Change is certainly the only thing that is constant among all social media networks. You can’t afford to grow comfortable with the way things are because today’s Facebook may look different next year — or even next month.

The same goes for Pinterest. The founders keep arguing that this website is a search engine, but everyone else keeps calling it a social media network. Whatever you call it, Pinterest has changed as well.

If you haven’t been using Pinterest, this post will help you to get started. If you’ve been on Pinterest for some time, you’ll learn about changes that have recently occurred.

We’re Part of a Visual Social Web

Social media has been trending toward a visual social web for the past several years. Take Instagram for example. It’s entirely visual. Tumblr has transitioned increasingly to a visual media website.

It was rumoured when Facebook purchased Instagram years ago that the move was made to compete with Pinterest. And Twitter recently began accommodating large images in its newsfeed.

What’s happening?

“Researchers found that colored visuals increased people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80%.” – James Mawhinney, HubSpot.com

What the above quote and the research Mawhinney refers to tell us is that If you don’t use images in your marketing, you’re making a mistake. Pictures improve engagement with your readers on social media and bring traffic to your website and dedicated readers.

For example, if you write insightful blog posts, but you aren’t incorporating images into the posts, you may be losing valuable readers who, over time, would purchase your books and retain you for any services you offer, such as editing.

In the same blog post, Mawhinney goes on to say this, “Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without relevant images.”

The importance of images is what makes Pinterest an essential part of your marketing.

A Closer Look at Pinterest

One of the beauties of Pinterest is that you can pin images from your website to a dedicated pinboard, and thus enjoy increased traffic to your blog, website or other landing pages.

Take a look at the people who are using Pinterest. Source: SproutSocial

• As of February 2015, 71% of Pinterest’s users were women.
• Men are a growing demographic on Pinterest. One-third of sign-ups is now coming from men. “…more men use the platform in the U.S. every month than read Sports Illustrated, and GQ combined.”
• Pinterest is increasingly mobile. Seventy-five percent of Pinterest usage occurs on mobile devices. 45% of users are from outside the U.S. (September 2015).
• Users are avid online shoppers.
• Millennials are avid users.

Other sources indicate that its consumer base is international (think book sales in India), and that is has a broad consumer base of Millenials (those born between the early 1980s and the early 2000s).

This is a guest post by Frances Caballo. Frances is an author, podcaster and social media strategist and manager for writers. You can read the full post and more on her blog, Social Media Just for Writers.