If you had told me in 2010 that Pinterest—a social media platform that digitally replicates the bulletin board you used to hang over your dorm room bed—would become the 3rd most popular social media platform among U.S. adults, I would have laughed and looked at you skeptically from behind my fake Ray Ban sunglasses.
Some of us might be guilty of underestimating this network, but Pinterest has quietly risen to success as a powerful search engine and one of the internet’s most important shopping platforms. It would be a huge mistake to leave Pinterest out of your brand’s marketing strategy.
And when crafting any marketing strategy, you’ve got to have the data to back it up. Who are Pinterest’s users? How do they use the platform? How do they respond to ads? And what are businesses already doing on Pinterest?
Here we dig deep to uncover the most important Pinterest stats social media marketers need to know, so you can plan and execute a successful Pinterest strategy for your brand.
Pinterest users
Pinterest has over 200 million monthly active users. Figuring out who those users are, however, is key to engaging them.
They’re millennials
1 out of 2 U.S. millennials use Pinterest every month, more than any other age group. Usage drops incrementally as age increases, so the perception that Pinterest is just for moms is not entirely accurate. The next biggest age group is 30 to 49-year-olds.
Women dominate
Pinterest continues to be a female-centric platform. According to Pew Research, nearly half (45 percent) of all women online are Pinterest users—compared to only 17 percent of online men. This even after the platform tweaked its search results to more accurately target gender (i.e., users can search specifically for “male watches” rather than just “watches”).
But usage among males is growing rapidly
Yes, women tend to dominate the Pinterest landscape, but 40 percent of new signups are men. That’s a 70 percent increase in year-over-year growth. Also, a not insignificant one in four American Pinterest users are men.
They’re global
Most of the major social networks extend far beyond American borders, and Pinterest is no exception. More than 50 percent of all Pinterest users, and 75 percent of new signups, come from outside the U.S. That’s a truly global, cross-cultural audience.
Besides the United States, the top three desktop users by country are Brazil, India, and Russia.
They’re well educated
Thirty-four percent of Pinterest users have at least some college education, while another 34 percent have more than a college education. That’s 10 percent more than users who have high school or less.
They’re likely to have an above-average income
Not surprisingly, being well educated also means that Pinterest users have money. Thirty-five percent have an income of over $75,000, a figure that rises to 50 percent when applied exclusively to millennials. The next largest income demographic is $30,000 to $49,000 (at 32 percent of users).
These figures support the statistic that Pinterest users have a nine percent higher average income than non-users, according to Ahalogy.
They live in the burbs
The largest demographic of Pinterest users resides in the suburbs (34 percent), according to Pew Research. Another 30 percent of users are urban and 25 percent are rural.
Pinterest usage statistics
How do people use Pinterest? Here are the Pinterest usage stats you need to know to make sure your strategy aligns with the way your customers are already engaging with this platform.
Every day, 2 million people post pins, resulting in a total of more than 100 billion pins currently living on Pinterest.
To put that in perspective, the Mall of America, the largest mall in the U.S., only gets 100,000 shoppers per day.
They access the platform on the go
As is the trend across all social networks, people increasingly use Pinterest on their phones. With over 500 million app installs, 85 percent of all Pinterest searches happen on mobile. That’s a 45 percent increase in mobile searches from 2016 to 2017.
Users tend to prefer using Pinterest on their mobile devices while shopping, traveling, and at work.
They use it to plan
86 percent of millennials say they use Pinterest to “plan life moments, big and small.” Plus, a Millward Brown study found that 47 percent of Pinners were likely to experience a major life event (like getting married, having a baby, or buying a car) in the next six months, and were disproportionately using Pinterest to plan for these events.
The study ultimately concluded that the research and planning people do on the platform contributes to their “vision of an ideal self,” a powerful concept for marketers.
They use it to search
Pinterest has always been a discovery focused…
