Pinterest is the fastest growing social media website. According to statistics, Pinterest user growth rate was 54 percent in contrast to Facebook’s growth rate of 57 percent. Pinterest has come to be known as retailer’s land of opportunity. By a simple method of posting pins to their boards, businesses have been able to build potential customers by exposing their products to the target market. Not only is this, according to many researchers, Pinterest the top traffic source to their website. People like to take inspiration from the posted pins of the portal. Probably that’s the reason, pinners have pinned over 30 billion pins till now. This means that Pinterest is a social media platform which is also providing the utility of search tool to its users.

There are many reasons why Pinterest is one social media platform that marketers must not miss. For instance, it has a longer post life which means once you pin something there are more chances of it to ripple through the web and reach target audience. This is evident from the fact that more that 80 percent of pins and re-pins as compared to 1.4 percent of tweets that are retweeted. This is the reason the average post life of a pin is way more than a twitter tweet or a Facebook post.

Another reason, as statistics explain is that pinners buy more and spend more. Pinterest has evolved as a product review, advice and shopping destination all built into one inspirational destination. A staggering 88 percent of pinners purchase a product that they pin.

There are many businesses that are using Pinterest to grow their business. Growing business through Pinterest does not only restrict to Promoted pins, ad products or Business Analytics dashboard. It also related to studying consumer insights, getting to know what is trending and what kind of products the customers are looking for. Stitch Fix, a popular startup with 145,000 followers is using Pinterest for this purpose.

Other startups like Heather Cleveland Design use Pinterest to improve efficiency of consultations. Cleveland said Pinterest’s potential was quickly apparent the first time she asked potential clients to share a board of design favorites. Within 10 pictures, Cleveland had figured out the clients’ preferred style. Similarly, other startups and businesses are using Pinterest to build audience.