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Facebook has been losing traffic and sales since the 2012 holidays, while Pinterest has been steadily trending upward.

Facebook’s share of traffic hit 92 percent in mid-December, then plummeted to 69 percent in the week leading up to Easter. Pinterest has grown from 6 percent to 25 percent in that time. Also in mid-December, at the peak of the holiday shopping season, Facebook’s market share of sales hit 89 percent, then fell to 78 percent by Easter. Pinterest grew from 10 percent to 21 percent in that same period.

the fundamental differences in how people use Facebook and Pinterest make the latter a better option for commerce. She likened Facebook ads to a marketer pitching wares while users are having conversations with friends, while Pinterest is more like window shopping at a store that the user chooses.

Companies currently spend 8.4% of their marketing budgets on social media, and that’s expected to grow to 21.6% in the next five years.

Pinterest has a higher concentration of people who are in a ‘buy’ state of mind, while Facebook users are more interested in interacting with friends - and brands. (According to Paul Adams, Facebook’s global head of brand design, Facebook’s strength is relationship-building, noting that many lightweight interactions over time can help promote brands.)

Pinterest traffic spent 60% more than did traffic coming from Facebook. Pinterest traffic converted to a sale 22% more than Facebook. Facebook traffic bounced 90% of the time, compared to 75% for Pinterest. Facebook users viewed an average of 1.6 pages. Pinterest users saw an average of 2.9 pages – an 81% difference.

In February, comScore reported that the site had passed 10 million monthly unique users faster than any standalone site ever.

But numbers from third-party sources like Facebook app tracking service, AppData, are pinning a slightly different picture on the image and link-sharing site. Pinterest’s monthly active users on Facebook — or the number that has connected to Facebook over the past thirty days — have dropped to 8.3 million, from around 12.2 million a month ago when the site did a major redesign. Daily Active Users are also down but not by as much: on April 21 they were 930,000, from 1.1 million on March 22.

A couple other sources including Google search trends, Compete and mobile app tracker App Annie are also showing a picture of decelerating growth

We don’t allow schemes that buy and sell Pins or pay people per Pin, follow, etc. We know that some popular Pinners have relationships with approved affiliate networks or participate in paid social media campaigns, and that’s still okay, as long as they’re not being compensated for each action on Pinterest. So if you're in a deal to earn $1 every time you pin a corporation's products, you're out of luck. But if you’re a highly influential blogger in a five-figure partnership with a brand, making money is A-OK. Here's more: A business can pay someone to help them put together a board that represents their brand. For example, it’s okay for a guest blogger to curate a board for a local boutique’s profile. We don’t allow that boutique to pay the blogger to Pin products to her own boards. A person can be given commission by an approved affiliate network. For example, it’s okay for a blogger to get paid when someone purchases a product that blogger has Pinned. However, we don’t allow the blogger to be paid just to Pin. In other words, Pinterest isn’t trying to keep brands or bloggers from making money. It just doesn't want anyone paid for filling up its network with garbage images.

“[Pinterest] will be a tremendous type of ad unit—truly based on your interests as a person,” Gupta said. “In a traditional demographic based ad, I might give you an ad for camping equipment because you’re 25 to 35 and male. But on Pinterest, I’d advertise it because you’re pinning a lot of camping equipment. I don’t care that you’re actually 55. I know you’ll be a buyer.”

It’s clear that Pinterest is simply trying to keep its content authentic, not transactional. But when you’re weighing that against a billion dollar valuation, the company has to move carefully.

the percentage of adults using the social networks of Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter or Instagram to communicate with each other is now at 73%, and Facebook — the world’s largest social network with 1.19 billion users — remains the most popular in the U.S., with 71% of U.S. adults using it.

That’s four percentage points up from last year’s 67%

inkedIn — site that bills itself as the “professional” social network focused on networking, job hunting and professional information and news — is hanging on at number-two, with 22% of U.S. adults using it — up 2% on last year. Close behind it is Pinterest — which has vaulted over Twitter to number-three position with 21% usage.

I contend Pinterest as a service is best conceived of as a mood board for the company image. It isn’t a place to broadcast specifics or a way to run contests. It’s not that these are impossible, but Twitter and Facebook are better suited. Pinterest is a forum to communicate a brand’s identity, values, and personality. A place to build trust and affinity with consumers. Surprisingly, it might be the best single channel for communicating brand essence that exists today.

Opt for fewer, broadly categorized boards rather than many narrow ones. I have 5 boards total, and just one called "designed," instead of art, product design, graphic design, typography, advertising, and logos. Broad categories give your boards greater variety, and variety equals engagement.

In my experience, following people doesn't really get you followers on Pinterest. This is anecdotal, but I don't think many users do the auto-follow-back thing - that’s more of a Twitter phenomenon.

Pinterest has beaten out Yahoo organic traffic, making Pinterest the fourth largest traffic driver worldwide

Google, Yahoo, and Bing organic traffic decreased by 15.63% on average since January, which the firm speculates may indicate more people are discovering content through social sites like Pinterest.

it could also be because Shareaholic’s data, which comes from a network of 200,000 publishers using its social sharing and content analysis tools, is more likely to reflect an engaged community where people are comfortable with using social networking sites to perform searches. In other words, it’s not a big picture study here – just a slice.

Pinterest, the web's fastest growing content-sharing platform

The It Girl of social networking isn't just full of mason jars and wedding dresses—as the most repinned material from 2013 shows, Pinterest is a place to plan travel, learn about tech, find workout inspiration, and bookmark the cars of your dreams, too.

Seventy percent of brand engagement on the social scrapbooking platform is driven by users—that is, users pinning brand content outside of brands' own Pinterest accounts—versus only 30 percent generated by brands pinning something that users repin, comment on or otherwise interact with.

fashion/retail brands that see 82 percent of their engagement come straight from the community. Meanwhile, auto brands saw 75 percent of their engagement from the community, and electronics brands saw a more even-keeled 53 percent engagement from the community.

Brands that want to join those conversations should create images that users will want to share.

Though Facebook is still the most popular social network among teens, their enthusiasm for Mark Zuckerberg's network is decreasing, according to new findings from the Pew Research Center. Pew reports that 77% of online teens (ages 12-17) surveyed use Facebook. But while Pew's findings show that teens view Facebook participation as important for socializing, they have "waning enthusiasm for Facebook," as explained in the video above. The report cites teens' dislike for over-sharing and stressful "drama" on the social network. Teens also don't like the fact that more and more adults are joining Facebook, although Pew found that 7 in 10 teens are Facebook friends with their parents.

Pew found 24% of online teens use Twitter, an increase from 16% in 2011

Outside of Twitter and Facebook, teens don't have as much of an online presence. In 2012, 11% of teen social media users used Instagram, while Tumblr (5%), Google+ (3%) and Pinterest (1%) drew in even fewer teens.

As user trends continue to shift from search to discovery, creating the structure and process to support that discovery requires a sophisticated content strategy.

Instead of requiring users to categorize each board they create, however, Pinterest’s strategy is to involve other users. When someone comes across an uncategorized board, they’re asked to help by selecting one of the 32 categories from a dropdown.  So while Pinterest gives its user community a lot of free reign when it comes to naming and organizing content, this strategy is supported by well-placed guidance to help the community improve the quality and reliability of the content. Pinterest strikes a balance between flexibility and structure by involving users in enhancing site categorization while lowering the barrier to entry for users who would rather not spend their time categorizing.

Promoting older but still relevant content. Creating and promoting new content is important, but leading users to older content may also be part of your content strategy.

To which social media brands do consumers feel the most attachment? Facebook ranked number one in a Brand Dependence Social Media Survey conducted by UTA Brand Studio

And we're not talking about "liking," apparently. To clarify, attachment, which is at the core of Brand Dependence research methodology, refers to the degree to which consumers believe a brand is like themselves and the degree to which thoughts and feelings about a brand come to mind,

Facebook was followed by Instagram, then YouTube, Pinterest and Reddit in the February 2014 survey of 2,006 U.S. adults aged 18 and up.

Search traffic to publishers has taken a dive in the last eight months, with traffic from Google dropping more than 30% from August 2012 through March 2013, according to research done by BuzzFeed. While Google makes up the bulk of search traffic to publishers, traffic from all search engines has dropped by 20% in the same period.

Of the three major search engines — Google, Yahoo and Bing — only Yahoo saw growth in this period. While Yahoo grew search traffic in this period, it sent 21M referrals to publishers in March, less than half of the 48M referrals sent by Google. Traffic from Bing dropped 12%.

In the past, we've reported how referrals from social platforms like Facebook to the BuzzFeed Network were growing, and at times sending more traffic than search. While that difference was at times marginal — 5 to 10M referrals — its now sustained and significant. In March, Facebook sent 1.5x more traffic than Google, the greatest difference we've ever measured between the platforms. At the same time, we've watched traffic from other social platforms — Twitter and Pinterest -—continue to grow an audience and drive traffic traffic to publishers. "Dark social," that netherland of direct traffic, is also accelerating on the network, growing referral traffic to publishers by 52% over the past twelve months. By comparison, referrals from social platforms, i.e. the Facebooks, Twitters, Pinterests and Reddits of the world, grew by 25%. It begs the question, could direct traffic be taking the place of search?

Marketing strategies will maintain their mediocre successes as long as we keep expecting engagement and loyalty from our customers without giving them the same consideration. However, by investing time and resources to develop great gobs of gorgeous content with compelling, interesting messages worth sharing, the scales will tip, the pendulum will swing. 

Make transmedia your best friend.  Get the most value out of investing in content by including multiple platforms and varied content around singular campaigns. During the planning phase, consider the different ways to connect to your audience and decide ahead of time to develop and integrate several of these platforms into your approach. Behind-the-scenes still shots at a video shoot can be published to Instagram, and money-saver tips used as website copy can be turned into a series of illustrated JPEGs and posted to Pinterest. Of course, it’s not necessary to always use every platform, but it is necessary to consider each platform.