Pinterest - It needs no explanation. By now you’ve likely been inundated with best practice guides and case studies. We won’t weigh you down with more how-to’s; we’re more interested if Pinterest is a valuable time and resource investment.

Outside of Pinterest follower counts, there are few ROI metrics available to explore. Pinterest is still a marketing experiment, with its potential currently being explored by brands, businesses and retailers alike. Here’s what the statistics tell us so far:

• From Q2 2011 to now, Pinterest has grown from representing 1.2% of social media revenue for e-commerce sites to 17.4%. This figure is predicted to grow to 40% by Q2 2012;
• Pinterest drives more referral traffic than YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+ - with its share of social media referrals growing steadily;
• A report by RJMetrics found Pinterest is retaining and engaging users as much as 2-3 times as efficiently as Twitter was at a similar time in history;
• Over 80% of pins are repins, demonstrating Pinterest’s tremendous virality at work.
   

Crunching the Numbers

Pinterest lacks an analytics dashboard, but measurement tools are springing up including PinPuff, PinReach and Pinerly. These tools don’t measure the true worth of your Pinterest activity, but make a great attempt and are a useful starting point for analysis. Until more established ROI metrics emerge, we have to rely on simple internal research and analysis.  Here's what to look at:

1. Traffic

In contrast to Facebook and LinkedIn which encourage on-site activity, Pinterest is geared toward encouraging users to click on the images and visit the original source. Therefore, tracking referral traffic and unique visitors is an immediate benefit that you can easily measure through Google Analytics. Using Analytics, deem how many users are visiting via Pins, and what page they’re entering through to deem which pin(s) are generating the most traffic. Also look at conversions - how many visiting Pinterest users purchased a product, requested a quote or completed a website action?
 

2. Market Research

This step entails discovering what people are pinning from your website to gain insights into customer perceptions. Search http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com” - replace “yourdomain.com” with your own URL. Next, research how your followers are interacting with your boards - which pins are your followers repinning, liking and commenting on? So far, repins offer a fair assumption of a user’s engagement with your content. However, a repin doesn’t guarantee a user follows as a result, so look at the ratio of users repinning to users following. Overall, a little market research provides preference and taste data that can be utilised to optimise your Pinterest strategy.

Once you identify your successful pins, you can dedicate more time to pinning valuable images that generate traffic.

For more information on Pinterest Marketing or implementing a Pinterest strategy, contact Vivo Group. We're marketing strategists who take the guesswork out of niche social networks.

P.S. Follow Vivo Group on Pinterest for all things digital

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