Pinterest marketing Social media marketing is already a complicated subject for some businesses. Finding time and content for the foremost popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin is time consuming already – not forgetting other forms of social media marketing such as email marketing and blogging.

That’s in addition to all of your other ongoing internet marketing including SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) and perhaps video marketing. So is it worth considering another social media platform? The growth of Pinterest suggests consumers feel there is room for another platform – and that has to be of interest to any business. But does it have benefits as a part of any companies’ social media marketing plan? Pinterest describes itself as: Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organise and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and share their favorite recipes. Based on the latest referral traffic and active user statistics, Pinterest has moved above LinkedIn as the third most-popular social network in the world – the daily number of Pinterest users has risen by 145 percent since January 1, 2012.

Pinterest in the social media marketing mix:

One advantage for any business is that Pinterest is still relatively new as an marketing tool. It means they are likely to have less commercial competitors on the site, but it also indicates that users are more responsive to buying from businesses using the site:

• A new study has revealed that buyers referred from Pinterest are not only 10 percent more likely to buy than those sent from other social channels, but they spend twice as much.
• According to the 2012 Social and Mobile Commerce Study, U.S. online consumers report that they follow an average of 9.3 retail companies on Pinterest, compared with 6.9 retailers on Facebook and 8.5 retailers via Twitter.
• Another study, from SteelHouse, reports that Pinterest users 79% more likely to purchase something they saw on the site compared to Facebook.

As one social media marketing guru concludes: Pinterest isn’t a place to socialise, it’s a place to discover, shop, and find deals…it’s success in turning over sales indicates consumers may not be quite as interested in having deep brand relationships as marketers suspect. This – and the statistics quoted – indicates that Pinterest is definitely worth considering as part of any organisation’s social medial strategy.   If you found this tutorial helpful then please click Like or Tweet or leave a comment. Remember to watch this space as we will be releasing a range of social media marketing blogs over the coming months. Our readers can also find our Opace Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/OpaceWebDesign. For all the latest goings on, you can keep up-to-date with Opace on Twitter https://twitter.com/OpaceWeb. And we also now have an Opace Googleplus page live at https://plus.google.com/111516148099633923012/posts.

Image credit – Bunches and Bits {Karina}