Pinterest – the latest trend in internet marketing

Over the past few months, one social media site has come onto the radar and is generating increased excitement in both the tech and internet marketing communities. Pinterest is a social network that concentrates on the visual by operating as a digital pinboard for its members. Members can set up different pin boards onto which they attach either their own pictures or images they find on the web.

The site was originally launched in March 2010, but over recent months it has grown increasingly rapidly, becoming the fastest independent website to register 10 million unique monthly users. Pinterest currently boasts 10.4 million users and 12 million unique monthly visitors. Impressive numbers, but the figures that made marketers really sit up and take notice was a survey by the plugin developer Shareaholic.

This showed that Pinterest was driving more referral traffic than the combined might of internet giants LinkedIn, Google Plus and You Tube. The site also referred a greater number of click throughs than Twitter despite being a fraction of the size.

As a result of the astonishing referral rate, more and more companies are following the early corporate adopters in hoping to take advantage of Pinterest’s referral power. These brands include some major household names including homeware company Martha Stewart, fashion chain Gap, technology giant General Electric and hundreds of other businesses both big and small.

British adoption of Pinterest is currently lagging behind the US, but there are already in excess of 200,000 UK accounts and the pattern of growth is sure to mirror America’s. As always, companies that adopt early use are sure to gain the best returns.