I’ve been hearing arguments either manufactured by, or misunderstood by non-SEO’s that Pinterest had surpassed Facebook and Twitter in traffic. Unique daily visitors on Pinterest are certainly high, but they’re nowhere near Facebook. That said, Pinterest has enjoyed an explosive 4,000% growth over just a six month period.
Pinterest's unique site visitor stats Feb, 2012
So there’s a nice strong upward trend (great initial growth curve) but Twitter, just this year has gone from 24,000,000 to 37,000,000 which is a 13 million unique visitor gain so far this year (not including long term repeat visitor traffic).
Pinterest vs Twitter graph (via Compete.com) Feb 20, 2012
Facebook, on the other hand isn’t threatened at all by Pinterest, though Pinterest does have that nice sweet curve all startup sites do when they first go viral:
Pinterest vs Facebook (via Compete.com) Feb 20, 2012
Facebook has climbed from 134,000,000 unique visitors to 166,890,779 visitors this year so far, a gain of almost 23 million visitors… but just the overall numbers as of Feb 20th 2012 aren’t showing them clearly in the lead:
- Pinterest: 16,230,441
- Twitter: 37,201,228
- Facebook: 166,890,779
So while Pinterest is highly rated as trusted by women, it is not the overall number one social media site and has in now way suddenly surpassed Facebook. Not even close.
However, as with all new growing social media sites, anywhere anyone thinks they can charge you a quick buck to “jump on the bandwagon” and to “keep up with the Jones’” (those other businesses that have more customers than you), and, if that doesn’t work, the horrible things that will happen if you don’t, and the wonderful things that will happen if you do… you know the routine – fear tactics and carrot on the stick tactics and that’s just for a start. I’m not even going into the “appeal to ego” or using infospeak and 3D charts – so here’s a few offers from a group I belong to in Linkedin:
Mostly spam posts in a Linkedin group offering out of this world results using Pinterest. Only problem is, this is an SEO group discussing Pinterest, not a lot of potential clients here, but idiot spammers sneak their way in everywhere.
Sugarrae says that the Pinterest TOS points out that Pinterest is using affiliate links to monetize products linked to from the site, and as Rae Hoffman-Dolan is an Affiliate Marketer herself she loves the idea and lauds Pinterest owners for monetizing in such a fashion. (While an Atlantic Magazine Sr Editor, Alexis Madrigal, points out the exact problem in the second image below).
So is all the marketing hype on the use of Pinterest valid? Is any of it true? And if so, how can it best be put to use in marketing?
About.com sent me an article written by By Darcie Connell (CEO of a travel site) on March 2, 2012 “Can you get 6,000 visitors a day from Pinterest?” with a five steps to success on Pinterest all laid out:
Step 1. Go Narrow.
Step 2. Go Deep.
Step 3. Meet Others on Pinterest.
Step 4. Add Useful, High Quality Photos to Your Site & to Pinterest
Step 5. Make it Easy for People To Find You on Pinterest.
Click here to read the details of how to make the five steps to Pinterest success work for you.
Hubspot also provides a nice PDF on how to use Pinterest for business which you may find helpful.
Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at Atlantic Magazine comments on Pinterests (outright) TOS disclosure.
Another important note when setting up an account for business mentioned in the PDF is “be sure to register your account with the same email address you use for your business’ Twitter account so you can easily share your new pins through your Twitter account, too. once you receive an invitation to sign up for pinterest, you’ll want to sign up through the Twitter option, not the facebook option. This will enable you to tie your pinterest account to your business’ Twitter account, not your personal facebook profile. currently, pinterest doesn’t offer a connection to facebook business pages.”
That said, there’s a lot more involved with Pinterest than meets the casual eye. Still with a “join by invite only” (which you can do by requesting one yourself) Pinterest needs to be taken a closer look at.
My personal advice here is to include clear, beautiful pictures of your happy customers (and workers) as well as new photos of your company events or interesting displays, product preparation, manufacturing or services. You don’t need to make them formal, as long as they’re quality.
Include Infographics too if you have them. Make sure you don’t just link to your site in your descriptions but to specific pages where the picture (and product) lives and don’t be afraid to ask for a sale, or ask for a “click this link to go to out blog” or some other calls to action. If you’re not using Web 2.0 technology like a blog or a forum then consider it now, it’s 2012, make sure your potential customers have a place to engage you, your company, and each other.
Latest UPDATE – Pinterest – 04/21/2012
Has The Pinterest Skyrocket Run out of Fuel?
Nicholas Carlson of businessinsider.com wrote on April 20th, 2012 that:
“Most Pinterest users sign-up to the site using their Facebook accounts, and AppData, which monitors how often users of third-party apps and Web sites interact with Facebook, says the number of Facebook-connected Pinterest users has declined precipitously the past 50 days (since April 20th or thereabouts). Monthly active users are down from 11.3 million on March 1 to 11.15 million on April 1 to just 8.3 million today.” Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider
One Twitter user I follow (who’s posts are protected so I won’t use his name) posted: “Hey @Pinterest, you may want to jump on that first $1B offer – if it ever comes.”
The writing is on the wall.
You can already see the slow down headed for the down-swing as of this screen shot of activity for Pinterest on 3/20/2012:
Has The Pinterest Skyrocket Run out of Fuel?
But here’s what it looks like from 03/21/2012 to 04/20/2012:
Here's a chart showing the 3/21 to 4/20 portion of this 25% decline:
