Here’s a quick overview:
As mentioned, it’s a nifty, free tool that allows you to monitor what’s being pinned to Pinterest from your website (or any other website you’re interested in monitoring). It’s a lot like Google Alerts but specific to Pinterest, which might make your life easier. And that’s always good. Using PinAlerts is as easy as filling out a form that looks just like this:
Once you’ve signed up and verified your email address, there are just three easy steps to get started.
- Add the domains you want to monitor (except for incredibly high traffic sites such as Facebook or Amazon);
- Select how often you want an alert for each domain (there are four choices ranging from “as it happens” to “once a week”);
- Create and manage your alerts.
And just like Google Alerts or any other kind of alerts, you can change this as often as you like once you start experimenting with the PinAlerts tool.
Once you’ve signed up, PinAlerts will begin scouring Pinterest for your URLs and emails you the initial findings (which may be one hefty email). After the initial scouring is complete, PinAlerts will email you any new pins found in the time frame you requested at set-up.
The email notifications include the following information:
- Who pinned your content
- The pin URL
- The board name to which it was pinned
- When it was found by PinAlerts
- The description provided by the person pinning the content
We’re data geeks. So tools like PinAlerts, which allow us to dive deeper into the data relative to content that resonates, is a pretty big deal. PinAlerts will allow you to do things like:
Identify and fine-tune your focus on your target audience
Anyone even remotely paying attention knows that women love Pinterest, but you need a lot more information than that before you develop and launch a campaign or hope to get real value out of Pinterest. PinAlerts allows you a deep dive into who, specifically, likes your content and what they’re doing and saying about it. And they’ll probably also show you that a love of Pinterest isn’t exclusive to women.
Let consumer behavior, not guesswork, drive strategy
A major problem with people who sell stuff is that we often think that just because we like something, others will, too. PinAlerts will allow you to test your theories as to what you like compared to what others like. With this in mind, we use PinAlerts to help us conduct A/B testing on product ideas for clients and to say it’s been extremely valuable is an understatement. We live by the adage that you should always test your ideas. Measure results. Then test some more. PinAlerts makes this easy.
Conduct market research
PinAlerts will allow you to conduct market research as to what content resonates most with your audience (from your own URLs as well as others). This can help you identify trends in both the B2C and the B2B space. And yes, Pinterest can be as valuable to brands in the B2B space as it is for brands selling directly to consumers. Plus, using PinAlerts can help you spot hot products, platforms, tools and ideas and keep you in-the-know on topics you care the most about.
Identify influencers and potential brand advocates
Identifying influencers and potential brand advocates is a part of everyday life for us and the brands that we serve. And PinAlerts plays an integral role in our ability to do this and do it well. As an example of this, we saw via PinAlerts that some of our content for a CPG client that sells little girls’ accessories was being pinned to a ballet teacher’s boards in preparation for upcoming recitals. We connected with her, developed a relationship and our client will now be working with her to outfit her classes at recital time. Not only did we identify a possible influencer because she told us she liked our client’s products, we created a relationship with a future brand advocate. And a relationship that will no doubt result in product sales. Getting more excited about this, aren’t you?
Conduct competitive analysis
Any business not engaged in competitive analysis on a daily basis is, well, missing the boat. Knowing what your competitors are doing, thinking about, succeeding with and/or not doing so well with is often integral to helping develop your own strategies. And PinAlerts can play a role specific to Pinterest activity. Seeing what your competitors are sharing and what Pinterest users are reacting to, sharing, etc., is important information when it comes to developing or fine-tuning your own campaigns. Start slowly so that you’re not overwhelmed with information. Identify two or three of your top competitors and set up PinAlerts for them.
New business development
In the same way that you can use PinAlerts for competitive analysis, you can use it for new business prospecting and lead generation. Identify your top three to five prospects who are experimenting with Pinterest and pay attention to their activity using PinAlerts. They’ll tell you what they’re thinking about, working on, interested in and/or needing assistance with–all you have to do is pay attention. Imagine that.
Community building
Like any other social network, Pinterest is a community. When you use PinAlerts to show activity around your content and Pinterest boards and then make time to connect with the people who are sharing it and work to build relationships, the potential benefit you might derive from the investment of time and effort you put into making friends will be worth its weight in gold. Just like anything else, building strong networks takes, um, well, networking, and utilizing PinAlerts will help you do that more efficiently and more effectively.
Get started on PinAlerts now and see what it digs up for your domain. And, after you’ve done that, we’d love to have you share this post on Pinterest. And if you’re not following V3 on Pinterest, we hope you’ll start. We share lots of interesting stuff.