• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, July 20, 2012

According to new research from Compete’s Online Shopper Intelligence Survey, Pinterest is succeeding in disrupting the social media landscape.  About 1 in 4 consumers reports that they are spending less time on other social media sites in favor of Pinterest.  And, evidence of this change in behavior says the report is a 3% decline in time spent on Facebook over the last month.

To put the growth in context, Pinterest has grown from 700K to almost 20M unique visitors in the last year, or about half the number of Twitter’s unique visitors.

Pinterest is also attracting consumers who have not previously interacted with a social media, says the report. 15% of Pinterest users reported that they do not use any other social media sites. That number climbed to 23% among consumers with income less than 30K.

Marketers will likely need to evolve their digital strategies given the above finding that 39% of the market has changed their social networking behavior in some way due to Pinterest.

Those who have interacted with Pinterest is aware of how diverse the content is, says the report, ranging from recipies to vacation destinations. Consumers in the study reported the types of content they are most likely to engage with on Pinterest to help provide some perspective on the highest potential areas of opportunities for marketers.

Food related content was the most overwhelmingly popular content that consumers interacted with, with 57% of consumers according to the Online Shopper Intelligence survey.

Considering traffic to recipe sites, outbound traffic from Pinterest to Allrecipes.com was up 16%.  CPG grocery manufacturers should also take note that Kraft’s recipe sites captured an additional 4% share of Pinterest’s outbound traffic in May 2012 according to the report.

The report notes that Pinterest is not just raising brand awareness but is also driving purchase behavior.   About 25% of consumers reported purchasing a product or service after discovering it on Pinterest, and jumped to 37% amongst males.

The Compete report concludes with suggestions for potential actions that brand marketers might take:

• Quantify the difference in consumer engagement and purchase behavior before and after being exposed to specific categories, brands and/or products on Pinterest
• Isolate differences in consumer purchase and engagement behavior across different demographics, including age, income and gender
• Compare how engagement and purchase behavior of consumers interacting with Pinterest compares with Facebook
• Quantify the impact that exposure to Pinterest has on brand / product loyalty

Please visit Compete here for additional information.