For those who don’t know, Pinterest is a rapidly growing 2nd tier social media site where members “pin” images to a virtual pin-board to share with others. Members place these images in categories they create, others can comment on them, and then follow the person that pinned them. More than just a site to share pictures, it’s a place to share ideas. Many users find new food recipes or home improvement ideas just by looking at images users have pinned. Pinterest has only been around for a couple of months, but according to Google Ad Planner, the site  receives 1.5 million unique visitors daily, and that number continues to grow. Not only that, users are spending an average of almost 17 minutes on the site, which is only a few minutes less than the 22 minutes people are averaging on Facebook. (visitors from the US).

It has certainly captured the attention of Anvil, where the possibilities of improving SEO, increasing traffic, and expanding brand awareness for clients brands seem very promising.

So who exactly is using this rapidly growing social media site?

Women. And a lot more than men.

Annette Benning is the first image to show up when searching for "women". She probably uses Pinterest. And likes crafts.

Google’s Ad Planner estimates 80% of Pinterest’s worldwide users are women. If you look at only the US, that number increases to 83%. When looking through the content of what is pinned, this isn’t a completely surprising number. You’ll likely be immediately  consumed by various wedding dress pictures, and decedent desserts.

Age

The majority of Pinterest users fall into the 25 to 44 age group, consisting of 56% of the sites traffic. 45-54 year old’s make up 24% of the traffic. Young people aren’t so into pinning yet, as only 9% of traffic is coming from those 24 years and younger. It will be interesting to see if growth occurs in the younger demographic. This would be the opposite of what happened to Facebook, where the younger crowds began as the primary users, and than growth skyrocketed with older generations.

Education and Income

25% of visitors have a bachelors degree or higher, which is actually slightly lower than the estimated 27% for the entire US. 77% of visitors have a household income of less than 75k a year, which is comparable to Flickr (74% less than 75K), another photo sharing site.

Interests

Probably one of the more important metrics to look at for the purposes of internet marketing are the interests of Pinterest visitors. Again, spending a little bit of time on the site will quickly give you insight into what type of interests members of Pinterest have. Utilizing Ad Planner, we can get an actual quantifiable look at Pinterest’s visitors interests using Google’s affinity score. The data suggests that visitors to Pinterest are;

• 10.3 times more likely to have an interest in crafts  than the average internet user (this is by far the highest interest category)
• 4 times more likely to have an interest in gifts
• 3.6 times more likely to have an interest in hobbies and leisure 
• 2.2 times more likely to have an interest in interior design