good and nice site