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How Facebook, Pinterest Compare In Social Commerce

With all the talk about the Facebook IPO, it’s easy to lose sight of the fundamentals. For social networks to succeed long term, they have to provide real value to advertisers and merchants.

Image via CrunchBase

That means ads or commerce that drive meaningful revenue.

Just how do social networks Facebook and Pinterest compare when it comes to social commerce? Online jewelry siteBoticca.com recently released the results of a study it conducted between March 15 and April 15, 2012 comparing engagement and sales of the two social network behemoths. Here’s what they learned:

• Pinterest users spend more. Pinterest users spend an average of $180 as opposed to Facebook users who spend an average of $85. This could be due to a different profile of user—or it could be due to the different natures of the two sites.
• Facebook users are more engaged. Pinterest users spend 65% less time on the site. They spend 70% less time on the Botica site than the average site user.
• Facebook delivers higher conversion rates. Pinterest has 51% lower conversion rates than Facebook, and 73% lower than the site average.
• Pinterest delivers more new users.

Boticca has captured this with an interesting infographic, shown below.

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What does this mean for big brands and entrepreneurs? It means that having a social media presence on all of the major social networks, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, is critical. Companies can’t rely on a single overall channel—they need to have a strong presence across social, search, and other major channels. Then, within each of those channels, they have to have a strong presence on each network within a particular segment.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools available to big brands and entrepreneurs alike that can help you create your social media presence—and track the results. These include products from companies like Buddy Media, HootSuite, and Wildfire, among others.

David Feinleib is a serial entrepreneur and adviser. He’s currently involved with Speechpad, the leader in Video SEO transcription, Onepo.st, a reposting site that helps you increase your social media popularity, and SendHub, a Y Combinator company that provides messaging services for organizations.