I will be the first to admit that I am an analytics geek. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy great photography and that’s what appeals to me most about Pinterest. When the number of my followers started growing fast, I was contacted by a few third party Pinterest analytics companies. They offered me beta versions of their product to try. This was really fun. I was kind of like a kid on Christmas. As I started using some of these products I was bombarded by numbers. In many cases I had no idea what they meant. The terminology was like a foreign language as well.
What I had wrong about Pinterest is that it is not a photo contest. That does not mean that a good quality picture is not important. It means that depending on what your goals are, different pictures produce different results.
For the typical Pinterest user none of this probably matters. If you are trying to build a following or promote a website you need to understand a little bit about analytics.
If your goal is to build a following it is more important to find pins that will get spread far and wide. As you can see by these examples it’s not always great photography but content that Pinterest users are looking for.
Remember that the description of the pin is very important as well. Use the image to catch Pinterest users attention. Use the description to get the pinterest users to take a closer look.
If you are trying to promote a website you obviously want Pinterest users to click through your image to the website. Don’t tell the whole story or give the full recipe in the pin description. It needs to be a tease to get users to click through for more.
Here are a few examples of pictures that got a lot of clicks but relatively few repins.
As you can see the click through game is not a photo contest either. I guess the conclusion here is that PInterest followers are lushes?
The picture below is really a nice photograph.
Believe it or not, not one person repinned this picture of a pear. 684 people clicked through to the website. Go figure.
If I can attract a large following on Pinterest you can too. Let me give you hand in reaching your goals. I do a little consulting on the side so if you are interested drop me a line at dan@dan330.com.
