Is Pinterest Right for Your Brand?

Is Pinterest Right for Your Brand?

Guest writer, Dana Dragomir

Pinterest is a digital scrapbooking tool that has more than 100 million active users today. It’s the fastest growing social media platform, with conversion rates that surpass those of its competitors by 22%. Content sharing in the form of rich pins and promoted pins provide this platform with some clear advantages over its counterparts. Pinterest is a strong tool for business because it provides your posts with the opportunity to reach a bigger audience – more than just your brand’s followers.

However, all social platforms take time and resources to nurture and these 5 questions can help you determine whether Pinterest is the best fit for your brand.

1. Who is your target audience?

Whether or not Pinterest is an appropriate social platform for your brand will depend first and foremost on who your customer is.

Pinterest demographic statistics reveal a glaring gender skew for Pinterest users in North America, with 85% of its member population being women. Additionally, 67% of users are millennials under 40 years old. Both of these demographics are also more likely to be active on the platform, spending more time on the platform and pinning more than their counterparts.

If your target is young, well-educated women, Pinterest fits the bill for your brand.

2. What is your industry?

While Pinterest is being used creatively by brands in unexpected industries, Pinterest users are most often searching for specific types of content. Pinterest has major categories that its pins can be separated into, such as animals, architecture and fashion. If your products fall into one of these sought-out categories, odds are your brand would benefit from a Pinterest presence, since your content would be easily visible. A full list of the categories can be found here.

As a general trend, out of the 10 most re-pinned words, 8 are food-related. Additionally, different categories of content are popular on different days, with travel being the most popular topic on Saturdays.

These insights can help you understand not only whether Pinterest is a fitting platform for your brand, but also when to leverage content based on your industry.

3. What are your goals?

Are you aiming to grow your social following as fast as possible, or is communicating with your customers directly the most important goal? Do you want to tell your brand’s story in an evocative way? All are valuable initiatives, but each objective requires a different strategy which may or may not be best executed on Pinterest.

This social platform can be a far more powerful tool for extended post reach. Since users can pin individual items as well as follow pinners, posts to this platform can reach users who are not yet following your brand without any promotional budget. Pinterest can also showcase products and brand lifestyle values splendidly through evocative visual content.

On the other hand, Pinterest is primarily a content curating platform, which means that it does not lend itself well to direct communication and messaging with customers. Secondly, the half-life of a pin is much longer than that of a Facebook post, which means the average pin takes 1,680 times longer to get 50% of its engagement than a Facebook post (an average of 3.5 month) – not ideal if you’re looking for immediate impact.

4. Do you have quality visual content – or the skills to make it?

Photos, infographics and DIY tutorials, content that does best on Pinterest is visual, informative or inspiring in nature. While Pinterest can be managed more passively than other social platforms, best practices recommend posting 5x per day on Pinterest, so your brand does have to have the resources and capacity to create quality visual content regularly.

Is someone on your team proficient in Adobe Creative Suite? Can you outsource creative photography work to a freelancer? How will you integrate this content management into your existing strategy? These are all questions you should ask yourself before launching your brand on Pinterest.

5. Is your website ready?

Pinterest statistics have shown that 75% of Pinterest traffic is mobile, with users accessing the platform from devices such as phones and tablets. Naturally, leads from this platform will be mostly from mobile devices and your brand’s website should be optimized for mobile display. Your efforts will be wasted if your potential customers arrive from Pinterest at an off-putting landing page.

On the other hand, your website should also have the “Pin It” button integrated, to drive social sharing from your website on Pinterest.

If you have limited resources and are trying to decide which social media channel will bring you the most leads, keeping these 5 questions in mind will help you determine whether Pinterest is the right fit for your brand’s online presence!

ABOUT DANA DRAGOMIR

Dana Dragomir is a content marketer and social media strategist based in Toronto. She helps brands leverage digital relationships to reach, inform and impact their intended audiences. Passionate about all things social, technology or innovation-related, she is also an avid photographer and creative writer. Connect with her on LinkedIn!

Originally posted as part of Community Voices series for Social Media Week in Toronto 2016.