Pinterest Insights & Analytics Archives

The Ideal Metrics to Track Social Media Performance

Stephanie Mayberry on May 4, 2022

Have you ever heard of a little thing called social media metrics? These marketing tricks help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media strategy, which is pretty important no matter the size of your business.

In a nutshell, social media metrics help you measure the success of a campaign and the overall impact your social media performance has on your business. And it measures these analytics by tracking things like engagement, sales, clicks, and overall growth.

When most people outside of marketing think of social media, they likely don’t think of strategy and statistics.

However, it’s hard to know what works for your audience without a plan, goals, and calculated measurements. Without tracking the metrics, every post is like a random shot in the dark. Any marketing without intention (unless you strike some luck) is a waste of time.

So if you’re a business using social media marketing and want to grow your account and make sales, then this post is for YOU .

Without further ado, there are three important things to consider when measuring your social media metrics.

What metrics to measure
Where to measure them
How to analyze metric performance

And the best part is I’ll be taking you through all of that in this post. By the time you’re done, you’ll be able to track your analytics like a pro.

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So let’s get to it, shall we?

What Metrics to Measure

Social media metrics give you a birds’ eye view of your content’s performance. But what social media analytics should you measure to include any potential blind spots?

There are four significant factors to keep in mind that’ll help determine the impact your social media presence is making. These four factors will help you see what your target audience prefers and the success of your campaigns.

Whether you’re a social media marketing manager or an entrepreneur, tracking these analytics will reveal everything you need to know about the success of your efforts.

1. Reach

There are two different types of reach that should be measured. And if you’re wondering, “how could there be different types of reach?”, don’t worry because we’re friends now, and I’ll explain why they’re different yet equally important.

The first type is post reach which keeps track of how many people organically saw the content since it was posted. This is really helpful in seeing where you’re falling in the algorithm and if people are seeing your posts or not.

It also helps measure the engagement percentage to gauge the direct impact your content has on its targeted audience. (We’re just scratching the surface on this topic, but I’ll go into greater detail below. )

The second type is potential reach which shows how many people likely saw your post during a certain period of time. When calculating potential reach, there are three factors taken into consideration.

Unique Views – How many people saw it both organically and through re-shares?
Impressions – How many people interacted with the content? This includes likes, comments, and shares. (Want to learn more? Check out our blog post on navigating Instagram impressions and reach!)
Follower Count – Did anyone follow you after seeing that post?
Audience Growth Rate – Did you maintain followers or lose any? What’s your overall growth rate? And is that continually climbing, declining, or remaining the same?

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2. Share of Voice

This analysis helps you see how many people are mentioning and tagging your account compared to your competitors. It enables you to evaluate your brand’s visibility and relevance within your market’s niche.

3. Conversion Metrics

These analytics help you see how effective your social engagement is at converting followers and making sales. Conversion metrics help you determine how engaging your content is and whether or not you’re targeting the right audience.

You can track conversion metrics depending on where the traffic is coming from and what type of content you’re measuring. But these analytics will significantly help you determine the effectiveness of your social media strategy.

Website Referrals show how many people come from other websites to yours and which websites are bringing them to yours. This is a standard metric used in affiliate programs and influencer marketing.
Social Media Conversions track how many people visit your website directly from social media, which helps you see the effectiveness of a post or campaign.
Conversion Rate is your post’s ratio of comments to the number of overall followers. This metric allows you to see if your audience was inspired to add their voice to your content.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR) tracks how often people click on a specific link you provide for additional content. CTRs are a great tool when determining how compelling the CTA is to your audience.
Bounce Rate is a marketing term for the percentage of people who click a link and quickly leave the page without taking any action. The lower your bounce rate, the more people are interacting with your page, meaning you’re hitting the right target audience.

4. Engagement Metrics

These are the most straightforward metrics to track, but they aren’t necessarily the most reliable. Algorithms change frequently, and sometimes a killer post can just get lost. However, the more loyal your audience, the less your content will be negatively impacted by algorithm changes.

So even though these analytics are more subjective, they’re still critical to consider when determining what is working in your social media strategy and what could use improvement.

There are several engagement metrics to keep in mind that the apps will track for you. And we’ll discuss that right meow.

Likes – This is the lowest form of determining engagement analytics because it is considered the least effort someone has to put into = engaging with a post. This number will generally be the highest analytic and is just part of the picture.
Comments – Comments are a better indicator of a post’s success. When someone comments, they feel called to share their opinion, which means they want to engage with your content and be a part of the story. Comments are one of the easiest ways to determine if content hits the targeted audience or not.
Shares – The next level up from comments is someone re-sharing your content as that goes beyond interacting with your content. Re-shares are essentially someone recommending your account to their audience.
Clicks – This was briefly mentioned in Click-Through-Rate and Bounce-Rate. But this essentially shows the percentage of people who clicked on your content.
Applause Rate – This metric takes the total number of actions just listed (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) a post receives compared to your number of followers. It provides valuable information on how valuable your audience found that post.
Likes – This is the lowest form of determining engagement analytics because it is considered the least effort someone has to put into = engaging with a post. This number will generally be the highest analytic and is just part of the picture.
Comments – Comments are a better indicator of a post’s success. When someone comments, they feel called to share their opinion, which means they want to engage with your content and be a part of the story. Comments are one of the easiest ways to determine if content hits the targeted audience or not.
Shares – The next level up from comments is someone re-sharing your content as that goes beyond interacting with your content. Re-shares are essentially someone recommending your account to their audience.
Clicks – This was briefly mentioned in Click-Through-Rate and Bounce-Rate. But this essentially shows the percentage of people who clicked on your content.
Applause Rate – This metric takes the total number of actions just listed (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) a post receives compared to your number of followers. It provides valuable information on how valuable your audience found that post.

(Interested in growing your engagement on Pinterest? We did a study on how to organically grow your Pinterest engagement.)

Now that we discussed what you should be measuring and the importance of those metrics, let’s go over how to do it. While you may be scratching your head wondering how to keep track of these crucial analytics, sit back and relax because it’s simpler than you’d think.

How to Measure Social Media Campaign Performance

Tracking several metrics on multiple social media platforms and analyzing performance can be a full-time job.

Luckily some apps will track all of that data for you and keep it stored in one single place. Social media tracking apps are simple and great for solo entrepreneurs and companies without a marketing team.

And an app like Tailwind can measure those analytics, saving you from compiling and analyzing the data yourself.

Tailwind allows you to track important analytics for both Pinterest and Instagram, but it has several other capabilities too!

Tailwind Create allows you to make custom posts from templates made by graphic designers. Hashtag Finder makes it easier than ever to find the perfect hashtags that will get your post the most traction. Smart.Bio allows you to include links to various places and tracks when each one is visited. And Tailwind Communities gives you a space to engage with people in your similar niche on Pinterest.

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Thanks to social media tracking tools, you don’t need to be a marketer to grow your accounts strategically. Marketing is easier and more accessible than ever.

Tailwind’s blog also keeps our users and readers up-to-date on social media best practices and app changes, like this post on using Pinterest analytics.

Social media performance doesn’t have to be a mystery!

Next Steps

As you can see, social media metrics and tracking your social media performance don’t have to be a headache.

And it’s also vital to your accounts’ growth and success.

Without tracking these metrics, every post is a missed opportunity to learn something from your target audience on what works verse what doesn’t.

While some analytics are easy to see and keep track of, such as likes and comments, an additional app like Tailwind can help keep track of those analytics plus more. Tailwind will also help break the data down into easily digestible information.

You don’t need to be a marketing guru to leverage social media and convert followers into customers.

If you’re not already a Tailwind user, you can try our forever-free plan and see if it’s worth retiring some of those rotating hats you have been juggling. Why not see if it can take a load off your plate and give you fewer things to worry about?

Now that you know what to track and how I suggest checking out our post, How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy, next!

The world is your oyster, friends.

Ciao!

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Measuring your efforts is the surest way to analyze your social media performance! Come learn what to track and the easiest ways to do so.

How to Calculate and Maximize Social Media ROI

Kristie Hill on April 26, 2022

What is Social Media ROI?

Social media ROI is simply the return on investment (ROI) from one’s social media marketing expenses and activities. Such expenses and activities might include ads, strategic campaigns, a redesign of the website, updated social media bios, etc.

The return can be in the form of revenue, brand awareness, improved customer service, customer loyalty, and much more. At an ideological level, this type of ROI is how much value you receive from the investments you make into social media marketing.

While this may seem like a simple enough concept, obtaining and demonstrating a strong social media ROI is not overly straightforward.

In fact, as of September 1, 2021, a mere 15% of social media marketers were measuring social ROI, according to a Sprout Social Index. However, anyone who incorporates these practices is likely to be several steps ahead of the competition.

How to Calculate and Measure Social Media ROI: 5-Step Plan

1. Define your goals

To begin, it is essential to define your goals and your brand’s social media purpose. The purpose of social media is different for each company. It might even be different for each product or campaign. Some examples of a purpose are as follows:

To make more money
Raise brand awareness
Community building
Better address customer comments
Enhance customer experience and loyalty

For goals, make sure they are actionable, measurable, and realistic. Such goals should also be specific to each campaign and in coordination with establishing goals for social media ROI in general.

Do not forget that goals should also be in line with overall business goals and overall marketing goals. By defining your goals in a specific manner, it will be easier when it comes time to calculate your ROI.

To define your goals, be sure to decide what you want to get out of your campaign. Keep in mind that setting goals is not a one-size-fits-all approach. What is right for your brand may not be realistic for another. The same is true for each campaign. The following are some goals to consider:

Raise brand awareness
Gain followers
Audience engagement
Signups for newsletter
Time spent on a page
Leads generated
Clicks on a link
Purchases
Downloads

In the end, goals should be based on measurable actions that can be monitored. This will help to demonstrate and present the value of your efforts to decision-makers.

2. Measure your progress

Establish metrics to be able to calculate social media ROI. Marketing metrics are a way to track the performance and outcome of a campaign to determine its effectiveness. Before you begin tracking metrics, do not forget to benchmark your ROI for paid social media initiatives. This can be done by measuring the ROI of existing social media marketing efforts prior to launching new campaigns or tactics.

And create a specific period of time to measure, such as the first two weeks or specific dates. LinkedIn research revealed that 77% of marketing individuals measured results during the first month of any campaign despite sales cycles being longer in many instances. The way many organizations and individuals measure progress with metrics is by tracking websites and social media.

On a website, you can use Google analytics to determine social media traffic and which platforms bring in such traffic. For social media, each platform, such as Twitter and Instagram, offers an analytics tool to track interactions and engagements with your audience.

You can keep track of new followers over a specific period of time, how many people save a post, etc. Each metric gathered can help improve the effectiveness of a campaign as well as the overall marketing strategy.

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3. Assign a monetary value to your results

To be able to prove that social media investments are worth the time and money, it will be critical to assign a monetary value to your results. One option is to calculate the lifetime value, or the amount you earn from a customer on average. A formula is often applied to determine the potential value of each visit from a customer.

This formula is the lifetime value x the conversion rate. For example, you might take the lifetime value and multiply that by the average number of email subscribers who become customers to find the real potential value of a customer visit.

Another monetary value can be assigned as the average sale. If the goal of your campaign is to try to get sales, then you’ll want to calculate your average sale amount and set that as the value.

In this case, your destination page would have to be the page that shows up after a customer completes a purchase. When returns are achieved organically, see how much it would have cost to generate those same returns with ads. The monetary value will be the amount you save.

4. Track your investment

Another component to determine the ROI of social media is to track your investments. The type of investments will vary by campaign. This might include:

Advertising costs
Cost of each employee’s hours spent working on the campaign
Expense of hiring someone to write content or social media posts
Fees for social media tools, like social media management software

It is important that these expenses are weighted. This means that if you use social media tools all year, only include the charges from the weeks or months of the campaign’s duration. And be sure to separate paid and organic social media tracking.

5. Calculate your social media ROI

Now that you have all the information and tools to figure out your social media ROI, it is time to calculate. You will need to have profit and investment per campaign at the ready. Profit is the money you earned from, the value of, etc., various social media marketing efforts.

Whereas, investment is the total cost of social media marketing efforts. The following is the social media ROI formula:

The actual calculation → (Profit-investment/investment) x100 = ROI %

And, in the end, you must be able to showcase ROI in an easily digestible report for decision-makers and team members who may not fully grasp social media ROI. You want these reports to follow a basic template.

They should use plain language void of jargon and acronyms. Include results that relate to relevant business objectives. Use KPIs to track progress in the short term. And clearly express any limitations and aspects that you can and can’t measure.

4 Tips for Maximizing Social Media ROI

These tips can help maximize social media ROI!

If you are unsure whether a campaign is right, consider a test campaign. Experiment with different platforms, ad formats, and target audiences. Once you determine which aspects work best, you can launch a full-scale campaign with greater results.

For any campaign, always keep goals in mind during the development and execution stages. It is critical to consider all goals, including the business goals, marketing goals, and campaign goals. You may have to reevaluate mid-campaign to remain aligned with ROI goals.

Look at the data with great frequency. Take advantage of the tools you have to track and monitor data. Evaluate data from a micro and macro perspective, or rather in great detail and from a broader viewpoint.

And, do not forget to use the many helpful social media marketing tools that exist. Tailwind has scheduling tools, analytics, and even Tailwind Create to help you make sure your campaign is a success! Check out Tailwind’s free trial to start getting the most value possible from your social media investment!

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Social media ROI can be a confusing topic, but it is vital for successful marketing. Here’s the ultimate guide to understanding and measuring social media ROI.

10 Social Media Optimization Strategies

Kristie Hill on March 16, 2022

Social media marketing can often seem like the wild west. Anything goes, and marketers have to try everything to see what sticks.

However, this isn’t the most efficient way of going about social media marketing. There are ways to make your campaigns more efficient while focusing your energy into what works instead of what doesn’t.

Let’s talk about the key elements of social media optimization and how you can optimize your social media campaigns.

What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?

Simply put, social media optimization is all about finding what works best for your brand and focusing in on that success. There’s no point in spending time and money on social media campaigns that don’t benefit your business.

However, it can be challenging to figure out what will work and what won’t. Building a popular brand on social media networks is extremely important, so it’s critical that businesses focus on the most efficient path to success.

Some common social media optimization strategies are:

Efficient post scheduling – when should you post content so that it reaches its maximum potential audience and achieves the highest level of engagement?
Intelligent hashtag usage – which hashtags should you use in your posts that will garner you the best results?
Intelligent profile creation – figuring out the best way to present your brand’s social media profile descriptions and links to users is important for any brand’s success.
Focus on community – How can you engage with your brand’s audience over time and make them feel part of the action?

How is Social Media Optimization Related to Search Engine Optimization?

If social media optimization (SMO) seems similar to search engine optimization (SEO) to you, then you’re not wrong!

They are related in some ways, but they have distinct characteristics. One important aspect of SMO is that it can improve SEO performance when done correctly.

They both have similar goals as well, as both aim to raise content awareness with a company’s audience and drive more traffic to websites and services that businesses operate.

As social media becomes more important in people’s everyday lives, so too does social media optimization for brands.

SMO For Every Platform

SMO can be applied to any platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more.

Each platform has its own nuance to it, so marketing on these sites will never be exactly the same.

Designing social media content for any platform should take all aspects into account.

The Main Idea of SMO

The most important element of SMO that will be a theme throughout the rest of this guide is that properly executing SMO involves formulating a strategy, putting that strategy into action, and then monitoring its progress.

This makes it similar to SEO marketing, but with a deeper focus on the nuance of the particular social media platforms you’re working with.

Why is Social Media Optimization Important?

Social media optimization can help your business be discovered more easily. Since social media is extremely pervasive in our society, more and more businesses are using it to promote their brand.

Leveraging the power of social media is critical for remaining competitive in the modern market. This is important even for local businesses.

Successfully implementing SMO can lead to better audience engagement and increased brand awareness. It can also help your brand reach a wider audience through different social media platforms.

SMO can also help marketers assess their ROI and other KPIs more concretely. These strategies can also help your business perform better on search engines, as social pages will rank for certain keywords.

Being connected with your audience on social media also helps marketers measure the response and thoughts of their audience.

With that in mind, let’s talk about specific ways that we can utilize social media optimization to benefit our brands and businesses.

#1 | Identify Your Social Media Goals

One of the most important aspects of social media optimization is to simply take a second to understand what you’re trying to achieve.

Focusing on what you want to accomplish will help narrow your strategy down and help you find purpose in your campaigns. Different campaigns will emerge from different goals. A strategy related to boosting sales will differ from a strategy that focuses on boosting a company’s followers on Instagram.

The length of these goals is also important to consider. It can be helpful to break down your goals into pieces and ask questions that can help you zero in on those goals.

Who is your target audience? What benefits do you offer through your social media presence? What are your competitors doing and who is following them? What kinds of quality content can you provide that differentiate you from that competition?

These are questions that can help you narrow down your goals and help you make better decisions when optimizing your social media campaigns.

#2 | Take Advantage of Your Profile

Consider that your profile is something nearly everyone in your audience may see. If they are curious enough to click on your profile after seeing a post they find interesting, what they see next is critical to retaining their viewership.

It’s important to fill out your profile as much as possible. Pay close attention to your profile picture, bio, links, location, and store hours. These will depend on the platform you’re using.

Your profile is a golden opportunity to communicate with your audience about what your business does and what matters to you. Be sure to include important keywords as these can help improve your search ranking not just on social platforms but also on search engines.

Be sure to make your company’s profiles across all social networks as consistent as possible. This will help with brand recognition. Profiles on social media are essential for social media optimization.

#3 | Do Your Research

Social media optimization strategies require research to be successful, just like SEO.

Taking a deeper look into competitor strategies and analyzing keywords can help you make your campaigns more successful.

Finding what keywords you’d like to implement into your campaigns can help formulate more effective hashtags and captions.

#4 | Use Hashtags

Knowing how to use hashtags is incredibly important for the optimization of any social media campaign. After you’ve done keyword research, top keywords can transform into hashtags that can help you accomplish your campaign’s goals.

Each social media platform is different in terms of how its hashtags function. For example, using single hashtags can be more effective than multiple ones.

Instagram is the opposite, performing well with as many as 30 hashtags per post! However, we recommend sticking to approximately 11 hashtags per post if possible.

Remember the purpose of hashtags: helping people find your content. For your business, this means that you can extend your reach to a wider audience.

Be sure that the hashtags you use are relevant to your brand. The more users that you reach, the more engagement that you will receive.

On Instagram, engagement has been declining in recent years, making it more important than ever to adopt effective outreach and engagement strategies for your brand.

#5 | Optimize Your Content

It’s critical to ensure that the content you’re creating is relevant for consumers. You should avoid redundant, pushy, or other language that comes off as trying to sell something too overtly.

Some different types of engaging content include infographics, news, and giveaways. Images are also a great way to increase engagement. Just like with other social media optimization strategies, take a step back every once in a while and consider if your content is closely aligned with your goals.

Each platform also has specific ins and outs that are very important for social media marketers to take into account.

For example, verifying your website on Pinterest is very important for helping you rank in Pinterest search results.

Paying attention to the way that your URL slug will appear on a post is important as well, as this can affect your post’s SEO performance.

Creating high-quality social media posts can be very effective for building your brand and building more brand awareness. The more that you build out your brand on social media, the more recognizable your business will be across platforms.

It will also become more difficult to replicate your marketing which differentiates your content from the competition.

#6 | Craft Effective and Attention-Grabbing Captions & Headlines

Your overall goal must be to capture the attention of your audience and maintain it. A common misconception is that captions and headlines should always be positive.

It’s easy to imagine that a negative headline might drive away a user. However, negatively framed headlines can actually be extremely effective in hooking a reader into your content.

For example, a headline titled “3 Things You Should Never Do…” can hook your audience quickly and consistently and is an effective way to optimize your social media content.

Positive Headline	Negative Headline
3 Things You Should Do	3 Things You Should Never Do
How X Can Help You Get Work Done	Don’t Buy X Until You Read This
This New Video Broke the Internet	10 Foods You Should Think Twice About Eating

Be sure to include keywords in your captions. Make sure that they reflect your brand and your goals.

Numbers can also be effective for drawing in engagement with your content. Captions should also feature some kind of call to action.

Integrating emotion into your captions can also be effective at converting and enticing users. Emojis can also be helpful, having the potential to boost engagement dramatically.

#7 | Create a Posting Schedule

Consistency and activity on social media is critical for a brand’s success with any audience. You should take some time to find the right schedule for posting in order to maximize brand engagement.

Do research to find when your audience is online most often. This will vary based on the time of year, who you’re trying to reach, as well as your audience’s demographic.

Different platforms are effective for different levels of frequency as well and mastering these can be helpful for optimizing your social media strategy.

Platform	Frequency
Facebook	3-10 posts per week
Twitter	5+ posts per day
LinkedIn	2-5 posts per week
Pinterest	5-10 posts per day

It’s also important to think about when the best time to post is during the course of the day.

This will vary based on what platform you’re using, but keeping in mind when your audience is most active during the day will help you better optimize your social media campaigns and achieve the most engagement.

#8 | Engage with Your Followers

Being active and responding to your audience is extremely important for social media optimization.

Be sure to respond quickly and kindly to your followers. Remember that every follower is a potential customer that can add more value to your company.

#9 | Keep Track of the Results, and Change What Isn’t Working

Monitoring your progress is one of the most critical components of social media optimization.

If you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s impossible to improve and narrow down how to achieve your goals over time.

Every social media marketer should track results and metrics depending on the platform they’re using. Some metrics to watch are:

Likes
Shares
Follows
Retweets
Post views
Link clicks

Be sure to pay close attention to what’s working well and what isn’t.

Optimizing your social media campaigns is all about adjustment. Achieve your goals by keeping what works and tossing out what doesn’t.

#10 | Using the Best Tools for Social Media Optimization

Using professional tools to optimize your social media campaigns can greatly increase your results and help you accomplish your goals faster with higher ROI. Tailwind is an effective solution that provides features such as SmartSchedule, Hashtag Finder, Smart.bio, and more for Instagram marketers.

Pinterest marketers can take advantage of scheduling, creativity tools, and community features as well with Tailwind.

One of the best parts about Tailwind’s social media optimization suite is that the creation tools don’t require any design skills, making them very easy to use for marketers of all skill levels.

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Social Media Optimization Strengthens Brands

In a very competitive digital landscape, social media optimization is incredibly important for strengthening brands online. Utilizing effective tools, doing the right research, and planning out your content can make or break your business’s success on social media platforms.

Industry experts like Tailwind provide effective tools that can elevate your brand and help you achieve your goals more efficiently.

When you’re ready to optimize your company’s social media presence, try out Tailwind’s social media tools today for free to see how professional content can help you achieve the results you need!

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Pinterest Statistics for Marketers to Know in 2021

Stephen Bell on May 21, 2021

Shows Total Saves and Total Followers in Pinterest analytics on a blue background

There’s nothing we love more than an interesting statistic – especially when it’s data that helps us adjust our marketing strategy or think about audiences in new ways.

The Pinterest statistics below are no exception – tell-tale signs of platform growth, user behavior and interests across different demographics can really help you fine-tune your approach to marketing on the platform. Or maybe it’ll encourage you to finally take the plunge and get started on Pinterest!

Skim this roundup of data and insights – and prepare to be amazed!

Pinterest Statistics to Pique Your Interest

The average visit duration to Pinterest (as of April 2021) was 4 minutes and 48 seconds.
Men on Pinterest grew 48% year over year in 2020
Top trends for Gen Z include “cottagecore fashion”, with a 80x increase in searches.
Top trends for men include “kitchen storage solutions”, with a 7x increase in Pinterest searches.
Top trends for millennials “fun couple activities”, with a 30x increase in Pinterest searches.

These statistics are not only interesting, they reveal an important marketing advantage. Pinterest can be a great platform for any B2C business, especially with target audiences spanning multiple gender and age demographics!

Pinterest ads see a 2.3x lower cost per click than other social media ads.

Speaking of ads, one niche in particular is getting more and more creative with their Pinterest ads: food!

As we noted in our 2021 Pinterest Trends Report, searches for “gourmet food plating,” “food garnishes” and “bread art” skyrocketed this year.

Ready to use Pinterest to meet your marketing goals? Try out Tailwind’s social media management tool for free! You can create stunning Pins in seconds, schedule them to go out at the best times, and analyze your Pin performance – all in one place!

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Pinterest Growth Over Time

Pinterest Statistics for Marketing

Pinterest Statistics for Business

Pinterest doesn’t just generate interest for your brand or business, it’s extremely effective at converting! Check out the stats below:

Pinterest User Stats & Demographics

How Pinterest Can Work For You

Pinterest can have immense values for businesses and brands looking to connect with their audiences, drive traffic to their sites and even sell on Pinterest.

More and more audiences are finding Pinterest and using it to search for ideas, inspiration and even products they love. And it’s easier than you think to get started! Especially when you have a smart marketing assistant in your corner – like Tailwind!

Whether you’re looking to create hundreds of personalized Pin designs for your industry and/ or content type (psst… all the Pins featured in this article are available templates in our Create tool), or find out more information about the type of Pins that are working best for you, Tailwind can help you manage your Pinterest marketing – and your other platforms, too!

Curious? Give it a try for free!

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Are you interested in testing out Pinterest for your marketing goals? Here are some statistics to get you excited about using Pinterest for marketing your business!

Using the New Pinterest Analytics for Smarter Marketing

Greg Starling on May 7, 2021

How to use Pinterest Analytics for Smarter Marketing in 2021

As you well know, Pinterest is constantly improving and updating their analytics data. What can we learn from them and how will they inform our Pinterest strategy?

Let’s have a look, shall we? We’ll start off with some of the basics and then move into using analytics to inform our strategy.

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Pinterest Analytics Glossary

An overview of Pinterest analytics, including impressions, saves and outbound clicks

Pinterest Impressions:

What are impressions on Pinterest you ask? Pinterest impressions refer to the amount of times your Pins were seen on any given screen. Impressions are a good indicator of how often your pin topics are being searched, and if your Pins are anywhere within scrolling distance.

Engagements:

Engagements numbers tell you how many times your Pin was clicked or saved. This can also help you see how often your topics are searched and whether or not your pin drew enough interest for a click or a save.

Tailwind Tip: Use engagement data with your total audience data to get understand your content’s engagement rate.

Saves:

Saves indicate how often a user saved your Pin to one of their boards. This is likely a higher intent metric, as it’s something the user wants to remember (and possibly buy). It will also come up again and again for them when they go to those boards!

Total Audience:

This metric is easily confused with impressions, but it measures how many unique views your Pin had. That means that it is measuring exactly how many people saw your Pin (not necessarily how many times they saw it).

While impressions can have one user multiple times, total audience tracks the user only once.

Outbound Clicks:

This one is self-explanatory, and an excellent indicator of audience intent. Outbound clicks refers to the amount of visits to the linked URL in your Pins (from the Pins themselves of course).

This is a very important metric in determining how successful your Pins are in your overall sales strategy.

There is lots more insight to gain from Pinterest analytics, but hopefully these basic definitions can help you as you review your performance metrics.

The New Pinterest Analytics: How It Works

The first thing you’ll notice is the design – clean and simple. It’s a huge improvement over the old dashboard.

By default you’ll see Impressions from all content types during the last 30 days:

Pins you saved from your site (“From you” – this includes repins on that Pin)
Pins other people saved from your site (“Not from you” – this includes repins on that Pin)
Paid and organic
Activity from all devices and from all your claimed accounts PLUS activity on Pins you saved which go to other people’s sites.

Whew!

Now comes the fun part – filtering the data! You can change your date range to show up to 90 days of information.

The first drop-down menu allows you a quick look at trends in:

Impressions
Engagements
Closeups
Link Clicks
Saves
Engagement Rate
Closeup Rate
Link Click Rate
Save Rate

Customize your chart view by using “Split by” to visualize trends broken out by:

Content type (Organic or Paid and earned – earned being downstream activity resulting from ads)
Claimed accounts (your website, Instagram, other people’s sites, etc.)
Device
Source (From you or Not from You)

Here are some of the important marketing questions you can answer with the new Pinterest analytics.

Pinterest Analytics FAQ

1. Which of My Pins Generate the Most Pinterest Traffic?

We’ll hop down to “Top Pins” below the graph at the top and change the drop-down menu to “Link clicks.”

Then, set your filters to:

“Content Type – Organic” (so your ad data doesn’t skew the results)
Claimed Accounts – Your URL

Voila! You’ll see the Pins which are sending the most traffic to your site.

Are they mostly Pins you saved or are they “Not from you” (change the “Split by” dropdown to filter)?

Why does this matter? Understanding what types of content, which image styles, and what subject matter sends the most traffic to your site is crucial in planning your content strategy and informing the design of your Pins.

Sort by content types and account in Pinterest analytics

2. Which of My Pins Are the Most Engaging?

Just switch the Top Pins drop down to “engagements.”

You can change the filters on the left to limit results to your own URL and to Pins you saved (“From you”) as well.

Why does this matter? When Pinterest shows your content to your followers first, they’re looking for a reaction. More engagement from your followers = more distribution for your Pin!

Taking a look at what Pinners find engaging can help you determine which topics and even which Pin designs/text on Pin work best for your audience.

Tailwind Tip: Looking at engagement for Pins NOT from your website gives you a look at what is working for your competitors, which might work for you, too! To view those Pins, just change your “Claimed sites” option to “Other Pins.”

If you spend hours and hours designing countless pins, Tailwind Create for Pinterest is for you. It automates the work of creating pins, giving you more time to guide the strategy of your Pinterest channel.

Sort by Top Pin > engagements in pinterest analytics

Sort by Claimed Accounts in Pinterest Analytics

3. How Much Impact Is My Strategy Having on My Pinterest Traffic?

If you’ve ever tried a new Pinning strategy and wondered – “How much is this really working?” now you can know for sure!

Set your date range for just before you started making the changes.

(Note: it can take a while to see an impact, give it at least a couple weeks before you check!)

Then set your filters like this :

Because you want to see all the impact on your traffic you’re looking at Pins you saved (“From you”) and Pins from others (“Not from you”) you’ve selected Source “All.”

But because it’s helpful to see just how much impact your activity has as opposed to that of others, set your “Split by” to “Source.”

Why does this matter? Any strategy you implement is worth measuring!

Do recall though, that Pinterest activity is very seasonal, so compare your overall traffic this period with that last year as opposed to traffic last month or a few months ago.

You’ll need to do that year-over-year traffic comparison in Google analytics for now – the more granular analytics are only available for the past 90 days at this time.

Just go to Acquisition > Social > Network Referrals > Traffic.

4. On Which Devices are People Most Engaged with MY Content?

Change the drop-down menu to “Engagement Rate” or “Link Click Rate” (depending on what you want to track) and Split by “Device”.

Set the filter for Claimed accounts and select your website URL.

Why does this matter? Knowing where your traffic comes from can help you make Pin designs that convert even better.

If most of your engagement is from mobile (as will likely be the case), you know you need to prioritize the legibility of the text on your Pin image and make sure that your landing pages are optimized for mobile viewers.

5. Is My Instagram (or YouTube or Etsy) Content Performing on Pinterest?

Have you claimed your accounts in your profile? When you do, Pinterest learns that you are the creator for the content on those sites, and includes stats on Pins from all those platforms in your analytics.

It can also help you get more followers on Pinterest and those claimed accounts. But, is anyone really seeing that content? Does it make sense to cross post from Instagram to Pinterest?

Now you can easily find out!

Just change your “Claimed accounts” filter option to Instagram and your drop-down menu to whichever metric matters to you!

Why does this matter? Sharing new, fresh content to Pinterest is a great way to increase your exposure and for Pinterest to see you as an active creator.

But you don’t want to be Pinning content that isn’t engaging. Check to see if:

It’s worth your time
If your content from other accounts is engaging to your audience

Ready for Deeper Insights?

Tailwindapp’s Pinterest Analytics Tools takes your data (and sales to new heights). Tailwind can divide up your data so you can see how each board, keyword, hashtag and source URL performs.

You can also implement heatmaps, see how your engagement levels progress over time, and even get insight into when your audience is most active.

Ready for that deeper strategy? Give Tailwind’s Pinterest Analytics a try. We’re so sure you’ll love it that we’ve offered the trial for free!

Conclusion: Using the New Pinterest Analytics

Now that we can split out activity from paid and organic, Pins we saved versus Pins others saved, and on and on, we can learn so much which will let us make our Pinterest strategies stronger and more effective over time.

Which burning Pinterest marketing questions will you answer with the new analytics?

Let us know if we missed yours!

Was this helpful to you? Please Pin it for later!

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Pinterest Update to Monthly Views (+More Changes)!

Paul Dughi on February 11, 2021

Pinterest Monthly Views on green background

If you use Pinterest for your business, Pinterest analytics are probably your best friend. From showing you which Pins perform best to how much of your website traffic comes from Pinterest to how your advertising dollars are working for you, the importance of understanding your metrics is undeniable.

In 2021, Pinterest is making this even easier for you! They have updated their metrics for paid ads and organic content, with one of the most notable changes being the shift from monthly viewers to monthly views.

How does this affect you? Read on for everything you need to know.

Introducing the New and Improved Monthly Views

If you’re a Pinterest pro, you’re likely used to only being able to see the number of monthly viewers.

This number included people who may have Pins linking to your site as Pinned by you and others, but also views on Pins you saved that link to other people’s sites.

So it was never a good indication of how Pinterest was working to grow your business.

With the new update, the spotlight is on your content. You’ll see the total number of times your Pins appeared in search, home feeds, and other locations in the past month.

This includes the Pins you publish and Pins others have saved from your claimed domain or accounts!

By the way, not claiming your domain could lead to Pins from your site NOT being included in your monthly views (or on your Create tab on your profile).

Not verifying your site on Pinterest can also have a real impact on your Pin performance! In a February 2021 study of over 2m accounts Pinning in November and January, fully 80% of those consistently enjoying higher than average engagement rates had verified their domains on Pinterest.

Compare this with under 3% of the consistent underperformers. Claim your site now!

How This Helps You

In one of their recent Facebook Lives, Jeff Sieh and Tailwind’s Alisa Meredith discussed the benefits of the new feature.

First and foremost, it gives content creators more credit for their Pins and ideas. Now you will be able to see how well the content you work so hard to create is performing on Pinterest.

Secondly, it helps you as a business owner gain more accurate data. As we mentioned before — in the past, monthly viewers reflected views to content you have shared from everywhere. The new monthly views statistic only reflects YOUR content. That’s meaningful!

You can still view total Monthly Viewers by:

Opening your Pinterest Analytics
Selecting Overview
Select “Monthly Total Audience” from the drop-down menu under “Performance Over Time”

how to view Monthly Viewers after new Pinterest update

Pro tip: Keep in mind that (most likely) Monthly Views > Monthly Viewers since Pinners who view one of your Pins will likely view some of your other Pins as well.

Other Updates to Pinterest Analytics

‘Close ups’ for organic Pins are now referred to as ‘Pin Clicks’

Pin Clicks represent when people click on your Pin to learn more. This only counts the number of CLICKS on your Pin, not Sideswipes as you may be used to.

‘Link clicks’ for organic Pins are now referred to as ‘Outbound Clicks’

Outbound clicks represent the number of clicks to your destination URL. This change in terminology creates more consistency between the terminology used for paid and organic content.

Metrics terminology will be updated to be the same between organic and paid metrics

This will make it easier to analyze all your metrics across Pinterest, regardless of whether it is paid ads or organic content.

The default metrics in your Business Hub and Analytics Pages will now show the performance of only Pins linking to your site.

These metrics will show the data for Pins you’ve published and Pins saved from your claimed domains. This will help you better understand which content drives followers to your page, traffic to your website, and conversions for your business. The performance of other Pinners’ content you’ve saved to your account will still be available via the ‘Include saved Pins’ tab in your Analytics graph filters.

What do you think about the new Pinterest updates? Let us know in the comments below

Pin Me For Reference :

Pinterest has rolled out a new update to Pinterest Analytics, including Pinterest Monthly Views! Find out what’s different here!

How to Maintain a Healthy Brand Presence on Pinterest

Greg Starling on February 2, 2021

Building and maintaining a strong brand presence on Pinterest can have a dramatically positive impact on your website traffic, lead generation, and sales. Today, we’ll cover some of the most important Pinterest marketing questions:

How Much Should I Be Pinning?
What Should I Be Pinning?
What Role Do Followers Play in Your Pinterest Success?
Should I Use a Pinterest Scheduler or Do I Need to Pin Manually?
How Can Using Story Pins Help Build a Strong Brand Presence on Pinterest?
Consider Pinterest Ads

Let’s dive in. ‍♀️

What Pinterest and Pinners Want from Brands and Creators

Pinterest has made it no secret – they want more fresh and exciting ideas on the platform.

Did you catch that? People are searching Pinterest for banana ideas, but there are more than enough banana bread recipes on Pinterest!

Other videos along the same lines for summer fashion (no more tie-dye, please) and “something green” (no more succulents) clearly indicate what they’re looking for.

Presenting a new and novel idea is exactly what Pinterest wants from you. More importantly for your Pinterest marketing success, fresh and innovative ideas are what Pinners want from you!

How Much Should I Be Pinning To Maintain a Healthy Brand Presence on Pinterest?

It depends on how much content you are creating or how much still-relevant content you have yet to share on Pinterest!

Always aim for quality over quantity – just make sure to add something brand new at least every week.

What Should I Be Pinning?

Concentrate on your own content. Of course, it’s fine to share others’ content in moderation – Pinners do this naturally!

The 80/20 “rule” (which advised people to share 80% of other people’s content and 20% of their own) was never, in fact, a “rule,” and is even less relevant today.

Additionally, don’t look for great results from resharing your content continually or by making slight variations to images that link to existing content.

In fact, we tested this ourselves! We found that in January, original Pins accounted for 71% of user engagement compared with 29% for saves.

So while you will likely get some results (29% of the total for Tailwind users, 19% for non-Tailwind) from resharing Pins, it’s best to create Pins that are fresh and engaging more frequently, as strategies that involve mainly reposting existing Pins are no longer recommended.

Instead of sharing the same images over and over, think of a few ways your content might appeal to a different audience and appear in different searches!

What Role Do Followers Play in Your Pinterest Success?

Let’s qualify this by focusing on engaged followers. Your Pins are shown to your followers first, and Pinterest looks at their engagement when determining how much to distribute your content more broadly.

That said, our study shows that those accounts with larger follower counts DO enjoy a higher average number of saves on their Pins.

Increase the number of engaged followers on your accounts by encouraging your (already engaged) blog and email audiences to follow you on Pinterest.

We like (and use) the MiloTree popup for WordPress!

Should I Use a Pinterest Scheduler or Do I Need to Pin Manually?

In the above-mentioned study, Tailwind investigated whether sharing directly to Pinterest or “Manual Pinning” might produce better results than sharing from Tailwind.

We found absolutely no advantage to “manual Pinning” compared with using Tailwind.

In fact, Pins scheduled via Tailwind actually performed a bit better (15% better) than those shared manually.

Note: Pins created or saved in July and August have had time to accrue engagement, while those saved later have not yet reached their potential.

Were we to perform this test again today with October 2020 on the far left, the graph would look similar, with the older Pins gathering more engagement and the newer ones not yet picking up!

So why might Tailwind-schedule Pins perform better than “manual” Pins?

It could be because our SmartSchedule recommends times for posting which coincide with the times your followers are most likely to be engaging, or it could be because our members tend to be more consistent in their Pinning!

Using an all-in-one create, schedule, publish, and analytics tool like Tailwind can save you considerable time and make it easier for your brand to maintain an active presence on the site. Remember, sharing content out regularly is much better than engaging in a Pin flurry a few times per month!

Tools like Tailwind are here to make your life easier and free up time so you can focus on other parts of your business.

Of course, you can also use the Pinterest scheduler if you prefer!

Some people find that their Pins saved manually perform better than those scheduled. That may be due to the fact that manual Pinning slows you down and may make it more likely that you’ll spend time to craft effective Pin titles and descriptions (which you could also do when scheduling!). Choose the method that works best for you.

How Can Using Story Pins Help Build a Strong Brand Presence on Pinterest?

Story Pins are a great way to build brand awareness and affinity while attracting new followers who will engage with your content.

If you have access to Story Pins, aim to create a new Story Pin each week and follow the best practices Pinterest shared in their recent online Creators Festival:

Video with cover title or text
Show what you’ll need
step-by-step
Finished creation
CTA

While some content creators are reluctant to spend time creating Pins that don’t lead to website traffic, Story Pins are clearly favored in the algorithm, so jump on board (so to speak) and start attracting people who want to see YOUR ideas!

Consider Pinterest Ads

With increasing competition, the potential for organic distribution and growth isn’t endless.

We’ve seen this with every platform, and Pinterest is no exception. While there is still distribution and traffic to be had without a budget for ads, increasingly only the most exceptional content will gain attention.

Not everyone has an ad budget, but if you do, why not move some of your ad spend to Pinterest ads?

Pinterest ads are a great way to quickly test out new ideas and target new audiences.

AND, unlike ads on other platforms, the increased distribution you pay for doesn’t disappear when the campaign ends; downstream increase in traffic and engagement can continue for many months after your promotion is over!

Wrapping Up: How to Maintain a Healthy Brand Presence on Pinterest

Create fresh and exciting content, presenting it in an appealing way.
Pin new content consistently.
Concentrate on sharing your own content.
Attract engaged followers from your email list and site visitors.
Use the scheduling method that works best for you.
Use Story Pins to increase awareness and attract engaged followers.
Try Pinterest ads.

So, what’s next? Get started on Pinterest in less than an hour with the Pinterest QuickStart.

OR, if you’re already there and looking for more ways to improve your Pinterest marketing, check out the comprehensive webinar, “Everything You Need to Know to Succeed on Pinterest”. Happy Pinning!

Pin Me For Reference :

What Content Marketing Trends Reveal About Pinterest as Your Next Big Marketing Channel

Rebecca Barnatt-Smith on December 21, 2020

Trade secret : the best content marketers constantly use trends to shape their strategy.

A common misconception about trends is that they are fads, fleeting, and should be ignored. But that’s not necessarily true! Trends give us quick, actionable insights into where our audiences are at and what they value.

Just take a look at the 2020 Pinterest Trends, which the platform forecasted with 80% accuracy. Those aren’t just about fads – they are a window into the deeply-held values and growth people are looking to achieve in their lives!

It’s big stuff, and it’s valuable. That’s why you should never ignore a trend report.

Speaking of, SEMrush’s Global Content Marketing Report for 2020 offers a perfect opportunity to learn from others and take a second look at Pinterest for content distribution and promotion.

If you’re on the fence about using Pinterest for your marketing strategy, this report may just change your mind.

So, ready to learn about the immense power of Pinterest?

We’ll dig into SEMrush’s report to show you how Pinterest can help your content succeed in 2021 – and beyond!

About the SEMrush Report

SEMrush’s report includes 63 pages of insight into everything that has happened in content marketing this year.

The data came from 1,500 survey responses, 1.2 million blog posts, and 600k tweets.

To say that it’s thorough is an understatement, as it examines everything from the most expensive keywords to popular distribution channels and more.

And here’s what it reveals about the importance of content marketing on Pinterest:

1. Most Content Marketers Aren’t Relying on Pinterest

But they should.

Brands are always trying to find new ways to stand out on social media, especially when they’re using social as a part of their content marketing strategy.

It’s no surprise that “social media content marketing” is the 20th most popular search query related to content marketing, according to the report.

The report explains that 69% of marketers use social media marketing tools to improve their content marketing.

Another 87% use social as a form of content distribution (or, in other words, extending the reach of their content and getting it in front of more people).

Despite this, only 4% said that Pinterest is the most effective platform for content.

This is at least partially likely because many aren’t even using Pinterest!

A large number of businesses focus almost exclusively on Facebook, Twitter, and possibly LinkedIn.

effective social media platforms for content distribution

Pinterest is a relatively new platform to many content marketers, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth investing in.

It was created as a content-sharing and content-saving platform in early 2010, so there are plenty of opportunities to drive traffic from Pinterest directly!

However, about 4% of marketers have caught on and say that it’s the most effective platform, not that it’s an effective platform.

That’s an important distinction, especially since a study from Merkle demonstrated that Pinterest had the largest year-on-year referral traffic growth in Q4 of 2019.

So what’s the deal?

The biggest reason that most content marketers haven’t made the leap to Pinterest is the misunderstanding that it won’t work for them.

They associate Pinterest exclusively with DIY content like how to make homemade gourmet dog biscuits or motivational quotes.

While this content is on Pinterest, it’s also more nuanced; people are researching buying decisions, and the audience has diversified significantly over the past few years.

Pinterest demographics — *Source: Pinterest Demographics*

Did you know men signing up at higher rates than ever before? And take a spin through Pinterest’s 2021 Trend report – people are using Pinterest for eco-sustainability, entrepreneurship guides, and global connection.

This isn’t just dog biscuits, people, so just because you haven’t used Pinterest yet isn’t a reason why you shouldn’t!

2. Visuals Are Crucial, and Pinterest Is All About Visual

Everybody likes visuals. Visuals can increase views by up to 94% when they’re added to articles and blog posts, and they can also help users retain information more effectively.

Posts with even a single image get 2x as much traffic as text-only posts, and they receive 30% more shares and 25% more backlinks.

And here’s another marketing secret: Social posts with visuals are prioritized by algorithms because people engage with them more consistently.

They’re also more attention-grabbing in busy newsfeeds and can add additional context to a post.

You should be using images and videos on your blog posts whenever possible, and those visual components can then directly be used to create Pins on Pinterest!

Infographics can even act as stand-alone posts, and you know what performs well on Pinterest? Infographic Pins.

Pinterest, after all, is not just another social media platform; it’s a visual search engine. Visuals are everything there.

And since you’re already hopefully creating strong visuals for your blog and across other social media channels, why not add them to another platform for extended reach?

Especially since you can easily drive traffic back to your blog. Can you say win-win?

The Insiders Guide to Pinterest Visuals

In order to excel on Pinterest, you will need to lean on visuals, as they’re a crucial part of the platform.

Without images, after all, you have no Pins, and therefore no Pinterest content!

However, there is a tool you can use to remove all the guesswork out of creating beautiful Pin designs to showcase your content.

It’s… drumroll please … Tailwind Create!

If you have even one image in your blog post, this feature will make it easy to create on-trend Pin designs to promote it.

Here’s how it works:

Start by selecting your brand colors and fonts, and uploading a logo.

Then add the URL you want to pull the image from, select a stock photo, or upload your own site photo.

Next, choose the title that you want to appear on the image.

Tailwind will automatically create different images based on what you’ve inputted. Then, you have multiple designs to choose from!

Easy, right? You have to give Tailwind Create a spin for yourself!

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3. Content with Lists Performs Best

Which is perfect for Pinterest!

According to the SEMrush report, content that features lists outperforms those that don’t.

Posts that contain at least one list for every 500 words of plain text see 70% more traffic than posts without.

Short bullet-point lists can increase page views, backlinks, and shares.

And good news: This translates well to Pinterest content, too!

Remember that people are on the platform to learn and discover new products and ideas, and information that’s conveyed through a list in the image itself can gain major traction on the platform.

Your Pin can then drive users to your blog for more information about how to execute each of the tips discussed.

4. Many Creators Are Publishing How-To Content, Which Performs Well on Pinterest

“Valuable” and “actionable” are two terms that you’ll commonly hear over and over again when people are talking about content marketing.

People want content that can help them solve a problem they’re searching to resolve.

That’s often why “how-to” guides and educational content are so popular and effective.

61% of those surveyed by SEMrush named “how to” and educational content as one of the most effective content marketing tactics they used in 2020.

This works for your blog, for social media posts, and for YouTube videos. It’s true for Pinterest, too.

Pinterest is an excellent platform for sharing your best tutorial and educational content; 85% of regular pinners will actually start research on-platform when they want to start a new project.

You can mention some of the steps in a list, as discussed above, or even consider sharing a video tutorial on-platform.

This makes Pinterest an exceptionally compatible marketing channel for your content marketing overall.

Final Thoughts

Pinterest doesn’t get all the clout that Facebook and Instagram always do, but you shouldn’t count it out. It’s users are highly engaged, and many start researching buying decisions on this platform first.

Since it was designed to be a platform to find and save great content, it only makes sense that it’s a strong candidate as a marketing channel for your content moving forward.

Interested in learning more about marketing with Pinterest? See how Tailwind can streamline and enhance your Pinterest marketing here!

Pin Me For Reference :

Why Are My Pinterest Impressions Going Down?

Greg Starling on October 27, 2020

If you’ve noticed conversations recently about falling impressions on Pinterest Pins, you are not alone. Should you be concerned? If you’ve noticed a decrease in Pin impressions on your own account, what can you do to reverse the trend? We have the answers, so stick around!

We recently had a lively discussion with Jeff Sieh and Jennifer Priest on Facebook on this topic. Have a watch!

What Is a Pinterest “Impression”?

Impressions simply count the number of times your Pin appeared on screen. It doesn’t mean anyone noticed it, engaged with it, or clicked on it, simply that it was displayed on someone’s screen.

If you’re looking at the overall Impression count for your profile, by default you will see impressions of everything you saved – Pins to your site, Pins to other people’s sites – and this figure includes impressions you paid for via Pinterest ads.

It includes impressions from your activity in sharing your own content AND that resulting from other people sharing your content. You can easily filter your impression analytics by adding filters.

Here I’ve filtered to just see impressions resulting from organic shares of content linking to our site:

What Does it Mean if My Pinterest Impressions Are Falling?

It could mean that your content is getting less distribution. Or it could mean that the content you are sharing which links to other people’s sites are getting less distribution. The really important thing to look at is – is your Pinterest referral traffic being impacted?

Use Google Analytics to find out. Go to Acquisition → All Traffic → Channels to see the bigger picture.

Falling impressions may have very little correlation to falling traffic, especially if you are sharing other people’s content.

Is Using Tailwind Causing My Impressions to Fall?

No. Using an approved partner tool will not decrease your distribution.

We have recently confirmed via our Pinterest Partner team that, Pins published through Tailwind or any other official Pinterest partner are not distributed differently than those published natively.

What is Causing a Decrease in my Pinterest Impressions?

Distribution of Pins varies for many reasons including:

What Pinners Are Searching For

If you’re Pinning about Spring dresses in July, you’re not likely to get a lot of distribution for that content – not because there is anything wrong with your content, but because no one is looking for it. It is not relevant today.

If, however, it’s August and you’re sharing your back-to-school tips, well, hello!

HOT TIP: Not sure when that cozy comfort food mac and cheese recipe post will be most relevant? End of November. How do I know? Pinterest Trends!! If you haven’t used it to plan your content, I’m begging you: try it.

Of course, it’s not just about seasonality. Styles and trends come and go. Tie dye was big this spring and ‘Home screen aesthetic and wallpapers’ is all the rage today. As in real life, fashions and trends come and go.

Try creating and sharing a variety of content relevant to multiple seasons, moments, life events, and trends to try to even out your highs and lows over the year.

How Much Engagement the Pin Receives

Your content is served up to your followers first, and their level of engagement sends Pinterest a signal as to its relevance and quality, which will impact your distribution.

Make sure that what you share to Pinterest is of interest to your audience. How? Check out your audience insights (found under “analytics”). You can see the interests and categories which are most engaging to your audience.

Encourage people who already like your content to follow you on Facebook! Your blog and email readers already enjoy what you share – having them as members of your Pinterest audience can give your engagement a boost!

Whether It’s a Brand New Post/Product or Older Content

The best way to increase impressions on your Pins overall is to share brand new, engaging content on Pinterest. That means a new blog post or product which is useful and inspiring to your audience. The recent Pinterest Creators Festival event suggests that creating 2-3 new pieces of content per week is a good goal to aim for.

This is not to say that you cannot create new images for existing content which would appeal to new audiences and new searches or to refresh still-relevant content (like that gift guide for last year – update your post and Pin it with the new date and content). Just leave plenty of room between shares and don’t overdo it.

One thing we’ve noticed is that some are making many images for the same content, sometimes sharing many in quick succession with the same photo, text, and title. This can make for an unpleasant user experience and can impact your distribution.

It’s better to stick with just a couple of images for each idea and experiment with different contexts to reach a new audience and appear in different searches.

When the Pin was Published

If your Pin went out 6 hours ago and you’re looking for thousands of impressions, you’re likely to be disappointed (in fact, you may not see anything at all yet!). More often than not, it’s a slow build. You share, people engage, they share, and it’s exponential.

Another way timing impacts distribution is seasonality, which we discussed above. If your content goes out when it doesn’t feel relevant to your audience, it’s not going to get much engagement, which will in turn limit distribution.

How Well Pinterest Can Identify the Content of the Pin and Map it to the Interests of Pinners

Are you making your product, service, or idea central to your Pin image? Are you using keywords in your Pin titles and descriptions? Are you sharing only to relevant Boards, which are also making use of keywords in the name and description?

Give Pinterest as many signals as possible to help them identify your content and serve it up to the right people. Learn more about Pinterest SEO.

Adherence to Pinterest Best Practices

Pin performance can also vary based on how well they adhere to Pinterest’s best practices. Pinterest has a series of courses available in their Pinterest Academy that we recommend to get up to speed on current best practices.

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This does mean that over a long enough period of time, you may see engagement drop or rise substantially across all of your Pins, or you could see engagement drop for certain types of Pins, regardless of how they were published to Pinterest.

Still have questions? We’ve broken it down here:

Pinterest Marketing & “Fresh Pins” FAQ from Tailwind

Conclusion – How to Combat Falling Pinterest Impressions:

Much of it comes down to the content you’re creating and the audience you’re attracting, so make sure to:

Create and save content that Pinners are searching for today.
Create content that your audience finds engaging.
Create brand new content and ideas to inspire.
Give it some time.
Make sure Pinterest can easily identify the content you are sharing (use SEO!)

We know you have more ideas and we’d love to hear from you – what have you found impactful for increasing your Pinterest impressions?

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The 10 Most Popular Pinterest Categories

Greg Starling on May 5, 2020

What’s a Pinterest category and why do categories matter? Categories used to be manually applied to Pinterest Boards to provide more context on the content therein, but this option has been removed. So, why do we care about categories? Knowing what’s popular can help you present your content in ways that reaches all new audiences and appears in new searches. Cool, right?

So, which are Pinterest’s most popular categories? Let’s start with a look at all the options.

What Pinterest Categories Are Available?

There are 33 categories to choose from – from Animals and pets to Women’s Fashion and nearly everything in between.

How to Find a List of Pinterest Categories

On mobile, edit a Board and look for “Topics.”
On desktop, click on a Board and hit the edit pencil. Look at the Categories dropdown list.
You can also see a list of the categories on this page on Pinterest.

Pinterest Categories List:

Check out the list of Pinterest categories and the kinds of content you would find in each one. Might your content fit into more categories than you initially thought?

It may also help you determine whether Pinterest is a natural fit for your business, though there are an awful lot of people finding success from within the “Other” category! Just because your content doesn’t fit neatly into one of the categories doesn’t mean you can’t also generate traffic from Pinterest.

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Animals and pets – cute critter photos and memes
Architecture – Some attainable inspirations and some total eye candy
Art – Wall art, drawings, how tos
Cars and motorcycles – Hotrods, antiques, and car shows
Celebrities – Mainly shots from movies and tabloids
DIY and crafts – Painting, sewing, crafts of all kinds!
Design – Home style ideas, drawings, design inspiration, graphics
Education – Resources and ideas for kids, parents, and teachers
Entertainment – Party planning, movies, books, tv
Food and drink – Recipes, recipes, and more recipes!
Gardening – How to grow anything
Geek – A place to share all those things that are so uncool they’re cool – superheroes, nerd humor, etc. 🙂
Hair and beauty – Hair and makeup
Health and fitness – Exercise and weight loss
History – Funny, artistic, and curious photos of old landmarks and cultural history
Holidays and events – Holidays, decorations, celebrations
Home decor – DIY Home decor, home decor inspiration
Humor – From clever to cheesy and a little PG-13, gifs and memes aplenty
Illustrations and posters – Paintings, posters, designs, drawings – total eye candy
Kids and parenting – Projects, learning tools, activities, crafts, parenting tips
Men’s fashion – Tips and products for the well-dressed man. Learn to tie a tie, match your socks, roll up your sleeves 🙂
Outdoors – Outdoor design, landscaping, and gardenscapes
Photography – Amateur and artistic photos plus helpful how tos
Products – Mainly product photos
Quotes – Inspirational quotes and poetry
Science and nature – Science experiments, learning resources, and astounding (and sometimes odd) nature photography
Sports – Sports memes and workouts
Tattoos – Inspiration for your next tattoo – in the form of tattoos, designs, and photos
Technology – Privacy protection, shortcuts and productivity hacks, coding tips, and cool products
Travel – Travel tips, destinations, and gorgeous photography
Weddings – Wedding dresses, etiquette, planning tips, invitations, jewelry
Women’s Fashion – Current trends, fashion to buy, how-tos
Other/Everything – Quotes, recipes, crafts, humor – EVERYTHING

The 10 Most Popular Categories on Pinterest

Technically, there’s no true way to see a list of the most popular Pinterest Board categories. BUT, Statista did a study in 2017 which provided some insight; and experience and observation can fill in the rest.

While Statista looked at general categories or topics of interest, we will map our most popular categories to actual Pinterest categories listed above.

Our mostly-unscientific list of the most popular categories on Pinterest, and not necessarily in exact order features:

Food and Drink – Showing up in the #1 and #2 spots in the Statista study (for food, drinks, and hobbies) – there’s no doubt that Pinterest is a go-to resource for all things recipes. In fact, some people report using Pinterest SOLELY for finding recipe ideas!
Home Decor – The first place people go for home interior ideas? PINTEREST!!
Travel – Is there any better way to plan a trip? I think NOT! Group Boards make it easy to collaborate with fellow travelers.
Health and Fitness – Whether we follow through or not, Pinterest is a great place to find workout ideas and health information.
Women’s Fashion – “What to wear to a spring wedding….” There’s no better place for style inspiration!
Hair and Beauty – How many of you have saved Pins to show to your stylist? ‍♀️
DIY & Crafts – Part of art, art supplies, and hobbies, DIY is HUGE on Pinterest.
Entertainment – Quotes, books, movies, music etc. Inspirational quotes, in particular, are incredibly popular.
Weddings – There’s a reason for the stereotype. There’s nothing you CAN’T find for planning the wedding of your dreams on Pinterest.
Holidays & Events – Pinners are planners and doers. Seasonal content is incredibly popular on Pinterest.

How to Choose Which Pinterest Categories to Target

While we might be inclined to try to wedge our content into Pinterest’s popular categories, the most important factor is going to be where your Pin really belongs. If you have a Pin for your article on “Food Photography,” you could present it in a way that would appeal to people interested in “Food and Drink.” But you wouldn’t try to make it (by changing text on image, title, and description), fit in the “home decor” category just because it’s a popular one!

That same Pin for “Food Photography” could be presented in such a way that it appeals to those interested in the “Design” category by changing the photo you use, the text on image, the title, and description. Remember to always save it to the most relevant Board first (generally you’ll look to the Board name to decide relevancy) and not to save it to more than 10 boards. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to where you save your Pins. Quickly saving Pins at the best times for engagement and to more than one Board at a sensible intervals is where a Pinterest marketing tool like Tailwind can make you more effective AND efficient.

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