Pinterest Vs. Instagram: Which one for your Business?

Curious about the key differences between Pinterest and Instagram and which one you should use for your business? Well, you might be surprised by this, but they are extremely different platforms, which means the results you see from each are also very different.

You’re here because you want to know how to reach your business goals, which most likely fall under one or more of the following categories:

• Brand awareness
• Traffic
• Lead generation
• Sales
• Retention
• More sales

First, I’ll walk you through the major differences between Instagram and Pinterest, and then what platform I recommend for you to reach your business goals.

This is sooo important to understand, so you don’t end up falling into the black hole of constant posting without reaching your core goals.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Pinterest Vs. Instagram: Key Differences

1. Statistics

Here is a breakdown of the high-level stats of Pinterest and Instagram in 2026.

Source: Social Sprout 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report

2. Social Media Vs. Search Engine

Both Instagram and Pinterest are highly visual platforms, so you need to make sure the quality of your posts and pins is bang on.

The key difference between the two…

• Instagram is a social network
• Pinterest is a visual search engine

With Instagram, people discover content that the algorithm shows them. This is based on:

• Who they follow
• The type of content they interact with most.
  • Interactions include: length of video views, likes, saves, comments, shares, etc.

The key difference with Pinterest is that people go to Pinterest with some action in mind. They are looking for ideas, inspiration and solutions.

Examples of things they might be seeking…

• Fine line tattoo inspiration
• How to plan a cut flower garden
• A printable habit tracker
• Finding ways to make money with a website
• How to start a blog
• Table setting inspiration for a small wedding
• Discovering the best free blogging courses
• Mother’s Day gift ideas
• 30 minute dinner ideas
• The list goes on and on

3. User Intent

When we talk about user intent, it is literally how people intend to use each platform.

To keep things straight to the point…

• Instagram users intend to scroll to kill time or find inspiration (depending on who they follow).
• Pinterest users intend to search, find answers and inspiration so they can ultimately take action on something.

Due to this intent, their behaviour on each platform is quite different…

4. User Behaviour

Pinterest users do a lot of different things on Pinterest, including:

• Searching for specific topics
• Saving pins to relevant boards so come back to later
• Clicking on pins to leave Pinterest and read content, sign up for lead magnets & make purchases
• Following accounts
• Comment on pins
• Like pins
• Create interest boards on a ton of different topics
• Organize their boards into subcategories
• Make collages

Pinterest is a platform that enables users to interact with published content (pins), but also get creative and create a space that’s enjoyable to come back to again and again.

Instagram users, on the other hand, mainly:

• Follow accounts
• Scroll, like, and comment
• Read DMs

They are able to save posts, but it’s not very straightforward to access these.

Instagram users also don’t leave the platform as frequently as Pinterest users, down to the way the platform is built (i.e. no outbound links on posts allowed).

5. Followers

On Instagram, followers 100% matter. If you want to get your posts in front of more eyeballs, you need followers.

On Pinterest, followers matter much less.

Why? Pinterest is a search engine and the Pinterest algorithm wants to serve the most relevant content to users (just like Google does).

Due to this, I’ve seen many accounts with a small number of followers have significant engagement (saves & outbound clicks).

This means you can drive a significant amount of organic traffic even with a small follower count.

6. Engagement

Engagement matters significantly on both Pinterest and Instagram. The key difference is that engagement on each platform leads to different outcomes.

Engagement on Instagram:

Instagram engagement means people viewing, sharing and saving your posts, reels or stories. 

The more an account’s followers do this, the more Instagram will push out a piece of content to more of your followers.

The Goal of Instagram: keep people on the platform and serve them more and more and more of the content they engage with.

Engagement on Pinterest:

Important engagement on Pinterest is saves and outbound clicks (clicks to your website, shop, YouTube, etc). 

The Goal of Pinterest: Serve up relevant pins to an audience so they can take action and build trust. The audience gets what they want, so they come back to Pinterest.

>> THIS is why there is such a massive opportunity for businesses – Pinterest helps you get your content in front of the right people (your target customer), as long as you follow Pinterest’s best practices

7. Consistency

Both Instagram and Pinterest require consistency, especially when you are growing your channels/profiles, however…

To see any results on Instagram, you need to show up daily, posting reels and stories – but even then, results can be limited. 

You’ll get likes and perhaps comments, but how is this directly building your business? 

If you use software like Manychat, you can get some people on your email list by sending a lead magnet. However, given that user intent on Instagram is mainly to scroll/escape, you wouldn’t see the same outcome as Pinterest users who are actively searching for a solution.

Therefore, the conversion rate from Pinterest is naturally higher.

To see results on Pinterest, you also need to be consistent, but the actual number of times you need to pin varies greatly depending on your business goals. 

I’ve seen many people (my clients included), pin just 3 times a week and consistently drive consistent growing traffic and email sign-ups.

The best part about Pinterest, however, is that once you get the Pinterest engine working for your business, if you go on a vacation, get sick, or don’t pin as much in some weeks, this doesn’t mean your results will go down. 

Why is this? It’s all about the life of a pin, which I explain in the next section…

8. Life of a Post/Pin

Let’s look at the lifespan of Instagram posts vs. Pinterest pins.

In 2026, an Instagram post typically has a lifespan of about 18 hours, while the lifespan of a Pinterest pin is 4 months to 1 year+.

Now, a 4-month lifespan of a pin is very conservative, as I have pins that drive evergreen content for me every single year that I created years ago.

In fact, according to a recent Tailwind study, 60% of total saves are from pins that are over 1 year old.

Why do pins last so long on Pinterest?

• People can find the pins over time, and if the right person saves the pin, it can pick back up and begin driving more traffic.
• Pinterest users search very early on, especially for holidays like Christmas and Halloween and content that is seasonal. They’ll start pinning this content 4 months before the actual time. So, older content that performed well a year ago or 2 years ago, will pick back up.

Example:

The pin below (top row), was created and uploaded to Pinterest on April 27, 2017, and in the past 30 days, it drove 325 clicks to my website.

The pin in the second row was pinned by someone else (from my website) and it has received 238 clicks to my website in the past 30 days. That totals 563 clicks to my website for a pin I uploaded 9 years ago! WooWee!!!

Key piece of info – this is not an anomaly – this is to be expected with Pinterest 🙂

How is this possible?

Multiple versions of my original pin have been created by people pinning directly from my website.

I use a WordPress plugin for this, which not only allows people to share my pin, it also uses the exact pin title and pin description that I want to use.

Unfortunately, without this plugin, sharing a pin just pulls the title of your post + alt text, which wouldn’t be set up to optimize for Pinterest success.

So, I’ve been using the Tasty Pins plugin for years now, wich has really contributed to expanding my reach on Pinterest. Check out my review of the WP Tasty plugin to see how it works.

9. Video Content

Video is such a massive focus these days, especially after TikTok took center stage in 2020.. So, most of us assume that we all need to become video creators. Do we, though? 

Let’s take a look at Instagram vs. Pinterest…

Instagram: Video is a must

As we’ve all seen, video is basically mandatory if you want to see some engagement with your audience. Just look at your feed and see if you can find any static posts? I can’t.

Yes, carousels are also doing very well on Pinterest, but video is still a priority for the algorithm.

Pinterest: Static image pins are the focus (Say no to video)

I do not recommend video to people who want to grow their business account for business. 

Why? Because most people repurpose video from Instagram or TikTok and the problem with this is that Pinterest users are different. They want to take action and the videos that 

10. Results

Earlier, we discussed user behaviour, and due to this behaviour, the expected results on Pinterest vs. Instagram are quite different.

Instagram Results

Instagram is a great place to build your brand and connect with your community. And due to solutions like ManyChat, more creators are able to grow their email list by promoting lead magnets on Instagram.

The main issue many businesses have with Instagram is the ROI isn’t there. For all the time spent creating content and posting, traffic is tiny and leads can be hit or miss.

Pinterest Results

Pinterest is ideal for people who want to maximize their website traffic and email subscribers. Most content-heavy sites that use Pinterest see their top 2 traffic drivers as Google and Pinterest.

This makes sense as Pinterest and Google are both search engines. This means people actively searching and clicking to find what they are looking for.

11. Monetizing Your Traffic

For those of you who want to monetize the traffic on your websites, traffic from Pinterest has the highest RPMs (revenue per thousand impressions) compared to all other platforms.

See example from my Mediavine dashboard…

(Note: these RPM numbers will differ based on your niche and the time of year – RPMs are always highest in Q4).

This means that the more traffic you get from Pinterest to your website, the more money you will make. 

Why will advertisers pay more money for their ads to get in front of Pinterest users?

It all goes back to user intent and behaviour, like we talked about earlier. 

These people are intending to TAKE ACTION (sorry for yelling 😉 ) – but this gets me excited! This means they are further down your sales funnel (more likely to buy) from the very beginning. 

Pinterest users are naturally warmer leads – making it easier to get them to sign up for a lead magnet, get on your email list and buy from you.

When it comes to making money on Pinterest, they also have shoppable posts (pins) that are highly successful with eCommerce businesses.

Which is the Ideal Platform Based on Your Business Goals?

Pinterest and Instagram serve different purposes in your marketing strategy, so let’s break down which platform you should focus on for your business goals.

Choosing whether Pinterest or Instagram is better for you depends on a few key factors:

1. Your business goals, as mentioned earlier
2. Whether you create content on your website or YouTube channel (or if you’re willing to)
3. What your business niche/industry is

Now, let’s take a look at specific business goals…

Brand Awareness

It’s a tie: Pinterest and Instagram

For brand awareness, I think both platforms are good, however, the type of brand awareness is a little different.

With Pinterest, brand awareness is based on users engaging with your content (your pins) on and off of Pinterest.

People get used to seeing your pins and saving them. They’ll end up following you and landing on your website, shop, and signing up for your email list.

Brand awareness on Instagram is all about staying on the platform. You connect people to your brand by sharing reels and stories, but the chance of them ending up on your website or shop to go deeper is less common.

Traffic

First place: Pinterest (Instagram fell behind Google, your email list, Bing and referrals – kinda like my track and field races in elementary school – I was Instagram, coming in at the very end lol)

I’ve managed many Google Analytics accounts for my clients over the years and have directly seen a recurring theme…

No matter how many times people post to Instagram, Pinterest will ALWAYS the clear winner and drive 50x to 100x more traffic. Now, this is if they were using Pinterest’s best practices for success, or I was managing their Pinterest account.

I’ve seen this time and time again for people who post to Instagram 5 to 7 days a week, even multiple times a day – and their pinning to Pinterest is about 3 times a week.

This is because Pinterest wants people to find what they are looking for, while Instagram just wants you to fall into the ether of mega doom-scrolling.

Lead Generation

First place: Pinterest

Due to Pinterest being a visual search engine, you can get more signups for your lead magnets on Pinterest. Yes, this is even if you have a low number of followers. 

Why? Because people will actively search for your lead magnet.

When people are searching, they want to take action, which is signing up for your lead magnet on the spot, or saving your lead magnet as part of their research and coming back to it later.

Tip: Do some research on Pinterest in advance to come up with your lead magnet idea.

Afterall if you create a lead magnet before you know if people actually want it, this will obviously affect your sign-up results.

👉 Here is an example of one of my lead magnets on Pinterest: Free Pinterest Templates + Canva Tutorial Video

To do some research, start in the search bar with these terms to find ideas:

• Free printable
• Free template
• And then you can make your way through the alphabet
  • For example… ‘free printable a’ will come up with free printable art, free printable adult coloring pages, free printable advent calendar, free printable alphabet worksheets.
• Name of your potential idea – example ‘meal plan’

When you do this, the Pinterest search bar will autopopulate with the most popular search results (keywords) that people are currently using.

This is a clear sign that creating a lead magnet about one of these autopopulated words is a good idea.

Final Thoughts

As you may be able to tell, I am a Pinterest fan – both professionally and personally. 

The main reason Pinterest has been a priority in my business is that driving consistent traffic has always been a goal of mine.

Pinterest has allowed me to:

• Work with Mediavine for the past 7 years, making a strong 5-figure income from ads alone
• Grow my email list to over 20K subscribers
• Generate an average of 500 leads every month
• Provide Pinterest Management, SEO and Design services to help my clients reach their biz goals
• Take vacations without posting and still make good money from Pinterest every month
• Launch a Pinterest Workshop (see details below) to teach my Pinterest strategies, so you too can reap the benefits of Pinterest as your go-to traffic driver.

Most of all, I love Pinterest because it allows me to reach my business goals without burning out posting 7 days a week.

• If you want more content like this, follow me on Pinterest.
• Also, check out my other Pinterest account for my Personal Growth website.

When it comes to Instagram…

I have 2 accounts, but I don’t post much, however I am trying to post a little more these days as I enjoy it from a creative perspective.

It doesn’t meet my ROI needs, but I do plan on experimenting with it more to see if I can share any interesting results with you.

• For digital marketing content, follow me here.
• To connect with my personal growth content, you can find me here.

Tell Me: What Are Your Thoughts on Pinterest Vs. Instagram?

Leave a comment below and let me know your experience when it comes to driving traffic, growing your email list and connecting with your audience.

More Digital Marketing Resources:

• Pinterest Marketing Starter Guide – Free eBook!
• Free Pinterest Templates for Canva
• 5 Types of Lead Magnets + 55 Examples To Grow Your List
• 15 Ways To Promote Your Blog for Free