Pinterest vs Instagram for Your Business
With so many new social media platforms popping up each year, it can be difficult to know which ones are best for your business. Instagram and Pinterest are similar, but serve different purposes and are geared towards different kinds of users.
Pinterest is essentially an online pin-board, where people create boards around a certain theme, such as travel or products. Images are sourced from other users or from the internet and pinned onto a user’s boards.
Where is Your Audience?
The majority of Pinterest users are based in the U.S.A. and are predominantly female. You need to consider if your business should invest time and money into this platform or choose a platform that has a larger amount of your target audience. Pinterest is much more popular overseas than in Australia, so it is a good platform if you are selling or promoting a product that is visually appealing and you want to gain extra exposure overseas without breaking the budget.
Pin Functionality
One of the best things about Pinterest is the automatic linking function for pins. Whenever you pin from another board or create your own pin from a website, a link to the image source is automatically embedded in the pin. This means that Pinterest users can click on the image and be transported to your website without the need for a long link or short link in the caption space.
Instagram Filters
One of Instagram’s biggest draw cards is the filters. There is a huge range of photograph filters available for free on Instagram and filters are being created or updated regularly. The aim with Instagram isn’t to encourage people to click through to your product or website (Instagram doesn’t embed photographs with links like Pinterest does), but rather to increase brand awareness and identity.
App Restrictions
One of the biggest problems from a business perspective is that Instagram does not allow users to upload images from their computer (though you can log in and check your account). Instagram also does not allow you to schedule your posts within the app, but you can utilise the mobile version of scheduling website such as Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule the posts instead.
While both Pinterest and Instagram both offer up image-based social media platforms, the manner in which they are used vary greatly. The key with any social media account is to create relevant information on your account that is both interesting and insightful to your follower, but the way to do that differs greatly between Pinterest and Instagram.
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