How to Use Pinterest Analytics to Crush It on Pinterest

If you want Pinterest to work for your blog, you need to know what’s working and what’s not. Pinterest Analytics is an amazing tool that can help bloggers analyze and improve their Pinterest strategies.

Note: If you haven’t started a Pinterest strategy, you can find out how to start one here.

To get a better understanding of how to use Pinterest analytics to improve your blog’s Pinterest strategy, I have a special guest post for you from the brilliant mind of Megan Fulton.

Megan is a full-time Pinterest manager and founder of A Hint of Meg. I recently included one of her posts, “The Ultimate Guide to Finding, Joining, and Using Group Boards on Pinterest” in my roundup post, “11 Pinterest Blog Posts That Will Make You an Expert in No Time.”

In today’s post, she will teach you everything you need to know about using Pinterest Analytics to create an effective Pinterest marketing strategy your blog. I know you are going to love this post!

*This post contains affiliate links. That means that if you make a purchase after clicking on a link I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. For more information, click here.

Using and understanding Pinterest analytics is the most important aspect of mastering the use of Pinterest for your blog. Without analytics, you might as well be feeling around in the dark trying to figure out where you’re going.

So today I’m going to explain all about Pinterest analytics. What they are, what they mean, and how to use them to create a Pinterest strategy that works for you and your business.

What Are Pinterest Analytics?

Pinterest analytics are insights into how well your account is performing. In order to access them, you need to have a business account and verify your website (not sure how to do that? Click here!)

Once you have a business account, you’ll be able to access your analytics by clicking on the analytics tab on the top left side of your Pinterest account.

Pinterest analytics tell you how many people are seeing your pins on a daily basis, which of your pins are gaining the most amount of views, repins and clicks, and how much much traffic is being sent back to your blog from Pinterest.

[yuzo_related]

Why Are Pinterest Analytics so Important?

When you use Pinterest to promote your blog, you need to know what’s working well and what’s not.

To be successful on Pinterest, you need to have a strategy in place. You can’t just throw a handful of pins out there and hope for the best. You need to be constantly testing new ideas to build your strategy and get as many click-throughs to your site as possible.

For example, I always create two or three different pins for each of my blog posts using pre-made templates. By always making my pins using the same templates, I can use my analytics to determine which of the templates are performing well, and which ones aren’t doing quite as well. Then, I can scrap the template that’s performing the most poorly and create a new template to try.

(Not sure how to make a good pin image? Learn how in 7 easy steps!)

Without consulting my analytics, I would never know which of my templates my readers prefer. And the same concept applies to every other aspect of my pinning strategy.

Let Me Show You Around

Click on your analytics overview and this is what you’ll see.

This is your overview page, and it gives you a great “at-a-glance” snapshot of how well your account is doing. The numbers you see are all averages based on the dates shown in the graph. In this case, the numbers are based on my stats from roughly May 5th through 10th.

“Your Pinterest Profile” numbers show you how well your account is doing overall and includes information from all the pins on your account; not just your own. Impressions are the number of times pins from your account are seen on Pinterest, and viewers are the number of individuals seeing your pins. So, in the example above, 1,144 people are seeing 3,766 of my pins (on average) in that time frame.

The “People You Reach” section shows you a little more information about the people seeing your pins. Average monthly engaged is the average number of people interacting with your pins. This could mean that they clicked on it for a close-up look, saved it to one of their boards, or clicked through to your website.

The “Activity From (Your Website)” section will show the same information as “Your Pinterest Profile” section, except that the numbers are calculated using only your original pins. This is the section you’ll want to pay the closest attention to as your end goal is to get people interacting with your original pins as much as possible.

Getting a Little Closer

Each of these broad sections offers more detailed information if you click on them. For example, if I click on “Your Pinterest Profile,” I get a screen that looks like this:

From this page, I can change the time range I want to see numbers for, and I can look to see the number of saves and clicks on pins from my account in that time. “Saves” refer to a repin, and “Clicks” means that someone has clicked through to the website.

Just remember that if you’re looking at a specific time range, you’ll need to readjust to that time frame every time you change tabs!

The “Activity From (Your Website)” section is laid out essentially the same way, but again with numbers from your original pins only.

The “People you Reach” section is a little different, though. This section focuses more on the demographics of the people who are viewing your pins and will tell you where these people live, if they’re male, female, or unspecified, and what language they speak.

For many niches, this information is more just interesting than anything else, but it can be important to know what kinds of people are the most interested in your content.

What Pinterest Analytics Data Should I Be Focusing On?

There is A LOT of information in your analytics, and it can be difficult to know which stats are important to focus on and which aren’t as important. I’ve outlined for you the different sections that I like to take particular note of, and what they tell me.

Follower count

I’m going to start with follower count because people are always the most concerned with this number. You’ll actually find your follower count on your profile under the tab that says “Followers”, and not in the analytics section.

The importance of your follower count has fluctuated quite a bit over the last few years. At one point, follower count was extremely important because the home feed of a user was made up of pins from the people they follow.

This changed when Pinterest introduced the smart feed a few years ago. Suddenly Pinterest was showing users pins based on their interests and the quality of pins, rather than simply the pins of the people they follow. Having a large following suddenly didn’t mean a large distribution of your pins and the importance of having a large following was greatly diminished.

And then, just a few weeks ago, Pinterest went through some major changes. Now, they’ve reintroduced the “Following” feed as an alternative to the home feed. So, when you first log into your Pinterest account, you’re seeing the smart feed, but if you click on the little people icon beside the search bar, you’ll see a feed of pins exclusively from people you’re following.

This is really important to bloggers because it means that a larger follower count could have an effect on how well your pins perform. Pinterest has come out and stated that they will be releasing all of your new pins to your followers first to see how well they perform, and then send them to the rest of Pinterest from there.

You can learn more about Pinterest’s best practices here.

While there will be some interaction with your pins in the following feed, the majority will still be taking place in the smart feed, in search results, and in related pin suggestions. So while your follower count has gained more importance since the update, it’s not something to stress too much about.

Average daily impressions

Your average daily impressions can be found in “Your Pinterest Profile” section in Analytics.

I like to keep an eye on this number because it’s a great indication of the overall health of my account. A high number of daily impressions means that the strategy I’m implementing is working well to get my pins in front of as many people as possible. But remember that this number includes all the pins on your account, not just those that link back to your website.

Most Clicked Pins

The most clicked pins can also be found in “Your Pinterest Profile” section, under the “Clicks” tab.

This gives you a list of the pins on your account that have had the most clicks to a website. This is an important thing to pay attention to as clicks to our website is the ultimate goal of being on Pinterest as a blogger.

I like to look at this list because it gives me a good overview of the kinds of content that my followers are looking for the most. If it’s mostly other people’s pins in the list, I can take a look and see if there’s some kind of theme I can emulate. Is there a certain topic people want to read about? Perhaps there’s a similar way the headlines are formatted or the pin is designed?

If I can find a pattern, I might try making some tweaks to my pins and see if it improves their performance.

Average Daily Clicks to The Website

The average daily clicks to your website can be found in the “Activity From (Your Website)” section of your Pinterest Analytics, under the “Clicks” tab.

This is the most important number in your entire analytics because getting people to click back to your website is the ultimate goal. This is the number you need to judge your success by, but it doesn’t give us much information past that.

Most Saved/Clicked Original Pins

Also under the “Activity From (Your Website)” section, you’ll find lists of your pins with the most saves and most clicks (under the appropriate tabs).

These pins are the ones that are being shared the most on Pinterest and generating the most traffic back to your site. You really want to pay attention to these because this is where you’ll be able to see which of your pin templates are performing the best, which topics your readers are most interested in, etc. This is where you can really see how well your Pinterest strategy is working.

You also want to pay attention to see if there’s a difference between the pins on these two lists. If you have pins that are getting a lot of saves, but not a lot of clicks, try to think if there is anything you could do to make the pin more clickable.

Maybe you could rewrite the headline to seem more urgent. For example, I might save a pin that says “Why I started pinning for my readers on Pinterest instead of myself”, but I’m much more likely to click through and read the article of a pin that says, “I tripled my blog traffic in 30 days by making this one tiny change on Pinterest”. The article is the same, but the headline makes a big difference in if people will read it or not.

You might also consider mentioning your freebie on your pin (people LOVE free stuff) or adding a call to action asking people to click through. “Are you making this major mistake on Pinterest? Click here to find out!”

Just to be clear, I’m NOT talking about click-bait. Your post always has to live up to the expectations you create in the pin, or you’ll lose the trust of your readers.

Power Pins

Power pins can be found in the “Activity From (Your Website)” section, under the “All Time” tab.

Your power pins are the pins that perform the best overall. That means they rank highly in search, and have a high repin and click count. You really want to take a look at these and see if there’s something that makes them stand out from the rest of your pins. Is it from a specific category on your blog? A template? What could you do to make your other pins more like these?

How Do I Use Pinterest Analytics to Get More Traffic Back to My Blog?

Take all the information you learned above and apply it to your pins. Are pins released in a specific template performing better than the others? Ditch the lowest performing template and try another. You want to constantly be phasing out that which doesn’t work, applying more broadly the things that do and trying new things to see if you can make your click-through rate even higher.

There’s lots of advice out there about how to use Pinterest properly. For the most part, it’s all just guesswork from people who have played around on their accounts and figured out what works well for them. Take the advice and try it out, but remember that you’ll need to watch your statistics and tweak the strategy to work for your own account.

(Pinterest actually came out the other week and had a conversation with Tailwind about their suggested best practices, which was absolutely incredible! Be sure to check out my notes from that conversation.)

It’s important to remember that (unlike Facebook) Pinterest is a long-term game. It can take some time for your pins to gain traction and for you to start seeing your numbers increase, so let any new strategy run for a couple of weeks before you take any action on it.

This also means that there will be high and low traffic points on Pinterest. My numbers fluctuate drastically from day to day or from one week to the next. But that’s okay! Because when I zoom out a little bit I can see that my numbers ARE steadily rising despite the occasional lull, which is ultimately all that I care about, and you should too.

Did you like this post? Be sure to share it on Pinterest!

About the Author

Megan Fulton is a full-time Pinterest Manager, and the founder of AHintofMeg.com. She helps bloggers drive traffic, fill their email lists, and make money through the sharing power of Pinterest. To learn more about using Pinterest to explode your blog traffic, be sure to check out her totally FREE Pro Pinning E-Course!

 

 

[yuzo_related]