Instagram vs. Pinterest for Your Business
Social media is an invaluable marketing tool for your business because it allows you to reach out to, and interact with customers, gain exposure, push traffic to your website and discover market trends. Most business owners realize that they need to be on social media, but a lot of them don’t know which platforms to focus their energy on.
Instagram and Pinterest are both very visual networks, but the similarities end there. If you are trying to decide to join one or both, it is important to compare the two and decide which one will help further the goals of your company. Here is our comparison:
Purpose
When you are deciding if you should use Instagram or Pinterest (or both) for your business, consider the purpose of each platform. Instagram is meant for sharing photos and influencing sales through brand awareness. Pinterest, on the other hand, is like an online catalog where images link to the source. So, depending on your goals and the type of business you run, you may want to use just one or both.
Audience
With any marketing strategy, it’s important to consider who your audience is and where they hang out (physically and virtually). Instagram and Pinterest audiences differ, so if you’re set on using one or the other, choose the one that more closely aligns with your market. Here are the facts:
- 1 billion active users
- 71 percent of users are under 35
- 50.3 percent of active users are female, and 49.7 percent are male
- 291 million active users
- 50 percent of Millennials use Pinterest monthly
- 79.5 percent of users are female
Link Sharing
If your goal is to share links to various pages, then Pinterest is for you. Each pin you create can be linked to a unique web address so that visitors can find the source of your content, be it an online store, blog post, company webpage, landing page, etc. On the other hand, Instagram only allows you to place one link in your profile and does not support active links in post captions or comments.
Device
Both platforms have easy-to-use mobile apps, but Pinterest is the only one that is also fully functional on a desktop computer. Instagram allows you to view and comment on content from a desktop, but you are not able to upload new posts, see ads, or watch Instagram Stories.
Discovery
Hashtags rule Instagram and allow others to find your content and profile. But on Pinterest, they’re almost non-existent. Instead of using hashtags, Pinterest allows you to categorize your pins onto boards, and also has a special visual search algorithm that analyzes photos. Therefore, both platforms offer easy ways to categorize and search content, just in different ways.
Image Type
Like we said before, both Instagram and Pinterest are extremely visual, but the similarities end there. On Pinterest, a 600 x 900 pixel image is optimal; while on Instagram, 1080 x 1080 works best, but 1080 x 608 and 1080 x 1350 both work as well.
It is easy to snap a picture on your phone and post it to Instagram, but posting to Pinterest is a greater time commitment. If your image is not the correct size for Pinterest, it will be squeezed into the correct proportions, which may or may not retain its visual appeal and readability. Also, infographics and quote images dominate on Pinterest, and developing them requires a program like Canva or Photoshop.
Image Preferences
Although both platforms rely heavily on visual appeal, users prefer very different image styles.
- Colors: Instagram posts with the primary color blue garner 24 percent more likes than those with red. However, predominantly red posts on Pinterest get twice as many re-pins as those with other primary colors. And when it comes to the number of colors, the networks prefer opposites, as well. Instagram images with a single dominant color receive 17 percent more likes than those with several dominant colors; and on Pinterest, images with multiple dominant colors receive three times more replies.
- Faces: On Pinterest, images without a human face are re-pinned 23 percent more often than those that include them. Instagram is the opposite—posts with smiling human faces on this platform received 38 percent more likes than those without them.
- Perspective: Close-up images perform better on Pinterest, while images with more background earn 29 percent more likes on Instagram.
Post Life
Pinterest posts tend to engage audiences over a longer period of time, sometimes months or even years, while Instagram posts are reported to last for about 21 hours. So, although Pinterest posts tend to take longer to create, you are more likely to gain long-term exposure from them.
Instagram and Pinterest are both valuable networks and you can’t go wrong by using either (or both) to promote your business. The key is to do your research, understand them well, and create content for each platform that will appeal to its users and convert into sales for your company.