Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Pinterest has slowly been building itself up as an advertising alternative to Google and Facebook over the past 12 months.

The company’s focus has historically been on building an engaged user base through its intuitive, visual interface. As a social network, it has always offered something a little different.

However, advertisers have been skeptical about whether Pinterest could ‘monetize’ this model, due to the nature of engagements users have and also the demographics that typically spend time on the site.

Those concerns have not been allayed altogether, but Pinterest has made some fascinating moves of late. They have launched a paid search partnership with Kenshoo, completely upgraded their visual search capabilities, and expanded their reach by adding a new Google Chrome extension.

Earlier in 2016, we did a study on brand marketing (studying over 16 million social media posts from 100,000 brands) and learned that Pinterest, in particular, holds a lot of potential for brands. This inspired us to dive even deeper into what’s happening on Pinterest.

We looked at over 1.5 million pins, all sent in 2016, to see what patterns we could find: when pins were sent, when people were pinning, and what words they were using.

I’m excited to share these findings with you and hope they can help you start, or enhance, an amazing Pinterest marketing strategy....

Within the last five years, Pinterest has truly made its mark on consumers across the country. Twenty-one percent of U.S. online adults visit Pinterest at least monthly--more than both Instagram (16 percent) and Google+ (16 percent)--making it the third most popular social network after Facebook (70 percent) and Twitter (22 percent).

Yet, despite its rising popularity, marketers find little value from branded boards, which clearly indicates room for growth. Overall, marketing leaders remain confused, as few comprehend how to leverage Pinterest in ways that will promote proactive marketing behaviors.

XForrester notes that only 56 percent of leading brands have created Pinterest boards. Those that have established their presence, however, neglect to post regularly, collect few followers, and see little engagement. Brands recognize Pinterest's potential, but fail to execute strategies that drive results, as the social network's ads currently offer limited targeting and effectiveness....

Wonder how to use images on Pinterest? Or why you’d create Pinterest images to pin content from your blog?

If so, you’re like many businesses still trying to make sense of Pinterest. But what if I were to tell you that it can become your biggest traffic driver?

And more than that, you can use it to convert higher-quality leads in a shorter amount of time?

It’s all possible when you position your content properly.

That means creating super compelling images. How do you do that?

Below I list seven easy tips to help you create Pinterest images that drive massive results....

Hoping to learn more about Pinterest marketing, I watched Cynthia Sanchez's speech from Social Media Marketing World about the best ways to get more Pinterest followers.And I decided to write about her awesome suggestions.

Answer these 5 questions before you even think about marketing your company on Pinterest:

• Who am I trying to reach?
• How can I help my customers?
• How can I make great content?
• What are my potential followers interested in?
• What topics should I choose for my followers?

Once you have those answers, just follow these 5 easy steps...