Smart Brands: Get On Pinterest NOW

If you want to know where users are flocking to on the internet, right now there’s one site that’s lapping up the traffic and proving a hit with people inside and outside of the tech circles : Pinterest. I first covered Pinterest on the blog around the time of its launch back in January 2011, and for the majority of time since the launch, the site went largely unnoticed outside of early adopters (and even to a certain extent within this group).

Then something strange started to happen. A few months ago, I began being followed by friends on Pinterest that I would definitely not put in the ‘tecchy’ group, then I began to see pins appearing in my Facebook newsfeed: a sign that it had reached the magic tipping point, emerging out of being yet another quirky social media site, into something both useful and used.

Indeed, the success of Pinterest can be seen in the fact that it is currently one of the fastest growing websites, with Hitwise reporting that it was the 60th most visited site in the US last week, and visits growing impressively from 10 million at the start of the year, to 17 million:

And with Pinterest’s new Timeline app seeing more stories from the site featuring in Facebook newsfeeds, you can expect this growth to continue.

Act Now

If there’s one thing you can be sure of with the meteoric rise in traffic that Pinterest is experiencing, it’s that it won’t be long until the brands follow. Some brands are already on there but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to get noticed. As the popularity of brand activity on Twitter and Facebook has shown us, the success of your social media campaigns is down as much to the experience you build up and longer-term data you create, as much as it is down to having a great idea.

As more brands get interested in Pinterest, the site will likely respond with customised offerings for advertisers and ways to connect brands and consumers that will ultimately be in Pinterest’s best interest. Only because they’d be silly if they didn’t, not because they are evil.

This is not to suggest of course that Pinterest is for everyone and that you should include it in your marketing plans just because. But spend some time on the site, build your own profile and get to know how people use it. If you can run a campaign on the site early, you can help guarantee longer term success, and right now it doesn’t look like Pinterest is going anywhere soon.

Also take early advantage of the fact that right now, there are currently no terms of service restricting use by brands