Pinterest's new spam-fighting team may affect brands' follower counts, but also removes low-grade content.

The unfortunate effect of the unprecedented growth of any social site in a short time period is the emergence of regular and invasive spammers. Pinterest, through its exponential serge into the daily lives of consumers and marketers, recently unveiled a project geared toward eliminating spam content permanently from the site.

Pinterest Spam FightersPinterest Engineering Manager Marty Weiner wrote in an official blog post that in order to provide users with the ideal experience, the social network needed a dedicated spam team to battle unauthentic content. Over the past few months, Pinterest has identified a number of suspicious, fake or spammy accounts.

The dedicated spam team at Pinterest will remove these unfavorable accounts and ensure that users engage with real people who share similar interests. However, the process will also cause certain users to experience follower count declines. Approximately 99 percent of accounts will lose less than 10 followers, the social site states, but larger brands may see greater dips.

In a recent article written by Samantha Murphy for Mashable, several large brands on Pinterest report losing hundreds of thousands of followers in the wake of the digital pin-board’s anti-spam efforts. Pinterest clarified the issue with Mashable by issuing this statement:

“We reached out yesterday directly to the accounts that would see the biggest drop to let them know and assure people that it had nothing to do with their pinning. In fact, the more authentic, interesting and popular you are, the more likely you were to be targeted.”

The latest spam-fighting efforts from Pinterest may have affected follower counts, but they also highlight the popularity and attention users give to visual content posted to the site. Marketers should note this, as well as Pinterest’s rapid road to growth, as the foundation of their future content marketing efforts. While written blog content builds authority for brands’ professional websites, social media marketing plays a growing role in boosting web presences and engaging with prospects.

As sites like Pinterest garner attention from consumers, brands must focus their attention of creating pinboards that speak to a variety of users to encourage social sharing. To make the most of Pinterest’s offerings, companies should strive to publish truly original content and actively monitor their accounts.

Ted Karczewski is an Executive Communications Associate at Brafton. He works to develop his own voice and apply his passions to the evolving world of SEO and content marketing, but he doesn't shy away from writing for fun. After graduating from Suffolk University, Ted used his Communications degree to test out Sports Journalism before Marketing at Brafton.