Yesterday Pinterest, the rapidly growing, third-most-popular social networking site in the U.S., launched Pinterest Web Analytics for businesses and website owners. This is the first analytics offering by Pinterest, which notes that additional tools for businesses and marketers will be released in upcoming months.
Prior to today, robust Pinterest analytics were only available through third party services such as Pinfluencer and Curalate. This free tool allows Pinterest account managers to understand what types of owned content are the most engaging for their communities and measure how pins affect action on their company’s website.
With the analytics dashboard, businesses can now measure:
1. What type of content resonates best with its audience, measured by:
- Most repinned pins
- Most clicked pins
- Most recent pins
- Related pins to your content
2. Pinning activity related to the website, measured by:
- How many people have pinned from website
- How many people have viewed the pins sourcing from website
- How many people have visited website from Pinterest (referral traffic)
The Web Analytics tool allows data to be accessed within custom timeframes with metrics such as reach and impressions over time. Data may also be downloaded and exported.
What Does This Mean for Brands?
Companies can now analyze basic Pinterest Big Data in a digestible manner without necessarily utilizing a third-party vendor. This data will benefit the content creation and management processes as users can access what type of content is the most popular among audiences and optimize content based on these findings. The website metrics provided by the tool support social marketing ROI, particularly how many website visits are generated by pins and how many pins source from a website.
Will This Replace Other Tools?
Right now, the Pinfluencer rollout includes analytics only and does not include other advanced features like pin scheduling, contest management and image-based traffic analysis. Smart money is betting that Pinterest will continue to add functionality, but there is no public timeline for additional rollouts. If your clients are currently involved in robust Pinterest activations, they should still consider tools like Pinfluencer or Curalate. If you’re launching a Pinterest strategy in a few months, you may want to take a “wait and see” approach to see if more features are forthcoming.
How Do I Access Web Analytics?
Web Analytics is free and available to any accounts with that have switched to Pinterest’s latest layout and have a verified website, which proves that you own your website and is indicated by a check mark next to your website URL. If your website is not verified, visit your Settings page and click on the Verify Website button. Currently, Pinterest only supports top-level domains, such as maintenance-ketchum-global.pantheonsite.io. For more information about verifying your website, visit https://help.pinterest.com/entries/22217383.
With a business account or a website listed on your Pinterest account, you can transition to the platform’s latest layout by hovering over the profile menu and clicking “Switch to the New Look.” Once your website is verified and you have switched to Pinterest’s new look, go to the top right menu and click on Analytics to access the Web Analytics dashboard.
Image credit: blog.pinterest.com
