The StartUp Pinterest is not only one of the most popular new sites out there, but also one of the largest traffic drivers to website. The “pinned” pictures and videos generate more viewers than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn … together

Traffic is boosting

The picture-bookmarking site is rapidly gaining followers and therefore is becoming more relevant for publishers. Shareaholic, a tool to easily distribute links throughout different social networks, released a very interesting study on Pinterest. The authors claim the outbound traffic from Pinteres has reached the level of Google and Twitter and therefore beats the aggregated traffic of Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn.

The report relies on on the aggregated data of more than 200’000 publishers with a total of 260 million unique users per month. Pinterest is at the fifth place for traffic with 3.6 percent, which is the fifth place behind Google (3.62 percent) and Twitter (3.61 percent). Unchallenged Facebook holds the lead with a fat 26.4 percent. Second place we find StumbleUpon with 5.07 percent.

If you look at the numbers of the December, it’s pretty clear that Pinterest is on a winning streak. From 2.5 to 3.6 in just one month is quite impressive. Only Facebook had a larger growth rate.

Unfortunately there’s no data to the integrated publishers, but since SumbleUpon is at the top, it can be assumed that the data is only valid for the American market. Nevertheless the German speaking market can count a large growth rate and Pinterest will for sure be one of the top players soon.

How to use Pinterest

Pinterest is a picture bookmarking site. Good pictures that are optically nice usually leave a good impression and are “repined”. The same seems to be valid for infographics. There seem to be a ton of infografic boards up there already. Technical and new Gadgets seem to spark interest as well. And of course cat pictures. Cute. Even videos can be pinned, (and should contain a good intro picture such as womens butt checks or crazy skiing action).

Publishers therefore should be sure to enhance the quality of their pictures and use the potential of Pinterest has as traffic source. If you want to pin something you can use the official Pinteres-Button.

So long and Pin this Post

About the Author

Daniel is a social media enthusiast. He holds a BA in media and communication science and an MA in european business of the University of Fribourg. He founded some of Switzerland's largest sports blogs for skiing and snowboarding. Social media, sports and analytics is what he loves.