When you’re just starting on Pinterest, there’s so much to learn. You’ve claimed your site, found your keywords, and started designing pins that make people want to click. But how do you know if you’re getting results? What do the Pinterest analytics actually tell you? How can you use the analytics to grow your business?
Good news! I’m here to answer these questions and so many others, so keep reading to find out all you need to know about Pinterest analytics!
What are the Pinterest Analytics on Your Profile?
The first number that new Pinterest business users almost always focus on in the average monthly viewers. That’s probably because it’s right on the profile!
If you look at my Pinterest profile above, you’ll see the 50.1k monthly viewers is circled. This means that pins I’ve pinned have been “seen” by just over 50,000 viewers in the past 30 days on Pinterest. This number is not important.
I’ll say it again.
This number is not important!
People call this number a vanity metric, and there’s a reason for that. When that number is really high, people who aren’t as familiar with Pinterest think that the user is doing really well on Pinterest.
But that’s not what that number really means.
The monthly viewer number is the number of times any pin you have pinned or repinned on Pinterest is shown to any person on Pinterest. It doesn’t matter if it’s your pin or someone else’s pin. It doesn’t matter if they stop to look at the pin or they scroll right past it. All it means is that a pin has appeared to someone, somewhere in Pinterest.
Here’s an example to show you what I mean. Open the Pinterest app on your phone. Once it’s opened, scroll once and let it go until it stops. If you count how many pins showed as you scrolled by, there are probably 15 to 20 pins that you scrolled past. For each of those pins, you just counted as a monthly viewer for the person who pinned it. Do you even know what most of the pins are about??
That’s why monthly viewers aren’t important, because they don’t necessarily matter to grow your business.
What Do Pin Analytics Mean?
The Pinterest analytics for each of your pins gives you information. Here’s an example of one of my pins.
As you look at the pin above, you’ll see the impressions first. That’s how many times this specific pin appeared in people’s feeds across Pinterest in the last 30 days.
Hint: If there’s a significant number like the 2.7k, you can tell that your pin has solid keywords in the description. If there are only a few impressions shown, you might want to check your keywords.
One of my favorite Pinterest gurus is Monica Froese. She blogs at redefiningmom.com and she is fabulous at explaining what low impressions mean. You can check out this Simple Pin Media podcast on Pinterest analytics to really understand what might cause low impressions and what to do about them.
The saves number shows you how many times this pin was saved in the last 30 days. This pin has been repinned 28 times across Pinterest. You’ll notice that’s different from the 149 down at the bottom of the screen next to the pin icon. The bottom number is how many times this pin has been pinned or repinned all across Pinterest. This includes the times I’ve pinned the pin, too.
The number of clicks is the one to be the most concerned about. This tells you how many times your pin has interested someone enough for them to want to visit your website. On this pin, 38 people have headed to my website from this pin in the last 30 days.
It’s important to keep in mind that this number is probably different than the statistic in Google Analytics, and there’s a reason for that. Pinterest measures when someone leaves their site to go to another site. Google Analytics doesn’t count it as a session until your website has fully loaded.
Hint: If there’s a big discrepancy between the count on Pinterest and the number in Google Analytics, it might be a good idea to check your site speed. People are impatient, so they won’t wait for slow websites to load.
If you click on the grey button that says See More Stats, you can see how many times people have clicked on the pin for a close-up. This tells you more about whether the pin is actually converting for your business.
Hint: If people are clicking on a Pinterest pin for a close-up but not clicking through to your site, you might want to try a new pin design or description. You should always try to improve your pins to make them even more clickable!
[bctt tweet=”If people are clicking on a Pinterest pin for a close-up but not clicking through to your site, you might want to try a new pin design or description. You should always try to improve your pins to make them even more clickable!” username=”mvirtualassists”]
What Do the Pinterest Analytics in the Analytics Dashboard Tell You?
When you’re on the Pinterest website, you can click on Analytics in the top left corner to visit your analytics. On your phone, you’ll need to go to analytics.pinterest.com.
Here’s the analytics dashboard for my Pinterest account.
You will notice there are several different things the analytics dashboard shows you. I’ll discuss each thing briefly and highlight the ones I think are the most important. The three graphs across the top can be viewed individually by clicking More>.
Your Pinterest profile
This graph shows data for your whole Pinterest account. Like I discussed earlier, these are any pins you’ve added to your account. They might be your own pins or other people’s pins. You can view impressions, saves, or clicks. You can also see the top pins for impressions, saves, and clicks. Again, they might be your pins, they might be other people’s pins. It’s also possible to customize the dates that the graph shows.
This data isn’t that important to your overall growth on Pinterest, so don’t look at it that often.
People you reach
This data ties in with your monthly viewers, but it’s updated more often. It’s a 30-day total for the number of users who have seen your pin. You can click on each day to see the previous 30-day total. The average monthly viewer number includes impressions only.
Average monthly engaged is significantly lower and focuses on users that either saved or clicked pins in your profile. These are pins that you’ve pinned or repinned to your account.
Again, this data is not the most important for your business.
Activity from your website
This is where you want to look when you’re looking at your Pinterest analytics. This section focuses solely on information from your website and all of the pins from your website.
Hint: This section of Pinterest analytics is only available if you’ve claimed your website on Pinterest. If you need help doing this, you can check out my post Get Your Pinterest Account Open for Business.
Just like your Pinterest profile analytics, this section shows impression, saves, and clicks, but ONLY for pins from your website. You can customize dates to check data. Underneath the graph, you can see the images of the pins with top impressions (or saves or clicks).
You’ll notice in this section that there are other things you can click across the top. The analytics show you how many original pins other people are pinning from your website. This activity shows up in the Activity section of your Pinterest profile. The All-time section shows pins that have the most saves, pins that show up the highest in search, and power pins. Power pins show your pins that have the most saves and clicks.
Hint: You can use power pins to see what style of pins perform well. You can use these pin designs as templates for your future pins and/or consider the topic for future content on your website.
What Can You Learn From Audience Insights?
Pinterest recently added a section to Pinterest analytics that gives you information about your audience. If you click on Audience Insights, you’ll be taken to a screen that looks like this:
Within Audience Insights, you can analyze what categories people search and pin from, what specific interest they have within the specific categories, the age of the audience, the gender of the audience, the location of the audience, and how they view Pinterest (iPhone, Android, web, etc.).
The nicest thing about these insights is you can narrow down the information to your engaged audience, your total audience, or look at the Pinterest as a whole. You can also compare your engaged audience to either your total audience or Pinterest audience. This can help you identify and market to your specific audience.
Hint: You can use information from Audience Insights to help develop a customer avatar for your business and Pinterest profile. You can also use the categories and interests for ideas for future content on your blog.
Where Else Can You Find Information on Pinterest Analytics?
There are other places to find more useful information on your Pinterest analytics. Both Tailwind Insights and Google Analytics are especially helpful in understanding what is happening in your Pinterest analytics.
If you use Tailwind Insights, you can look at the success of specific pins in the Pin Inspector and how often they are repinned on Pinterest. You can also check out how well your various boards perform and what kind of virality and engagement they receive. This is especially helpful to see if your group boards are worth the effort. If they aren’t performing well, it might be a good idea to leave the board. Tailwind also lets you see what activity your website is experiencing and even visits to your website, if you link Google Analytics.
Hint: Tailwind only shows data for the past 30 days, unless you have an Enterprise plan. These plans are quite expensive, so you probably will only need it unless you have an agency.
Tailwind Tribes let you see how the pins you share within the tribes perform. You are able to see how many times your pin is shared, who is sharing, the number of repins that your pin receives, and the number of impressions your pin gets. This information is helpful is recognizing if the tribe is helping to grow your Pinterest visibility and your business.
The best place to look at your Pinterest analytics is in Google Analytics. These analytics let you know if your content is engaging to your audience and converting. Google Analytics shows you what amount of your traffic comes from Pinterest, what pages people are landing on, how long they’re spending on your website, when people are visiting, where they’re visiting from, and even what devices they’re using to access the website. You can also see if they are visiting multiple pages within your site and whether they are buying from you or opting in to your email list.
You can use information from Google Analytics to help you develop your buyer avatar, identify posts or products to promote, figure out when is the best time to post to your blog, and see what content and topics perform the best on your site. It can also be helpful to figure out what keywords and referral avenues are working to grow your business.
Hint: If you want to dive even deeper into your Pinterest analytics within Google Analytics, you need to get the Pinterest dashboard from Kristie Hill! This dashboard gives you the specific details about the Pinterest pins that drive traffic to your site.
What If You Need More Help With Pinterest Analytics?
This post is a great start to understanding Pinterest analytics and what they can tell you, but it can be overwhelming. Not everyone is as fascinated by analytics as I am!
If you are feeling lost or confused by all of this information, I would love to help you out. You can head over to my Work with Me! page and schedule a free consultation. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have on Pinterest analytics.
I also offer Pinterest management services if you would prefer to have someone else handle your Pinterest profile for you. You can check out all of the services I offer on my Services We Offer page.
That’s it for today! I would love to hear what your Pinterest analytics are telling you, so please share one thing you discovered in your analytics on the May Virtual Assists’ Facebook page. I can’t wait to see what you learned!
Until next time,
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