If you've ever been on Pinterest then you know how easy it is to get sucked into the mindless cycle of repinning content. First you see a gorgeous kitchen remodel, so you pin that to your Homes board. Then you see a fun Halloween craft, so you pin that to your DIY board. Before you know it, you're pinning recipes that you'll probably never make and outfits that you'll probably never wear. You are pinning for the sake of pinning with no goal or purpose in mind. While this may be okay if you're just trying to waste a few minutes on your personal Pinterest account, it can be very unbeneficial if you're trying to build a following for your business.

The importance of having a strategy of what to pin cannot be overstated. Pinning without a goal in mind will just waste your time and get you no closer to accomplishing your social media goals. So what should you pin?

Your Pinterest Analytics can give you great insight into what kind of content works best for your business. When you log into your analytics, you'll see four categories: Impressions, Repins, Clicks, and All-Time.

We'll dive into what these sections are and what they can teach you, but first... If you haven't enabled Analytics on your Pinterest profile yet, here's how: You must have a business account to get access to Pinterest analytics. Once a business account is set up, you will need to connect it to your website. You can do this by adding an HTML file or a META tag to your website. Pinterest will distribute this code to you when you click Verify Website under your account settings. Once your website has been verified by Pinterest, you will see a checkmark next to your account name and will have access to all your Pinterest Analytics. Now that you're logged into Analytics, you can start reviewing the information there.

Here's a brief breakdown of each section:

Impressions: Impressions reveal the number of times your pins have been seen in search results and Pinterest feeds.

Repins: Repins can give you an idea of how much your content has spread across Pinterest due to people repinning your content.

Clicks: Represents the number of times people have clicked a link on one of your pins.

All-time: This section delves into the history of your profile to find your all-time most repinned pins, your highest performing pins in search, and your power pins (pins that have the highest combination of all engagement metrics).

Reviewing these four sections will give you insight into what people are looking for on Pinterest and the type of content they are engaging with the most. Let this information guide what you post in the future. If there is a particular board that is receiving a lot of engagement, continue posting to it so you can keep up the momentum. If there is a certain topic or type of content people seem to repin a lot, find more pins that will fit into that category. Just remember that people are following you because they are interested in your business, so be sure all of your pins are relevant.