How to use Pinterest Analytics to Grow Your Blog

Guide to Understanding Your Pinterest Analytics

Are you confused when you’re looking at your Pinterest Analytics?

Trust me – you’re not the only one who’s not sure what the numbers mean and how to use them to grow your blog.

I’ve lost count of the number posts I’ve seen in Facebook groups asking questions about ‘What’s going on with my Pinterest numbers?’ They talk about all the things that they’re doing and the comments get filled with a ton of advice from all the experts.

But here’s the thing folks … all this panic when your monthly views go down. All this complaining about impression numbers going up and down like a roller coaster are just not worth your time or energy.

Those numbers are just vanity metrics { something that makes us look good! } and not real numbers that can actually help you grow your blog. If you’re one of those people who have been freaking out, this post is for you.

 

What do the Pinterest Analytic numbers mean?

First let me start with the basics of Pinterest Analytics – this feature is only available to accounts that have a business profile.

For those with a business account, you should see the link to review your analytics in the upper left corner of your screen or in the overview section when viewing your account in your phone.

When you click on the link on your computer, use the dropdown to choose Overview.

You’ll come to a new section of Pinterest where you can review the performance of your pins, the boards that you’re pinning your content to, the group boards you’ve joined and information about the pinners you’re reaching with your pins.

 

You’ll see different metrics measuring your account:

• Impressions: The total number of times your pins were shown.
• Engagements: The total number of engagements on your Pins. This includes saves, closeups, link clicks and carousel card swipes.
• Closeups: The total number of times people viewed a close-up version of your pin.
• Saves: The total number of times people saved your pins to a board.
• Link clicks: The total number of times people have clicked on your pin to a website on or off of Pinterest.
• Video views: the amount of views for at least 2 seconds with 50% of video in view.
• Average watch time: the average time someone spent watching your video

 

You Pinerest Analytics also shows an overview of both organic and paid activity over time:

Organic content refers to activity on:

• Pins created or saved by you on your profile

• Pins created or saved by others that drive to your claimed website or account

Paid content refers to activity on:

• Pins promoted by you, including earned activity. This means pins saved from a campaign you ran that may continue to earn impressions and engagements as people save your pins to their boards on Pinterest

 

What not to freak out about

When you’re reviewing your analytics, click on ALL for every filter option EXCEPT the Claimed Accounts section. Make sure that you click on the button for your verified website so you’re only reviewing the content/pins that are directly connected to your website.

Then scroll down to do some digging into your analytics to see if you pins are connecting with your Pinterest community.

In the metrics sections, you’ll see Impressions, Engagements, Closeups, Links and Saves. You’ll notice that you don’t see the one metric that everyone is monitoring – Monthly Viewers.

Before I get into the metrics that you want to keep an eye on to develop your pinning strategy, let’s talk about the two numbers connected to your account that you don’t need to freak out about when you see them going up and down.

Monthly Viewers

This is the number that I’m seeing people talking about in all those Facebook group posts. Even I can admit that I’ve been caught up in this number when I see it take a nosedive and I can’t figure out what just happened.

Your Monthly Viewers number is the number of people who’ve seen your content over the course of a month. And while it’s great to have that many people see your pins, your blog’s traffic doesn’t really grow until your pins get repins that lead to clicks to your site.

It’s just a number on your profile that shows how many people you’re reaching with your content.

And that number represents the reach of EVERY pin that you’re pinning gets.

So when you’re pinning other people’s pins, the reach of those pins get added into your total number giving you an overall number of your pinning activity, not what’s actually driving traffic back to your website.

What I’m saying here is that your Monthly Viewers number doesn’t equal traffic.

 

Impressions

Impressions are a similar number to the monthly viewers. Your Impressions are the number of times that your pins show up in a pinner’s feed or showed up in a search.

The Impressions number is a good indicator about the keywords you’re using to get pulled up a Pinterest search BUT { and this is a big honking BUT! } this number is just showing you the number of times your pins are getting seen.

Your goal is to get more people to save your pin and click over to your website.

 

Developing Your Pinterest Strategy

If your goal is to use Pinterest to grow traffic to your website or to grow your email list, then you should be making time to monitor your Pinterest Analytics. You should be paying attention to which pins are getting more Impressions { the ones showing up in more searches } and which ones are generating clicks back to your website.

This means monitoring your individual pin stats or following what happens when you manually pin vs use a scheduler.

If you’ve just started to evaluate your analytics, make sure you set up a tracking process to follow your progress to determine whether your pin descriptions and pin images need to be adjusted.

Questions to ask as you’re reviewing your Pinterest pins:

• Which pins are showing up in your Impressions list? These are the pins with the most actively searched keywords and phrases.
  • Take a look at the pin descriptions – which keywords are showing up the most in your Impressions.
  • Start a list of the keywords and phrases to be used for your next set of pins you’re going to create.

 

• Which pins are showing up in your Click-Through list? These are the topics that are connecting with your community, had a clear searchable headline to generate enough interest for someone to click to learn more.
  • Was it the topic of your content?
  • Is this a new design or one that you’ve used that’s a consistent branded look for your pins?
  • Did you add in a compelling headline on those pins?

Chances are, you’re going to see duplicate images of the same pin listed in the Most Clicked list — but that’s a good thing! These are the pins that are already resonating with people on Pinterest. Scroll through the list and you’ll find loads of opportunities of pins that you can re-work with a new image and pin description.

• Which pins got very little engagement?
  • Look at the design of the pin – is there a color combination that you tried and it’s not working like your other images?
  • If the pins with more repins had bright pink bold letters on on it and you used a different font, go back to the bright pink bold font.
  • Review your pin in your phone and see what it looks like in a smaller scale. If you can’t read the headline or understand what the background image is then rework your designs and test it out again in your phone.

 

How can you use this information for your Pinterest strategy?

You use your analytics information to help you create something that Pinterest likes to call Fresh Content.

If you’re heard this phrase before but not sure ‘what makes content fresh’ mean, let me explain how this works.

Pinterest’s folks have been sharing with us this information: “It doesn’t have to be a totally new image/pin. Other categories count as fresh as well, such as a new pin from an older blog post or an old image re-pinned with fresh and more relevant descriptions.”

What falls under the idea of Fresh Content?

• A new Pin for your email opt-in or anything else you want to promote { not Repin }
• A Pin for a new blog post
• A new image for an old blog post

Take a look at your pins that are at the top of your Impressions and Click-Throughs sections.

Spend some time every week thinking about these pins and WHY it’s your best content and how you can create fresh content by making a new pin.

After you’ve changed out the image, do some research using Pinterest’s Guided Search for new keyword phrases and hashtags that you can add to the pin description.

And then think about what ideas you can come up with for 5 to 10 more posts on topics that have received the best response.

 

What else can you do to up your game with your Pinterest strategy?

• Get your most popular pins back into the Pinterest algorithm. Reschedule them to be shared on some of your top boards.
• Find more group boards to pin your fresh content to as well as the original pin that gave you the big numbers.
• Update your pins that aren’t showing up in your analytics. How can you change out the image or write a more compelling headline to get more repins and clicks to your site.
• Always run a search in the Guided Search bar to help you improve your images, headlines and pin descriptions to increase engagement.