A battle continues in the social media world, and it’s all about the influencer. After a 1500% increase in searches for the term “influential marketing” over the past 3 years, in a world where video rules, Pinterest has recently made changes with its platform to attract influencers and creators wanting to showcase their brands through video. 

While it may sound like Pinterest is just now catching up to the likes of Instagram and Facebook, they have differentiated themselves in an important way—by positioning Pinterest as a discovery platform instead of a social network. This increases a brand’s ability to produce videos that are more evergreen. According to Pinterest’s Chief Marketing Officer Andrea Mallard, videos on Pinterest have a much longer shelf like than it’s competition since Pinterest videos never disappear from content feeds and resurface over time. 

This approach combined with a lack of competition within Pinterest has fueled an increase in influencers. The number of videos on Pinterest has grown 100% from Q1 2018 to Q1 2019. The beauty and food industries have experienced the greatest rise in video searches. According to Pinterest, how-to videos rose 3712% while the term lasagna recipe was up 3462%.

Businesses utilizing influencer marketing have seen impressive returns with an average media value of $5.20 per dollar spent on influencer marketing, according to NeoReach. However, many organizations and brands continue to find it challenging to navigate influencer marketing successfully, and are relying on agency partners to bridge the gap in strategy and process for this work. 

Why it matters: Pinterest video and influencer marketing represents a strong value proposition to brands due to the level of growth opportunity and the longevity of the content on the 5th most popular social channel in the US.