Both Experian and comScore recently reported that social media platform Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing websites.

Both comScore and Experian HitWise reported this that week that social photo sharing website Pinterest is among the fastest-growing on the internet. According to HitWise, Pinterest, which is aimed at women, ranked as the 60th most popular website for the first three weeks of 2012.

As recently as last summer, Pinterest’s traffic was minimal as it struggled to find a consistent audience. However, it has steadily increased its traffic each month since September, essentially doubling its unique visits every month.

ComScore measured its traffic in unique visitors, rather than page views, and found a similarly strong performance from the burgeoning social platform. From November to December, Pinterest’s unique visitors rose 55 percent from 4.8 million to more than 7.5 million.

For marketers, Pinterest’s growth represents an increased focus on visual content in social media marketing. Producing engaging articles and blog posts will likely help drive traffic and engagement to a website. Adding images and other visual content only compliments the written content. Moreover, the images, infographics and other visuals can serve as a form of content on their own.

Pinterest users create profiles and share content as they like, following other users they share interests with. As the site has grown, more businesses have opted to create accounts and share their content with the network’s audience. Users can “repin” content of interest and share it with their followers on the website.

Visual content is increasingly valuable on all social networks, according to a report from WebLiquid. The company found that images and other visuals increase user engagement on social networks.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.