At four years old, Pinterest is still relatively new on the social media scene. But it has been more than enough time for business owners and marketers to realize the value of the platform for marketing products and increasing brand recognition. As the newest and smallest of the social networks, Pinterest gets less attention than Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn, but there is research that solidly shows the value of the image-sharing platform. Here are 10 recent stats on Pinterest that will get you pinning.
Pinterest first wowed people with how quickly the platform grew. That growth has yet to abate. According to Pew Research Center, 21 percent of US online adults used Pinterest in 2013, up from 15 percent in 2012.
Pinterest is an ideal choice for brands that want to connect with their consumers. A report from Lab42 found that 70 percent of Pinterest users who follow brands on the site feel more connected to the brands they follow than the ones they do not.
The same Lab42 study showed the benefit of Pinterest for holiday shoppers. The report found that 92 percent of Pinterest users believe the site makes holiday planning less stressful. This may explain why 43 percent of Pinterest users have a board designated for the holidays.
Besides making the holidays less stressful, Pinterest drove sales for retailers. Lab42 reported that 59 percent of Pinterest users have purchased something they saw on the site during the 2013 holiday season and 19 percent of Pinterest users spend more money because of the site.
Pinterest is the platform of choice for sharing cooking tips. ShareThis reported that US consumers are 72 percent more likely to share recipes on Pinterest than Facebook or Twitter.
Moms are a prime target audience for social media and Pinterest is almost just as useful as Facebook for getting moms to share content. A different ShareThis study found 29 percent of online content shared by moms is shared through Pinterest, compared to 34 percent for Facebook, and only 7 percent for email.
The same ShareThis study found that Pinterest is easily the platform of choice for iPad users. A whopping 48 percent of social media content shared on iPads is shared through Pinterest, compared to 17 percent for Facebook, and 16 percent for Twitter.
ShareThis also noted that overall sharing on Pinterest is growing. Based on the most recently available data, Pinterest sharing increased by 15 percent in August 2013.
Retailers who aren’t marketing their good on Pinterest are missing out on 25 percent of all social shopping sessions, according to a report from RichRelevance.
Falling just behind Facebook in the rankings, people referred by links on Pinterest spend an average of 64.67 minutes on sites, view 1.71 pages per visit, and have a bounce rate of 56.35 percent, according to a 2014 report from ShareThis.
These stats show that Pinterest is a growing power that marketers need to use to their advantage. As was mentioned in an earlier article on this site, there is an inherent value in diversifying the number of social networks a business uses to share content. Depending on a business’ target demographic or the type of content they produce, Pinterest may even be a better choice than some of the larger social media networks. Check these other articles to see the research on Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn.