Pinterest is a network that has grown very quickly in popularity over the past year. Because of this growth, brands have naturally joined the network in order to reach their target and distribute content. One current implication of managing a brand on Pinterest is you can only see basic information such as followers and following, without any real analytical insights.  Well, now there is solution. Currently in beta, Pinerly is a tool that lets you track views and clickthroughs on pins you create. 

First start by creating a campaign on Pinerly. The interface mirrors that of Pinterest. Here you provide the image, description, and tags. Pinerly also has an editing feature with effects and Instagram-like filters. Once your content (photo) is posted, it will automatically be sent to Pinterest as a pin. From here you will be able to begin tracking analytics. 

Once a pin is published to Pinerly, you may track performance via an analytics dashboard. The dashboard shows you weekly and monthly stats around your Pinterest content. Specific to each pin, you can view various metrics such as clicks, likes, pins, and total reach.

The ability to now track Pinterest content via analytics will allow us to manage pages similarly to the way we have with Facebook Insights. Services like Pinerly make it easier for community managers and brands to better understand the content and ways to effectively reach their audience on social platforms. This creates a better experience for all. Hopefully in the near future, Pinterest will provide analytics and insights software for...

Is your brand on Pinterest? If so, what kind of metrics are you using and how are you tabulating them? (You are tracking against some sort of success metric, right?)

If these questions leave you with a look more awkward than Phil Mickelson's smile as he approaches the 18th green, then fear not; there is hope. Enter Curalate.

As stated in the video above,

Curalate uses some pretty cool technologies to automagically find, match, and remember images that are about your brand. We take the impossible and make it possible, discovering, tracking and measuring the sharing of your brand's content on visual platforms like Pinterest.

Curalate is packed full of stats and graphs, and appears to be thorough to say the least. My only caution on this one is to make sure you don't get lost in the data. As with most things online, it's possible to track a minutia of data points, but not all data points truly matter. Make sure you don't get lost tabulating results that aren't actionable or insightful.

Thanks, Ben!

Pinterest is a great place for brands to illustrate a lifestyle that includes their products or services. With 5.5 million monthly uniques in the U.S. alone, it is no surprise why many companies are getting involved. 

To stand out from the crowd and generate further interactions with fans, many brands are hosting contests on the site. Successful contests can help to achieve larger business goals such as driving awareness, engagement, consideration and sales. 

Incentives for Increased Brand Awareness 

New-to-market brands, products or services that need added awareness can leverage Pinterest contests to help spread the word. Crowning a contest winner based on the number repins, comments and likes received gives users incentive to spread the word to friends and family. 

High Point Market is one brand that has launched this type of campaign.

Encouraging Brand Engagement 

Brands looking to drive ongoing engagement with participants can launch "Pin It to Win It" style contests, where the "best" board is selected against a set of judging criteria. Selecting the winner based on quality of content keeps the barrier to entry low, while giving users incentive to spend more time on campaign-related activities. 

Brands that have launched "Pin It to Win It" style contests include ModCloth, Kraft, Lands' End and Barney's New York.

Driving Consideration

Consumers looking to purchase expensive goods...

Keeping tabs on all of the delicious recipes you encounter online can be quite the pain. While there are sites like KeepRecipes that allow you to store links, Foodily is much more of a community experience not unlike Twitter where you follow "taste makers" (key influencers, chefs, etc) and can "fave" recipes that tickle your tummy bone.

Signing up for Foodily is a breeze. Once you've created your username and password you're able to pick the people you'd like to follow. Foodily suggests famous chefs, brands, and bloggers but you're welcome to invite friends and search for ones who might already be active on the site.

It even allows you to port over your recipes that you have already catalogued on Pinterest.

The experience starts with a simple search function. Two bars let you find what you're looking for while allowing you to remove any unwanted ingredients.

With the recent explosion of visual search and Pinterest-like user interfaces, there has been a shift in the way fashion is curated online. A new form of e-commerce has evolved that some refer to as "social shopping". A great example of a "social shopping" site that I have spent the past few weeks researching is SparkRebel. Similar to "pinning" on Pinterest, users are asked to "spark" the fashions that most inspire them. 

My personal favorite part of this site is the "Brands and Stores" page which allows users to shop and spark fashion pieces directly from their favorite companies, such as Calvin Klein, Gap, Urban Outfitters, and even Zac Posen. The price and a "Buy It" button are clearly displayed under each item, a more direct link to e-commerce than Pinterest currently has. 

Aside from just being able to shop and "spark" clothing directly from collecitons, users can also post their own products, photos, blogs, and anything else from the web to topic-specific channels. Exisiting channels cover a wide range of topics, from weddings to beauty to (my personal favorite) fashion disasters. There is even a "Sales & Promos" section for the deal seeking divas out there. Users are asked to contribute anything that inspires them and their style.

Sites like SparkRebel that have succesfully managed to tie "social shopping"  directly to the back end of many partnering stores will...