Pinterest: Who’s This New Kid on the Block?

Maybe you’ve heard of the hot new kid on the social block—Pinterest? The online equivalent of an old-school inspiration board, the two-year old site has caught on like wildfire recently. Users can ”pin” photos from their favorite websites and blogs to ”pinboards” that they can sort by category—such as home, recipes and crafts.

The visual nature of the site appeals predominantly to women, enabling them to pin photos of of home décor, fashion, art, and even wedding-related images in one place, and, as such, women account for 58% of the site’s traffic, according to Experian Hitwise.

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So why should you care? One reason is because users on Pinterest are sticky. They spend a lot of time there, and the amount of time they spend on the site is only growing. In the month of January, users spent an average 97.8 minutes on site, compared to July’s average of 37.8 minutes per user.

Why else should you care? The user base has doubled since November, according to ComScore. In January, more than 11 million unique visitors visited the site; the site had 4.9 unique visitors in November.

And retailers and brands have caught on. High-end retailer Bergdorf Goodman has its own boards on Pinterest to attract a following, and a recent Wall Street Journal piece says that online eyewear retailer Warby Parker’s traffic to its site from Pinterest has quadrupled over the past four months, while retail deal site Ideeli’s traffic from Pinterest has seen a 446 percent increase in traffic from Pinterest—and the sales from those visits have increased 500 percent, according to Entrepreneur.com

For the right brand, Pinterest can help extend the brand story and inspire a brand’s target audience by capturing the essence or lifestyle at the core of a brand’s identity – which in turn creates heightened brand awareness and engagement. Its staggering growth, ability to drive traffic and engagement, and keep users on site makes this a social media platform that’s hard to ignore.

By Theodora Blanchfield, Account Executive