Should Your Small Business Ditch Facebook for Pinterest?

If your small business makes and/or sells products, you might want to refocus your social media marketing energy on Pinterest rather than Facebook. Pinterest users, as it turns out, are shoppers.

In a recent Bizrate Insight survey, consumers were asked to list the reasons they use Facebook and Pinterest. As it turns out, Pinterest users are far more engaged than Facebook users – and way more likely to shop on the site.

Here are the most noteworthy results:

Pinterest users are shoppers

A whopping 69% of Pinterest users have purchased an item on the site, compared to only 40% on Facebook. That is a significant enough difference to make you rethink your social media strategy, isn’t it?

Pinterest users are looking for inspiration

Pinterest really takes the inspiration cake: 70% of users look for inspiration, 67% keep track of or collect the things they like, and 67% keep up with trends. Facebook came in at a paltry 17%, 21%, and 22% respectively, so take this as a directive to step up your content creation and product marketing on Pinterest.

Brands and offers do better on Pinterest

Shift your branding and exclusive offer efforts to Pinterest, since 43% of Pinterest users like to associate with retailers or brands (24% on Facebook) and 39% use it to get special offers (26% on Facebook).

Both sites are hang-outs

So, should you ditch Facebook completely? Probably not. People like to hang out and pass time on both sites – 73% on Pinterest and 61% on Facebook. If you have a pretty active community on Facebook, refocus your efforts on sharing fun stuff and creating conversations.

Have you had success selling on Pinterest? Share your tips in the comments below!

Image courtesy of in-this-economy.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2012 at 9:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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