A Comparison of 4 Top Pinterest Analytics Platforms

Pinterest is a social media site that has been growing rapidly over the last couple years, yet traditional web analytics doesn’t capture accurate data for this social media giant.  As a result, a new web analytics niche has cropped up targeting Pinterest data and is quickly getting crowded as more businesses jump on the bandwagon.  These Pinterest analytics platforms are designed to analyze the visual pictures used on Pinterest rather than the traditional text used on other social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.  A comparison of four popular Pinterest analytics platforms—Pinfluencer, Pinalytics, Curulate, and Ohtootay—can help you decide which platform is best for your business.

1.       Pinfluencer is the platform created and used by Google Analytics.  Pinfluencer does all the basic analysis for Pinterest, including identifying top pins from websites and boards, as well as the top pins driving clicks, number of pins from unique content, and gives pins an engagement score.  It also analyzes pins with viral reach, allowing the user to better utilize pinning.  In addition to analyzing individual pins, Pinfluencer analyzes Pinners themselves to see which Pinners are Brand Advocates and find out who the most influential Pinners.  Knowing these details allows a company to better target these Pinners and spread the word about a brand.  Pinfluencer digs deeper using Pinster 360 to find out the social presence of Pinners across Twitter and Facebook.  This is powerful information for a company to use in their marketing strategy. Give a company all this information about their competitors, which is a huge selling point for Pinfluencer, and that company has a gold mine of information for utilizing their best Pinners as well as reaching out to the best Pinners of their competitors. 

2.       Pinalytics is based in the UK and is a social media tool that helps “you find, track and evaluate content and interactions on Pinterest.”  Pinalytics is an easy-to-use software focusing on the spread of a pin through social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.  A search bar is used to scan the Pinterest network for a pin then analyze the number of repins, likes, comments, and presence on other social media sites. This information can be sorted in a variety of ways to obtain the necessary information. 

3.       Curalate is a platform focused on using algorithms for image recognition to analyze data in the visually-heavy Pinterest network.  The following video provides a simple yet poignant explanation for the basis of Curalate:

As Curalate finds pins across social media sites, the user can use this data to reply to comments and tweets as they appear.  The user can also use this information to drive clicks and pins and to “monitor words representing sentiments or brand names”. 

4.       Ohtootay is a new platform launched in September 2012.  It analyzes much of the same date represented above.  However, the difference between Ohtootay and the other Pinterest analytics tools is the ability to “track pins all the way through website conversions and associated sales.”  Other platforms can only track sales that are directly linked from the Pinterest site.  Mark Otuteye, found of Ohtootay, explains, “What if a customer clicks on your pin that points to a relevant infographic not on your own site, later Googles you, and then decides to buy? Other analytics software will mistakenly tell social media managers that ‘Google’ caused this sale even though the customer’s first contact was through content you curated on your Pinterest boards.” This is called “last-click bias” and the use of Ohtootay eliminates this hole in Pinterest analytics. 

Overall, there are many options for analyzing a brand or business on Pinterest.  These four have many similar abilities with tweaks that set them apart.  Understanding how Pinterest is different from other social media sites encourages the use of a Pinterest-specific analytics tool.  Because Pinterest has grown tremendously in the past two years and is likely to continue to grow, it is imperative for companies to utilize Pinterest to grow their brand and increase their ROI through one the above platforms. 

Sources:

http://www.curalate.com/

http://pinalytics.co.uk/howto

http://www.pinfluencer.com/

Kalokowski, Nick (Oct. 5, 2005).  http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/pinterest-analytics-on-the-rise/

Perez, Sarah (Sept. 24, 2012). http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/whats-the-roi-of-posting-to-pinterest-new-social-media-solution-ohtootay-tells-you/