Amazon UK doesn’t really bother with Pinterest, though in the UK version of this study it came second behind ASOS, which does make an effort. 

Here’s Amazon UK’s Pinterest board, tumbleweed just out of shot…

Amazon US does make more effort, with 17 boards and 516 pins (by Amazon), though this is a fraction of its product range. 

For example, Walmart and QVC have pinned more than 10,000 products between them. 

What’s clear though, is that, whatever the efforts of these retailers own marketing / social teams in creating boards, the vast majority of the work is done by Pinterest users ‘pinning’ the products. 

Here are the numbers: 

  1. Amazon (pinterest.com/amazon/), 16,360 pins per week, 1,740,314 total pins, 5,637 followers.
  2. Walmart (pinterest.com/walmart/), 5,778 pins per week, 529,992 total pins, 33,337 followers.
  3. Apple (pinterest.com/AAPL/), 3,871 pins per week, 1,111,959 total pins, 1,597 followers.
  4. QVC (pinterest.com/qvc/), 325 pins per week, 54,935 total pins, 42,683 followers.
  5. Staples (pinterest.com/StaplesInc/), 307 pins per week,  17,252 total pins, 2,025 followers. 
  6. Best Buy (pinterest.com/bestbuy/), 281 pins per week, 60,630 total pins, 4,047 followers.
  7. Netflix (pinterest.com/netflix/), 202 pins per week, 7,802 total pins, 445 followers.
  8. Sears (pinterest.com/SearsHC/), 29 pins per week, 1,511 total pins, 190 followers. 
  9. Office Depot (pinterest.com/officedepot/), 27 pins per week, 2,635 total pins, 1,994 followers. 
  10. Dell (pinterest.com/dell/), 9 pins per week, 2,715 total pins, 1,160 followers.

Apple, it will not surprise you, takes the number three slot with very little effort, which reflects its general social media non-strategy, yet its products are being pinned anyway. 

This is not to say that these brands shouldn’t be making more effort on Pinterest to encourage sharing of their products and content.

Several case studies suggest that Pinterest is a valuable source of traffic (and sales) for ecommerce sites, because they are more likely to be in ‘purchase mode’ browsing photos of products than they would be on, say, Facebook or Twitter. 

Perhaps some of these brands should be doing more to curate their own Pinterest boards, making it easier to share with ‘Pin this’ buttons on product pages for instance. Or by using Rich Pins, price alerts or even paid placements. 

For more insight, read our Pinterest for small business guide and take a look at five more brands that are nailing Pinterest.