should your brand be on pinterest? - chicago | elevate · elevate studios 328 s jefferson s t....

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Should Your BrandBe on Pinterest?

Pinterest allows marketers to leverage their brand

equity and captivate their audiences in a more visual

way than other social media networks. Though

Pinterest was once seen as simply a place for a

mainly female audience to share craft ideas and

recipes, the Pinterest audience and their interests

have diversified, making it a valuable social media

tool for marketers. As brands experiment with

creating unique engagement opportunities on

Pinterest, the social network is proving to be an

increasingly effective direct traffic driver to brand

sites. This dossier reviews the changing audience

of Pinterest and their behaviors, provides usage

guidelines and showcases several successful

brand examples.

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2 / 15Should your brand be on PintereSt? - 9/24/13

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Contents

The Pinterest Audience

Usage Trends on Pinterest

Pinterest’s Global Usage

Pinterest’s Localized Approach to Global

Top Brands on Pinterest

Case Studies

Creative Pin Examples

Pinterest Best Practices

Pinterest Brand Usage Tips

Quick Guide to Pinterest Images

Pinterest Resources

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8% $25k

42% $25k - $50k

29% $50k - $75k

12% $75k - $100k

6% $100k - $150k

3% $150k

Users Household Income $

The Pinterest Audience

• Audience is diversifying

More men are taking an interest in Pinterest.

The percentage of male users has reached 28%

and is still growing.1 Also, according to Forbes

Social Intelligence Report, there were 5,000,000

conversations about Pinterest across other social

sites over the past year and 40% of participants

were male.

• Audience doesn’t skew very young or old

80% of users are between the age of 25-54.1

• Audience is engaged

The average time spent on Pinterest per visit

is 14.2 minutes.1

• Audience is exploratory

Pinterest’s referral rates are increasing while

those of Twitter and Facebook are decreasing.2

• Audience has above average incomes 1

• Audience is tech savvy

The Pinterest iPhone app has been downloaded

almost 250,000 times.3

1. Google Analytics, 23 April 20122. Shareaholic https://blog.shareaholic.com/pinterest-referral-traffic-2/3. Wayfair Study http://mashable.com/2012/04/02/pinterest-wayfair/

Pinterest can be a valuable communication tool for your

brand if your unique audience is on Pinterest. If they are, it

is important to understand how their behavior on the site

differs from their behavior on other social platforms. Here

are a few insights about the Pinterest audience at large.

Clicks & Conversions?One of the strengths behind Pinterest as

a marketing tool is that it is increasingly

e�ective at driving tra�c back to brand

sites. How can marketers best leverage this

strength to create a continual relationship

with their brand’s audience?

Recommendation:Create a dedicated landing page experience

or greeting for visitors who come to your

brand’s site from Pinterest. This helps connect

the user's recent experience with your brand

on Pinterest with the experience they are

about to have on your site. Invite them to

follow your brand on Pinterest since they have

already shown interest in your pinned content.

Pinterest followers will be more likely to return

to your site regularly in the future.




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Are Pinterest users motivated to purchase?

Though Facebook is still currently leading referral traffic,

Pinterest is better at driving the big spenders. Pinterest

shoppers outspend Facebook shoppers significantly when

it comes to average order value.9

Usage Trends on Pinterest

Once you have determined that your target audience is

using Pinterest, your next step is to understand what they

are doing on the site. Learning about audience behavior

and engagement patterns can help you decide what

content your audience will want to see, when you should

post it and what success metrics you should use to track

the success of your initiatives. Here are a few emerging

behavior trends.

1 Fashion Design & Collections

2 Music Art & Memorabilia

3 Vineyards & Wine Tourism

4 Utah

5 Crafts

6 Public Relations

7 Venture Capital

8 Iowa

9 SEO & Marketing

10 Graphic design

Top Interests on Pinterest5

100repins

24likes

1comment

Best time to post during the day: 2PM-4PM EST

Best time to post in the evening: 8PM-1AM EST

AVOID: Posting in late afternoon PEAK TIME: Saturday morning

$85$153

When should you post?

While Facebook and

Twitter traffic is often at its

highest during commuting

hours, Pinterest traffic is

highest in the afternoon

and late evening.6

What are Pinterest users interested in?

Everything. Pinterest users’ interests are diversifying and

Pinterest is no longer just for recipes and craft ideas.

Brands in any vertical can connect with the Pinterest

audience as long as they are creating valuable and

engaging content.

How are users interacting with content?

Knowing the common ratio of repins to likes to comments

can help you establish reasonable goals and success

metrics for your content. Users are 100 times more likely

to repin than comment.4

What categories are users repinning most?

Aligning your brand’s content with any of the followings

categories may increase your number of repins.

Is Pinterest driving users to brand sites?

Yes, at a growing rate. Pinterest referral rates have now

surpassed Twitter’s and though Facebook is still the

leader in referral traffic for sites, its referral rate is

declining.7 According to the retail deal site ideeli.com,

Pinterest has brought a 446% increase in web traffic to

their business’ site.8

Facebook Referrals (% of all tra�c)

Pinterest Referrals (%)

6.92 6.38

.85 1.05

Jan. 2012 Feb. 2012

4. Unmetric Pindustry Report. unmetric.com5. Google Analytics, 23 April 20126. Pinerly Inc. 20127. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/pinterest-now-beating-google-referral-traffic-plus-bing-twitter-stumbleupon/ Jan. 20128. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222740#9. Richrelevance shopping Insights TM, richrelevance.com




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Pinterest has seen incredible success and growth within the United States, becoming the 16th most popular website in the

U.S. according to Alexa traffic data.

However, Pinterest’s US success has yet to be repeated in global markets. Nearly half of Pinterest’s users are Americans

and the rest of their users are highly dispersed globally. No single country besides the US accounts for more that 5% of all

page views. Pinterest is currently looking to tap into the growth potential of non-US markets and has dedicated a portion of

its recently-raised funding towards international growth initiatives. Pinterest already offered users the ability to customize

their experience by choosing from English, French, Spanish, Dutch or Portuguese for their language setting, but Pinterest

is now working to localize the experience even more by curating content based on a user’s country to attract additional

international users.

Pinterest is the fastest growing social site hitting 10M U.S. monthly visits, more than any standalone site - ever.

- Forbes Social Intelligence Report

“”

Pinterest’s Global Usage




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French pinners will see more local content in Search and category feeds, a well as links to more French domains and pins with descriptions in French. We hope today’s updates

will help French pinners discover more relevant pins, and faster than ever before.

– blog.pinterest.com

10. http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/10/pinterest-pushes-global-growth-with-a-localized-version-for-france-its-first-non-english-site/

“

”

Pinterest’s Localized Approach to Globalization

Pinterest began its global localization efforts in May by launching a UK-specific version of Pinterest.com, along with the

addition of British English to the language settings. In June, Pinterest launched their second localized version for the French

market. The beauty of Pinterest’s new localized versions is that most users won’t even realize they are now accessing a

new version. The domain name and look of the site remains exactly the same for all users and all users still have access

to the same global content that exists on Pinterest. However, content that is specific to a user’s country is prioritized when

available, so that users are being shown the content that is most relevant to them.

When Pinterest launched the UK version they initiated a #pinitforwardUK campaign. To get the word out that Pinterest now

has a more tailored content experience for UK users, Pinterest invited 300 UK bloggers to share their Pinterest stories and

pins on their own blogs. Pinterest repeated the Pin It Forward campaign in France with the help of 300 French bloggers.

Through the Pin It Forward France (Epingler c’est partager) campaign, Pinterest intends to spread the word that for French

users, Pinterest will now be even more French.

Why France?(GROWTH)

While France currently accounts for only 1% of Pinterest’s tra�c, the amount of tra�c from French users has grown 20% over the last 6 months. The US still has the highest tra�c rate at 70%, but US tra�c has declined 8% over the last 6 months.10




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Top Brands on Pinterest

Perfect Palette

429,272 Followers

200 Boards

36,396 Pins

Perfect Palette helps audiences looking for color

themes or inspiration for weddings, apartments and

fashion on Pinterest.

Real Simple

340,301 Followers

110 Boards

6,043 Pins

Time’s Real Simple magazine is a natural match for

Pinterest. Their boards feature tips for everyday

decorating, event preparation, cooking and styling.

The Beauty Department

815,993 Followers

26 Boards

855 Pins

Dubbed “your daily dose of pretty,” The Beauty

Department blog gives women tips on how to apply

makeup and style their hair on Pinterest.

HGTV

316,043 Followers

63 Boards

6,854 Pins

HGTV’s Pinterest presence offers lots of tips on

beautifying your home.

Kate Spade NY

142,799 Followers

11 Boards

2,569 Pins

The front-running fashion brand on Pinterest, Kate Spade

New York offers tips on how to live and dress “colorfully.”

Better Homes and Gardens

391,745 Followers

121 Boards

5,776 Pins

Better Homes and Gardens has successfully created a

Pinterest following for their brand. They regularly devote a

whole board to guest pinners, which has been extremely

successful in generating pins and traffic.

Whole Foods

141,125 Followers

55 Boards

2,437 Pins

Whole Foods’ Pinterest boards address a range of

activities related to the organic lifestyle including

gardening, recycling and, of course, recipes.

West Elm

178,050 Followers

53 Boards

5,301 Pins

West Elm, a furniture company, uses Pinterest to showcase

its products in natural settings and offers decorating tips.

Mashable

1,478,278 Followers

39 Boards

3.993 Pins

Mashable’s sharp community team seized on Pinterest

early and has loaded their boards with memes, tips &

tricks and, perhaps best of all, a section on Pinterest.




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Case Study

Sony: Launching on Pinterest

Sony has become hugely successful on Pinterest, with

over 2300 followers, more than 1200 likes on Sony pins

and more than 2500 pins from the Sony website. Most

importantly, according to Callan Green, Senior Social

Media Specialist for Sony Electronics, they have seen

an 800% increase in traffic from Pinterest to the Sony

Store site. Pinterest now drives 2.5 times more traffic

than Twitter, despite the fact they have 169,000 Twitter

followers and only 35,000 Pinterest followers.

Before launching, Sony looked at what pins already

existed on Pinterest about the Sony brand and products.

Their research showed that Pinterest users were not only

pinning current products, as expected, but that they were

also pinning retro products, as well as fan-made items like

a Sony Walkman cake. Sony realized that their audience

was excited about new products but also had nostalgia for

some older products.

Sony then continued with a soft launch on Pinterest. They

used this three-month period to test content, as well

as the frequency and timing of their posts, before they

invested time and resources into actively promoting their

Pinterest presence. During this period they also put Pin It

buttons on their brand site.

Based on their initial audience research and the results

of their content tests during the soft launch period, Sony

determined that their Pinterest strategy should focus on

three goals to ensure diverse and effective content:

1. Drive sales through product boards

2. Create brand affinity with boards that focus on the

brand over individual products (ex. retro Sony board)

3. Build community acquisition by tapping into other

interests of their audience (ex. pinning photos that

have to do with Harry Potter, Star Wars, comics etc.)

When Sony was ready for their hard launch, they used

other social media channels to promote their Pinterest

page and also increased the frequency of their pins to

four times daily so that new followers would see them as

valuable and interesting content creators. They continue

to promote their Pinterest presence via emails, social

channels and by reaching out to the media and bloggers

to maintain their growth.

As part of their effort to create branded images people would want to share, Sony pinned a creative heart-shaped collage of Sony products and the Sony logo. It became one of their most popular pins and

is now their profile image.

In preparation for Mother’s Day, Sony created a board – “For the Moms”

– that showcased Sony product gift ideas, but also included a variety of non-gadget gift ideas, comics about being a mom, quotes about motherhood and odes to moms.




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Case Study

Sephora: Driving Site Traffic

Sephora noticed that many Pinterest users were pinning

their favorite beauty products onto their boards and that

a lot of those images were from the Sephora site. As part

of a planned site redesign project, Sephora added Pin It

buttons to all of the products on their site, making it even

easier for Pinterest users to add them to their boards.

They then used this connection with Pinterest to help

familiarize users with their new site and to test its search

and navigation usability. The “Sephora Color Wash”

campaign encouraged Pinterest users to explore

Sephora.com and pin color coordinated images from

the site to their boards. The boards that pinners created

then became additional traffic drivers to the Sephora site,

making Pinterest a top ten referring site to Sephora.com.11

One of Sephora’s top consumer engagement efforts is

their email marketing program. Sephora decided to see if

Pinterest could help increase the impact of these emails.

Sephora began creating Pinterest-centric emails that

included actual Pin It buttons within the emails. This gave

their busy email audience the opportunity to pin items that

interested them for later purchase.

Sephora Pinnable Email Results:

•14,000repinsgeneratedbyoneemail 11

•60%increaseinPinterestreferraltraffictoSephora.com

in the month following its first pinnable email campaign11

•15timesmoremoneyspentonSephora.comby

the average Pinterest follower than the average

Facebook fan11

Jetsetter: Engaging Promotions

Jetsetter has launched several successful promotions

using Pinterest that invite their audience to interact with

their site. In order to discover what content interested their

audience most, Jetsetter launched a “Jetsetter Curator”

promotion, inviting over a million of their members to

create boards about inspiring travel destinations by

pinning content from the Jetsetter site. According to

Jetsetter Social Media Manager, Jon Goldmann, “When we

unleashed our community to share their favorite Jetsetter

content on Pinterest, it generated a ton of ideas for how to

make our own Pinterest boards more compelling. We also

learned which photos on our site resonate the most with

our users and it’s since influenced our content strategy.”

Jetsetter also created a Pinterest challenge to help them

test the user experience of their site. In the “Pin Your Way

to Paradise” scavenger hunt, members were given daily

clues and asked to pin photos from the site that best

matched those clues, promoting the exploration of their

site. Jetsetter observed how participants navigated the

site to find relevant images and gained valuable insight

into how they could improve their user experience. They

also learned a valuable lesson about Pinterest promotions

in general: simplicity drives participation.

Jetsetter Curator Promotion Results:

• 50,000 images pinned12

• 100% increase in Pinterest referral traffic

to Jetsetter.com12

• 150% increase in Jetsetter page views12

11. http://business.pinterest.com/case-study-sephora/12. http://business.pinterest.com/case-study-jetsetter/




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ELLE: Live Pinning and Content Testing

During New York Fashion Week, ELLE gave its followers

access to the shows as they happened, pinning each look

as the models came down the runway. Brian Madden of

ELLE said, “Watching the images in the Pinterest stream

is like being in the front row at Fashion Week - users are

able to experience each collection and each designer’s

vision in its entirety.” The Runway Trends boards were

some of ELLE’S most successful, increasing referral traffic

to their site throughout the week by 13%.13

ELLE regularly uses Pinterest to get a pulse on what

content their audience is most interested in without

needing to conduct qualitative research studies. ELLE

simply looks at the Most Repinned and Most Clicked tabs

within Pinterest’s web analytics to learn what content their

audience is most interested in. This content can then be

more highly promoted within their site and other social

feeds. Pinterest enables ELLE to learn an immense

amount about their audience while also creating an

engaging experience.

ELLE Live Runway Trends Results:

• 7x more activity than ELLE’s other boards13

• More than 16,000 repins and 4,000 likes during

Fashion Week alone13

• 13% increase in Pinterest referral traffic to ELLE.com13

Case Study

BHG and Nars: Guest Pinners

Guest pinners are typically very successful on Pinterest

and are a great way to leverage the following that others

have created to introduce new people to your brand. Two

brands, Better Homes and Gardens and Nars, illustrate two

different approaches to incorporating guest pinners.

Better Homes and Gardens spotlighted ten of their

biggest fans by inviting them to participate and contribute

to a group board on the BHG Pinterest page dedicated

to the guest pinners. The board, titled “Blogger Faves

From BHG. com” attracted a lot of audience engagement

from BHG’s followers, as well as the followers of their

guest pinners, and became one of the most successful

branded boards. Among branded boards it had the second

most repins, third most likes and fourth highest number

of comments.14

The cosmetics company Nars also used guest pinners, but

instead of inviting them to pin on a board on the brand’s

Pinterest page, they had the guest pinners pin Nars related

images on their own accounts as part of a campaign for

Nars’ new lip pencil collection. Nars used the analytics

tool Pinfluencer to identify three Pinterest users who had

already driven significant traffic to the Nars website by

pinning images from it and reached out to them to create

partnerships. Taking advantage of those users’ far larger

followings, Nars provided the three pinners with exclusive

access to their new collection and asked them to create

boards that complimented the collection’s three color

categories and included the product images in order to

lead potential buyers back to the Nars site.

13. http://business.pinterest.com/case-study-elle/14. http://mashable.com/2013/05/08/pinterest-most-popular-brand-boards/




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Instructional

Sephora does an effective job in promoting JULEP nail

polish by displaying a color palette and visual steps for a

how-to manicure.

Creative Pin Examples

Inspirational

Minted.com created a contest where users designed

inspiration boards around minted.com’s themed card

designs and then submitted them on their site. This

created a lot of content for minted.com to use on their

own site and on other forms of social media.

A pin it button instantly goes on every design uploaded




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Strive for engagement over size

Gathering a large number of followers should not be

the most important goal for your brand. Rather than

constantly hunting down new followers/pinners, we

recommend you create a valued environment that benefits

your existing followers and keeps bringing them back as

customers. Engaging followers who support the brand is

much more beneficial than establishing a larger but

less-engaged audience.

Be positive

Pinterest is a positive and creative space. In contrast to

other forms of social media, where consumers often use

brand pages to share their opinions about or problems

with a product, the goal of Pinterest is to engage your

audience visually. Help your brand keep it positive!

Share inspiring ideas

People go to Pinterest for ideas, but Pinterest users have

the means to make purchases. Use your boards to support

the purchase process by putting products in context,

supplying additional valued information (such as how to

put together outfits) and offering how-tos (in the form of

recipes and patterns). Empower your audience with the

help of your products and expertise.

Promote your boards

Promote your Pinterest presence across all social media

channels with clear links to your boards. Many consumers

will go to Facebook and Twitter before they think to head

on over to Pinterest, so you will need to drive traffic to

your boards. Make sure you add the “Pin It” button to all of

your product and content pages on your website and blog.

Visuals matter

Pinterest is a highly-visual experience laid out in a

large grid-based page. People often scan until they find

something that catches their eye. Make sure your images

stand out. Refer to our quick guide on pg 13 for tips on

creating highly repinnable images.

Don’t be overly promotional

Pinterest’s main use is to foster ideas and creativity, so try

not to be overtly promotional. For example, clothing lines

may highlight sales on their boards but do so with style

photography that links back to their website pages where

explicit pricing information is available. While sweepstakes,

giveaways and coupon campaigns are not very successful

at driving direct sales on Pinterest, these initiatives can

increase brand awareness and engagement among

followers and brand loyalists.

Focus on lifestyles, not products

Straightforward product photos are not effective on

Pinterest. Images of products should be styled and/or

include context. Pinterest is best at initiating indirect or

organic sales processes. For example, Whole Foods is

known for not pinning items that are directly available in

their stores. Instead they pin products as they relate to a

lifestyle that can be created by shopping in their stores.

Pinterest Best Practices




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Profile

• Make your name easy to find

• Make sure to verify your web page

• Remember: Top 3 people you repin appear on the top right of your Pinterest page

Pins

• Use creative pin titles

• Tag others using @ symbol

• Use calls to action

Copyright

• State source when pinning

• Display URL on pin

• Always credit photos

Contests

• Hold monthly board contest so users return regularly

• Integrate with FB, Twitter

• Pin image of contest rules

Boards

• Use playful, fun titles and include keywords in description

• Mix content: yours + others

• Create a board to showcase your latest, best-selling products

Images

• Make infographic text LARGE

• Make all photos optimized for size & visually appealing

Collaboration

• Create theme group boards

• Ask friends, colleagues etc. to repin

• Comment on, like, share and follow other relevant boards

Evaluation

• Monitor competitors’ boards

• Identify & track Pinterest marketing goals

• How is your brand converting?

• What boards get repinned?

• Is Pinterest driving traffic?

15. http://sparkandhustle.com/takeaway-tips/pinterest-marketing-strategies/

Pinterest Brand Usage Tips




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Image Size

How Images Are Displayed

Optimizing Your Profile

Maximum Image

No image is too big to pin. Images that

are significantly wider than they are long

get compressed. Make the most of the

fact there is no vertical size contraint.

Narrow, long pins are much more

eye-catching than short images.

Minimum Image

Both the length and width of an image

must be 81 pixels or greater.

192 Pixels Wide in Stream

554 Pixels Wide on Pin Page

Profile PicSize

165px x 165px

Board Cover Size

222px x 207px

Maximum Bio Characters

200

Links Supported In

Your Profile

Web, Facebook & Twitter

81 px

81

px

Atleast81 px

eye-catching

Quick Guide to Pinterest Images




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Pinterest Resources

Getting started on Pinterest

You simply need to:

1. Create a business account.

2. Verify your brand’s site so pinners know it’s trustworthy.

3. Add the Pin It button to your site.

For more information and direct links to get started visit:

http://business.pinterest.com/setup/

Pinterest Web Analytics

To view the available data in this free tool provided

by Pinterest, you simply have to verify your site with

Pinterest. Pinterest Web Analytics provides the

following information:

Pins/Pinners:

“Pins” tells you how many times people have pinned

content directly from your site on Pinterest. “Pinners” tell

you how many different users have done so.

Repins/Repinners:

“Repins” tells you how many times content from your site

has been discovered by users on Pinterest and repinned

to their own boards. “Repinners” tells you how many

different users have done so.

Impressions/Reach:

“Impressions” tells you the number of times your images

have been viewed by someone on Pinterest, either in the

main feed or through viewing a board or search results.

“Reach” tells you how many different users have seen

your images.

Clicks/Visitors:

“Clicks” tells you the number of times people clicked on

an image and viewed your site. “Visitors” tells you the

number of different users who have done so.

You can learn more about Pinterest Web Analytics here:

http://business.pinterest.com/analytics/

Other Resources

Postris:

Postris helps you discover what pins, boards and

pinners are trending on Pinterest. It also allows you

to track specific interests and tags.

http://postris.com/

Viral Tag:

Viral Tag is a service that helps you schedule your pins

on Pinterest. It also provides image editing tools, metrics,

Google Analytics integration and a dashboard to manage

multiple accounts.

https://www.viraltag.com/

Elevate StudiosWe are a digital agency with teams

in Chicago and New York.

Want to continue the conversation?

Contact us at elevatestudios.com/contact

to learn about how we can help you

maximize your digital presence.




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