6 Reasons Not to Ignore Pinterest The social-media platform is proving itself to be nearly invaluable to marketers. It's growing fast and leads to more sales conversions than any other social network.

If you're not gaga over cooking, home decor, or crafts, then you're probably personally not drawn to Pinterest. If your job involves social media—and whose doesn't these days?—you shouldn't let the social media site slip off your radar.

Precise figures are hard to come by, but Pinterest's number of monthly active users in the U.S. is around 53 million, according to Ahalogy survey data cited by Forbes.

As Kevin Roose recently wrote on New York magazine's website:

Pinterest's growth should scare the hell out of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and every other company that will have to compete with it for the marketing budgets of big companies. And it should make the rest of us pay much more attention to what's going on over there. Pinterest might not be your social network of choice, but it's an advertiser's dream—and that may end up mattering more.

Here are six more reasons why Pinterest should matter to you.

1. Social media users admire Pinterest.

In the most recent American Consumer Satisfaction Index, Pinterest outranked every other social media site, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Overall, social media websites are among the worst-performing companies tracked by the index.

Pinterest "has made steady gains with pinners over the past three years, but improved features and search functions now push Pinterest to the top of the social media category for the first time," the index says.

2. Pinterest is popular.

Here are two additional measures of the site's popularity:

• Users have put more than 30 billion pins on Pinterest, New York magazine reports.
• The site drives more web traffic to publishers than Reddit and Twitter combined, according toMashable.

3. Women flock to Pinterest.

Around 80 percent of Pinterest users are women, according to RJMetrics. Given the fact that 85 percent of purchasing decisions are made by women, Pinterest is a target-rich site for any business that's selling a product or service geared toward that audience. If you're in the home decor industry, for instance, you'd be foolish not to have a Pinterest presence.

4. It's fertile turf.

According to Growth Devil, a consulting agency that helps startups grow, Pinterest boasts a 50 percent higher conversion rate than any other social media site that directs people to products. Furthermore, Growth Devil says, Pinterest users regularly spend more money, more often than users of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Google+.

5. Pinterest users are loyal.

RJMetrics also reports that 84 percent of female pinners still are pinning in their fourth year on the platform. In the first year, the average woman on Pinterest posted 42 pins. In the fourth year on the site, that user is up to 152 pins.

6. There's room for growth.

Ahalogy's survey showed that men were 36 percent more likely than women to have tried Pinterest for the first time in the previous six months. And, as Forbes noted, "there are a lot fewer women who've never tried Pinterest to begin with."