11 pros & cons of Pinterest for business, is it worth it

Hi I am Praneeth

In this blog, you will learn everything related to the pros and cons of using Pinterest for your business and education.

Without further ado let’s get started.

Here is a 30000-foot view of the blog.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a visual imagery search engine, to say simply, it is a perfect mixture of Google and Instagram.

It is the place where you can browse easily on your phone to find lots of ideas related to all types of niches and categories from food and fitness to home decoration.

In the name itself, Pinterest is a combination of 2 words, Pin+Interest

The pin is either a horizontal image or video and you can upload it on the platform based on your interests.

Each pin lets you the opportunity to connect to an external source like a website or online store with a hyperlink, here pins act like the cover of the books like images and first impressions for the website content or online store product.

You can learn more about Pinterest here.

Pros and cons of using Pinterest.

Here is the table of the pros and cons of using Pinterest.

s/no.	pros	cons
1.	Incredible source of the traffic to websites.	Copyright infringement.
2.	Boost rankings of your website in search engines.	Confined to a few niches and audience types.
3.	Traffic has a high conversion rate yet for free.	Time-consuming process.
4.	Pinterest is not social media.	It can penalize accounts like google.
5.	Beginner-friendly algorithm.
6.	There is less competition.
7.	Great place to find amazing keyword ideas for your blog.

Let’s talk about the pros first.

Pros of using Pinterest.

Let’s see the pros of using Pinterest for your business and education purpose detail, lets get started.

Note: I use lots of statistics in this blog to explain the advantages and disadvantages of using Pinterest,

Here is the list of all the sources of the statistics I use in this blog,

Let’s get started with the pros first.

The incredible source of traffic to websites.

One of the biggest boons for bloggers is having a platform like Pinterest where you can drive a massive amount of traffic to the website other than search engines like Google.

I have a couple of people whom I know who are driving more than 70% of the traffic from Pinterest to the website.

It is not Google from where the people driving traffic to the website,

It is the only platform in the social media industry where you are allowed to add new links and external websites to each piece of content you upload on the platform, which means you can easily drive traffic to other places from the platform.

Let’s have a look at some of the top Pinterest statistics.

Pinterest has 367 million monthly users.
Pinterest is the third-largest largest social media plate form in the USA.
An average pin can drive up to 6-page visits and 11 pin saves with 3.5 months half lifespan time which is the largest in social media platforms.

The point here is that when you start a blog or website it is next to impossible to drive traffic to your website instantly from search engine optimization whereas,

We can drive a large amount of traffic by spending a lit bit more time on Pinterest as compared to search engines.

2. It helps boost website rankings on google.

Because Pinterest is a great platform to drive referral traffic to your website or blog,

Even if the traffic is not coming from search engines, search engines like Google’s algorithms will crawl all the web pages on the internet,

They observe the movement and the engagement of the audience with a particular website on a particular topic,

If more people are visiting a particular website from any platform including Pinterest and forums or any Social media then,

It is a great social signal to Google that the page is good.

This results in higher rankings of the particular page in search engines for a specific keyword of that blog or website.

3. Traffic has a high conversion rate yet for free.

I don’t want to comment much about this because the statistics are astounding.

Take a look at stats.

83% purchase after seeing a brand’s content or pins on Pinterest.
98% of users said they have tried something new that they have found on Pinterest.
Pinterest is now expanding to over 247 million monthly users the outside United States.
83% of weekly users have made a purchase brand content on Pinterest users use it for shopping.
An average a single pin can drive 6-page visits and 11 repins.
The average age of Pinterest users is 40 years.
According to, a study the majority of Pinterest users earn around $75,000 a year.
97% of all Pinterest searches are non branded.
Revenue from shopping ads grown 100% last year on the platform.
Nearly all of the Pinterest uses related to tech telecom purchases decide to buy things after seeing content on Pinterest.

I think these stats are enough to tell Pinterest is a gold mine for bloggers and website owners who want to increase their sales on their website or of their company.

The most awesome thing about Pinterest is that it is free just create a profile and get started, despite having the option to advertise your product or your pin on the platform,

If you continue working on the platform with attractive pins for free with a business account then there is no stopping you from higher sales and more traffic to your website.

4. Pinterest is not social media.

look many people have a misconception regarding Pinterest is a social media platform or anything like that but it is not.

To explain it simple Pinterest is a visual search engine.

It is just like Google for images.

Pinterest allows you to connect a link from each pin you upload on the platform to your website.

With that said let’s look at some interesting facts about it as a search engine.

There are over 2 billion Pinterest searches that happen on the platform every month with an average user typing 8 searches he’s for a month.
28% of advertisers already use Pinterest.
77% of Weekly pinners have discovered new products or brands. Users of Pinterest have said that content from Pinterest pins and ads are useful.
Nine out of ten Pinterest users rated Pinterest to be filled with positivity because followers, comments won’t affect your traffic acquisition on Pinterest.
Pinterest allows you to save all of your ideas or pins that you have searched for at one place called boards in your account and you can make them either public or private.
The average user spends 14 minutes on the Platform every day.
The average life span of the Pinterest pin is 3.5 months whereas 5 hours on Facebook and 48 hours on LinkedIn for a normal post.

According to the guidelines of Pinterest,

Pinterest does not allow other people to follow these in this category like,

Hatred.
Sexual exploitation.
Harmful content.
Misleading content.
Misinformation or critic can learn more about the guidelines and its safety measures for using Pinterest here.

If the Pinterest algorithm identifies your account or if someone reports your account opposing the guidelines of using Pinterest,

It can and will remove or block or limit your account visibility on the platform to maintain the positivity that it has as a social media platform as well.

These are all amazing statistics about Pinterest which say it is way more than just a social media platform rather it is a search engine and an amazing opportunity for bloggers to acquire traffic to the website from the platform.

5. Beginners-friendly algorithm.

Pinterest is a visual search engine just like Google.

But the amazing thing about Pinterest is that you never need things like backlinks or a lot of age and authority to be able to rank higher on the platform.

The Pinterest algorithm is highly user friendly for beginners.

You can rank your pin on a higher position of Pinterest in less time in no authority needed.

You might be wondering what is the use of ranking higher in Pinterest search.

look Pinterest works just like Google where people search for different things just like Google like sports and home decoration things like keywords in the Pinterest search bar.

By using keywords that the people use on Pinterest in your pin description and titles,

You can rank higher on Pinterest, get more impressions, and clicks on your pins that lead to your website or your targeted page.

The Pinterest algorithm does not give a shit about user engagement or followers of the account or comments you have.

It rewards the accounts based on the value and unique pins that they add on the platform which are highly relevant and on evergreen content optimized for Pinterest search.

6. There is less competition.

According to a study, 80% of all on Pinterest are repins or saved which gives an idea of the platform.

in this, platform, there is a high chance of getting your posts to go viral among any other platform like Facebook and YouTube.

Suppose if your pin goes viral due to some unique feature that you have added on your pin which caused it to go crazy with hundreds of thousands of impressions and lakhs of views to your website.

This has its advantages and disadvantages.

When your pin goes viral thousands of other Pinterest users repin or save your viral pin to their board to increase their website presence.

This of course gives you lots of additional clicks from other places and accounts to your website.

But,

when other Pinterest users are only repinning or saving your existing pin at their Pinterest boards but nothing unique getting posted on Pinterest by them.

There is no new content or pins added on Pinterest.

That is the reason, 80% of all the pins are saved pins.

Hence,

The Pinterest algorithm is designed in such a way that it favors accounts that add new pins that are not repinned or already existing on the platform in any way but,

It ranks such pins high on search results of interest leading to more impressions and clicks.

If you continue adding new unique pins on Pinterest then the algorithm favors you a lot by ranking your pins higher on the search irrespective of the,

Age or followers or audience engagement or any other factors involved which,

Influence your rankings like on Google.

Another thing is that not most people use Pinterest to drive traffic either like most people only use,

Or leverage social media platforms like Facebook, youtube, and Linkedin to drive traffic to their website from social but,

Very few leverage Pinterest underestimating the potential of Pinterest.

This creates a great opportunity for you to grab the position and win the audience with awesome pins and graphic elements.

7. This is a great place to find amazing keyword ideas for your blog.

you can find amazing keyword ideas and topics for your blog using the Pinterest search bar.

As you know Pinterest is not a social media platform completely as it is a visual search engine, just like Google you have auto suggestions feature enabled in the Pinterest search bar as well.

Using Auto-suggestions of the Pinterest search bar you can find amazing keyword ideas that people are searching for on Pinterest.

The fact is the 48% of Pinterest users use it for shopping purposes.
The fact is that about 39 % of the female pinners and 48% of male users prefer Pinterest search engine over Google & Bing to search for things.

When you are targeting an audience on Pinterest it’s better to use Pinterest to find keywords to target in your website or blogs instead of using Google if not you will be mismatching the wrong keywords.

So, you know the traffic which we can generate from Pinterest is of high conversion rate.

As you know Pinterest traffic has a high conversion rate.

Even after searching for terms on Pinterest, you get a horizontal list of keyword topics that people are searching for that are highly popular and term on Pinterest for the particular topic.

You can scroll down further and further to find amazing keyword ideas or topics for your blog related to the particular term looking at what types of posts or pins are ranking for the particular keyword on Pinterest.

You can apply or use the keyword topics in your further blog post and drive traffic to your website through Pinterest.

It is just like using Google search where you can find amazing ideas for your blog right from Google similarly,

We can find amazing keyword ideas that people are searching for on Pinterest to target the audience by ranking on the keywords that people are actively searching for.

There are some serious cons of using Pinterest as well.

Cons of using Pinterest.

Here are 4 cons of using Pinterest.

Copyright infringement is an issue to deal with.

One of the few problems that we have on Pinterest is that it,

Just like blogging you can have people stealing your hard work which is pins cropping them into sizes as per their interest and,

Uploading the pins on their accounts to make it look original is a thing that stealing other pins is a normal thing on Pinterest.

If people don’t want to repin a pin or save a pin in their board or if they found any pin very attractive that they want to use it without giving the credit then they would crop the pin and use it on their account.

People might steal images of other websites, graphic designers, photos, graphics, and premium shock photos which they don’t own in their pins.

This will cause no benefit to creating the image for the owner of the image.

If your pins are of high quality and attractive, there is a good chance of your pins getting stolen,

That is the reason it is highly recommended to use your brand name on the Pinterest pins that you create and upload so that you can give the Proof in the form of the copyright claim and,

Not just that, having a brand name in the Pinterest pins increase brand awareness by 67%.

By using the brand name in your pins, if someone steals your pins, you can complain to the user on pinterest and,

Show them the proof that they have used in your pin by having your brand name in the pin or your image, to get justified.

Even the Pinterest platform is keen to reduce copyright infringement on its platform.

It offers many features like,

If you don’t see the option of saving the pin then avoid the pin because the owner does not want its pin to be saved on other boards.
You can send a copyright complaint to the Pinterest platform to report a user who is using your image without giving you credit.

Although Pinterest is working very actively on this idea to reduce copyright infringement on the platform still there is a large number of people who are just stealing the existing pins and,

Uploading them to the account or from websites and bloggers to their accounts without getting much or any credit.

If you are repinning other pins on your board definitely read and follow the copyright guidelines of Pinterest to use the platform without getting your account suspended or banned by Pinterest.

2. It is confined to a few niches with a specific audience group & types to target.

Pinterest is a visual search engine.

You know that now.

The problem with Pinterest is that,

It is favorable to a few niches. like these,

Home decoration.
Outdoor bars, Indian living rooms.
Fashion.
Tech.
Travel.
Photography.
Crafts and design.
Health and Education.
Quotes and stories.

The platform favors all these types of niches mostly indoor ones because of its majority audience characteristics like,

Over 72% of Pinterest users are women the remaining portion 19% in men and 9% unspecified.
40% of US dad’s use the platform.
80% of the users access the platform through mobile.
25-34 aged women form 29% of the userbase.
It is not all female actually, 50% of all the new accounts are male and the number is increasing..
52% of millennials use Pinterest every month.

Still, a large percentage of users of Pinterest are female and confined to only a few niches and categories of audience,

If your website or online business does not target this specified audience type and gender then Pinterest is not the platform for you to advertise your product,

Like if your business deals with B2B business then Pinterest is not the platform to hang around and advertise your product.

3. It is a Time-consuming yet active process.

Remember that I have said that the Pinterest algorithm is designed in such a way that it does not help accounts with more user engagement or comments and followers rather it rewards the accounts that,

Continuously and constantly add new and valuable unique pins on the platform.

According to Buffer, the ideal pinning frequency is 15-30 pins a day.

It takes a good amount of time to create high-quality quality pins.

You should be extra careful with the pin’s context and quality,

As there is less text involved in the content so it’s all visual impressions of images with people and the wrong context or bad quality images can,

Hurt your brand or leave fewer clicks on your pins and traffic to your pages.

It is a time-consuming process to make pins everyday.

Even if you achieve a mark of 1 million views, you still have to constantly add new pins to the platform to be able to continue driving traffic to your place.

It is a constant active process.

I have done a small experiment to see how’s the algorithm on Pinterest.

I have posted 10 pins a day on Pinterest 2 weeks back.

I have stopped posting for a week time.

After leaving Pinterest behind like not pinning for approx 2 weeks, here are my screenshots results.

Take a look at my monthly views while consistently uploading pins for a week straightforward.

Here is the image after leaving Pinterest without posting pins for 2 weeks straight.

but failing to upload pins on Pinterest for long while, I lost almost 300 monthly views.

You can’t post a pin on a weekday as you do with blogging.

In that case, to make your pinning process easier, I recommend you to use CANVA.

Let’s first understand what you will get through CANVA.

It is the top graphic design tool for beginners.
It has a drag and drops feature to add new elements and features to your pins instantly.
You can directly upload or schedule your pins to Pinterest or other social platforms from CANVA instead of downloading it on your computer and uploading.
You can create your custom dimensions.
Other than Pinterest pins, you can create things like infographics, blog post banners, logos, book covers, YouTube thumbnails, invitations, business cards, book and CD covers, menus, and much more in less amount of effort involved with the drag and drop feature.
You can have hundreds of ready-made templates to use and edit for every functionality.
You can have direct access to hundreds of free stock photo, videos and fonts to use them in your graphic designs for free.

Thankfully, You can enjoy these amazing features of CANVA for a 30-days free trial.

You can use either the free trial or use the platform buying it and make your pinning process easy with CANVA.

I use CANVA to design all the blog banners and Pinterest pins and I would highly recommend you to use the same tool to design elements for your website or business.

Use the link to activate your discount on the CANVA premium plan.

4. Pinterest can penalize your account with its algorithm updates just like Google.

Pinterest is just like Google but it is a search engine for visual images and each image has an option to connect to an external source either be it a website or blog or online store.

Just like Google, Pinterest also wants to show so unique and high-quality valuable content to its users.

That is the reason even Pinterest constantly updates its algorithm and penalizes accounts that do not follow the rules of using the platform or abuse the platform or user experience.

If you are using Pinterest with the following methods like,

Linking to websites or pages on your pins with lots of broken links cause a bad user experience that can hurt your traffic.
Uploading 50 pins a day like spamming the platform for higher traffic can hurt your traffic.
Creating and publishing many pins pointing to a single web page.
Uploading pins like misleading or misinformative, harmful, exploitation, adult content, hatred, violent types of content can lead to block, limit, or removal of your account.
Uploading a single pin to multiple boards can also lead to a penalty from Pinterest.
Lots of bad redirections from your Pinterest pins without specifying the Pinterest is sponsored if it has affiliate links in the description.
Pins size and quality mismatch with the best practices.

All of these things can cause you a penalty on Pinterest or limit the traffic you will get from the platform.

The Pinterest algorithm always changes and it is now more advanced just like Google,

Even Pinterest is a social media platform with a mix of Google and Facebook.

It makes money from showing ads on the platform.

That is the reason Pinterest is limiting the traffic to other websites by constant updates in its algorithm and improving user experience.

It is now promoting its advertising option called promoted pin where you can start advertising on the platform from 10 cents to 1.5 dollars and show your pins higher on search results for targeted keywords.

It is cheap by the way with the value you will be getting from the promoted pins.

Overall, Pinterest is overall is a great platform to drive traffic to websites and I would highly recommend you to consider using the platform before it gets too crowded.

These are all the pros and cons of using Pinterest that you need to know if you want to use Pinterest for your business and education.

Ending remarks.

There you go I have explained everything related to the pros and cons of using Pinterest for your business education and website.

Please consider sharing the blog with your family and friends to let them know the importance and benefits of using Pinterest.

Sharing is caring.

Do comment what do you think about Pinterest, what are the pros and cons that I missed, I would like to know it.

Consider checking out my other blogs.

I will catch you next time in my next blog.

Till then keep learning and keep growing.