Promotional image for La Mer's Made for Pinterest effort
By Danny Parisi for Mobile Marketer
Pinterest’s new Pinterest 100 report lays out some of the most popular trends of the year according to users’ Pinterest pinning and shopping behavior.
These trends range from health and wellness to apparel to home decoration. The report shows how important social media behavior can be as an indicator of commercial habits and trends.
“Our mission is to help people discover and do things they love," said a spokesperson for Pinterest. "With that in mind, we use our trend data and insights as a great storytelling tool to expose people to new ideas, but our trends are also relevant for businesses creating content for Pinners and ultimately trying to reach customers.
"Businesses can use these insights to understand what people are interested in on Pinterest and create valuable, relevant content that people will engage with. The Pinterest 100 helps businesses better understand their customer’s mindset and see where interest is in things and whether it’s rising or falling.
"With this information, businesses can stay on top of the next big trend or plan ahead for it. In addition they'll be able to make more informed creative, marketing and product decisions that will help them reach their customers at the right time with something they're interested in."
Pinterest 100
While social media is usually seen as an opportunity for marketing, user behavior on social media sites can also be a good indicator of commercial behavior.
For example, while Pinterest is a great opportunity for makers of home decorations suppliers to market their products to consumers, analyzing Pinterest shows that nightstands in particular have seen a 721 percent increase in popularity.
With that information, the home decoration suppliers can do more than just market nightstands better, they can also prepare for and push for more nightstands to be sold, taking advantage of the data provided to them by Pinterest.
Most of the content on Pinterest comes from businesses, making it a great way to both predict and interact with customer intention.
“Pinterest is a great way to connect for businesses to connect with its more than 150 million monthly users," The Pinterest spokesperson said. "People come to Pinterest looking for useful, everyday ideas and most of the ideas come from businesses."
“On Pinterest, people are open minded to brands and their ideas and have a high degree of commercial intent. This mindset is great for marketers as it enables them to connect with people who are genuinely interested in their products.“
Social commerce
Pinterest’s new report identifying the top trends of consumer behavior is a clear signal that social commerce is becoming more prevalent.
As the lines between various digital channels, such as social media, shopping, messaging and others, begin to disappear, it will only become more necessary for brands to be able to unify those channels and make the customer experience seamless.
Social commerce is one way that will those lines will begin to dissolve. Consumers are already beginning to do shopping based on social media posts and content.
Right now, a majority of content on Pinterest comes from businesses, which consumers frequently pin and then shop for later.
Pinterest recently updated its platform to give businesses more control over what consumers see and can shop for specifically to strengthen social commerce (see story).
Smart brands will understand that connecting with consumers socially does not have to be separate from commerce and in fact the two can be done in concert, through the same interactions.
"There are a number of things businesses can do to connect with customers," the spokesperson said. "First, it is important that set up a free business profile here.
"Once they do they can save Pins to Pinterest about their company and their products. In addition, if they want to reach more customers a business can use Pinterest's Promoted Pins ad platform.
"We also provide free insights into how people are engaging with their Pins through Pinterest Analytics."