Stephanie Huizar | @steffhuizar

Influencer marketing has enormously increased in the last year. It is a form of marketing attracting popular users with large social media followings in a marketing campaign. Most social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat already connect brands with influencers. Pinterest is stepping up their game by creating an influencer marketplace.

Pin Collective is a new feature that connects brands to influencers. Pin Collective is made up of hand selected publishers, production shops and individuals which will work precisely with brands on their Pinterest campaigns.  According to Pinterest, PureWow, Refinery29, Brit + Co and Tastemade are Pinterest’s publisher partners. Gary Arndt (travel), Peter Lombardi (photography/design), Amanda Holstein (millennial advice), Kyla Herbes (home design), and Sarah Barnes (food) are the service’s independent creators. The production shops are Monent Studio, McBeard, The Mill and loop88.

Pinterest is trying to make it easy for marketers to advertise. They are creating an ecosystem that helps small and large marketers create unique, inspiring pins no matter their budget. “Our goal is to help brands get what they need to produce content that’s optimized for Pinterest’s visual format and Pinners’ unique behavior,” said Pinterest creative strategist, Nikki Bazzani.

Pin Collective gives brands more power to create viral pins, buyable pins and promote pins with videos. Pin Collective is a win-win for both marketers and Pinterest, because it will bring more engagement and more money to Pinterest.

Pinterest will not be paying the creators, Pinterest is strictly the matchmaker. Therefore, brands will directly negotiate with the creators and brands will pay creators directly.

Pinterest said they are seeing immense results already. Albertsons teamed up with lifestyle blogger and creator of Lavin Label, Monica Lavin, to help Albertsons with their holiday campaign. “Partnering with Lavin Label gave us the opportunity to take a more sophisticated approach to creative.” said VP of Social and Digital Marketing at Albertsons Companies, Karl Meinhardt. “It also freed up resources on our end to focus more time on holiday planning and strategy.”

What is your insight on this new feature? Tweet us @socialmediadel and let us know!