What is the difference between Pinterest and Facebook for business? In this blog post series I am outlining some of the differences between Pinterest and other key platforms.
This Part 2 of a 3 part mini series. If you missed part 1, you can read them here
Pinterest vs Instagram: A Comparison
Pinterest vs YouTube: A Comparison
Pinterest vs Facebook
Similar to Instagram, Facebook is a social media platform. Whereas, Pinterest is a visual search engine. This means that they have different purposes, different uses and different audiences.
Connecting + socialising on Facebook vs Search + discovery on Pinterest
Facebook is primarily a place where people go to engage and connect. That might be connecting with friends and family and staying up to date with their lives, or might be connecting and networking with like minded people in Facebook groups etc.
Pinterest is a search and discovery network. Basically what that means is that users go there looking for answers and information. They may want to find inspiration and ideas, discover new products or services, or to plan their lives. Pinterest users are big planners. This means that for a business on Pinterest, it's a place to be discovered, to raise awareness, and to provide that inspiration or content that people are actively looking for.
Content on Pinterest is evergreen
On Facebook (similar to Instagram) your posts will disappear from your followers feeds at some point, and they would need to scroll through your profile to see it again.
Pinterest has evergreen content. Pins don't really ever 'disappear' - they can always be found again via search (given the right search terms and SEO optimisation).
To illustrate this, I'm just going to share one of my favourite statistics about Pinterest. On a social media or similar platform, you have something which is called a half life. The half life of a post is basically the time it takes to get half of its engagement (ie all the clicks and likes). After this point, the engagement tends to drop off very quickly.
A Facebook post has a half life around 90 minutes, whereas a Pinterest pin has a half life of three and a half months. So essentially a pin lasts for 1680 times longer than a Facebook post
Looking at audience size, Facebook is obviously a huge platform, with 2.4 billion monthly active users. As mentioned already, Pinterest has a smaller audience at the moment, but it is really growing quite rapidly.
Furthermore, there are 18 million plus businesses on Facebook (with a Facebook page set up), compared to approximately 1.5 million businesses on Pinterest. This indicates that there is still an opportunity for organic reach, and a less crowded marketplace.
There are 7 million businesses using paid ads on Facebook. It is also possible to advertise on Pinterest (these are called promoted pins). The advantage of promoted pins is that people tend to find them less intrusive. Pinterest users are in a different mindset, as they've come to search for or find something, and seem to get less annoyed by ads.
To summarise, here is a comparison table for Pinterest and Facebook.
Going back to my original question in part 1, ie
“When you think about these three platforms (Facebook, Instagram and YouTube) – which one do you think is most similar to Pinterest?”
You can probably see that Pinterest is actually most similar to YouTube (being another search engine) than it is to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Summary of Key Points
- Each platform has its own purpose, strategy, features, audience etc that can help with marketing your business
- The key is to determine which platform(s) fits best with your current business goals, strategy, funnels, niche and audience.
- There are different ways that you can use Pinterest as a business strategy. You can use it to attract people to your website, to grow your email list, raise brand awareness, and to increase sales and conversions.
- Pinterest can work really well for many different types of businesses. Don't dismiss Pinterest just because you have a non-visual business or a service based businesses.
- If you have content, a website and a service or product that converts, then it's worth considering Pinterest.