Pinterest winning battles in social media war
The battle over social media channel dominance continues to wage, as Pinterest (21 per cent) becomes more popular than Twitter (18 per cent) among Internet users in 2013, according to Pew Research Center.
Further statistics from ShareThis shows that for the first time, Pinterest outpaced email to become the third most popular sharing channel in the fourth quarter of 2013. While sharing via email declined 11 per cent year-over-year, Pinterest shares increased 58 per cent, making it the fastest growing sharing channel last year.
Most of that growth was driven by women, who account for 56.76 per cent of social shares across all channels and 57.63 per cent of shares to Pinterest. If Pinterest is on the fast-track for growth, why then are hoteliers neglecting to add it to their social media programs?
“Pinterest is the perfect place for hotel marketers to organise images and information into boards for specific categories, such as weddings, food, beverage, lighting, water sports etc, to make it easier for consumers and meeting planners to find what interests them most and then act upon it,” said DJ Vallauri, Lodging Interactive founder and president. “Pinterest boards are designed to highlight all the various aspects of a hotel, from the guestrooms and food-and-beverage areas, to recreation, social offerings and even local area attractions. “Recent studies show that women in particular love ‘pinning’ things, like articles and photos to share with their friends rather than dropping links into emails,” he said. “This opens up a whole New World of opportunity for hotel marketers. A hotel’s followers will see the pinned content, and they can like, comment or re-pin it to their boards. Items of interest may contain links to the site where the image originated. Pinterest pins, like Facebook, have the opportunity to go viral. Unlike Facebook, visitors don’t need to be friends with someone to follow their board. The key is simply sharing a common interest.” There are 70 million active Pinterest users; 68 per cent of whom are women (MediaBistro).
The recent rise of Pinterest is a sure sign of how quickly social media is changing the digital landscape. Accommodation marketers looking to showcase their property, events, specials, and local area attractions plus express their culture or personality via social media, will find great success with Pinterest.
