Pinterest, a picture-bookmarking site, has become one of the indispensable marketing platforms for travel brands.
This is mainly due to the common characteristic that exists between Pinterest and travel: inspiration. Pinterest is all about future dreams. People pin images that reflect their inspiration. And travel fits the bill.
The impact of Pinterest on travel brands is huge. Some startups have even built their design in imitation of Pinterest, including TravelAvenue, iKnow.Travel, and Mygola, to name a few.
There are also technology companies that provide rich analytics, promotion management, monitoring & listening services for brand's Pinterest pages. A few examples: Pinfluencer (Orbitz and Jetsetter use this), Viralheat (SixFlags uses this), PinLeague, Pingraphy, and Curalate.
The good news today for travel brands is that Pinterest has launched its own Analytics engine.
For a brand to get access to Analytics, it must first make sure that its website has been listed on its profile page as verified. Getting verified can be achieved by two alternate methods listed on Pinterest's site.
Once the website URL is verified, then the Pinterest account user will see "Analytics" option listed in the top right section of their Pinterest page.
Upon clicking on Analytics, the user is presented with five sections:
1. Site Metrics
This is a graphic dashboard that will tell you:
- Number of pinners who have pinned content from your website, total number of pins the pinners have created
- Number of repinners and repins
- Number of pin impressions
- Number of pin visitors and total number of people who clicked on pins
All of the above parameters can be analyzed for any date range.
Site metrics gives a measure of two things: Actions and the number of people who did that action.
2. Most Recent
Displays pins that are recently pinned by users from your website. Clicking on a particular pin opens the image and displays the person who pinned it along with "People who pinned this also pinned" section.
3. Most Repinned
Displays pins that are most repinned by users.
4. Most Clicked
Displays pins that are most clicked by users.
5. Export
User will be able to download the entire site metrics data and remaining three tab data into a CSV file.
Few Takeaways:
- Pinterest Web Analytics is FREE. So, if you are not using any of the above mentioned third party tools to measure your Pinterest performance, then give Pinterest Analytics a spin.
- Pinterest Analytics is just in its initial version, so the next logical step for Pinterest might be to implement a super rich analytics engine like Google Analytics. Pinterest announced about Analytics rollout in November 2012.
- Pinterest has also announced that it will launch a "Suggestion" feature. The site will recommend pins or boards based on what the user has previously pinned. Example: A user adding a pin about beach might be recommended boards/pins from a beach resort or similar destination.
- Ben Silbermann, co-founder of Pinterest, said that 2013 will be the year for building foundations to monetize Pinterest. Wall Street reports that Pinterest is studying a potential advertising system and that it is also building up its relationships with businesses to learn how Pinterest traffic can eventually convert to transactions, from which Pinterest may eventually be able to take a cut.
