With over 100 million users every month, Pinterest is a social media platform not to ignore for your business. Always more traditionally understood to be a place to share decorating ideas, cake recipes or wedding inspiration, Pinterest has always been underestimated as a business platform. However, this has been changing over the last few years as more and more businesses are getting to grips with how Pinterest can help them further build their brand.
One of these ways is through video. We have written on so many occasions about the meteoric rise of using video for your business, and especially through the use of social video, which gets 1200% more shares than text and images combined. Businesses using video grow revenue 49% faster year on year than organisations without video.
So not surprisingly, Pinterest has seen a 60% increase in videos being featured over the last year and have therefore decided to bring in Promoted Video. What this allows businesses is more of an opportunity to increase their sales; 55% of people on Pinterest are there to shop – more than on any other social media channel. By adding video into this shopping experience will make the customer more likely to buy. Pinterest has also added featured pins to sit alongside the video, related to the product being advertised. This means that whatever product you are promoting through your video, you can have these additional products for your customers to click on and find out more.
The video starts as you scroll past it, and you can then click on it to open up a new tab and see the whole film, with those pins below it. The videos can be up to five minutes in length, and you can choose which frame/s of the video start to play as you scroll past. This will be a paid service, with Pinterest charging per impression. The analytics of the video and pins will be very comprehensive too, to help you understand how well your content is working.
Promoted Videos have only just been introduced through testing a small number of partners, but studies conducted have seen significant increases in views. You will need a Pinterest business account to set up Promoted Videos (just like promoted pins) and it is only available to businesses in the US and UK currently working with a Pinterest account team. However if you are interested in learning more you can let Pinterest know here.