Don’t Underestimate Pinterest

You’ll want to Pin this! Pinterest boasts over 200 million active users a month. A massive 87% of those users reported having purchased a product found on the platform. Most of us associate Pinterest with recipes, crafts, and DIY tips, but it’s so much more than that. Users don’t only visit the platform for ideas and inspiration, they also visit the platform to shop.

Rich Pins & Promoted Pins

Pinterest’s “Product Rich Pins” help e-commerce businesses showcase their products on the platform. Rich Pins make shopping easier by including product information on your pins. Consumers are then redirected back to your website to buy the products.

Pinterest also has the ability to create paid advertisements in the form of “Promoted Pins.” This allows businesses to build brand awareness & increase traffic to their websites quickly and easily.

Improving the Platform

Since announcing their massive growth in users, Pinterest announced a series of steps they are taking to improve the platform. They’ll be adding more features such as “pinch and zoom” on photos and “boards within boards,” a feature to help organize your pins even further which will help users find what they’re looking for.

As a platform, Pinterest is different from other social media since it works as a visual search engine. Pinterest has shifted away from the standard characteristics of a social profile by eliminating the ability to “Like” pins.

Search Pinterest with Your Camera

Pinterest is working on “visual search” and “object detection” technologies that make it easier for people to find what they are looking for and discover similar images within the Pinterest library.

As a result, they’re rolling out a new app that will work with the camera on your smartphone. This new app called “Lens” will allow the user to take photos of items around them and spit back relevant pins including those items. Who wouldn’t want an app that instantly helps you identify an item and where you can buy it? This will be a great opportunity for e-commerce businesses to boost sales.

Is Your Business Pinterest-Ready?

Pinterest Business accounts are free to set up. With the ability to incorporate keyword research and the use of Rich Pins, it’s easy to see how this is a powerful platform to host your images.