All About Pinterest

Pinterest is the third most popular social network in the U.S. with over 14.9 million users, staggering numbers that have captured the attention of brands that want to leverage that popularity, especially considering shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10 percent more likely to make a purchase than those who come from Facebook and Twitter.

If the lack of an invitation was keeping you from joining Pinterest, your day has come! Pinterest is now officially open to the public, no invite required. In addition to Twitter and Facebook logins users can sign-up for an account with just an email address.

Engagement With Your Pinterest Content At a minimum, find a tool that can capture repins, likes, and comments of your pins in a systematic way. First, the tool should let you sort these numbers online to see which pins rise to the top. With this information, you can determine what makes a winning pin for you and consequently figure out how to curate more pins of that type. This video from Pintics shows its ability to sort Pinterest data online.*

Second, the tool should have download capabilities. Curalate provides data downloads so that you can sort your data offline and show it off it in the way that works best for you.

Clicks are another metric to pay attention to, especially for pins that come from your Website. I have found Pinerly to be a good tool to capture clicks.

Pintics, Curalate, and Pinerly are among five Pinterest analysis tools I summarize in the below chart.

Your Influence on Pinterest In the same vein of Klout and Kred, PinReach and Pinpuff (featured in the above chart) will give your Pinterest account a numerical grade based on what they determine to be your influence in the Pinosphere. Both of the said Pinterest services grade you on a scale from 1-100. Given that many social analysts still question the validity of Klout’s algorithm, these aren’t necessarily numbers to run to the tattoo parlor with. But this data point can serve as a benchmark in a Pinterest growth report or comparative analysis.

Traffic To Your Website Although Pinterest is not about making a hard sell, your business strategy on Pinterest should include driving traffic to your Website and converting that traffic into sales or signups. Pintics and Curalate can tap into your Google Analytics data and tell you more about traffic patterns from your pins.

So Which Pinterest Tool Should I Choose? As you’ll see in the above chart, there is currently no free tool that covers all my basic analytic requirements. If you’re on a tight budget, consider using a combination of these tools. While it’s not ideal, it’s certainly easier than manually cutting and pasting from Pinterest.

Once Pinterest opens its API to developers, my hope is that tools will include the following data:

location stats of followers

list of most engaged pinners

follower growth rate from month to month

day parting analysis

hashtag analysis

These are features you should also hunger for. If the Pinospshere can’t come up with a robust analytics tool, then folks in the C-suite (or nearby cubicles) will continue to be leery of the time put into your company’s presence on Pinterest.

In today’s online reality, users are too busy to read and they just want to skim until something catches their eye. Since pictures can tell an effective story without saying hundreds of words, visual social platforms like Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr have enjoyed tremendous growth and popularity. Brands are now taking advantage of this trend by making infographics and stories easier to find and more enjoyable to see.

Images are a way to share ideas and get engagement from fans. You are not limited to just the written word. Share images of your favorite things: foods, vacation spots, charities, etc. It gets a conversation started.

Site Traffic

Pinterest is an excellent example of pictures bringing site traffic. An interesting fact is that Pinterest has grown faster than Facebook or Twitter during its launch year. It is already driving more traffic that Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. One reason for the growth is its effectiveness when adding images to your sites or blogs and then “pinning” them on Pinterest you are creating a link back to your site. You can then count on more visitors coming to your site.

Five Image Sharing Sites

Pinterest:As discussed above it’s a great sharing tool. You “pin” your pictures and people are able to like or share. It also drives traffic back to the site where the image originated from. Take away:People “re-pin” your images. Audience “likes” your images and spreads the information for you. You also get site traffic.

Instagram:It’s an app on the iPhone and so easy to use. There is also an audience aspect. On the app you are able to follow people and have people follow you. You can see their photos and they can see yours. Take away:Instagram lets you share on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and more. You can make friends on Instagram and have people follow you and comment on your pictures.

Google+:It’s somewhat like Facebook but the pictures are bigger. You are able to brand your company with images. You can also create circles of friends, colleagues, and more. Take away:Brand your company through pictures. It’s a great way to get the word across and make it fun.

Posterus:The simple site it’s a great way to post anything by email. It allows you to post multiple photos and create an image gallery. Take away:Automatically posts to your Posterous site and you get a custom domain and Google Analytics. If you want a very simple blog that is incredibly easy to publish content to when you’re on the go, then Posterous is a great option.

Tumblr:The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, named a “tumblelog”. Users  can follow other users’ blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Take away:You “follow” other blogs or people that you like, based on the content they post. Essentially you go around posting and “reblogging” pictures. It’s a great way to share information and pictures.

Here are our top 5 Pinterest marketing success stories.

1) Etsy (@etsy) was an early adopter of Pinterest as a marketing tool, and have since confirmed it is their number one traffic driver. They have nearly 90,000 followers, 1,609 pins and 30 boards. They don’t just promote items for sale on their site; their success comes from good quality information, like tutorials on DIY projects. Etsy understands that social networking is a two-way street and they interact well with followers.

2) Christine Martinez (@chrisem) is a stylist and fashion blogger. She has 984,088 users following 6,262 pins over 44 boards. Christine is the third most followed Pinterest user. She is not a conglomerate; she is one person proving that Pinterest can give a business a worldwide profile. Christine has used Pinterest to successfully build her own brand, sending her career soaring.

3) Wedding Republic (@WeddingRepublic) saw a 75% increase in traffic to their website after they started using Pinterest. Despite a relatively small number of Pinterest followers, their use of good quality photos, each linking back to their online wedding registry site, has successfully boosted their profile among their target market (Pinterest is very popular with brides-to-be), all for free.

4) Today (@todayshow) uses Pinterest to successfully connect with its audience. They provide information viewers want, from recipes to behind the scenes photos. They use Pinterest as an extension of their website (today.com) to keep viewers interested and involved when they are not on air.

Uniqlo and FirstBorn team up for a project that owns Pinterest -- literally.

To wake Pinterest users from a scrolling slumber, the agency created 100 separate shell Pinterest accounts that pinned images simultaneously. As users scrolled down their favorite categories, they came across all the images, which combined to create giant mosaics that "animated" when scrolled through.

The giant branded mosaics can be seen by Pinterest users whether or not they follow the Uniqlo brand page. The project targets five categories on which mosaics will appear: men's apparel, women's apparel, geek, fitness and sports.

Brands are still trying to figure out Pinterest. That’s no secret. The numbers on Pinterest are really low, with global brands like Coca-Cola having just 1,200 followers. The majority of brands are pushing products through Pinterest, in an obvious effort to boost sales. But we’ve all learned with the onset of social media that the best type of marketing is the kind that does not feel like marketing at all.

Without considering the number of followers or how much activity is taking place, Digiday set out to find brands that get Pinterest. We were looking at what types of content brands were pinning and the kinds of boards they created. There are a select few that seem to have it all figured out. Here are some fun brand Pinterest pages that we just can’t get enough of.

Sephora 11 boards 422 pins 29,038 followers

From nail color to lipstick shades, Sephora’s Pinterest is obviously for the makeup-obsessed. It is meant to bring the seasons colors and styles to those who are looking to update their makeup collection. It does push products, but it does it in a way that isn’t a turnoff for consumers. Consumers can find out the summer styles that are hot this season and can even attempt to get the look themselves via how-to photographs. The boards are actually useful.

Land’s End 16 boards 336 pins 570 followers

The Land’s End Pinterest presence is updated daily, with the brand pinning its own merchandise but also pinning photos of things that reflect the Land’s End lifestyle. We like this Pinterest profile because it does push products, but there’s also a lightness there, with pictures of sand castles and mermaids and other images that fit in nice with the Land’s End image. It is kept up to date, with one board meant to help inspire people on what to get their dads for Father’s Day. While this board does push Land’s End products, it is also useful in giving consumers ideas for the perfect gift.

Coca-Cola 5 boards 91 pins 1,216 followers

The Coca-Cola Pinterest page is all about discovering moments of happiness. Coke is really keeping to the theme here, without shoving product down people’s throats. One of the boards, “Keep Discovering,” shows pictures of people reading out in the woods, a man playing hide and seek and a boy making a discovery in a box. The pictures evoke a certain type of emotion when you look at them, which is likely what Coke intended here.

Gap 21 boards 500 pins 8,761 followers

Gap pushes products via Pinterest, but it also has some interesting boards that are meant to inspire people to take advantage of the summer months. “How To Picnic” is one, with photos from picnics. There are recommendations on what to wear to a picnic, what food to bring, what beverages to serve and photos with picnic blankets on green grass. It’s inspirational as well as promotional. But the promotional aspect is so subtle that it does not feel like advertising at all. It feels more like Gap is trying to help, through images, and inspire.

Macy’s 28 boards 852 pins 3,511 followers

Want to meet women online? Well, it seems you might have the best chance on Pinterest - 72 per cent of that site's users are of the fairer sex.

An analysis has revealed how the social media browsing habits of men and women differ, and it shows some remarkable results.

Of course, it's probably no surprise that women love the social pinboard Pinterest, or that Reddit is full of sexist, technology obsessed men.

But more surprising is that more than half of YouTube users are male - perhaps all looking for fight clips and girls shaking booty - and that 62 per cent of Twitter users are female.

The data has been harvested from Google Ad Planner and put into this rather neat infographic by data journalist David McCandless for his site Information Is Beautiful.

It shows that the ladies generally prefer sites which allow them to connect with their friends, like Facebook and Myspace, while men seem to prefer social networks where they can find stuff out, like Digg and del.icio.us.

Men also seem to prefer music based social networks like Soundcloud and Last.fm, while women prefer those on which they can share pictures, like Instagram, and ones in which they can catch up with old friends from real life, like Classmates.com and Mylife.

YouTube is getting in on the Pinterest action — by launching an account of its own, the online video company announced Thursday.

Videos will be posted to one of several Pinterest YouTube boards themed around topics including crafts, lifestyle tips, beauty, food and fitness.

YouTube says it will also have numerous additional boards categorizing the videos it posts.

In Thursday’s post on YouTube’s blog, the company points out that it already has accounts on other major social networking sites including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.

Pinterest made video pinning available in August 2011; its users have been pinning videos from YouTube since that time.

It makes sense that the video sharing site — which gets 72 hours of video uploaded every minute — would want to leverage Pinterest’s large and growing following of reportedly up to 21 million unique visitors per month.

Pinterest was one of the fastest growing social networks ever this spring. In fact, Pinterest users spend more time on the site than Facebook. The majority of those users are mothers, of whom 28% have a household income greater than $100,000 per year, according to Modea, a digital advertising agency.

Facebook’s advertising team must be gnashing their teeth at a soon-to-be-launched Dial campaign. Next week will debut the Move the Dial Pinterest contest, in which Dial Facebook fans will be urged to create a board on Pinterest with pinned images that show how their favorite cause helps “move the dial” in their community. The winning charity will receive a $5,000 donation.

Pinterest, I can hear the Facebook team exclaiming, through clenched teeth, is not supposed to be about relationship building or branding. It is about the image and the categories in which these images fall.

As Tom Edwards, VP of Digital Strategy at themarketingarm says: “Visual images transcend language, evokes emotion and means something unique to each individual. So when you combine visual images + discoverability of content amplified by social relevance to the user, you get a powerful tool.”

This is why Pinterest traffic tends to convert at e-commerce sites into sales at higher rates than Facebook traffic does–people are naturally in the mood to buy after looking at the pictures, whereas they may or may not be after checking their Facebook feed for the thousandth time, then playing a game, watching a video, and so on, on Facebook.

Grim Statistics

Recent statistics have been particularly grim for Facebook, which among other goals wants to build up its social commerce bona fides. A joint research project by Shop.org, comScore and The Partnering Group, found that online U.S. consumers follow an average of 9.3 retail companies on Pinterest, compared to the average 6.9 retailers on Facebook and the 8.5 retailers on Twitter. Another study, from SteelHouse, reports that Pinterest users 79% more likely to purchase something they saw on the site compared to Facebook.

It’s not that Facebook isn’t moving in this direction Edwards says—it is. “The shift within timeline to drive visual storytelling is a first step towards driving engagement visually,” he says. “The differences when it comes to Pinterest vs. Facebook influencing e-commerce, Facebook users traditionally spend less but are more engaged with the brand as a whole, while data shows Pinterest has a higher ability to influence a single transaction but less overall time spent on a retailers site.”

What Customers Want

This in-and-out, no-engagement-necessary mode of e-commerce, I must say, is particularly appealing – and not just to me.

In their wonderful piece in the Harvard Business Review, “Three Myths about What Customers Want,”  Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird, took on the notion that consumers want to have a relationship with a brand. No, in fact, most do not.

They do not want to be bombarded with surveys and contests and endless emails about upcoming new product offerings, unless that is, it is a discount or coupon of some kind. And in that case, just leave the offer in the inbox please, and then leave.

This lack of ever-determined, ever-cheerful engagement with the customer is the secret behind Pinterest’s rave success – and the reason why Facebook has yet to successfully morph its site into a social commerce platform.

“On Pinterest, no real conversations are taking place and it has evolved as a place to trigger purchases than Facebook,” N. Venkat Venkatraman, a business professor at Boston University, pointed out to me recently. Meanwhile, Facebook is the top social community, but the premise that social advertising leads to commerce is still unproven, he says.

The irony, he says, is that “photographs of products pinned and liked and shared can be more readily connected with offers from companies than text conversations on Facebook.”

If you're seeing an unusual change in your followers number, this is because we're switching to a new system for tabulating Pinterest counters this week which is correcting for our past inaccuracies:

If you saw a decrease in your followers, we know this is probably really disappointing news. We want to make sure you know the change in your followers isn’t a reflection of your Pinterest activity or “pinning quality” in any way, and it’s strictly a fix for a long-term problem we’ve been eager to solve.

During our most rapid periods of growth, follower counts could be thrown off due to system-slowness or bugs which miscounted board-followers versus people who chose “Follow All” on profiles. For your board-follower counts, we're also beginning to correctly subtract people who click "Follow All" on your profile, and then choose to unfollow specific boards.

As you’ve probably noticed, our growth has also attracted attention from spammers, so any decrease in followers is partly tied to fake accounts we’ve been removing. 

We’re confident that the new counts will be accurate, and this process will be a big improvement for our infrastructure and all Pinners’ stats going forward, so we really appreciate your understanding.

In case you’re curious, these back-end changes will also allow for future capabilities:

- The new system will order lists chronologically to show newest followers/followings on top.

- We also hope this system will lay the foundation for clicking on a specific followers list on a board and adding a blocking feature, so we’re pretty excited that it’ll improve Pinterest in other ways too!

We're really sorry about the confusion and hopefully that's a helpful explanation of what's happening.

PS: Repin and likes counts aren't affected in any way.