There’s been a lot of hype about Pinterest lately from online marketers which is no doubt well deserved.  Pinterest is the newest and hottest social networking tool out there now and you don’t want to be left wondering how you missed the Pinterest train.

While you can get results just by blogging useful content to your viewers, by marketing your content on the web in places where your viewers live you can supercharge your content marketing program.  The Internet is full lurkers, with 90% of all viewers on the web falling into the “Lurker” category.  The trick is how to draw them out to become your advocates.  And one answer could be Pinterest, where viewing, pinning and re-pinning is so effortless, rewarding and essential to the experience of Pinterest, that lurking behavior seems to be minimized.

We have a client who has been engaging in content marketing, blogging and utilizing other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter since summer of 2010.  Their program results showed improvement month over month with a slow and steady climb.  By the end of their first year, they had the expected growth patterns and rates for the main KPI’s we watch.

Then 18 months into their program they had some photos from a handful of their blog posts go viral on Pinterest.  Their referral traffic went through the roof, increasing by over 4,500% in just a few months before dropping to a more consistent level.  So far, referral traffic in year 2 is on average more than 2,600% higher than in the first year of the program, based mostly on the affects of sharing their blog content in Pinterest.

But more interesting is the lasting impact the increases in referral traffic had on organic search.  While the viral content has spiked and now moderated, the organic traffic continues to grow.   The organic traffic is currently more than double what we saw before the Pinterest traffic spike began and averaging more than 700% higher in year 2 vs. year 1.

Above is just one example, we’ve seen this pattern in several clients who have experienced spikes in organic traffic in the months following a spike in referral traffic from Pinterest.

It’s early yet, just as the popularity of Pinterest is still fairly new, but I’m interested to continue watching this trend and how popularity in Pinterest impacts your content marketing initiatives over the coming months.