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Why We Should Focus On Pinterest -- The Quietly Approaching Unicorn

Ever have one of those weeks when the same name cropped up a couple of times and made you realise you should pay it more interest -- or should that be more Pinterest? Like a lot of platforms, I set up an account yonks ago to see what it was about but hadn't done much with it. Every time I heard it referred to, it was usually in an American context. So I don't know about you, but it's just been bubbling away quietly in the background -- quite literally, actually, as my first following and personal board was for vegetarian recipes.

Anyway, if like me you've had it on the back burner, here are some things to consider. To start with, talking with BuzzFeed the other day, there is a real mismatch between where content is viewed and where it is shared. Namely, Facebook is its largest service for watching videos, and  two in three video views happen through the social media giant. No real surprise, there. However, when it comes to sharing, 86% of videos are shared on to Pinterest and only 13% are shared on Facebook. People are quite literally pinning their favourite content on to Pinterest so they can come back to it. At the same time, people who like their boards are sharing the content further. 

So to get immediate attention and views, it's not surprising to hear that Facebook is the way forward. What did surprise me, however, is that the majority of the content is pinned away for later and shared via Pinterest.

It was interesting to see, this morning, then that The Telegraph is similarly suggesting that brands pay attention to a service that is now available to British advertisers. Growth in UK subscribers was up 50% last year, and the service now claims that it has reached a tipping point where half of its subscribers are based outside the U.S.

So after a week where conferences have led to headlines that fail to surprise, along the lines of marketers need to be more aware of mobile and Amazon is really good at selling stuff, I offer this little titbit. If you have Pinterest on a back burner somewhere, I'd suggest you take a look -- particularly if your brand is seeking a young audience -- and speak to one of or more of the platform's major hobby streams, such as travel, cooking, sports, fashion, films and books, to name just a few.

I've certainly had my attention grabbed this week, or at least reawakened by a unicorn that is valued around the same level as Dropbox and only just behind Snapchat.

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