By Kelly Faircloth 11/14 6:10pm
Behold, a leaderboard!
Marketers know that Pinterest can drive a flood of acquisition-minded traffic. But hammering out a specific strategy is a different matter entirely, and the social network is only just emerging from the earliest, have-the-intern-run-it stages of social media popularity.
“The most followed people don’t necessarily equate to the most effective people,” HelloInsights CEO Kyla Brennan told Betabeat. Her company hopes to help, with its newly launched analytics platform.
The core of the service is a free leaderboard that incorporates followers, pin virality and other data to rank the most influential users. Also included are features like automated pinning, plus a customizable comparison chart brands can use to measure themselves against their competitors.
It’s the latest company to emerge from Science Inc., the L.A.-based startup “studio” run by former MySpace CEO Mike Jones. Previous projects: Dollar Shave Club and Dog Vacay. “HelloInsights began a little over a year ago, as Science’s kind of internal program to help its portfolio of ecommerce companies optimize their marketing and branding efforts through Pinterest,” Ms. Brennan explained. “After a year of collecting data and best practices, we have HelloInsights.”
HelloInsights wouldn’t reveal any current clients, but it’s already tracked more than a million user acquisitions and “hundreds of thousands” in revenue.
“Everybody that’s come on board has been happy with what they’ve seen on Pinterest,” Ms. Brennan assured us.
The startup builds on pin-to-purchase tracking technology developed by Science Inc. acquisition PinPuff. After a year of work, the difference is “night and day,” said Ms. Brennan. “We now know exactly what tools are actually helpful, versus just what people want to play around with.”
Our biggest question: What protects HelloInsights from Pinterest producing something similar in-house? Facebook-friendly companies like Wildfire and Buddy Media have fared well, but anybody building for Twitter has recently had a rude awakening.
“They can always build something in-house,” Ms. Brennan said. “But I think that what we’re doing is beneficial to Pinterest. We’re showing these marketers exactly the power Pinterest has.”
Not to mention the fact that, should Pinterest decide they’re in the market for such a solution, HelloInsights will be there for the acquiring.
Follow Kelly Faircloth on Twitter or via RSS. kfaircloth@observer.com
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