One of the latest social media studies to hit the headlines suggests that online retailers prefer to use the Pinterest ‘Pin It’ button on their goods rather than the old faithful Facebook ‘Like’. 8thBridge is a social analytics firm which monitored nearly 900 shopping portals between July and November 2013, finding that 62 percent used the Pinterest button and only 59 percent employed the Facebook equivalent.
Twitter made an appearance on a respectable 61 percent of sites with its ‘Tweet’ button, while the ‘1+’ badges of Google+ were in fourth place with 42 percent coverage.
It’s not just these figures that are bad news for Facebook either. According to 8thBridge, Facebookers are spending less time interacting with their favorite brands than they have done in the past: the stats say that engagement is down 27 percent on last year in terms of activity taking place on brand posts and pages. 99 percent of the brands that 8thBridge spoke to had a Facebook Page, but the influence of these Pages appears to be dropping.
Facebook apps are struggling too. 40 percent of brands with Facebook apps had at least one non-functioning or outdated app on their page, up from 35 percent last year. If brands and users start to jump ship to alternatives, it could spell trouble for the social networking behemoth. Back in October, Pinterest was valued at $3.8 billion based on its appeal to shoppers and retailers.
One glimmer of light for Mark Zuckerberg and his team is that Facebook remains the best social network for driving digital traffic. 8thBridge’s report concludes: “Although companies have embraced social discovery via Pinterest, the upstream traffic to their sites from Pinterest is still underwhelming, averaging 0.1 percent of their total traffic and twenty-two times less than Facebook.”
Details of the report are available on the 8thBridge site. You might also be interested in our guide to getting the most out of Pinterest for your small business.
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