I’ve been working on some extensive analysis lately on the business owners and operators we’ve studied over the years. Since 2012, we’ve polled and cataloged over 63,000 of my fellow entrepreneurs and CEOs, looking at their media habits, lifestyle, and a gazillion other things. I’ll be sharing the highlights from that research in the coming days.
In the meantime, I had to share one quick discovery I made last night. It blew me away, even though it makes sense the more I think about it.
So, I was analyzing social network usage among business owners. (Note: I didn’t include LinkedIn – which is a ‘professional’ not ‘social’ networking site, regardless of whether it sends me annoying birthday reminders). It should come as no surprise that business owners tend to use social media at a rate higher than the average population. They tend to be more tech and media savvy in general.
But something really surprised me: Pinterest seriously over-indexes in popularity among business owners and operators. Check it out.
Business Owners and Pinterest, By the Numbers
In the past calendar year, our data tell us that 26% of U.S. adults have used Pinterest, but that number jumps to 30% among our entrepreneur respondents. See for yourself:
Explained inversely, a Pinterest user is 22% more likely than an average U.S. adult to be a business owner. That’s slightly higher than Twitter users and higher than Facebook users, who don’t over-index as business owners at all (Note:Â Facebook is a far more ubiquitous platform and it’s harder to move big numbers).
Why Was I So Surprised?
First, I knew that the gender make-up of Pinterest is roughly three-to-one female based on our latest research. I also knew that business owners are more likely to be men than women. Statistically, this should add up to a Pinterest user-base that under-indexes as business owners. But nope. As it turns out, not only are female members of Pinterest more likely than non-members to be business owners; the male members of Pinterest are MUCH (40%) more likely than non-Pinterest-member males to be business owners. Who knew?
Second, I just assumed Twitter would blow Pinterest away. It seems every entrepreneur I know is on Twitter, while my primary experience with Pinterest is coming up with recipes for my daughter and I to bake together. But that just shows how little I know. And, while I don’t have the data to prove it, I wonder if the ‘discovery’ nature of Pinterest simply attracts the creative, adventurous types of people who become entrepreneurs in the first place – people who are always looking for new ideas and inspiration. That’s my hypothesis anyway.
So What?
What this all means is that while Facebook may reach a larger absolute number of business owners – or anyone for that matter – if you threw a water balloon into a group of Pinterest users, you’d have a better chance of hitting a business owner than anywhere else. Just something to think about if you’re in the B2B marketing realm. I probably wouldn’t have considered it before.