Vincent NG
Welcome to day 21 of the 31 days to a better Pinterest page. And for day 21, you’re going on a spy mission. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to gather intelligence from your competitors, and use that intelligence to make better business decisions. This isn’t a dangerous mission, but it’s a mission that requires intelligence, guts and dedication. Do you accept the mission? Excellent…let’s get started Pinterest secret agent.
Have you been slaving away at writing blog posts and pinning content but it just doesn’t seem to be getting the type of social traction you had hope for? And yet you see a competitor (or a friend who’s in the same blogging biz) that seems to be racing ahead of you when it comes to their social shares. It can be a little frustrating at times can’t it?
Regardless of whether you have a retail site, or a blog, the following tools and information can be extremely helpful in getting to know more about your competitors to help level the playing ground and potentially put you ahead of the pack.
Find Out What’s Socially Popular On Another Site
Do you have a blogger that you admire a lot and want to find out what she’s writing about that’s getting her a lot of social shares?
Here’s a great tool for you. When I discovered it through Kissmetrics blog, my eyes turned bigger than a full moon. Your secret intelligence will come from BuzzSumo.com.
Go to BuzzSumo.com and you can type in any site to find out how many social shares a site has received for the previous day, week or up to the previous six months.. You can type in a website, or check up by search terms like “Blue Diamonds.” This will offer you some hint on what’s extremely popular on Pinterest in terms of repins and other social shares.
I find that if you run into an article or a product that doesn’t get a lot of shares on networks like Facebook, or Twitter, then chances are you’ve run into a hot topic and pinnable topic on Pinterest.
Once you’ve found a website that may be of interest, make sure you click through to the website to see what the product or blog post is about to get a better understanding of why it may be so popular.
I researched copyblogger to find out which article of theirs was most popular in terms of repins for the last six months. I noticed that the top article received twice as many repins as the next one, and the big reason why the first one did, was because it had a pinnable image that contained a headline about the article.
The article second most pinned article contained a photo that didn’t have a headline.
Yes it pays to have a blog with a pinnable feature image!
Check Out Your Competitor’s Pinterest Page
A good way to find out what’s popular with your competitors audience is to actually go and visit their Pinterest page. You can go and see what their pinning strategy is like, as well as what type of topics seem to be popular among their audiences.
Chances are you’re going to be sharing the same type of audience with your competitors, so being able to know what type of pins is popular among their audience means that you’re going to know what will most likely work for yours as well.
All you need to do is go to their profile and click on their Pin tab. Observe to see what type of pins are getting a lot of repins.
Check Out What’s Being Pinned from a Competitor’s Website
The other way to see what’s popular on a competitor’s website in terms of what’s being pinned from it is to use the url www.pinterest.com/source/(website.com). You will need to sign up for a Pinterest account to gain access to.
Here’s an example of what it looks like when I type in www.pinterest.com/source/zappos.com
This way you can find out what other people are pinning and see if there are some popular pins that keep coming up again and again.
Use an Analytics Tool like Tailwind
The pro version of Tailwind allows you to keep track of competitors and how they are doing. Tailwind sets benchmarks for you to compare metrics such a engagement levels, and virality of your competitor’s pins.
Day 21 Actionable Step:
Your goal today is to go around and play with BuzzSumo.com. Find out what’s popular on two of your competitor’s sites. Also take the time to take a look at two keywords and see what articles related to the keywords are popular.
Additional Resource:
Head on over to the Pintalysis Academy and check out the video 5 Tips for using Pinterest for Business.
