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The platform is already bigger than Twitter and doesn’t seem to stop growing
It is believed that Pinterest is only suitable for culinary and fashion bloggers and has absolutely nothing to do with media companies. New Pinterest features, however, can help publishers strengthen their communities and earn money.
The popularity of Pinterest in Europe
Pinterest is the 14th most popular social media platform worldwide. The fact that the platform overtook Reddit and Twitter in July 2021, according to Statista, may be surprising. However, the companies’ results speak for themselves.
The top 5 European countries by Pinterest penetration are Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain, Statista reported. Even though the platform has the biggest audience in the States, Pinterest is growing steadily in 2021:
- Q3 revenue grew 43% year over year to $633 million.
- Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs) raised up 1% year over year to 444 million.
“Our key strategic priorities for 2021 remain anchored in content, Pinner experience, advertiser success, and shopping. We plan to continue investing in these this year. We expect R&D efforts to continue to focus on Pinner product, ad product and measurement investments,”Pinterest’s press release from November 2021 stated.
Pinterest’s new features and advertising opportunities for publishers
Basically, from the user’s perspective, Pinterest is simple: you can save or “pin” any picture you find. Users, or “Pinners”, as the company calls them, can create different boards and categorize their collections. Most images are linked to the original websites they’re from. Before analyzing the platform’s innovations, it is worth dwelling on its traffic driver role. The platform has its own SEO rules, which could help in attracting more engaged people to the website. Neil Patel, the digital marketing expert, defined the main elements of Pinterest SEO:
#1 Domain quality
Pinterest wants creators to pin high-quality content constantly and enable rich pins, which automatically sync information from the website.
#2 Pin quality
Quality is defined here by freshness, popularity, and engagement level. Worth mentioning that, if someone shares your pin, Pinterest will measure the engagement from its every instance.
#3 Pinner quality
This could be enhanced by frequent posting, sharing relevant content, increasing saves, and engaging with followers.
#4 Topic relevance
Add keywords to your pin descriptions, board titles, image text, and profiles. Hashtags should be also integrated with the corresponding phrases.
More about keywords extraction on Pinterest you can read here.
There are two most common ways to earn money on Pinterest. First of all, tag products in Idea Pins, which unwittingly resemble Instagram stories and TikTok videos. Users can search and tag any product to recommend to the audience. Idea Pins could be also tagged with affiliate links so you earn a commission when people click through and shop. According to Pinterest’s data, Pinners are 89% more likely to demonstrate shopping intent on products tagged in Idea Pins than on standalone Product Pins.
Moreover, the algorithm seems to be changing in favor of video content. Also, publishers can’t pay to boost idea pins, as it was possible with the usual pins. Looks like Pinterest wants to go beyond the role of click-through pictures platform.
“We have seen static pins’ organic numbers drop over the last year. This original photo pin format will generate on average 1,000 to 6,000 views in the first 30 days. Idea pins, on the other hand, will easily reach more than 100,000 views for Brit + Co and have an engagement rate (like a person saving it to their board) of a couple thousand per pin, told Matthew Schulte, the CRO and COO of Brit + Co to Digiday.
The other monetization source is the sponsorship tag. A creator just has to create an Idea Pin and tag the partner directly in the Pin. Once the advertiser approves the tag, a publisher will see the brand show up alongside the Idea Pin with a “paid partnership” tag. The creator’s commission depends on the terms set up with the advertisers. If you’re interested in testing the above-mentioned opportunities of the platform, it’s better to learn more about Pinterest Business Account.
When you use the paid partnership tools, you’ll work directly with the brands you’re partnering with to define payment details.
Besides, in October 2021 Pinterest rolled out a worldwide “Takes” – engaging feature, which allows the audience to publish their reinterpretations of the creators’ idea. User’s responses will link back to the creators’ original Idea Pins, and publishers can also highlight top takes from the followers. Moreover, to avoid aggression on the platform a comment code will be displayed to the Pinners, who interact with creators. It’s aimed to reinforce positive interactions on the platform and follows five rules from Pinterest’s Creator Code:
#1 Be kind: Ensure content doesn’t insult or put others down
#2 Check my facts: Make sure information is accurate and factual
#3 Be aware of triggers: Practice discretion when it comes to visually sensitive content
#4 Practice inclusion: Never intentionally exclude certain groups or communities
#5 Do no harm: Make sure any call to action or challenge is safe
How European media use Pinterest
Daily Mail
The British tabloid has 2.4M followers and 10m+ monthly views on the platform. Daily Mail profile consists of many separate dashboards dedicated to specific celebrities and keywords on entertainment topics – cinema, music, food, beauty.
Vogue Italia
Like most Vogue international editions, the Italian one seems to be big with 506.5k followers and more than 10M monthly views. Fashion is the core topic on the platform and Conde Nast is aware of that. The dashboard is split into many topics, interesting for Vogue’s mostly female audience. The sections with the biggest numbers of pins are Beauty&Skincare, Trends, Celebrity Looks, and Fashion Shows. Dashboards under Italian titles are significantly smaller.
Highsnobiety
Started as a German sneakerhead blog in the early 2000s, now one of the top fashion media projects in the world, Highsnobiety constantly experiments with monetization sources. In that context, its Pinterest account is worth mentioning, although it hasn’t been active for 1 year as of 16.11.2021.
The publisher used Pinterest not only as the traffic source but also sold products there, creating shoppable pins. This tool allows redirecting users to the website and shows them similar items on demand. This could be done while creating pins or creating the existing ones. Despite the lack of activity, the account remains popular with 203.4K followers and 1.2M monthly views in October.
Xataka
Looks like that Spanish medium about technologies occupied an atypical niche on the platform, where fashion, cuisine and art are leading. Its content would be also relevant for the users from Mexico, the third-largest Pinterest market. In that sense publishers’ 3rd position on our ranking of European publishers on TikTok is significant as well. On Pinterest, Xataka has 32.6k followers and 3.7M monthly views. Dashboards don’t seem to be very divided. “Since”, “Xataka Basics” with different tech tutorials and “Apps” seem to be the biggest.
Konbini
The French lifestyle publisher appears to be not that keen on Pinterest. Konbini’s account counts 11.3k followers and 1.8M monthly views. Yet it does not seem to have any dashboard strategy, but just automatically copies the pictures and descriptions from the website. There are few non-detailed dashboards, and pictures don’t seem to be aesthetic-focused.
Despite the majority of lifestyle content on the platform, it is worth giving Pinterest a try. The number of users is growing, new opportunities for monetization keep on appearing. The newcomers can occupy a certain Pinterest niche, depending on their specialization and the content language.
This piece was originally published in The Fix and is re-published with permission. The Fix is a solutions-oriented publication focusing on the European media scene. Subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
