Are Pinterest Analytics Killing Your Blog?

Call me crazy but I don’t think the pharaohs worried or wondered about how many impressions, pageviews or unique users would be attached to the hieroglyphics in their tombs.

And it wasn’t because they operated in an offline world that preceded the digital one we live in by thousands of years either. Nah those ancient dudes didn’t wonder or worry because as gods on earth all that mattered was being certain their stories were told with the proper amount of grandeur and respect.

I suppose you could debate the importance of quality of content versus marketing because the blogosphere isn’t like Field of Dreams. There is no guarantee they’ll come if you write it.

Ask me for my professional opinion and I might tell you about the dumbest way to get arrested because some of you haven’t figured out the importance of focusing on quality content because it doesn’t matter how good your marketing skills are if you can’t hold the reader’s attention. And if you don’t recognize the significance of that you might very well be the person who gets arrested in the manner listed above.

Want to know what happened to Egyptians who did a poor job of painting hieroglyphics?

Sadly those guys didn’t have unions or labor boards to protect them. On the other hand they did have hammers and rumor has it they inspired Pete Seeger to write If I Had a Hammer. Bet my dear Shmata Queen didn’t know that little historical nugget.

How Does This Relate To Pinterest Analytics?

I am glad you asked and I shall answer. A while back I was doing the blogger content versus marketing dance which is a fancier way of saying I decided it was time to try to increase readership here and I began researching ways to do it.

Pinterest kept showing up on my radar screen as being an effective way to generate more traffic so I decided to include it in my social media strategy.

So I started looking for images that I thought would add something to the stories I told in my blog posts and would also make people want to pin them.

Time passed and I started to see an increase in traffic but I didn’t have as strong a handle on what was happening on Pinterest as I wanted to. I wanted to see what sort of activity was generated on Pinterest and whether that encouraged people to move from Pinterest over here to the grand old sailing ship of the dad blogosphere, TheJackB.

There was only one problem with that. I didn’t have access to Pinterest analytics so all I was able to see was how many people came here but I couldn’t tell what the hell they were doing on Pinterest.

Fortunately that was a short hiccup and was solved when Pinterest gave me access to a business account and analytics.

Take a look at the screenshot below and you’ll see some of the fine information I received from my analytics.

What I see in the shot above is that I have managed to carve out a small presence on Pinterest but relatively few of the people who visit my boards are coming back to the blog.

It doesn’t provide me with enough information to determine how much crossover traffic there is. I am relatively certain that some of the readers of the blog also hang out on Pinterest with me, but I can’t provide you with hard data.

Are Pinterest Analytics Killing Your Blog?

Sometimes social media participation feels like we are all a bunch of hamsters running as fast as we can on a giant cyber wheel. There is a constant buzz and push to try to secure as many followers/readers as we can and that can be dangerous for blogs and bloggers.

Dangerous because it is easy to become overextended, easy to find yourself chasing and responding to the latest shiny object.

If you have set things up so your blog is supposed to be your online hub than those shiny objects can hurt them as well as help. That is because we all have limited time and resources so you have to be strategic about where you spend your time.

Sometimes looking at analytics can be helpful because it provides data you can use to modify your strategy and be more effective. The key is to be smart about how you use them and to not let those numbers push you into not spending your time wisely.

Be careful kids, don’t fall down the rabbit hole and get lost in the shiny objects. They don’t always yield the results you want. Bloggers don’t always need another ebook . It is a marathon and not a sprint.

And now if you will excuse me I think I need to send the Egyptian government an invoice for services rendered. My ancestors built the pyramids and never got paid. It is time to collect.

• Saved: Blogging, Pinterest