Need Pinterest Analytics? Look to Curalate.

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Pinterest. I use it frequently, both personally and as a business tool. And I help our partners build it into their digital marketing strategies.

One of my only complaints about Pinterest has been a lack of analytics. Yes, I can pull traffic and referral info from Google Analytics, but I wanted to know more about my pins. Where they being shared, who was sharing them, what got repinned the most? Also, I wanted to know: how could I find out about brand conversations that were happening on other boards besides the brand’s boards?

It was a big frustration for me. Then I found Curalate.

What is Curalate?

Curalate is, simply-put, a platform for monitoring Pinterest statistics. It’s clean, simple, and easy to use. The platform helps you measure and monitor your pinning, which in turn helps you build a Pinterest strategy.

Another thing I love about Curalate: it allows you to manage several brands from the same platform. This makes life so much easier for me, as I help several of our partners with Pinterest strategy.

But I might be most stoked about the fact that Curalate can round up brand conversations that are happening outside of your brand’s boards. A study by Curalate found that only about 15% of a brand’s engagement happens on it’s own boards. With Curalate, you can find out where those other 85% of conversations are happening.

Here are some of the Curalate features that you’re going to find most helpful.

Repins by Board

I really like this feature. At a glance, it allows you see how successful your boards are, at least repin-wise. It helps me understand which boards I should focus on, whether I need to keep doing more of the same or I need to revamp my strategy.

Repins by Pin

Simply put, this stat shows me which of my pins are the most successful, if my goal is for repins. I can take a look at the date/time the pin was shared, which board, who was repinning, and from there, craft a strategy for similar future pins.

Impressions

This stat shows you how often your pins showed up in other users’ activity feeds. This is a great way to get a feel for the overall exposure that your pins are getting.

Engaged Users 

From Curalate: “The number of unique individuals who interacted with your brand’s content. This does not include interactions on your own boards.” So in other words, this stat shows you how often your pins were shared on others’ boards, and interacted with there. And what’s great about Curalate is that you can interact with your brand followers and repinners directly through the platform. You don’t have to sign into Pinterest separately.

 

Competitors

Curalate gives you the option to set up monitoring tools for your competitors. So, at a glance, you can also see their pins, followers, and engagement. Don’t be afraid to dig into these stats. You can learn a lot from a competitor who is doing something right on Pinterest. Remember, it’s a platform that lots of folks are still experimenting with.

Monitor Keywords

Curalate has a cool feature that allows you to monitor keywords. You can set up your account with the keywords of your choosing, and Curalate will go out and find the pins that mention those words. Then it will show you the pin, the pin’s description, the date of the pin, the user of the pin, and the number of followers for that pinner. You can also monitor competitor keywords.

Traffic (Visits)

And perhaps the most valuable feature of Curalate? It integrates with Google Analytics so you can see the visits that are coming to your website from Pinterest. And those are the golden pins. Getting them on your site hopefully leads to purchase.

To get your own Curalate account, you’ll need to request access at this time. It doesn’t take long, and once you’re in, you’ll have several days to dig in before you need to decide if you’re going to continue with the service. From there, Curalate charges a monthly fee, which I found to be very reasonable.

Retail companies especially have lots to gain by pinning. A recent report estimates that Pinterest will account for 40% of social media driven purchases by the end of 2012. To really get a grasp on the success of your Pinterest strategy, analytics are crucial. Curalate is a great place to start digging into that data.

How are you currently measuring Pinterest analytics? Let’s chat in the comments.