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The Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising on Pinterest

Over the past nearly seven years Pinterest has grown from a start-up site to having over 70 million users.  Like other social media sites, although the CEO likes to call it a “Catalog of Ideas”, you can setup your Pinterest account to be a business account.  But should you use it to advertise your business?Lets look over the pros and cons of using Pinterest for your business.

Like any service there is always something that can help you out:
  • Time span of a pin
    • A couple of years ago Wiselytics measured how long post seem to last.  On average the half-life, how long it takes to get to 50% of who will view it, of a tweet is going to be measured in minutes, while with Facebook it is measured in hours.  While the same time frame for a pin looks to be in months.
    • The time span can go even longer if the image or the page is something people like and others keep pinning it, which means their friends will see it, and so forth.  For an online business this can push knowledge of you and your product far.
  • Open System
    • Everything in Pinterest is available for everyone on Pintrest.  While it is setup to show you primarily items that fit into a specific set of interest setup in your profile, you can search for anything and be able to view it.

But what are some of draw backs of using it:
  • Closed System
    • While I mentioned above that everything in Pinterest is available for everyone on Pinterest, you do have to be on Pinterest.  No one without an account will be able to view whats on the system.
  • Limited Audience
    • Another major draw back is that Pinterest has a limited audience.  While a large part of the community is still female, that is changing, but what does not seem to be changing currently is the users still seem to be mostly 45 years or younger.
  • Image requirements
    • To pin something, you need to have an image, and that image needs to be good.  Not a simple thrown together deal either.  The quality of your image can also be a part of how well it might do in searches on Pinterest.
      • But keep in mind they will still consider how many people pin to your page and how frequently.

If you do not yet have a Pinterest account you should sign-up for one.  Even if you end up not using it to talk about your product, you might find ideas to help you out in your business.

Good Luck and Good Sales