The Daily Mail beats rivals to achieve most pins on Pinterest

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Posted 16 October 2012 11:39am by David Moth with 1 comment

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As readership and ad revenues continue to decline, national newspapers are searching for new ways to attract visits to their sites and monetise content.

Social media has proved to be a great source of traffic, with The Guardian predicting earlier this year that Facebook would soon drive more visits to its site than search.

Furthermore, many publishers use social blogging platform Tumblr to extend their audience by sharing their most interesting short-form content.

So it's not surprising to find out that many of the UK's top newspapers have also established Pinterest accounts.

Analysis by search and social analytics company Searchmetrics shows that eight out of the top 13 UK newspapers have official accounts, though some are for sport or celebrity sections rather than the main newspaper.

• The Guardian has attracted the most followers (2,258).
• The Telegraph is next with 1,502.  
• The Daily Mail has just 322 followers.

It may have fewer followeres, but the Daily Mail's content is pinned by other users far more often than its rivals. It has gained 2m pins compared to 429,137 for The Telegraph and 329,720 for The Guardian.

It's not that surprising to see The Mail Online gaining so many shares on Pinterest as a majority of its content is celebrity gossip and fashion news.

The articles rely on eye-catching images to keep people on-site, which is also perfect fodder for sharing on Pinterest.

A previous Searchmetrics study found that The Mail Online performs equally well on Google+, receiving an average of 10,493 +1s per week, compared to 5,822 for the Telegraph and 3,367 for the Guardian.

Looking at individual stories, the most pinned page identified in the Searchmetrics study of the newspaper sites was a feature on how to make a baby's swaddle blanket (53,638 pins) from Guardian.co.uk. 

Second and third place are taken by DailyMail.co.uk with an article and photograph of the Duchess of Cambridge in a teal dress gown at the London Olympic Gala concert (52,813 pins) and a feature on how to get thin thighs in 30 days (45,811 pins).