Case Study: BuzzFeed achieves long-term mobile-driven traffic growth and 10x more saved Pins with Pinterest

BuzzFeed - Customer Case Study

BuzzFeed, the digital media publisher, set out to grow awareness and drive website traffic through social referrals, with a focus on Pinterest. They needed to understand Pinterest’s unique, long-tail traffic patterns (more than half of Pinterest-driven visits go to posts older than two months), the different behaviors between highly saved vs. highly clicked Pins, and how to optimize for a mostly mobile audience (77% of Pinterest visits).

BuzzFeed experimented with new content categories, designed Pinterest-ready tall images and strong Pin descriptions, and added prominent Save buttons and follow widgets—including showing the Save button over images in the mobile app. The changes paid off: Pinterest became their second-largest social referrer, a 2012 DIY post alone drove over 2.3M views from Pinterest, saved Pins increased 10x, and the platform delivered both immediate and long-tail traffic that now informs their editorial and product strategy.

BuzzFeed

Dao Nguyen

Vice President of Growth and Data