Using Pinterest To Grow Your Blog Part Three

Understanding Analytics

As promised in last week’s using Pinterest to grow your blog post I’m going to talk about using analytics today. Before we get started analytics can be a bit dull and boring but being able to analyse them is so useful if you want to grow your blog. So, bear with me today as I know this is a bit of a dull topic, but trust me it is really useful.

Why study your analytics?

• Tells you what your audience enjoys
• Identifies gaps in content
• Show what content isn’t working
• Helps you to create more content your audience will love
• Shows which content needs updating/improvement

Pinterest Analytics

Firstly, you need to have a business account on Pinterest to access their inbuilt analytics. If you don’t already have one set up, you can do it here for free.

Once you have a business account set up you will be able to access your analytics. When you are logged into Pinterest you will see the analytics tab at the top left of your screen. This will then give you 3 options profile, people you reach and website. There is also the option to see an overview. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to this section, just keep an eye on the numbers. you don’t want to see a dramatic drop they should be rising steadily. I prefer to look a little deeper into each section as this provides much more useful information. Now let’s look at each section in turn and how they are useful.

Your Pinterest Profile

This section shows you the boards and pins which your followers enjoy the most. Look at the top pin impressions to see which pins your audience loves. Here you should compare the clicks and repins. Ideally, you want to see a healthy mix of clicks and repins. You may find you want to increase the amount of repins or clicks certain pins get. You can do this by changing the description, promoting the pin or adding a call to action such as ‘click through to read full article’.

This section also shows your boards with the highest impressions. This tells you which topics your audience loves. Think back to part one when I spoke about your boards being like blog categories. Do your top boards reflect this? Are they on-brand and relevant to you blogs focus? These top boards should attract your ideal audience.

Another interesting part of this section is the all-time tab. This shows pins which rank the highest in searches. Whether these are your own pins or not have a good look at these to try to work why they do so well. Look at what they have in common. Read the descriptions and see which keywords they’re targeting.

People You Reach

This section lets you learn more about your audience. It shows they’re demographics, where they’re from, what language they use and gender. But the more interesting part of this section is your audience’s interests. Here you can see the topics they are search and type of content they are pinning. You can also see the boards which feature your pins. Have a look at who is creating these boards as this is your audience. (these boards can also be a useful source of content).

Use this section to build a profile of your target audience. Now you know what they are interested in you can create content which you know they will love. Remember though that it’s important to keep content relevant to the focus of your blog. Just because your audience also happens to like gardening doesn’t mean you should suddenly start blogging about gardening if you have a beauty blog.

Your Website

This section only looks at pins from your website. You can use this section to analyse which type of content drives the most traffic. You can then use this information to plan your content.

Like with the profile section look at which pins are getting the most clicks and repins. If a pin has lots of repins this show that you pin inspires users. They are interested in the content and are saving for later or they love the image. If a pin is getting lots of clicks this means they are interested in the content and want to learn more.

If you want pins to get more repins and clicks try changing the description, adding in relevant keywords and a call to action.

This section has an all-time tab which shows which of your pins do really well in searches. Spend time looking at these pins to try to work out why they are doing well. Are your targeting specific keywords? Do you have a clear call to actions? You could also compare your pins to the pins which do well from your profile. Think about how you can improve their search ranking and help your other pins to do well.

Linking with Google Analytics

I recommend analysing your Google Analytics alongside the inbuilt Pinterest analytics. Google Analytics is going to give you a much more accurate picture of the traffic coming to your site from Pinterest. If you don’t already have Google Analytics, make sure you get yourself set up ASAP. Google Analytics is seen as the industry standard for analytics and I know PRs prefer knowing your stats come from there. You will appear more professional if you use professional analytics. It also gives you way more in-depth information than your sites stats (if you’re on blogger it counts bots so you end up with over inflated page views which doesn’t do anyone any good).

To see which posts are receiving the most traffic from Pinterest go to Acquisition > Social > Overview > Pinterest. This will then show you which posts receive the most traffic. This tells you what your audience enjoys and you can then create more content like it. You may also use this information to upgrade posts, adding new images, inbound links etc.

You can also use Google Analytics to see which pins drive the most traffic to your site. This is especially useful if you add multiple pins to each post. To see this go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals > Pinterest.com. This will then bring up a list of pins which drive traffic to your site. To see which pin is referring traffic click the little square next to its link (circled in image) this will then bring the pin up in a pop-up window.

Like you did with Pinterest analytics analyse these pins to see why they are driving the most traffic. Look at keywords you used in the descriptions, if you have a call to action etc. Knowing which or your pins are working the hardest will help you to create more pins (and content) like them.

That’s it we’ve made it to the end. I hope I haven’t bored you senseless and you now have a better understanding of how to use Pinterest analytics. This was the last post in my using Pinterest to grow your blog series. I hope you have found all three posts useful. If you missed the early posts you can read them below.

Using Pinterest To Grow Your Blog Part One: Creating a Killer Pinterest Profile

Using Pinterest To Grow Your Blog Part Two: Driving Traffic To Your Blog