How to Use Pinterest Analytics to Improve Your Account

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If there’s one thing you can’t ignore when you run an online business, it’s analytics.  If you want to grow your business, what works, when it works or why it might not have worked are all key questions.  The same applies to Pinterest – you need to know what Pins are working, what is getting clicked and what’s sitting alone and unloved on your boards.  That’s when you need to use Pinterest Analytics.

Intro to Analytics

Pinterest Analytics is only available for business accounts, but then if you have a website, you should have one of these anyway.  Connecting your website to the account lets you use the analytics and opens up things like Rich Pins.  Plus, it’s the terms of service that if you are a business, you need a business account.  Okay, Pinterest, we give in.

Once you have connected your website to the account, it might take around a week for the analytics to really start working.  And be warned, Pinterest is usually a couple of days behind.  And there are sometimes issues, like recently, where I had clicks but no impressions – okay, that’s magic then.  But ultimately, understanding Pinterest analytics is useful but should always be paired with Google Analytics.

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Looking at the analytics

Under the new analytics, there are just two options on the drop down menu – overview and audience insights.

Overview – sidebar

Let’s start with the overview and the sidebar along the left of the page.  Here you find the various settings to control what you see on the page.  The main features are:

• Date range – defaults to the last 30 days, but you can change this a lot more than previously
• Content types – all, organic or paid and earned, the latter being if you run promoted pins
• Claimed accounts – this is where claiming that Etsy, YouTube or Instagram account pays off because you can see dedicated date from them
• Devices – see which device is most successful for our account
• Source – all, your pins and other pins, the latter being where people have pinned your stuff from your website directly to their account

Overview – the chart

At the top of the main area of the page is the new chart which is a great way to easily see a host of data and how these figures are changing.  Directly under the graph is a figure for the total period selected or an average percentage, depending on the metric selected from the drop down menu.  You can also select no split, content type, claimed account, device or source to further fine tune.

The options in the main drop down menu are:

• Impressions – when people see your content on their account
• Engagements – where they interact with it
• Pin clicks – where they click to look at it
• Saves – where they save it to their boards
• Outbound clicks – where they click through to your website

There is a percentage rate for each of these as well as a figure.  The final options are total audience and engaged audience which tell you how many people are seeing and interacting with your account as a whole.

Overview – top pins

The lower part of the main page is where you can the top pins for your account.  The default view is for impressions and you can select the same options as above to see the difference. 

The view tells you if the content is organic or paid, your own content or other people’s and gives a total figure at the end.  You can then go to view the individual pin for more information.

Audience insights

The other option on the drop down menu is much the same as before and provides you with information about the audience of your account.  This helps you to see if you are reaching the right type of people and can be a source of more ideas or ways to fine tune the account.

Pinterest analytics on Google

For me, the key to understanding your traffic from Pinterest involve looking both at Pinterest Analytics and also Google Analytics.  If you haven’t signed up for GA, go forth now and do it instantly.  It is free, it is an industry standard piece of software and there is a ton of useful information on it.

Assuming you are now the proud owner of a GA account, let’s see where some of the data from Pinterest can be found.  There are three main places I look to see what’s working from Pinterest.

Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels

First stop is a general view of what sources are sending you traffic.  GA splits them into five main categories:

• Organic search
• Direct
• Referral
• Social
• Other

If you click on ‘Social’ you will then see how much traffic has come from Pinterest in the defined period selected at the top (it defaults to a week, but you can change it).  You will also see the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn here if you got any traffic from them.

Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals > Pinterest

This section tells you where you can find which pins are sending traffic to your site.  When you click on Pinterest you will see which posts have been the most popular – this can be from multiple pins.  If you then click the post, it will give you the URL of each pin and how many people came through from it (it measures sessions, not page views).  You can copy and paste this into a browser to see which board this pin is on.

This is also how you can find your most popular posts for a particular period.  I do this for each month of the year, usually two months ahead.  So I’ve just looked at the September ones at the end of July.  These are worth creating new pins for because if they were popular last year, there’s a good chance they might be popular again this year.

Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns

This last one is for anyone using Tailwind and their Tribes.  This is where you can see how many sessions have come from Tribes and is worth looking at to see that your efforts are working.  Sadly it doesn’t tell you which pins are sending this traffic, but you can get more information on Tailwind itself about this.

What to check when

When I first started blogging, I would check stats all the time because it was amazing to see that people were actually coming to my blog.  Now I restrain myself.  I might take a quick look at Pinterest each morning to see what the analytics are showing – any spikes?  Pin suddenly doing well?  Pinterest analytics acting up again?

On a Sunday, I fill in an Airtable base to help me track things properly.  Here I record my general figures for my blog and have a separate sheet for Pinterest analytics.  I use both Pinterest analytics and Tailwind for this.  I record:

• Pin activity (Tailwind)
• New repins (Tailwind)
• New Followers (Tailwind)
• Total Followers (Tailwind)
• Comments (Tailwind)
• Average daily impressions (Pinterest analytics – website)
• Average daily viewers (Pinterest analytics – website)
• Average daily clicks (Pinterest analytics – website)
• Top 3 pins (Pinterest analytics – website)
• Virality score (Tailwind)
• Engagement score (Tailwind)
• Engagement Rate (Tailwind)

I also have another sheet with the same figures on where I record them once a month on the 1^st for the previous month.  Do you need to do as much as this?  Not if you don’t want to but it can be very handy to watch what is happening, especially if you are running a promoted pin or doing some A/B testing in design or keywords.

Using Pinterest Analytics

I’m the first to admit that Pinterest analytics can be a bit of a pain.  Of late, there have been more than a few gremlins in the system but when I check Google Analytics, it all makes sense.  But it is definitely worth getting acquainted with it, using it and starting to record data so you can make sure every pin counts.

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