I haven’t been this excited about a social media upgrade in a long time! Pinterest introduced Place Pins today! And the cool part is that they connected their map to Foursquare. So not only does it geotag correctly (remember the old days of Flickr geotagging?!), it also will pull in the address and telephone number…
Pinterest sent an email this morning stating that group owners now have more control of their group members! I’ve always been cautious about recommending group boards to CVBs so this is definitely a step in the right direction. How many group boards to you use?
Let’s take a look at where CVBs stand on Pinterest! Some accounts have reached a few milestones worth noting in this update. *data collected May 30, 2013. Los Angeles has over 30,000 followers now. VisitSavannah Georgia has nearly 25,000 and Pure Michigan will probably be the next DMO to reach 10,000 followers. Other top accounts…
Pinterest is now offering analytics for business accounts. In order to get the analytics, you need to follow these steps: Convert your existing account into a business account. If you don’t already have a Pinterest account, you can join as a business. Verify your website. Pinterest will provide an HTML file or a META tag…
CVBs are doing a great job on Pinterest but are the US state DMOs keeping up?
Kind of.
Out of the 46 state DMOs on Pinterest, 12 accounts were inactive last month and didn’t pin one single image from February 6 – March 4, 2013. And then an additional 7 DMOs that pinned 5 images or less during that same period. There were only 7 inactive accounts the previous month. Is this trend growing? Are DMOs losing interest in Pinterest?
Not all of them! Here are the most active state DMOs on Pinterest:
State DMOs typically have gained a decent amount of followers in a short period of time once they start promoting their account across their other social channels. The average state gains approx 50-150 followers each month. You’ll notice below that being an active pinner doesn’t always result in a strong growth in followers. For example, Hawaii gained 202 followers but did not pin any images in the same period of time.
Here are the top DMOs that gained the most followers from February 6 – March 4:…
It’s been an ENTIRE year since I started tracking CVBs on Pinterest! Can you believe it? Me neither. Since my first update (February 22, 2012), there has been amazing growth in the number of pinning CVBs. On Feb 22, 2012, there were- 34 US destinations 3 international destinations 8,041 pins 640 boards 15,575 total followers…
2013 got off to a great start on Pinterest. Many CVBs have seen incredible growth in followers and are being more strategic about their Pinterest efforts. Los Angeles (18K followers) is starting to catch up to VisitSavannah Georgia (21K followers). Colorado Tourism, Beverly Hills, Visit Austin Texas and Pure Michigan all have over 5K followers…
2012 closed with 420 US CVBs and DMOs on Pinterest! I posted a lot of stats last month so let’s just get into the ranking! If you’re interested in how the State DMOs compare, check out this list: And as always, if you know of any CVBs not on my CVBs on Pinterest board, please…
We’re almost ready to close out the year! Will a more active Pinterest account be on your 2013 to-do list?
Most DMOs have stopped pinning all together. From data collected on December 3, 145 DMOs did not pin at all during the entire month of November. That’s 35% of the total amount of DMOs. And approximately the same amount (151 DMOs) pinned 20 or less pins during the month. That’s about one pin per weekday. Some may say that’s enough activity but I feel that DMOs should pin more frequently than that. Here’s the total breakdown:
Who were the most active pinners in November? Boston USA, Explore Georgia, VisitSavannah Georgia, Panama City Beach and Lake County Ohio Visitors Bureau take the lead.
In terms of total pins, VisitSavannah Georgia, Visit Philly, Explore Georgia, Boston USA and Temple CVB rank at the top of that list. Here’s the breakdown of all 413 DMOs: …
Another month has gone by and my list of CVBs on Pinterest has grown to nearly 400 DMOs!
Below are the rankings for 396 DMOs, sorted by total followers. Pinterest data in this blog post was collected on November 1, 2012.
Best Practices
As I was collecting my data, I came across several inconsistencies in how accounts were branded. Here are a few details that should not be missed.
Profile Picture: Some logos are too small while others are cropped strangely to fit into a square. Be sure to upload a logo or photo that is at least 165×165 pixels but Pinterest recommends 600×600 pixels. If you don’t already have a square logo, get one designed right away. You can use it on Twitter, Facebook and nearly all of your social media channels.
Profile: If I’m unsure whether a profile is official or not, I usually click on their website link and look for “CVB” mentioned somewhere on the site. There are a lot of travel agencies, especially for international destinations, that are using “Visit” or “Explore” followed by the destination’s name. I tediously check this because I want my list to only contain official CVBs and DMOs, not travel agencies, chambers, cities, etc.
Several accounts do not list websites in their profiles. Why is this important? Pinterest now allows you to verify your website and displays a check mark on your profile page as well as in search results. Check out VisitSavannah Georgia as an example.
You also have the option of listing your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles. The problem with this right now is that you can’t list a Facebook page, just a Facebook profile. My recommendation would be to list your Twitter account here but do no link them together so that all of your pins automatically tweet. I feel that all organizations and businesses should have a social media content strategy and that linking accounts so things automatically tweet can easily produce over-sharing and possibly lead to people unfollowing your account.
Business Account: Pinterest just rolled out an option for businesses last week. You can convert your account to a business account by going to http://business.pinterest.com. Currently there doesn’t seem to be a lot of benefits for converting your account but since Pinterest is working on separating business accounts from personal accounts, there must be a plan to help businesses promote themselves better on this platform. Will it be free? My guess is that eventually there will be some sort of fee for specific business features or advertisement in the future.
Who are the most active DMOs?
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