Forgotten about Pinterest? Think again

Pinterest has three core topics that drive a lot of traffic: fashion, food, and design. In their latest media kit, Pinterest says that it has 117 million design-related pins and three billion wedding-related pins. 

And who else have lots of content on weddings, food, and design besides Pinterest? That’s right, we, the media. Nevertheless, many publishers are less active on this platform than they could have been. To get you thinking about it again, we examine in which areas Pinterest is important and suggest how to get the most out of it.

Better Homes & Gardens Pinterest ()

It has huge female audience, and the total number of users keeps growing

In October 2016 Ben Silbermann, the CEO of the company, announced in a blog post that they have 150 million active users. Pinterest said at LDV Vision Summit in NYC this month that the number now is more than 175 million. That’s 25 million more active users in just six months. 

Some of FIPP’s members, such as Rodale and Meredith, are active on the platform. Rodale’s Organic Life has 53 boards and more than 20,000 followers. Martha Stewart Living has almost 700 thousand followers, and Martha Stewart Weddings has 325,000 users with over 80,000 pins combined for two titles. Better Homes & Gardens has – ready? – 1,600,000 followers. So if you want to reach women, Pins is a way to go. Look at these titles for some great content examples. 

Rodale Pinterest ()

Marketers love Pinterest

Recently Pinterest rolled-out autoplay ads in its mobile app. Right now this feature is in beta and the company is testing it with large brands such as Adidas, L’Oreal and Visa. But the tool will be available to all advertisers to buy through Pinterest’s self-serve ad-buying tool or advertising API or directly from the company’s sales team. The easier the ad buying process is, the more marketers will be investing in Pinterest content and ads. 

So what’s in it for publishers? Digiday in April ran a story that media companies and the platform do not get along. But a Pinterest spokesperson said in an email that even though they don’t have any media partnerships to announce at the moment, “content creators [including publishers] are an important part of the Pinterest experience as they provide a majority of the high quality content for users. At this time our value exchange is driving reach, engagement, and traffic to our partners content on Pinterest. We understand that businesses and bloggers need a sustainable way to keep making great content which is why we allow affiliate links on Pinterest.” 

The company has a Partnerships team who works with all content creators including publishers. According to the spokesperson, their goal is “to help partners get their content discovered and drive engagement and traffic through organic and paid tools.” Besides affiliate links, Pinterest recommends that publishers set up their business account, and use the website tools to make it easier for people to save their favourite content.

Martha Stewart Pinterest ()

The new “shazam-for food” feature will be popular among users, and your content better show up in those search results

This one is the real deal. In February, Pinterest introduced a new mobile app feature called Lens. Here is how it works: you tap the camera icon in Pinterest Search to take a photo. You take a picture of food, say, a cherry. Pinterest returns with some word suggestions and objects. You tap on the word that best describes your object, and Pinterest shows search results typical for the platform: cherry-based recipes, infographics, and merchandise with cherry-inspired patterns. It’s magic!  

Pinterest Lens ()

Pinterest Lens 2 ()

Andrew Zhai, software engineer and tech lead at Visual Search/Lens for Pinterest said in an email that “The feedback we’ve gotten from Pinners has been positive and gives us the confidence to continue pushing the bounds of computer vision to not just identify what an object is, but to see the possibilities of what it could become. What to make with fresh strawberries? How to style a new dress? Those are the kinds of subjective questions we answer, which is different from how anyone else is applying computer vision technology.”

He mentioned that since Lens’s launch in February, technology keeps improving and in the last month the company saw a 3x increase in feature usage. Pinterest is about to start a partnership with Samsung, where they will bring Lens technology to Samsung Galaxy S8 phones. The company also launched visual guides to help Pinners with the feature and expanded the categories and objects Lens recognises. It can now give you suggestions based on a picture of a full dish.

Lens feature is going to change a lot on the market. As more users start using it, more searches and purchase-making decisions will be powered through Pinterest. And you want your content be helping users make these decisions.

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