Pinterest Guidelines

Pinterest overview

If your university unit is interested is launching a presence on Pinterest, there are opportunities to collaborate on shared boards hosted by the Missouri State University account. Contact web strategy and development to request a collaborative Pinterest board for your unit.

Strengths

• Pinterest users leverage the platform to plan for major life events, find new projects and learn how to do new things. If you have content that fits in one of those areas, Pinterest would be a great way to share it.
• Pinterest content is sourced based on topic rather than time, so the platform is a great fit for evergreen (not time-specific) content. The average life of an original pin is three and a half months.
• Pinterest users will help you broaden your reach over time. The platform thrives on users saving content to topic-specific boards, which in turn shares it to their followers.
• Success on the platform does not require a large investment of time. Comments and messaging are not common therefore minimal moderation is required.

Challenges

• Users find content through topic searches and pins from their followers so organic follower growth can be slow.
• Curating or creating content that is informational or entertaining and not time-specific can be challenging and limiting for some university units.
• More than half of users visit Pinterest less than once per week, so engagement with your target audience can be infrequent.

Audience

The audience on Pinterest is unique in a few ways.

• Pinterest has higher usage rates among women than men; 42 percent of adult women have accounts.
• The platform has high usage among most age brackets; nearly one in four adults 18-49 have an account.
• Adults ages 50 and older are one of the fastest growing demographic groups of users on Pinterest.

Discover more about Pinterest demographics

Checklist

• Consider partnering with the Missouri State University account on collaborative boards rather than creating your own account.
• Share evergreen content that centers on a particular topic or theme.
• Reinforce the university and your unit’s brand through creative and complete pin descriptions, colorful imagery that incorporates the color palette and links that point back to your university website.