Pinterest can be a valuable social tool to help brands build their network and increase traffic to their websites. That’s especially true for businesses that have something visual to share such as ecommerce businesses, design businesses or businesses that use photos, videos and infographics.
But just using the site itself might not garner the best possible results. It has an elegantly simple interface – but it is barebones when it comes to features. It doesn’t notify you with alerts. It doesn’t have analytics. It doesn’t let you schedule your activity.
That is why you need add-on tools. We’ve chosen 6 “pinteresting” tools you may not be aware of that can make your business more successful on Pinterest, and help you understand its impact on your brand.
Here are our picks of six online tools have sprouted up recently that can help businesses get the most out of Pinterest:
PinGraphy – This tool allows users to schedule pins so they go up on the site at specific times. Businesses that use Pinterest to drive traffic to their sites might find that their customers are more likely to click over at certain times. Particularly for business owners that might reserve pinning for the late night hours, this type of tool could definitely help your pins be seen by more pinners or prospective customers.
PinAlerts – This Web service sends alerts via email when someone pins something from your website. Businesses can add their sites to the PinAlerts list and then see which users are visiting their site and when, along with what type of content they find interesting enough to pin. Here are 5 ways to use PinAlerts.
Octopin – This analytics tool gives insights into the effectiveness of Pinterest marketing campaigns. Users can measure clicks from particular pins, re-pins, popular pins, and even demographics data about their followers, as well as manage campaigns, contests, comment conversations and more.
Lexity – This tool can give online retailers an idea about what products are reaching the most people on Pinterest. The report contains information about a site’s most pinned products, along with the competitive landscape and pinners who most influence your network and those who share the content from your site.
Pinerly – This is an all-inclusive Pinterest dashboard that allows users to manage their posts, optimize content through posting times and descriptions, and measure how Pinterest content is received by your followers. Pinerly aims to maximize the effectiveness a brand’s pins while minimizing the number of sites and accounts needed.
ViralHeat – This social media monitoring and analytics tool recently announced integration with Pinterest. Though the service is paid, it can monitor pins by keyword, find influencers, and and provide relevant statistics and analytics information that brands might find useful.
Thanks, Annie!
Thanks for the tips…and the tools.
It’s just that…I’m a little burned out. With all the social media tools..platforms, etc.
But, some days I’m not.
I do like Pinterest, actually. Going there is a nice break for the eyes after writing and reading thousands of words every day.
I will check out the 6 Pinterest tools you suggested.
The Franchise King®,
Great list! I’m experimenting with picmonkey to make quotes. I really like Pinstamatic but I’m looking into picmonkey for making quotes that have pictures or background images with the text.
Thanks for sharing!
Tried using PinGraphy right away. Unfortunately scheduling of pins doesn’t seem to work that well if your timezone is in Europe…
I also like Pinvolve, the Facebook app that lets you connect your Pinterest account to your Facebook page 🙂
Suzanne
Thanks for mentioning PinAlerts! Everyone gets notice of repins (from Pinterest). PinAlerts emails you when people pin original pins from your website.
Besides PinAlerts, Pinerly is my favorite because you can identify trends and get ideas for what works best on Pinterest. I still need to try some of the other Pinterset tools on your list, thanks for finding some new ones that I rarely see mentioned.
-Janet
Thanks, Janet.
Pinerly sounds like it’s something I could use for blog topics and such.
The Franchise King®
This is fantastic, Annie. Have it bookmarked. Will be adding each of these to my Pinterest arsenal. Thank you.
Personally I think Pinterest is excellent for sites and small businesses that are or can be visually stimulating – we had a go at it for a bit but didn’t see any positive results whatsoever 🙁
I love pinerly! It’s a great add on tool for Pinterest. I think Pinterest has a lot of potential to become something great.
Thank you for the list of tools for pinterest. I especially liked pingraphy as it allows pin scheduling.
Great list of tools, my question is, to what extent does Pinterest have an effect on seo efforts. I’m associated with a physician monitored weight loss program that gets dramatic results for people who have struggled getting anything to work. We’re always on the look out for ways to promote our business and thought maybe some before and after pics might be a good way to get the word out and promote our site.
i will try pingraaphy but still wait email, thank
Hi Annie – Thanks so much for writing about Pingraphy in the past. We’re now called Viraltag and have added some great features for visual content marketing. We’re also happy to tell you Viraltag is now running on Pinterest’s API. With the new data we’re building more functionality to make Viraltag an even more powerful platform for our users. If you have any questions feel free to reach out to me directly — Jilly Badanes, Director of Marketing @ Viraltag.