Master the ins and outs of the dashboard, understand the metrics and how they can be used to establish a winning strategy.
Want to reach the largest possible audience on one of the world’s best social media marketing platforms? Then you’ve come to the right place. Pinterest Analytics is the built-in tool that helps track activity.
Across all pins and boards, Pinterest Analytics aids businesses in finding the right target audience, skyrocketing the performance of pins, conversions, sales, campaign targets, and much more.
Table of Contents 1. Why The Data Matters 2. Overview 3. Key Metrics 4. Audience Insights 5. Video 6. Trends
1. Why The Data Matters
Jumping into Pinterest Analytics extends far beyond merely trying to figure out which of your dashing visuals were saved the most.
Fully understanding how posted content performs is the key to developing a successful strategy that supports the goals of your business.
Simply targeting every person on Earth regardless of variables like gender, interest, and location is wasteful as there is almost no product or service in existence that appeals to the entirety of the human population. Pinterest Analytics is designed to help fine-tune what type of content is working to drive action in specific audiences and allow you to target for the best possible results.
2. Overview
The reason Pinterest is a must-have for any online business is the simple fact that you can not only market virtually any product or service on it absolutely free, but Pinterest Analytics delivers an entirely free set of tools that anyone can use to track performance and monitor key metrics over time.
Analytics allows a business owner to see which Pins generated the greatest number of impressions as well as which ones drove the majority of clicks to the website.
This level of insight represents the best way by which to make informed decisions regarding content and get the most out of a given strategy.
Claim Your Website
If you are selling your products and services on a dedicated eCommerce platform like Shopify or Lightspeed, you should claim your website on Pinterest by either adding in a meta tag or uploading Pinterest’s HTML file to your website’s codebase. Once you claim a particular website on your profile, no other account on Pinterest can.
By successfully performing the above steps, Pinterest will display an official checkmark next to your brand logo on your profile to mark it as verified in a similar vein to Twitter.
Add a Save Button
The Save button, when added to your official website, allows visitors to save content directly on Pinterest. Upon installing the button, a clickable logo displaying Pinterest’s icon will appear on images or posts. Visitors can then save the content straight onto their own boards.
This represents a phenomenal tactic in encouraging more Pinterest activity for your brand and also allows Pinterest to gather more precise data for your business website.
3. Key Metrics
Pinterest contains an abundance of useful metrics to optimize the content strategy of any business. To access, select the Analytics tab housed in the top left-hand corner of your profile page and click Overview.
In the dashboard, you can view every single key metric and also filter by format, content type, source, and device to understand what is working for the account.
a. Impressions
b. Pin Clicks
c. Saves
d. Save Rate
e. Outbound Clicks
f. Engagements
g. Total Audience and Monthly Total Audience
h. Engaged Audience and Monthly Engaged Audience
i. Top Pins
j. Top Boards
Impressions
Too many people confuse impressions with clicks. What this variable actually refers to is views.
Impressions serve as a reflection of how many times a Pin is shown in front of users. This includes other boards, search results, or their Home Feed. When looking at stats across several Pins, it’s beneficial to identify trends through the discovery of certain patterns.
For instance, if several of a business’s top-performing Pins fall under the same classification of content (e.g., food recipes), this means that a great many users are searching for keywords related to such content. Consequently, the Pin has proven it is optimized for SEO.
This insight allows any content strategy to be hacked for maximum outreach and audience awareness.
Pin Clicks
Previously referred to as Closeups, Pin Clicks measure a count of the number of times a user has either tapped or clicked a Pin to view it zoomed-in. Given the fact that this only increases when audiences are intrigued by the content, it represents a stellar benchmark for determining how interesting the Pin is.
If you find a particular Pin is receiving a substantially high volume of Pin Clicks, it may be a good idea to dig further into why. It could be the result of a better design, valuable detail, or information on the image.
Saves
Pinterest Saves are indicative of how many times a particular user saved a Pin to one of their boards. This is a prime indicator of how much content is resonating with a particular audience. The best part? When someone saves one of your Pins, it automatically displays in their followers’ feeds to seamlessly provide your business with additional valuable exposure.
Save Rate
Similar to the Pin Clicks rate, the Save Rate demonstrates the percentage of total saved Pins generated over a period of time. This provides more of a general overview regarding how well the content strategy is performing as a whole.
Higher percentages of saves indicate a business is doing at least one thing right. If a spike is discovered around a particular date, examine what was going on during that time window.
Replicate the search keywords and content themes again to monitor if a similar spike in performance occurs.
Outbound Clicks
Formerly known as Link Clicks, Outbound Clicks is the definitive tool to measure how many times your Pins directed traffic from Pins clicked on by users directly to your website. This is the layman for measuring return on investment, especially when boosting.
For Pins that generated a significant number of Outbound Clicks, take note, for they likely display the best call-to-action for potential customers.
Engagements
This metric is simply a combined total of the number of Outbound Clicks and Saves tracked for a particular Pin. Use this in addition to others mentioned for a better general overview of performance.
Total Audience and Monthly Total Audience
Clicking Total Audience will provide insight into the total number of unique users that content reached for every day in the chosen date range. For instance, some 741 users saw at least a single Pin from your account on Friday, January 7.
However, if you toggle to Monthly Total Audience, a trailing, cumulative 30-day count of exposure will be shown. When viewing this on a particular day, it will show the total number of unique Pinners that viewed the content in the last 30 days prior to the particular day. The next day will track data from the 30 days prior to its own date, and so on.
Engaged Audience and Monthly Engaged Audience
Clicking Engaged Audience shows the total number of Pinners that interacted with your business’s content in some form for every day in a finite range.
The same applies to Monthly Engaged Audience. Instead, the data represents a trailing, cumulative 30-day count of engaged members.
Top Pins
Top Pins specifically outlines the best-performing pins over the course of a month. It is filtered by the majority of key metrics including impressions, engagements, pin clicks, outbound clicks, and saves.
This is a great overview because it produces a comprehensive outlook on how Pins are performing when compared to one another. Almost every single time, you’ll find that boosted posts will skyrocket to the top for obvious reasons. However, if you boost all or none of them, it will prove more effective in determining what your audience cares about the most.
Top Boards
Just like Top Pins, Top Boards maps out the most popular collections of Pins a business is showcasing to its Pinterest users. This points to which ones are getting the most clicks and saves.
4. Audience Insights
By selecting Audience Insights, you can easily adjust dates and view the behavior of either the total audience or the engaged audience. Irrespective of which segment is chosen, you will see a section for categories and interests that ranks the most popular categories with their related interests for a given audience.
Take note of the relevant categories that align with the content strategy you want for your brand.
Demographics
Underneath interests and categories, you’ll find a section for demographics. Here, you can see information regarding the audience’s age, location, gender, and the particular device used to browse the content.
This is amazing for the provision of helpful insights needed for retargeting. Once you view who you have been able to reach and uncover what that audience cares most about, you can edit messaging and publishing strategies to resonate even further; all while optimizing any potential ad spend.
For instance, if you find that many users are based in the United Kingdom, consider this in your planning. Campaigns could be published around popular sales events in the area like Boxing Day.
5. Video
For any Pins encasing videos, the Video section of the Analytics dashboard caters specifically to the ways you can measure success in this category of content.
Every video that gets published has clickable sections that show views, total watch time (minutes), link clicks, and saves. Resembling the Overview section, the user can filter and sort data by device, impressions, saves, clicks, organic Pins, and more.
6. Trends
This is very much the “secret sauce” of content marketing strategies on the platform, as Trends reveal exactly what the world of Pinterest is currently searching for. You can even click through trends to view a timeline of exactly when the particular subject rose to fame along with every popular Pin associated with the topic.
There’s tons of great inspiration to be found here to inform your business of the best content strategy.
Pinterest Analytics is a must for optimizing and building a dedicated audience that is loyal to your content, engages with the brand, and most importantly, buys your products. Get started now.