Pinterest: The Latest Features & What You Need To Know
Despite having a smaller number of users than it’s fellow social media networks, (100M active monthly users compared to Facebook’s 1.59B), Pinterest is the social network to watch when it comes to commerce.
Pinterest users are active shoppers. According to Shopify, 93% of users use Pinterest to plan purchases and 96% use it to find out product information; two activities that are high in purchase intent. What’s more with a user base that grew 97% between 2014 and 2015, is Pinterest a platform that you can choose to ignore?
We’ve previously discussed just how valuable Pinterest can be to any ecommerce business, but with a wealth of product announcements over the last 6 months, I thought I could catch you up on some of the latest features available you need to be aware of.
How-to Pins
Pinterest announced their new How-to Pins just a few weeks ago, and while only available to a select number of brands at the moment, it’s a good example of the kind of content that its users are interested in.
These pins show as normal in users’ feeds, but once clicked on, users can then see step by step instructions on how to create whatever’s in the original image.
These features might not be available to you but it doesn’t mean you can’t follow their lead!
Pinterest Ads Manager
At the beginning of March, Pinterest opened up their Ads Manager to all small- and medium-sized enterprises, so that all US and UK businesses were able to create their own Promoted Pins.
This was previously only available to bigger brands, but now anyone can access this by heading to ads.pinterest.com when logged into a business account.
You can target your pins based on Interest, Keywords and later this year, customer database. One huge advantage Pinterest Promoted Pins is touting over other platforms is that because your promoted pins will get pinned to users’ boards, you could see extra engagement even once your campaign has ended, which equals free clicks!
Pinterest Shop
Finally, at the back end of 2015, Pinterest announced the launch of it’s new Shop. Despite buyable pins available almost across the board, (pun not intended), users would still have to hunt for the little blue Buy button.
The new Shop, as Pinterest calls it, curates ‘trending collections’ of buyable pins from across Pinterest into one easy to find spot.
It’s only available on the Android and iOS apps, but still gives you ample reason to get those Buyable Pins set up if you can!
So there you have it, 3 key announcements from Pinterest that you need to stay on top of. So what’s your next steps?