Pinterest

The Pros of  Pinterest:

• It is very easy to drive traffic from Pinterest to external sites.
  This is because of the unique design that Pinterest offers. Every image that you place on a pinboard is automatically hyperlinked to its original source. If you want to experiment with new landing pages or promote something specific, you can test it out pretty easily. Because of this design, the referral traffic that comes from Pinterest exceeds that which comes from sites like YouTube or even Twitter.
• Followers aren’t force to follow everything you do. Many people today want information that is specifically valuable to them. If you’re following an account on a different platform, there will undoubtedly be content which is not of interest. On Pinterest, followers can follow individual boards on your account so they can receive only the information updates that they find to be valuable.
• Information on Pinterest is very easy to share. Embedding images from Pinterest onto an external site is very easy. This allows you to refer traffic from your site to Pinterest, creating a circle of interest. For Pinterest followers, they can pin your content to their boards to share content they found to be interesting. Not only does this allow them to access your content on their time, but it also increases your brand’s exposure to those who are following that person’s boards.
• Comments are optional on Pinterest. The goal of Pinterest is to make information be as useful as possible. People can choose to just follow boards if they want. They can choose to just repin images if that is their preference. This platform doesn’t offer the same hidden pressures to comment on content just to stay engaged with a certain brand. It also means you won’t have to worry about the platform hiding content from your followers if they haven’t liked or commented on something in awhile.
• All of the boards on Pinterest are public boards. Your content isn’t automatically excluded from people just because they don’t follow the board where it was pinned. Pinterest users are able to access any image that has been pinned anywhere on the network at any time. This makes it a lot easier for brands to connect with new prospects because people who want what you have can find you. As long as you can prove your niche expertise when you’re found, Pinterest for Business makes it very easy to expand your reach.
• Conversion rates on Pinterest are typically higher.Because people can research subject matter that is important to them quite easily, this means they’re already in the mindset to buy or sign up for something. This means that the conversion rates on Pinterest tend to be higher compared to rates from Twitter or Facebook. Conversions on Pinterest also tend to spend about 2.5x more per conversion than the other two platforms. Without a presence on Pinterest, this is money a business could be just throwing away.

The Cons Of Pinterest:

• The traffic on Pinterest is attractive to a very specific audience. 
  Although the Pinterest demographics have been slowly equalizing, the majority of users are still women who are under the age of 45. Broad traffic is a possibility on this platform, but not as likely as it would be on a different social media platform. If you want an easy way to reach women, however, 4 out of 5 Pinterest users may just be interested in the content that you are pinning to your boards.
• The images you use must be very specific. The images that get pinned to the boards on Pinterest must meet certain quality rules. There are also size requirements which must be met. You can use tools and apps to automatically resize your graphics to make them Pinterest compatible, but that can also change the perspective of the image. What typically works on your blog on your website isn’t going to work here, which means you’ll need to take time to create Pinterest specific graphics to grow your presence on this site.
• There are legal issues which must be considered. If you’re sharing your own content that you’ve personally made, then you won’t have to worry about this key point. If you’re repinning content that someone else has made to use for your own marketing purposes, however, you might find yourself in some difficult gray areas when it comes to copyright issues. Always ask permission to post items to your board if the content didn’t come from you, but remember: just because someone posted an image on Pinterest that you want to repin doesn’t mean they’re the ones who made the content.
• More repins isn’t always a good thing. Although the hyperlink process is great on Pinterest, it isn’t 100% effective. When content gets copied by someone else and then pinned to a different board, you may lose the link to your content. This means your work is still being spread around, but it may not draw the same level of traffic back to your site.
• Many boards on Pinterest are not necessarily business orientated. Pinterest is primarily a lifestyle social site. If your business fits in with this profile, then you’ll have a good chance to find success. If not, then you may need to alter your approach to the content that you’re creating so it can fit. The top categories on Pinterest tend to be fashion and recipes. If you’re selling aluminum sheeting, that might be difficult to transition over into the arts and crafts world.
• It is difficult to fully automate Pinterest. Pinterest for Business only offers basic scheduling and tracking options for users. This makes it difficult to save time by scheduling your pins in advance. There are some options which make this a possibility, but many of them tend to be costly and go further than what the average business typically needs – especially during the first days on this platform.
• More content typically needs to be shared to get noticed. The average Pinterest for Business account will need to share between 5-20 pins per day to get their boards noticed. Sometimes that recommendation is per board. If you have 5 boards, that’s 100 potential pins per day that may be required. Even if you repin content, that’s a massive time investment that the other platforms don’t necessarily require. It also takes a lot of creativity on a consistent basis and let’s face it: even the most creative people need to take the occasional break.
• Your content may go places you don’t want it to go. Imagine if a church’s pins were being used to promote a porn website. Or what if Coca-Cola had pins which Pepsi was using to promote their products? With this being a public platform, you have limited control over where your content spreads. It may go places you don’t want it to go.