Monday, March 11, 2013

Schedule, Enhance & Analyze Your Pins With This Must-Have Pinterest Tool

Schedule, Enhance & Analyze Your Pins With This Must-Have Pinterest Tool

pinterest toolsPinterest, the visual social network, was all the rage last year. In the span of just several months, almost everyone I know joined the network, and the pinning craze was at its height. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that the Pinterest craze is over, but as with every big social network, it slowly sank stabilized as a place we go to for eye-candy, food photos, beautiful ideas, and other such things.

Naturally, with Pinterest’s rising popularity there came a wave of useful Pinterest tools such as Pinerly, Pinstamatic, and many other Pinterest tools that helped us make better use of it. As time went by, people thought up all sort of unique uses for Pinterest, even the coveted secret boards were finally added to the mix, but one feature remained unreachable â€" scheduling pins. Because as great as Pinterest is, you can’t spend your days on the website pinning your favorite things to your boards one at a time, an d pinning them all at the same time might not sit well with your followers.

This problem is now history, with a nice service called Pingraphy. Pingraphy lets you schedule your pins easily, and adds some basic image editing and analytics to the mix. Wondering if Pingraphy is for you? Continue reading.

Start Scheduling Pins In Seconds

Pingraphy is completely free to use, and there’s nothing at all to set up. Simply sign in with your Pinterest account, and find everything you need within. The first thing you’ll have to do is drag the Pingraphy bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar.This not a complete must, but if you want to pin images straight from the webpage you find them on, this is the only way.

Alternatively, the Pingraphy Pinterest tool lets you upload images from your computer, or from your Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa accounts.

pinterest tools

Now that you’re set with how to pin, it’s time to schedule some pins. Pingraphy lets you schedule as many pins as you want at the same time, but there are some limitations. If you choose to pin several images from the same webpage, or if you upload several images at once, you’ll have to pin them all, one after the other, in a set interval.

For example, if you want to pin 4 images at the same time, you can pin them with a 90 minutes interval, so every hour and a half, an image will be pinned. You can set the interval to be as long or short as you like.

pinterest utilities

Alternatively, you can pin your images one by one, and set a different date and time for each, as you please. Note that the time zone you set keeps resetting to GMT -5 for some reason, so if you live in a different one, you may have to set it every time you schedule pins.

If you choose to pin several images at once, you’ll get the chance to specify a board for each, and include a description and a URL. Pingraphy doesn’t let you pin without a URL, even if you upload the image yourself.

pinterest utilities

Once your images are pinned, you can see your upcoming schedule on your dashboard. Unfortunately, there’s no way to change the date and time after you’ve scheduled a pin. The only available action for scheduled pins is delete, which could be a shame if the pin is an image you’ve enhanced using the built-in editor. I couldn’t find a way to salvage the image itself out of the scheduled pin, aside from letting the image get pinned.

pinterest utilities

All in all, it’s not a perfect system, but after getting used to the quirks, it can be a life saver for Pinterest addicts and even businesses that need to pin regularly. But it gets even better.

Photo Editor

analyze pinterest

Pingraphy includes a basic photo editor powered by Aviary, which offers some nice auto-edits for dark or backlit photos, a nice selection of filters, rotate and cropping tools, and brightness, saturation and contrast controls,among other options. You can also use the editor to add text to your image, which you can design in numerous colors and fonts, and place anywhere on the image. The editor is excellent, in true Aviary tradition.

analyze pinterest

Just keep in mind that once you schedule your creation, you lose access to the image until it’s pinned.

Analytics

Don’t expect graphs, charts, and fireworks, but Pingraphy does help you get a better idea of how your pins are doing. As soon as you sign in for the first time, Pingraphy will analyze all your existing pins (the ones you’ve made prior to using Pingraphy), and give you some useful information.

pinterest tools

In addition to the total number of pins, repins, likes and comments you have, you’ll also get your top 10 pins of all times, full stats for your boards including pin, repin, like and comment count for each, and a list of your 20 recent uploads.

Bottom Line

Pingraphy isn’t perfect yet, but it’s a great all-around solution for managing your Pinterest account better. Combined with creativity and some good Pinterest inspiration, you can work wonders on your Pinterest account with a minimal amount of work.

There’s more to Pinterest than scheduling pins, of course, so if you need some more advice and guidance, you can always check out our free Pinterest guide.

Do you think scheduling pins is necessary, or can you make do without it? Do you have any other great Pinterest tools to recommend? Share in the comments!

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