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Wisdom.Applied Wednesday: Pinterest Piquing Brand Interest

Since Pinterest burst onto the scene, marketers have been waiting for the day that it would transform from a digital cork board to a digital mall. The site, which celebrated its fifth birthday last week, has 70 million monthly visitors Pinterest is dominated by women, 68 percent of the sites users are females between the ages of 25 and 44 using it to get ideas for planning weddings, preparing dinner, planning birthday parties or finding the perfect pair of shoes for an outfit. With more than 50 billion “pins” currently on Pinterest, surprisingly two-thirds of the content on its site was created by brands. Ironically most brands can’t seem to find success on Pinterest. This Wisdom.Applied Wednesday let’s take a look at what the future make look like for brands on Pinterest.

Brands find it difficult to maintain active Pinterest boards because they are unsure what to post, so they are collecting very few followers and seeing very little user interaction. The cola giant Coca-Cola, for example, only has about 5,000 Pinterest followers, and its last 50 pins were repined an average of 11 times each. In comparison, Whole Foods has 250,000 followers and most of their pins get over 400 repins. These examples lead to an important question: is Pinterest the right fit for all brands?

In an effort to get more serious about going after marketers, Pinterest has developed new services like Promoted Pins and is reportedly working on offering a “Buy” button. This option would let users purchase pinned items without leaving the site or app. Now Pinterest is taking things even further by refining its ad-targeting tools and audience targeting products.

In January, Pinterest acquired ad-tech firm Kosei, which specializes in targeting ads based on a relationship and recommendation model. Previously, a marketer may have only been able to target interests on this site broadly like sports, but now it will be able to target a specific sports like soccer. Pinterest is working to offer a more sophisticated and targeted service to marketers in order to position itself as an essential social-media platform.

By 2016, Pinterest’s ad offering could trump that of other social sites but today most brands are still struggling to successfully use it as a marketing tool. With the addition of these new features it will be interesting to see whether brands will have a greater presence on Pinterest, because currently the site has become a battle between quality and quantity for marketers. With so few brands being successful on the site, marketers are left to decide whether to even put in effort on this social media platform. Whether the site will remain relevant for years to come or just fizzle out, brands certainly are putting time, effort and money behind this site.

Cover Photo Source: Your Design / Shutterstock.com

[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://wpmaster.sjadv.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Our-Space-The-San-Jose-Group.png[/author_image] [author_info]Jestelle is a junior executive at SJG. She is currently working toward obtaining a BA in Advertising and Public Relations and a minor in Marketing from Loyola University Chicago. Outside the office, Jestelle is an avid tea drinker and devoted Netflix watcher.[/author_info] [/author]