The key to confirming that your new social content strategy works is through understanding your analytics reports. Without careful evaluation of what type of content performs well, you only have anecdotal evidence. You don’t want to spend all that time Pinning away only to have nothing to show for it.
In this Pinterest guide, we’ll walk through how to read the networks’ analytics. You’ll be able to use your data to make informed decisions and structure your content plan to your advantage.
Pinterest Analytics Requirements
To start off, you need to make sure your Pinterest account is a business account. It’s a fast and easy process. Once you have it converted, you’ll have access to the native analytics that Pinterest offers and be able to set up ad campaigns.
Next, make sure you claim your website. Having a claimed website verifies your site with a small globe icon and also shows your profile photo in any Pin originating from your site. The website verification process is easy: you either need to paste in a meta tag or upload an HTML file.
When someone else Pins from your claimed website, your profile photo appears as subtle branding.
Having a business account and claiming your website are the two basic must-have steps for gaining access to your analytics. If you’d like to go the extra mile, there are a few more options for you:
- Install a Save button on your site so users can easily Pin. It’ll also generate analytics information on which Pins send you referral traffic from Pinterest.
- Add a Pinterest Tag to measure actions someone takes after seeing your Promoted Pin
- Add Rich Pins for your products, articles and apps. These give a little more information in the Pin when a user Pins from your site.
Pinterest Analytics Glossary
Lucky for us, Pinterest analytics use similar vocabulary to other networks. If you’re already familiar with Facebook and Twitter reports, then you’ll find yourself easily understanding Pinterest terms.
Audience Growth
Pinterest uses Followers like Twitter does. A new Follower is counted when someone follows your account, not when they follow only one Board. In Pinterest, you’ll be notified anytime someone follows you or your Board. In Sprout Social, your Smart Inbox will show new comments and posts.
The Sprout Pinterest report also includes a number on Total People and Items Following, which includes accounts, Boards and topics that you follow. When you’re looking at your audience growth, these two metrics show how well your brand is developing on Pinterest. Are your Pins high quality enough to earn a follow? Are you as a brand keeping track of new accounts and Boards?
Publishing
The Sprout Pinterest report provides a high-level look at how consistently you Pin on the network, including a breakdown of Pins Sent and the report also gives an Average Pins Per Day metric. If you see gaps in your publishing or that you Pin more often one day than another, it’s a good sign to reevaluate your strategy. Pinterest is a long game for brands, which means that you’ll often need to consistently post for the best results. Dumping 20 Pins in one day and ignoring the network for two days won’t cut it. Better yet, spread the 20 Pins out over the course of a week so your account is consistently active.
To execute this, use a feature like Sprout’s calendar to schedule your posts. Spend time collecting your Pins and then scheduling them out so you don’t have to worry about timing. Your scheduled Pins will show up next to all of your other network posts, giving you a great overview of your content calendar.
Sprout’s scheduling feature lets you set either manual times or ViralPost times. If you choose ViralPost, the software will schedule the posts at times that historically have the highest engagement. This proprietary feature learns as you post, so the more you post, the more it understands when your audience is around.
Individual Pin Analytics
How each of your Pins performs is an important part of analyzing what went well. The Pins that show up in this area are ones that you Pinned.
Comments are the number of comments that are on your Pin. Saves are the number of times someone have saved your Pin. The individual Pins (Message Type) are categorized as either Pins or Saves. In your account, they all end up showing as Pins but how they got there is what differentiates them. Pins are original: you scheduled them, uploaded them natively or created them from a website. Saves are when you’ve found someone else’s Pin in Pinterest and saved it to your own Board.
While you can see the analytics for both, it’s usually encouraged to create more original Pins because any subsequent actions on the Pin all lead back to the original Pin. Pins with high save counts mean that they’re resonating with your audience enough for them to save them for future use.
Clicks are the actual action that someone has taken to click on your Pin, either to open it up to learn more or to click through to the website that it’s linked to. If you have Pins with high click counts, it means that the Pin is interesting enough for people to engage with it.
Profile Overview
In native Pinterest analytics, you’ll see a few more statistics like impressions and viewers. Impressions are the same meaning as Facebook: the number of times it shows up in a feed, search results or category results. Viewers are the number of people who have seen at least one of your Pins.
Taking a look at both the viewer and impressions count gives you an understanding of how engaged your audience is. If your Pins are receiving high viewers but low impressions, it could mean that your followers are seeing your Pins but your SEO could use improvement. Remember, impressions are counted when your Pins show up in search results.
Another feature of Pinterest’s native analytics that’s helpful is the Boards with top Pin impressions. This table gives you information on which Boards are performing well, which will help you understand what to focus more on. If you’re constantly posting on one Board but finding that the Pins are not resonating, then it might be time to cut your losses on the Board or figure out a different strategy.
Website Pins
Remember when we recommended that you claim your website? Adding this gives you a lot of access to what users are finding useful from your site. If you have any sort of content on your website with a decent amount of visitors, chances are that someone has Pinned from your site.
In the Website section of your native analytics, you’ll find some helpful charts that rank Pins originating from your website by impressions, saves and clicks. What are people finding to be the most Pinnable and what’s ranking highest in search?
These categories of Pins in the All-time category are ones that you want to duplicate the success of. If you find that the Power Pins, or Pins that have a high mix of saves, clicks and more, are mostly vertical infographics, then you can focus more of your attention on that type of content. With Best in Search, you’ll be able to see what SEO strategy works for your Pins. These are the Pins that show up highest in search results for Pinners.
Audience Insights
The core to understanding what resonates with your audience is knowing already who you’re marketing to. It’s not enough to know who the average user on Pinterest is, though it’s helpful if you’re just starting out on the platform.
The new Audience Insights page on Pinterest gives you a glimpse into what makes up not only your own audience but all of Pinterest’s audience. There’s also a helpful comparison tool to assist you in benchmarking your audience. The categories and interests are further broken down into keywords. For example, the food and drink category also shows how many are interested in snack mix recipes and sweets.
Additional audience demographic information includes age, gender, location (by metro and country) and device. Use this information to your advantage by Pinning more in the categories that your audience is interested in. The subinterest breakdowns also help you find keywords to use in your Pins and in your advertising strategy.
Every audience category comes with an Affinity score, which indicates how interested your audience is in the topic compared to the rest of Pinterest. A high affinity score means that your Pins in that topic are resonating with that audience. Paired with the Percent of Audience metric, high numbers in each indicate a hyper relevance of that topic.
Conclusion
Understanding how Pinterest analytics work will only better inform your Pinning strategy. In opposition to other social media networks, Pinterest is a longer strategy for brands. Pinners will often Pin in advance for a project and Pins tend to stay visible longer in the network, especially coming up through search results.
Looking at your Pinterest analytics will give you insight on what type of content is working well so you can Pin more of it. The website analytics also give you information on what parts of your site’s content viewers are finding most useful. Using a service like Sprout Social for scheduling and reviewing analytics gives you more time to find and plan interesting content. The native analytics that Pinterest offers help you understand your audience demographic and plan for your future ad campaigns.