Ah, Pinterest. How can you not love it? All those pretty pictures…
If you have a business that is visually-based, Pinterest could quite seriously be your best friend. Pinterest is a major source of traffic to both of my blogs, but especially my cooking blog. For this blog, things like infographics and how-tos tend to drive traffic my way from Pintrest, and for my cooking blog, it’s the pretty #foodporn photos that do the trick.
Over the past few years, there were a bunch of options for free Pinterest analytics, but they seem to have all become paid options. The good news is, Pinterest introduced their own analytics a while back, and they have since improved them greatly.
In order for you to access Pinterest analytics, you first need to verify your site. After you’ve verified it, you’ll see a little check mark beside your profile:
Once you’ve done this, give it a month or two to start collecting your data. Here’s what you can learn from your Pinterest analytics (BTW you’ll find them under the little gear symbol on your profile):
How many views and impressions your pins get. Now, it’s important to note that these are all of your pins. Not just the pins that come from your blog. You can also see in this section your top 10 most repinned pins.
Demographic info: where do people who are pinning your stuff live? What is their sex (primarily female, for sure), and what languages do they speak?
Activity from your blog: this is the third tab across the top of the page, and for my money, the most important information to know. You want to know what people are pinning from your site. You can also see which are the most popular pins over the last month (but you can change those dates if you want further data).
The “All Time” tab: this shows you which pins from your site have the most virility–have been shared the most amount of times. It also shows you pins that rank higher in Pinterest’s search, and as well, what they call “power pins,” which are pins that have a nice mix of repins, clicks, and more.
Clicks: Pinterest also tracks which of your pins people actually click on to go back to your site. Gotta love that info!
So… what to do with all this info?
First of all, chart it out, and then look closely to see if you can find patterns. If you look at mine, for example, you’ll see a few pins that come up over and over again. One is booze. You’ll see the Salted Caramel Apple Martini and the Berry Bourbon Iced Tea repeat. Another theme those top pins appear to share are the tags #vegan and #glutenfree (primarily the desserts–attach the word “chocolate”). Finally, the Pumpkin Whoopie Pies also show up a lot.
What does this mean? Well, simply put, I need to make more recipes like the ones that are trending. Boozy, Vegan and Gluten Free appear to be three really popular topics that people want more of, so I should make an effort to supply them!
One last tip on Pinterest analytics: don’t underestimate the power of a good photograph. Also, people love to pin stuff on Pinterest that is a DIY all in a photograph, so play around with a tool like PicMonkey, and create a full recipe or a DIY on a picture and pin that, and see how it performs.