Pinterest Eclipses All Social Media Sites But Facebook To Dominate Referral Traffic

When you come across a website or product you like, you can "like it," and you can "tweet it," but you're most likely to "pin it." Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Reddit are great places to share the stuff you love, but they are also great ways for websites to gain attention and generate traffic, and one of the social media sites that is doing that the best is Pinterest. While Facebook is still the leader in driving traffic to websites, Pinterest has risen to take second place, generating more traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit combined. With Pinterest's referrals continuing to grow, website publishers are looking to capitalize on this market, often turning to businesses like Ebyline and other freelance sites to create the kind of original content that is likely to be pinned.

A three year old social bookmarking site, Pinterest allows users to save their favorite online discoveries by "pinning" them to an online bulletin board. These pins and boards are then shared with other Pinterest users. Each pin includes an image and a description, which catches the eyes of other pinners and then allows them to click the pin and follow the link to the original website. If they like the content, they can repin the link to their personal online bulletin boards. Essentially, each time someone pins a website, they are making a recommendation to other users and referring them to that site. And with over 7.51 million users on Pinterest, those referrals have a large audience.

With social networking and forums creating the third most traffic referrals to retailer websites, many companies are increasing their involvement in these sites and seeing the benefits of their efforts. Business like HGTV, Nordstorm, West Elm, and ModCloth have anywhere from 4,000 to 8,000 followers of their pins, and as those followers repin these retailers' pins, the potential market continues to grow. Apart from generating traffic to their websites, business can also use Pinterest and its users to gain feedback on their products, creating more customer reviews.

Businesses that are successfully using Pinterest have recognized some key factors to their social media usage. Pinterest users are looking to incorporate these images and pins into their lifestyle, so by focusing on creating a feel for their pins, businesses garner followers. Second, by tracking the amount of repins and followers of their pins and boards, retailers can use Pinterest like a focus group to judge the success of their products. Using Pinterest allows businesses to crowd source some of their advertising as their followers will essentially be doing some of their marketing for them. However, in order to take advantage of that opportunity, these businesses have been concentrating on generating content that attracts users and creates pinnable information and images.

To do this, many retailers have been creating blogs that provide their potential customers with valuable and interesting information about their product. By doing so, their customers are more likely to pin their information and generate traffic referrals to the site. However, many businesses do not have the staff or expertise to write these kinds of articles. That's where sites like Ebyline step in. Sites like Ebyline connect businesses looking for great content to skilled, reliable freelance writers. These sites allow businesses to get content on a as-needed basis while still being sure of its quality. With the continued growth of social media sites like Pinterest, the value of well-written content is only going to increase.

Whether you "pin it," "like it," or "tweet it," social media and social bookmarking sites are some of the most popular sites on the internet. If businesses want their customer base to grow, they will need to go where the people are and start getting pins and likes that bring those potential customers to them.