Pinterest head of beauty partnerships Rachel Goodman on helping brands tell a story

When Pinterest launched in 2010, it was pegged as a supplemental platform for bloggers. Fast forward to over a decade later and it's now a regular go-to for beauty brands, beauty fans and far beyond with its buzzy ecosystem of content creators.

At the helm of Pinterest's beauty division is Rachel Goodman, head of beauty partnerships, who has been with the company for seven years. During her tenure, she has witnessed the evolution of how Pinterest fits within people’s social media consumption. It has gone from being a special-occasion platform for people decorating apartments or getting married to becoming an “always-on” website for seeking inspiration and shopping. With this in mind, Pinterest has focused over the last two years on connecting the dots from providing inspiration for an idea to facilitating its realization through a purchase.

“People aren't coming to Pinterest to broadcast their thoughts and opinions to a social network,” Goodman said on the Glossy Beauty Podcast. “People come to Pinterest to look for ideas, to discover [ideas], to save them, and to go out and do them.”

In the last 12 months alone, Pinterest has launched an inclusive beauty search for hair inspiration for Black, brown and Latinx people. It launched the Creator Fund in April 2021, which aims to recruit and amplify creators of color on the platform through a mix of education, tools, free advertising and income-generating opportunities. Pinterest also became more shoppable through a new program called Idea Pins and launched a daily live-streaming show called "Pinterest TV" in 2021.

Goodman spoke further with Glossy about how Pinterest is working with creators differently, which beauty brands perform well on the platform and how Pinterest is helping brands adapt their tactics.