Do You Heart It? Or Haven't You Heard...

If you haven't yet heard about the new social media platform We Heart It, just ask the closest teenage girl. 

With nearly 30 million global users, We Heart It stands just slightly smaller than Snapchat, and about one-eighth the size of Twitter. And if you’re a small business owner who’s looking to capture the interest of teens, it could be the most affordable, productive marketing tool you’ve ever discovered.

Here’s Why You Need To Pay Attention

• Featured as one of Google Play’s best apps of 2013, We Heart It appeals to the younger, mobile-focused generation.
• The site currently has 20 million monthly users, with a growth rate of more than 1 million per month. That is a shockingly massive growth rate!
• People that are on We Heart It spend a lot of time there. The average user on the social network is on the platform for 16.5 minutes every visit.
• Demographically, We Heart It differs from Pinterest in that it has a much younger user-base – under 24’s – though they are still predominantly women.

The image-based social network is somewhat similar to Pinterest, where users collect and share images via the website or mobile app. But We Heart It distinguishes itself in a few key ways. 

Unlike Pinterest, where said photos frequently depict recipes, crafts or other practical pursuits, We Heart It trades in inspiration — “images that move you.”

According to We Heart It, 70 percent of its users are women, and more than 80 percent of its users are 24-years-old or younger - younger than the average Pinner.

We Heart It users can “heart” images, but can’t add comments, so you won’t find negativity of bullying on the site.

Earlier this month, We Heart It started rolling out native ads for advertisers like Teen Vogue, who it partnered with last December, and Old Navy, Hollister, JC Penney, SFX Entertainment and Candies. Their advertising team isn’t worried about blowback from users because each advertiser has to complete a training course to make sure ads maintain the feel of the platform.

According Cory Cole, social media director at Candie’s parent Iconix Brand Group, New York, Candie’s is one of the first who has already found We Heart It as the better fit for their brand. 

 “We felt that Candie’s wasn’t really working in the Pinterest environment, primarily because the younger girls were not there and were not engaging," he says.

“We started working with We Heart It and we’ve seen an incredible amount of engagement and growth. From a platform perspective, it really is the best fit for this brand.” 

A year ago, the brand started working with We Heart It after accumulating less than 1,000 followers on Pinterest over the course of a couple of years.

With very little effort, Candie’s has built a following of 19,000 users on We Heart It in a year. 

We Heart It users are already actively posting images of how they are using favorite brands such as Nike and Starbucks in their daily lives.

The platform is building out offerings for native ads as a way for brands to further drive engagement. With the native advertising strategy, the brand’s content is appearing in We Heart It users’ newsfeeds, with a button indicating that it is sponsored content.

“As our audience has moved onto the mobile sphere for almost everything they are doing, brand advertisers have been struggling to figure out how do we talk to these people in a way that feels relevant,” said Dave Williams, president of We Heart It, San Francisco.

“By taking a native ads approach – which is basically advertising as content, it is not a traditional package of ads, it is full screen, it is immersive, it can be 30 to 50 pieces of creative - they can use a platform like We Heart It to express themselves in a lot of different ways and with a lot of impact,” he said. 

This presents a unique opportunity for small business owners that are trying to target teens or early twenty-somethings.  If you focus your marketing on We Heart It, you could end up getting more conversion rates than Pinterest or Facebook, with a much more accurate user base.

Think of all the products and services that people from younger generations love. Place your dynamic ‘Instagrammy’ photos on the platform, and get them shared among users that grew up with technology, and are much more likely to share it with friends. So not only are they younger, but they are more likely to share and engage with your images.