Pinterest is perfect for brand storytelling: a chance to show off your products, inspiration for your brand and a chance to gain invaluable knowledge about what your followers and repinners are sharing and watching quickly and easily. Combine dozens of images, sorted by storyboard, with the ability to mix these images into both consumer and business Facebook and Twitter accounts through links and account apps and businesses have an ideal chance for brands to blend into the minds and hearts of consumers.

Good customer-to-vendor communication isn’t only reason Pinterest is useful for brands and businesses of sizes. As the digital and social media space gets busier, engaging content is a must to recruit and retain new and old brand loyalists: Pinterest provides a visual, controllable outlet focused on goods and experiences. (Yes, experiences versus services: experiences are services come to life. Even physicians, especially in the plastic surgery and lifestyles realm, are branding their content via Pinterest.)

Pinterest power has been witnessed by Media Bistro, who noted that, “Pinterest showed serious legs in 2013, emerging as a major contender for social media eyeballs, particularly in the retail space – studies have shown that Pinterest now commands upwards of 41 percent of e-commerce traffic from social networking sites, and the average Pinterest user has a household income of more than $100,000 per annum.”

Pinterest is also dominantly female with an overwhelming 80% majority usage.

For retailers targeting women, with everything from hotel experiences to women’s retail goods to house renovation materials, the power of a pin is more than a single image but a strategic sales decision.

Those pins themselves have a cash conversion: In late 2012, the Business According to a new study by Piqora, “A pin on Pinterest generates $0.78 in sales, on average on e-commerce sites, which is 25% more than what it drove in the fourth quarter of 2012. What’s more, a pin is re pinned (a form of sharing) 10 times on average”. Pinterest also now has a promoted pin option where businesses can layer advertising into the mix and social strategy for business incorporates a Pinterest for Business page with your promoted Pins and loyalty pins – ‘Place Pins’, a check-in concept similar to Foursquare.

As retailers, especially those focusing on e-commerce, look to turn their digital investment (whether that is staff pinning images or dollars spent on digital ads) into sales, content meets commerce with a growing focus on the stories told via Pinterest.

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