For most small businesses, Facebook is the go-to platform for social media marketing. When I say Facebook, I do include Instagram as well. Both these social networks together account for majority of social media activity by companies, influencers, marketers and bloggers.
However, for those of us without an obscene marketing budget or those with time constraints, the reality is Pinterest should be our main focus and our primary social network for organic marketing.
Now note I mentioned organic marketing here. If you are ready to spend money on pay-per-click advertising, then no one can beat the targeting options of Facebook. They just know everything about their users and advertisers can pinpoint the exact audience that cannot be matched anywhere else.
So in today’s article, I am strictly talking about organic marketing. Where you are not spending money and trying to grow based on your activity on the social network. In this case, I do firmly believe that Pinterest is way better than Facebook plus Instagram.
To make my point, I shall present three reasons that hopefully should convince you that your time is well spent on Pinterest rather than anywhere else.
1) Life of a Pin vs Post
In Facebook, once we post any content on our page like an image, web link, quote etc., that post appears on our followers feed almost immediately. Now if a user was simply scrolling through their feed and misses our post, that is it. The post will not show for that user any longer. When they return, they will see other posts.
Now in Pinterest, we create a pin. A pin always include an image, a title, some text and a website link. This pin will now show up on our followers feed. However, if the pin is not viewed by the user at that moment, it is still possible for the pin to remain on their home feed when they come back to the site.
Typically, most experts will tell you the life of a Facebook post is just a few minutes while the life of a Pinterest Pin is on average about a week.
For me though, the best part about Pinterest Pins is not how it appears on your followers feed. It is about how Pinterest is in reality almost like a search engine.
When a user searches within Pinterest, it is very much possible your pin will show up if it matches what they are looking for. Not just that, Pinterest pin URLs related to specific topics even show up on Google search. I am sure you may have already experienced it at least once. When you search for a key-phrase on Google, a page with related Pinterest Pins also appear in the search results.
This is absolutely the best part about Pinterest. It is not simply about your followers and how pins appear on their feed and for how long. It is also about how your pins show up during searches in both Pinterest and Google. In that respect, a life of a pin can be infinite.
I personally love this aspect of Pinterest and there are so many Pinterest users that report getting traffic from old pins just because they show up in search.
2) User Engagement
I mentioned above that a Facebook post appears on your followers feed almost immediately. However, it does not appear on all of your followers feeds.
Did you know that less than 10% of your followers actually get to view your post? On top of that, only a miniscule number of followers will actual engage with the post out of those 10%.
In recent years, the number has fallen well below 10% as Facebook wants you to boost your post with paid ads if you want to reach more users. Depending upon the niche, your followers and the type of content you are posting, the actual user engagement with your followers will be hardly 2-3%. If you post links, then you will get an even lower engagement.
Imagine spending all that time and money to increase followers and then getting just a 2% engagement.
With Pinterest, user engagement is much higher.
Firstly Pinterest pins always contain links. You are actually encouraged to add your website or blog links along with your image and content. This pin will then appear on the feed of all your followers. Hence it makes much more sense to make the effort to gain followers in Pinterest as you know your subsequent pins will reach almost all of them.
3) User Intent
To me, this is an extremely important point. What is the intent of a user when they login to Facebook vs when they login to Pinterest?
In Facebook, your followers are not looking to buy or engage with anything when logging in. They may be there just to post what they are doing, what new dishes they have tried or probably complaining about something.
If they see a post from a page there are following, it is unlikely they will click on a link and further engage with that business as that is not why they logged in to Facebook.
Mind you over here, I will repeat that for paid ads, Facebook is amazing as their algorithms coupled with what they know about their user’s interests and habits ensure highly targeted ads that do get decent engagement.
Now lets think about Pinterest. When a user is logging in to Pinterest, they are looking to check out new pins, learn more about a particular topic and maybe even search for certain keywords.
Hence when a Pinterest user sees a pin on their feed or search results, they are likely to want to check it out. The difference between user intent in using the respective social media platforms is a reason why Pinterest pins get higher engagement.
Final Thoughts
I have covered only three reasons about why Pinterest is way better than Facebook for organic digital marketing. In reality there are more points as well why every business, blogger and entrepreneur should put in a higher effort in Pinterest than other social media platforms.
However, you should also keep in mind that this is true for only consumer oriented businesses. Meaning where you are targeting a consumer or someone looking to learn about a particular topic.
For Business-to-Business products and services, you are better off focusing on LinkedIn and Facebook.
For all others, Pinterest should be your number one priority.
