What is Pinterest?

Pinterest calls itself a virtual pinboard. The following is a quote from their website:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

I signed up for Pinterest the other day and spent some time playing around with it. Before I knew it I found myself engulfed in areas that interested me. I began to follow others who had interests that were like mine and re-pinned many of their items. At first I did not think I was interested in finding recipes or new shoe styles, however after spending some time browsing through the magnitude of pictures and information I found what I consider to be an advertiser's dream. There are incredible opportunities for an organization's products to be connected to people who like items like they provide.

Upon this realization, I had to find out how many people are using this service. Utilizing the Nielsen 2012 Social Media Report I found the following quote.

Pinterest had the largest year-over-year increase in audience and time spent of any social network across PC, mobile, and web apps.

In the U.S. Market alone Pinterest surpassed over 46 million unique visitors. This is something that any producer of a product should be intently aware of. So if you have not checked out Pinterest, you may want to spend some time fining your interests.

Top Social Media of 2012

There are so many different ways a person can share their insights with the world that one often wonders which one to use. The yearly Social Media Report from the Nielsens is usually a great avenue to determine where the most activity and users are. Advertisers must also watch this information to make sure they are spending their money in front of the greatest audience. 

The 2012 Social Media Report gives us some insight on the trending of the top Social Media Networks of the year. Facebook has been a hard hitter in the social media realm but this year seems to be a year of change. Still reporting in with over 152 million unique visitors in the PC access demographic, but they are down 4%. However, the way people access Facebook is drastically changing to the mobile device market. There has been an increase of over 85% of visitors in the mobile web and mobile app department accommodating for slightly more unique visitors than those accessing by PC.

Twitter was accessed on cellphones and other mobile devices through the web and Twitter apps by almost 67 million unique users which illustrated around 140% increase over the previous year. The PC market for Twitter topped slightly over 37 million unique visitors and reported an increase of 13%. Other statistics can be found on the Nielson website.

Some people have mentioned that Facebook is on its way out and that may be true from the PC market, however as an advertiser I would not recommend bailing on that service yet. Twitter is still running strong and is something organizations need to pay attention to. Social media networks change very frequently and how we use them to promote our products and services should change along with them.

Keep up the work and reap the benefits!

Looking Back to 2012 with Social Media

I don't know if you are looking for any good reading material, but I found myself scanning through the Nielsen's Social Media Report for 2012 over Christmas and New Year's. Sounds like good reading doesn't it? I would not recommend it to you for the latest top 10 novels on the bookshelf but it is very interesting to see what people are doing with social media.  Lets take a look at a few of the stats found in the report.

First of all, mobile web access (access to Internet sites) is up 82% in 2012. This is an incredible statistic! What does this mean to me? Well, if you are a website owner you need to make sure that your site is mobile friendly. In July 2012 over 95 million people were accessing websites by their cellphones or mobile devices. On top of that, the number of mobile apps increased by 85% to over 101 million apps on the market.

Some people may argue that Internet usage is up overall but that is not the case for the type of devices that people are using. For instance, PC access to the Internet has begun to drop (4%). It is true that people are spending more time on the Internet overall, however they are using their cell phones and mobile devices to do so.

If you think about the time you spend on the Internet, ask yourself how and when do you access your favorite pages. I know in my life, outside of work I access the Internet by mobile device almost 10 to 1 over using a PC. These statistics should make the advertiser realize he or she needs to be aware of how people are accessing their ads. Are they mobile friendly? I hope so, because your organization needs to make sure your products and services are accessible by the largest market.