Teen Site PopCosmo Grows Traffic with Pinterest

Pinterest has quickly become famous for driving massive amounts traffic to blogs and websites. In September, Shareaholic reported “Pinterest sent more traffic than Yahoo organic traffic and is now the fourth largest traffic source in the world.” For the mother-daughter team behind the popular teen lifestyle website, PopCosmo, Pinterest is more than just a crush.

PopCosmo was born when Chloe moved with her family to Louisville, Kentucky. She was starting high school in a new city and with her mom, Kim, they came up with an idea for new website. The original premise was to simply be about what teens could do in Louisville but, that simple concept grew into much more.

Kim describes PopCosmo as “a trend spotting website bringing teen girls the latest in fashion, beauty, DIY, and lifestyle both nationally and locally.” Fashion, beauty and DIY? Sounds like it Pinterest and PopCosmo were a match made in heaven.

They are leveraging social media to grow their website, and can be found on many social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Chloe, the teen powerhouse (she used to compete in triathlons) behind PopCosmo, manages the Pinterest account. Pinterest has had a big impact on their success. According to Kim, “Pinterest accounts for almost 1/2 of our referral traffic and about 20 % of overall traffic. When a Pin goes viral, it can alter our web stats for months.”

This post has been pinned over an amazing 380,000 times directly from their website. That’s not including likes or repins that also bring traffic back to the site.

This post about customizing notebooks has been pinned over 4,000 times.

Their marshmallow pop tutorial has been pinned over 1,000 times.

I asked Kim and Chloe if they noticed a difference between teen users and adult users on Pinterest. They said ” Teens pin a lot but, they also like the same thing adults like: recipes, room ideas, wedding ideas. Of course there are pins that are more teen-specific like teen fashion, prom and teen trends.”

The Secret to Pinterest Success

When asked how they make their content pinnable to Pinterest, Kim said “It’s just having a good image that is interesting to people, plus content to back it up when people click through to our site we are able to keep them engaged . Our bounce rate from Pinterest referrals is only 3%, which means we are giving our readers what they expect when they come to our site.”

Kim’s advice to to bloggers and businesses using Pinterest is “Pin what you love and people who like the same thing will find you and spread the word.”

I 100% agree with Kim. Here are a few things I’ve noticed that might have also contributed to their success:

• The images are bright and colorful.
• The images are large enough for pins (theirs are 500px wide).
• They have the Pin it and other social sharing buttons on the website.
• They appeal to the DIY nature of many Pinterest users.
• The images or wording used in the images tells what the post is about.

Do you have a Pinterest story you’d like to share? Is there a site you have begun to follow just because of Pinterest? Let me know in the comments below.