Pinterest, the next big social network for business? Will, from Barr Media, finds out.
Post by Will Lamerton
Let's get a first-person look.
About 3-months ago I downloaded the Pinterest app onto my phone, created my account and was pinning content before the day was out. But what triggered me to move away from the more traditional social marketing platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and try out a smaller service like Pinterest for my marketing?
Asides from the obvious and age-old advice of 'be on every platform', the major choice to give something else a go came down to diversifying away from Instagram as my primary marketing platform. Although still where the majority of my audience lies as well as giving a fantastic amount of advertising and content tools to help put your business out there, Instagram has made subtle changes and moves into trying to get you to spend more money as a business on their in-house advertising platform. This has resulted in costs going up and organic reach and engagement going down on posts.
The truth is, this is okay. A business has to make money and the tradeoff of allowing access to Instagram for free is that you're going to have to pay at some point down the line to get the most out of the platform. What this did trigger for me is to think about moving into other spaces and not just relying on Instagram as a major driver of traffic and interest in my brands. Building strong presences on smaller, but still, popular platforms would be a smart move, not only would this increase my audience overall, but would also mean if one platform stop performing without huge cost, I still have strong alternative presences that keep my brand alive on social media.
So, that brings us to 3-months ago, joining Pinterest to see if I could replicate my success on Instagram with a smaller platform.
Why Pinterest?
I landed on Pinterest for a few reasons:
- I'd heard a lot about it. With a major IPO in America taking place, the company hit the stock market with a $10 billion valuation gearing a huge amount of publicity. They weren't messing around and obviously wanted to be seen as an up and coming player in the tech scene.
- It's visual. As my personal brand has often revolved heavily around my work as a photographer and my continued creative work under Barr Media means that platforms should be as visual as possible for me. This is part of the reason Instagram had been such a success and I was hoping with Pinterest's array of visual tools and features I would see similar results.
- Recommendation from others. I had also heard from a few people in my network that Pinterest had given them quick growth and success for their businesses.
So, out of all the options, Pinterest seemed large enough to build a good audience, but also young enough to build that audience for as little investment as possible all while offering visual features that were perfect for an imagery driven page.
Pinterest Business Metrics
Before I dive into my results over the last 3-months, which exceeded all expectations, by the way, let me share a couple of KPI's (key performance indicators) that Pinterest is boasting versus other big players for you.
- Pinterest has 291 million monthly active users.
- Pinterest added more US users in 2017-2018 than Facebook and Twitter combined.
- Pinterest drives 33% more traffic to shopping sites than Facebook.
- 50% of new Pinterest sign-ups in 2018 were men.
- 80% of new Pinterest sign-ups in 2017-2018 were from outside the US.
- 98% of Pinners try out the ideas they discover on the platform.
- Two-thirds of Pinterest pins represent brands and products.
- Advertising on Pinterest earns a £1.55 profit for every £0.77 spent.
What does this tell us? Pinterest is a vibrant, growing community offering the chance for businesses to tap into a platform that has users so engaged in the content they're consuming compared to other major platforms. Oh, and if you did want to put some budget behind your Pinterest growth, that average profit of every pound spent is not a bad starting point as an ROI (return on investment).
If that doesn't convince you to try and find a purpose for Pinterest in your business then not much will!
My Metrics
I set out a strategy at the beginning of my Pinterest journey, and following that has gained me success rates that are mindblowing only 3-months down the line...
My 3-month analytics.
Starting from absolutely nothing on Pinterest, I've managed to generate over 500,000 impressions on my content in 3-months building a total audience of 223,000 users of which almost 11,000 continue to engage regularly.
From here, I've generated hundreds of website clicks and interest in not only my work but leads for Barr Media as users want to replicate this rapid growth that I've experienced.
What's next?
Pinterest has certainly proved itself as a platform to me so it would be stupid not to continue to develop a strategy and build an audience further. The main focuses for me are:
- Continue to develop reach. My current stats sit, at the time of writing, at 162,000 monthly unique viewers. My next milestone is 333,000 which generate 1,000,000 impressions per quarter.
- Focus on written content. Some of my most popular content on Pinterest has been micro-blogging using their stories feature. To separate my Instagram strategy and not just cross-post, I would like to focus on writing short summaries of locations I visit to inspire others to check them out.
- Grow Barr Media on Pinterest. Having had success personally, now it's time to also replicate this success for Barr Media as a company.
- Generate more leads and sales through Pinterest. That's the last piece of the puzzle, although I have been generating clicks and leads, the conversion rate to someone even clicking compared to impressions sits at around 0.5%. My content strategy aims to increase this conversion rate.
How can Barr Media help with your social media marketing on Pinterest?
Since this is a blog for Barr Media, I'm going to turn full circle and offer our services out to you. If you think that your business could have a place on Pinterest, or want to know how it could, please get in touch. Our team are more than happy to help and we would love to not only take your Pinterest marketing to the next level but your whole digital presence.
We want to bring value to you and have worked in over 13-industries delivering digital marketing results for clients big and small.
Check out Will Lamerton's Pinterest here.