Audience Insights - An Often Overlooked, But Valuable Analytics Tool
As someone who uses Pinterest for your business, it's important to understand your analytics. You may regularly review your stats under the "Analytics Overview" tab, but have you looked at your "Audience Insights" before? Although it's not necessary to look at this one each month, it is important to understand what it shows and how to leverage it as part of your Pinterest strategy.
First, it's important to understand how the Pinterest algorithm works. The algorithm centers on users behavior on the platform (ie. searches, pins you engage with, and even boards you create and save to). Based on these behaviors, Pinterest "tags" your account with a variety of INTERESTS.
Do you ever notice after you do a search for something on Pinterest, you start seeing a bunch of pins that are related to that search next time you open the app? This is the algorithm at play. Now that we understand how the algorithm works, lets jump back into the Audience Insights report...
When logged into your account, at the top, go to Analytics > Audience Insights
Once there, you'll see a list of Categories & Interests and where your audience falls within them. (NOTE: don't be alarmed if you don't see a category or interest directly related to your business. There are WAY more than what they show here. These are just the most popular ones.)
By default it is sorted by AFFINITY (aka the level of interest your audience has in that topic compared to the rest of Pinterest). A high affinity indicates that this portion of your audience has a strong likelihood of engaging with content related to this interest. If your highest affinities are for categories are in line with your target audience, bravo! This means your are creating inspiring and engaging content your audience is highly interested in.
Now click the % of Audience column to rank what the bulk of your audience is interested in. This step is important...if the largest percent of your audience is in a category/interest that is unrelated to your business or has a really low affinity, you have some work to do! Remember, your audience is curated off the pins you save and create on your account...so if you are saving pins (to public boards) for your personal use (say recipes or fashion inspo) but they don't align with your business, you will begin to attract an audience interested in those topics.
TIPS TO ATTRACT YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE:
- Use secret boards for pinning personal content unrelated to your business and target audience or create a separate personal account that is linked to your business account for easy toggling back and forth.
- Grow an engaged audience by creating content for interests on this report that are high affinity, but low % of audience.
- Leverage the Trends Tool to see what is trending now or seasonally by selecting your main interests (in the newest version of the trends tool)
Go and take a look at your Audience Insights...Do they align with your target audience?
