Pinterest is a strange egg, there’s no doubt about it. I know a lot of businesses who are tearing their hair out trying to understand how certain brands are killing it making a profit on the social pinning site where all you do is virtually stick virtual images on virtual boards. To these people I say that you don’t have to understand why Pinterest is successful. Sure, it would help if you did, and I think it’s worth making an effort to learn, but you don’t strictly need to understand why Pinterest is successful to use it. All you NEED to know is this:
The value of a pin = 2 site visits, six pageviews, 10 re-pins, and $.78.
Sure, 78 cents isn’t life changing money, but it’s a snowball effect. Each pin spawns re-pins which turn into more nickels and dimes, and those pins spawn more re-pins, and it goes forever onward. Sure, it can (and does) take months for pins to turn into sales, but money is always worth the wait.
This data comes to us from the social analytics company Piqora via TechCrunch.
“Half of site visits take place 3.5 months after the first pinning, while half of orders take place 2.5 months after the pinning,” TechCrunch reported.
I know what you’re thinking, these metrics are only true for e-commerce sites that target women, but that’s not true. Businesses of all kinds are benefitting from using Pinterest. Of course, certain businesses will always do better than others:
“Martha Stewart was getting 10x more traffic last year from Pinterest than from Facebook,” said a rep from Piqora. “So obviously there are cases where a publisher or retailer in a visual space like food, fashion or home decor is very likely to be getting way over two site visits.”
Still, it’s more than worth the time it takes to set up a Pinterest account. Make sure yours is going strong!