Brands favoring other social platforms over Pinterest could be missing out on a big opportunity to connect with customers, according to Pinfluencer.

The Pinterest analytics and marketing company revealed that 50 brands, which ran promotions on the platform, boosted their follower acquisition rates by 156 percent and pins per day by 125 percent. Pinfluencer launched in private beta in October.

Although somewhat biased — the company is built around the platform — Pinfulencer believes Pinterest is an ideal environment for marketers looking to launch contents, among other marketing strategies. Another company, JetSetter, launched a scavenger hunt that generated 7 million impressions of the company’s pins.

“Pinterest contests are fun and creative,” Sharad Verma, Pinfluencer’s chief executive told VentureBeat. “They’re very open-ended, not forcing you to do something you wouldn’t want to do. You simply pin products from a website.”

In turn, that generates a lot of attention, clickthroughs, and sales, whereas Facebook, for example, is about “conversation and brand awareness.” Of course, neither of those are bad things, but the social network is struggling with how brand messages are received across the site.

If you’re interested in combining efforts, Pinfluencer enables you to host contests through a Facebook tab, converting your fans into frequent pinners on Pinterest. But before you take the plunge, we recommend checking out how other companies are killing it on the platform. And while many metrics can be counted manually, bigger brands might want to look into analytics services like Pinfluencer.

[Via: VentureBeat, Image credit: becky becks]