Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Pinterest has released a new tool called Pinterest Trends that provides users with year-round, real-time trends data. According to the company, it will give “a view of the top US search terms within the past 12 months, and a look into when top search terms peak. This will help brands validate assumptions about emerging trends, and get deeper insights into planning behaviors on the platform.”
The company also released ‘Pinterest 100‘, an annual report that reveals the top emerging trends for the coming year. The extensive report offers businesses a sneak peek into what research indicates people around the world will want in 2020.
The report has a dedicated mini-site showing what’s next, with ideas across categories including food, home, style, beauty, health, travel and family.
“Early signals into consumer behavior”
Nidhi Sapra, Product Marketing Manager at Pinterest says, “People come to Pinterest early to plan for all of life’s moments, from major holidays to sporting events to seasonal celebrations. As a result, we’ve aggregated and anonymized insights on the ever-evolving tastes of our audience.”
According to Pinterest, this gives marketers a different sort of customer data than what they are accustomed to. Amy Vener, Pinterest’s Head of Retail Strategy and Marketing told Vogue Business, “If they can marry the trends insights with past information, it becomes a more built-out view of the consumer. It’s like the world’s largest focus group.”
Over 320M people around the world use Pinterest to get inspired — from finding meals they’re going to cook, to figuring out what to wear or how to style their homes. More than 200B ideas have been saved to over 4B boards to-date on the platform, providing insights into emerging trends and early signals into consumer behavior and evolving tastes.
Pinterest
The tool will not only serve marketers but also help publishers in planning their content strategy with more precision. It will especially be useful for publishers like BuzzFeed, who generate substantial ecommerce revenues via reviews, listicles and shopping guides. In fact, at BuzzFeed, Pinterest is the second-biggest referral platform after Facebook.
Unlike on Facebook and Instagram, Pinterest users are actively searching for what to buy next, versus browsing. And unlike Google, they tend to be specifically focused on shopping and aspirational purchase content.
Maghan McDowell, Innovation Editor, Vogue Business
“Pinterest is a major focus for us”
Many publishers started looking hopefully at Pinterest after Facebook’s 2018 algorithm change which degraded their content in the news feed. Pinterest has also been increasingly co-operative and is regularly adding features that make it a potent ecommerce tool for publishers.
In July, the company introduced new features for creators and brands to make reaching viewers easier. These included an improved video uploading tool, a refreshed gallery tab, a lifetime analytics metric, and Pin scheduling functionality. Late last year, it launched a new API intended to help brands find and keep track of influencers, with metrics like unique viewers, impressions, and engagement per Pin.
Meredith’s GM of Lifestyle and SVP of Digital Operations and Business Development Regina Buckley told Digiday earlier, “Pinterest is a major focus for us. It’s material and growing as a referral source. Yes, it does increase our interest in Pinterest, in light of Facebook. Pinterest is interested in being a real partner to us. They want to work together to grow both our businesses. That is definitely something I can’t say of all our distribution sources.”
“Among our top three with strong year-over-year growth”
Meredith launched a dedicated Pinterest team late last year. It creates pins for AllRecipes, EatingWell, Travel+Leisure, Better Homes and Gardens, Southern Living, Parents, Shape, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart Living and Martha Stewart Weddings.
According to Lorraine Goldberg, Director of Social Strategy at Meredith the objective was to diversify their social strategy. Additionally, they saw an alignment between the audience’s intentions at Pinterest and many of Meredith’s publications.
“There’s a natural fit. Pinterest users want to find a recipe, or they’re moving into their first apartment, or first home or they’re having a baby — all those lifestyle moments especially of female consumers — it was a really good place for us,” she said.
We definitely focus on how do we grow impressions and engagement on Pinterest, and we focus on translating that to traffic. We’re deeply committed to Pinterest. In terms of volume of traffic, it’s among our top three with strong year-over-year growth. We’re looking at ways to grow and expand our Pinterest presence and traffic across our brands.
Lorraine Goldberg, Director of Social Strategy at Meredith
Pinterest promises to offer more tools in the coming months. Sapra told Adweek, “We aim to empower Pinners, bloggers, media planners and creative strategists to get a sense of the latest trends and tell a better story about audiences and key moments on Pinterest.
“In the coming months, we plan to introduce additional features allowing users to explore deeper insights for Pinner behavior on the platform, including aggregated demographic and geographic data related to a selected term.”
Pinterest Trends is currently in beta. It will be rolled out to the public in the US in coming weeks and will eventually be extended worldwide.
The full Pinterest 100 report can be accessed here.