Social media marketing research shows Pinterest as most important platform for engagement

Surveys show it creates a stronger connection with retailers than Facebook or Twitter.

Though social media marketing has become wildly important over the last couple of years – particularly with the rapidly increasing penetration of smartphones – actually knowing how to go about using it and choosing the platform(s) on which to concentrate has presented somewhat of a challenge to retailers and marketers.

For example, though Facebook is still the social network leader, with its membership nearing a billion, and over 425 million of them access their accounts using their mobile device every month. This makes advertising by way of these platforms highly attractive to both consumers and retailers.

However, as popular as Facebook may be, research is showing that Pinterest has the greatest impact.

A research study performed jointly between comScore and Shop.org – called The Partnering Group – has shown that Pinterest and its highly visually appealing site layout, has become a massively important player within this sphere. In the United States alone, consumers using the site follow an average of 9.3 different brands or retail companies, when compared to the average of 6.9 retailers that they follow on Facebook and 8.5 retailers that they are tracking using Twitter.

On the whole, 38 percent of consumers online follow retailers through at least one social network.

According to the executive director of Shop.org, Vicki Cantrell, “Retailers have done a commendable job embracing social media – engaging their customers where it makes sense while keeping their brand relevant, interesting, appealing and exciting on each platform.” She pointed out that Pinterest has provided these retailers with a whole new and effective way to interact with consumers.

The study also looked into why consumers were choosing to follow the social media marketing of retailers. Fifty one percent of the respondents said that they did so in order to obtain more information about coupons, discounts, offers, and other deals. This actually dropped from last year, when 58 percent said that this was their main reason for following a company or brand. Another 43 percent said that they wanted more information about products, while 36 percent were seeking to find comments that were posted about the goods and services that were offered.