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…
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…
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?
…
By now you’ve heard about which CVBs have an active Pinterest presence but have you wondered how they stack up when comparing states? 
The 108 US CVBs on Pinterest represent 36 states in total.
Number of CVBs
The chart to the right depicts the breakdown by state. All stats were recorded on March 11.
Texas takes the lead with 16 total CVBs on Pinterest. I’m not really surprised by this. Claire Isabel, an influential Pinterest user, found me on Pinterest and shared this Texans are pinning it BIG! blog post. Her passion for Texas is amazing. She created a Texans are pinning it BIG! Pinterest board and added many of the Texas CVBs as contributors. Several of the collaborating CVBs have been actively pinning items to that board.
This concept would work wonderfully for state DMOs. CVBs can also create neighborhood boards and collaborate with attractions, restaurants or hotels in those specific locations.
The top 5 list is rounded out with California (11 CVBs), Illinois (8 CVBs), Ohio (7 CVBs) and Florida (6 CVBs).
Number of CVBs
This information is great but it doesn’t really tell us the most active states when it comes to pins or followers. I think these two metrics are important for determining active Pinterest users. …
I first blogged about CVBs on Pinterest on February 22. Within these past 3 weeks, the list of US and Canadian CVBs has increased from 34 to 110. The number of international DMOs also increased from 3 to 26 DMOs.
For this post, we’ll just focus on US and Canadian CVBs and DMOs.
One of the more important Pinterest engagement metrics is the number of repins an account receives. This is almost impossible for me to calculate manually as I’d have to look at each pin and tally the numbers for each CVB. This is why I focus mostly on the number of followers and the number of pins. The number of followers can determine an account’s reach while the number of pins shows how active/dedicated the account really is.
As a side note, a few CVBs got a head start and secured their accounts really early in the game. Users followed these accounts even though there was/is little or no activity. This is why I prefer a combination of followers and pins.
It’s no surprise that Visit Savannah is still in the lead in both number of followers and pins. With 12,422 followers, they actually have almost twice the amount of followers of all the other accounts combined (7,151 followers). The second highest is Wyoming Tourism with 775 followers. All the other CVBs have less than 400 followers.
Visit Savannah (1,090 pins) also has over double the amount of pins of any other CVB. The next closest CVB is Visit Salt Lake with 504 pins. Just beyond that are Experience Columbus (442 pins), SeeMonterey (409 pins) and VISIT Milwaukee (399 pins).
Now let’s look a little deeper.…
Many international DMOs have recently started to use Pinterest as another platform to promote their destinations. Since my list was created in mid-February, there has been a significant increase — from 3 to 26 international DMOs on Pinterest, as of March 10.
Of these 26, there are only 10 DMOs that have solid accounts with 75 or more pins. The chart on the right depicts the top 10 international DMOs with the most pins.
Visit Norway is clearly leading the way with 300 pins, 18 boards and 162 followers.
In terms of number of pins, close behind Visit Norway are the following DMOs: Visit Peak District (299 pins, 15 boards), Visit Trentino (284 pins, 18 boards), Visit Melbourne (236 pins, 9 boards), Visit Abu Dhabi (191 pins, 12 boards), Tourism Vancouver (122 pins, 9 boards), Visit Tuscany (117 pins, 8 boards), Calgary (103 pins, 3 boards), Visit Jordan (98 pins, 13 boards) and Visit London (75 pins, 7 boards).
Below that are 7 DMOs with a decent start (23-43 pins each), 4 DMOs with less than 11 pins each and 5 DMOs that have inactive accounts with 0 pins.
In terms of number of followers, Visit Norway is still at the top with 162 followers. 
Behind Visit Norway are the following DMOs: …
As most of you know, I’ve been dealing with mono for the past 11 weeks. It’s been a slow and frustrating recovery but I’m finally at the point where life is almost normal again. In celebration of this milestone, I’ve spent most of the weekend preparing posts for … wait for it ……. Pinterest Week!
What can you expect from me this week? Well I’m starting the week early and ending it late because there are just too many posts to fit in otherwise. These posts are not going to discuss how to use Pinterest because there are already plenty of those available. My Pinterest posts this week will focus on how the tourism industry uses Pinterest as well tips on how to add it to your current social media efforts.
Here’s the breakdown:
Now let’s get started.
The best way to fully understand something is to watch what others are doing. Since most of you are in the tourism industry, you can take a look at the CVBs on Pinterest but you’ll see a lot of accounts that are doing very similar things. That’s great if you just want to fit it but if you want to stand out, you have to look at the bigger picture. Look at what big brands are doing and then tweak that to work for your destination.
I came across this Brands on Pinterest board several weeks ago and fell in love with it. It was actually the inspiration for my CVBs on Pinterest board. According to a recent blog post, there are over 250 brands on Pinterest and Mashable has listed the most-followed brands on Pinterest. Many of the brands that I’ve looked at have little or no activity which is actually a little disappointing to me. However, there are several brand accounts that stand out. …
A lot of destinations are using Pinterest now. In fact, I’ve been tracking 70+ DMOs on the network. To see which destinations are on it, check on this CVBs on Pinterest board.
Our January 19 #tourismchat focused on Pinterest. If you have time, read through the entire transcript. Here are my highlights.
What type of boards do you have?
How often do you pin?
Where are you sourcing your pins?
Are you following back people that follow your boards?…
Pinterest has quickly become one of the fastest growing social networks to date. With over 10 million users, this network should be considered as part of an organization’s social strategy. Want more stats? Check out this Pinterest infographic from Mashable or these demographics.
If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s a virtual pinboard for organizing and collecting photos and videos. I’m not going to go in-depth about how to use Pinterest as Mashable put together a nice Beginner’s Guide and there’s also this massive post with instructions, tips and more demographics.
The facts behind CVBs and destinations on Pinterest
Through my research, I found 34 US destinations and 3 International destinations (Croatia, Cuba [does not appear to be the official DMO] and Jordan) with Pinterest accounts. The following comments and stats will only reflect US destinations and are current as of February 21.
There are a total of 5,013 pins and 390 boards from these 34 US destinations. These accounts have “liked” 764 pins and have a combined following of 14,970 followers.
Pins
Savannah has the highest number of pins (751), followed by Columbus (426), Arkansas (354), Monterey (334) and Lake County, IL (306). There are 16 DMOs that have over 100 pins on their account and 18 DMOs with less than 100 pins. My personal opinion is that an account should have at least 300 pins to be taken as a serious Pinterest user.
Boards
For number of boards, Arkansas takes the lead with 33 boards. Behind them are Monterey and Kissimmee, each with 19 boards, and Phoenix and Fargo-Moorhead, each with 18 boards. There are 14 DMOs with 10-17 boards each and 15 DMOs with less than 10 boards each.
As I was researching, I saw many half-filled boards but did not explore the average number of pins each DMO had on their boards. I think each board should have at least 30 pins in order to be useful to Pinterest users.
Likes
Not all DMOs are “liking” pins on Pinterest. This action is not as strong as a repin but is still an easy way to engage with other Pinterest users. There are three DMOs with over 100 likes: Ohio (198), Monterey (178) and Savannah (140). Mesa is the next closest with 86 likes but the majority of the remaining DMOs have less than 10 likes each. In fact, 13 DMOs have 0 likes.
Followers
Visit Savannah has an astounding 12,114 followers alone, leaving a combined total of 2,856 followers among the other 33 destinations. Don’t think that this means there’s an average of 86 followers per destination. There are 5 DMOs with more than 200 followers: Savannah, Wyoming, Corvallis, Indiana and Columbus.
There are 17 DMOs with less than 50 followers each. Most of these accounts are newer to Pinterest. 5 of these 17 DMOs have more than 100 pins each so even though they’re new, they’re very active.
The mother of all Pinterest boards (for the tourism industry)
If you’re as addicted to Pinterest as I am, take a moment and follow some of these DMOs. I’ve created this CVBs on Pinterest board to help. Each pin links to the CVB’s Pinterest account so following your favorite destinations is easy.…
