You can use Metricool for Pinterest because it is now an API approved tool for scheduling your pins. So, of course I had to try it and report back on it in today’s post. Here is how to use Metricool to schedule your Pinterest pins so you know how it works and if you’d like to use it.

My favorite things about Metricool for Pinterest + pricing

I just want to mention how easy it is to get started with Metricool and that is one big pro. Another huge pro for using Metricool is that everything is all in one. For one tool, you can connect up to five brands for $22 USD a month, if you pay monthly. And that’s a really affordable way to utilize a scheduling tool for all of your needs. 

Another really cool feature, once you get your Pinterest account connected, is the analytics and being able to see everything in one place. So those are my favorites about using this tool. 

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Cons of using Metricool for Pinterest

One of the cons of using Metricool for Pinterest is the lack of ability to actually upload multiple images to drafts at one time. I really do not like that. I hate that you have to upload everything one by one. It just takes so much time. 

I love that Tailwind, Planoly, and Later have a drafts library where you can actually just bulk upload everything in one place, and then you can one by one add things into your schedule. Or in the case of Tailwind for example, you can bulk schedule things all at once. So Metricool not having that ability, for me as a Pinterest manager, is really a big loss. Unfortunately, a lot of scheduling tools just don’t offer it. 

Now that you know what I like, what I don’t like, let’s just jump right on into the tutorial so you can learn exactly how to use Metricool to schedule your own Pinterest pins. 

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How to use Metricool to schedule your Pinterest pins

I’m going to walk you through how to use Metricool specifically for your Pinterest scheduling needs, and these are the things we’re going to talk about: 

• Connecting your Pinterest account
• Uploading your content
• Optimizing your pins once you get them there
• Saving content as drafts
• Editing already scheduled content
• Using UTM event codes

When you log in and you’ve not connected anything to Metricool, it’s going to look like this.

Connecting your Pinterest account

What you’re going to do is connect your Pinterest account from the list of networks available. Make sure that your Pinterest account is logged into the right user first! 

1. In the upper right menu, select ‘Connections.’
2. Click on ‘Connect a Pinterest account’.
3. Login and click ‘Give access’.

And once that is there, then your Pinterest account is going to show up and you’ll be able to hop over to ‘Planning’. 

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What to do before you start scheduling

Now, before you actually start schedule pins, you need to have everything downloaded to your desktop before uploading them to Metricool. Have your pins created, descriptions and titles all sorted, so you can just copy and paste faster. 

The first thing that you want to do is make sure that you set your time zone for where you’re at in the world. I’m in Arizona, so I set mine to Phoenix. When you want your pins scheduled to go out is when you need to set your time zone.

1. Click ‘Planning’, or the calendar icon at the top.
2. In the upper right, toggle the drop down to your timezone.
3. Click ‘Accept’. 

Uploading your pins to Metricool

Once you have your Pinterest image all downloaded to your desktop to drag and drop, now you’re ready to upload your pins to Metricool for scheduling. Remember to ONLY do one pin at a time, and not a bunch at once, or it will make carousel posts, which we don’t often want. 

1. Go to your ‘Planner’ tab, the icon is a calendar.
2. Click the upper right button to ‘Create post’.
3. Drag and drop your pin into the window that pops up. 
4. Paste your pin description in the main box.
5. Enter your pin title, the board, and your URL in the ‘Pinterest presets’ at the bottom.

You can add brand new boards to Pinterest from right here if you would like to. But just know that does mean that you will need to go back and optimize that board in your Pinterest profile. So ideally, if you were to add a board through Metricool to Pinterest, you are going to hop over to Pinterest before your pin is published and make that board fully optimized. 

It does say in the bottom right of the description box that you are limited by the platform for the character count of 500. So make sure you stay in that or it will just cut off what you paste in. Pay attention to that.

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Scheduling your Pinterest pins 

In the bottom right corner, choose the date you want to schedule to and hit ‘Schedule’. You can click ‘Schedule’, ‘Save as draft’, or ‘Publish now’. Pins in draft mode are greyed out, while those fully scheduled are bright. 

If you want to edit anything, just click on it to open and make the adjustments. If you have other platforms and accounts connected, you can schedule the same content to whichever as you wish. 

If you want to duplicate a pin, you have to open it and click ‘Duplicate’ on the bottom. You can duplicate it to a second board as well. So if there was a second board you wanted to schedule to, you could definitely do that. 

Bonus tip: I always follow the guidelines of pinning 30 days apart for any of the content that I’m scheduling a second time. 

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Using UTM code with Metricool for Pinterest

Let’s talk finally about using UTM codes with Metricool. One of the things about Google Analytics 4, when it rolled out in June of 2023, is the ability to see all of your traffic accurately. And the way that you can be sure you can track all of your data is to use UTM codes. 

Now, UTM codes are just a little bit of extra tracking inside of your URLs. So you can actually see inside of your analytics exactly which Pinterest pin your traffic is coming from. If you want to use Metricool’s UTM code builder functionality, you’re going to click the link icon in the bottom right of your draft. Then paste in the URL of the website your pin will link to. 

Then later, when you go inside of your Google Analytics, you will be able to filter in your campaigns and be able to see exactly where Pinterest traffic was coming from, with the  UTM codes in your links. If it was a specific pin, if it was a specific blog post, etc. you could narrow in on what those details are more discreetly.

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Use my Pinterest system for easier code building

I have an easier and alternative method for doing this that will keep all your links more organized. I built an automatic spreadsheet that automatically pumps out your final URL. So if you didn’t want to take the time to actually build this out inside of Metricool,

I have tools available inside of my membership program, or if you were to get my Pinterest System, it’s already built in. That way you can reuse these links, keep track of them easier, and you don’t have to do them inside of Metricool every single time. If you use their UTM builder, you have to input all of this information every single time. 

Because with Pinterest, you are consistently promoting the same URLs multiple ways for different images. So you’re gonna have to rebuild that each time in Metricool. Whereas if you build it one time inside of a spreadsheet, inside of a tool like my Pinterest System, then you can just simply grab that URL and save time and headache.

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Pin descriptions writing AI tool with drafts

Now a couple of last little things that I wanted to talk about with Metricool. There is a text generator with AI you can use to write your pin descriptions. Enter the prompt and details of what you’d like it to write, and then you would click ‘Generate text’.

This works the same way I’ve talked about, like with Ghostwriter from Tailwind. I suggest you even save all of the copy that it generates for you and save it in a Google doc to reuse if it’s highly applicable to your content. Because it only gives you so many credits per month to use with the AI writing feature. So just keep that tally in mind. 

Remember that Pinterest only allows 500 characters for pin descriptions. But I noticed that the AI writer will do whatever, so you’ll need to edit that down and make it fit for the Pinterest platform. 

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Last few things with Metricool for Pinterest

Now a couple of the last things that I wanted to talk about were these four things that Metricool can do. 

• Analytics dashboard
• Messaging Inbox
• Smart links
• Running social media ads

So let’s touch on each of these just briefly, then we’ll get to pricing.

Analytics dashboard for your pins

You do have a functionality to see analytics. You can come in and add other platforms and you can see analytics all in one dashboard. On your pins, for example, you can see the numbers of impressions, savings, clicks, etc.

Social media channels messaging inbox

Then you have your inbox, to see messages you may receive on your accounts, but accessible from one dashboard. So if you were to have all of your social platforms connected, you could manage all of your inboxes in this one tool, which is actually pretty nifty. 

Smartlinks for buttons and content

The last thing is smart links. You can create buttons, simplified links, etc. that go to your content and pages in order to track and make them in one place. But I personally would not use the smart links functionality with Metricool, because that traffic is being sent to Metricool primarily.

I would rather simply just use my own links page, or pretty links through my website. I have a links page (like a linktree landing page) and this page has my own personal tracking pixels on this page. If I have all of that page visit data collected, it’s all getting collected inside my Google Analytics.

Whereas if you’re using third party tools to build your link pages, you’re sending traffic elsewhere and not to your own website. That’s not what we are necessarily wanting to do. We are wanting to send traffic to our own websites. So I would encourage you to create your own links page on your own website.

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Running your ads with Metricool

The last thing that we will just briefly glaze over, is that Metricool is rolling out the ability to run ads within their scheduling platforms. So you can do Facebook, Google, and TikTok ads right inside of the same platform

Now I’m not sure if you can start and build the ads in Metricool. Or if you can just view the data of what’s going on in those ads inside of this dashboard. I do know for another tool I am researching, that you actually have the ability to launch ads from their dashboard. I’m waiting for that tool to be more established before exploring because it’s the first time I’ve come across it; but same here, it is noteworthy.

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Pricing and number of brands to use Metricool 

It is a pretty nifty little tool and overall for the price that I mentioned at the beginning, it seems to be a decent place to start, especially if you are scheduling more than one platform. You can get up to five brands for $22 per month, and 2000 pieces of content scheduled. 

If you’re a Pinterest manager, you could potentially have five clients within your one Metricool account for your one price. That’s a pretty good deal! You can easily add multiple brands inside your Metricool account settings and you could toggle between them, and that is pretty nifty. 

Final thoughts on using Metricool for Pinterest

That’s Metricool in a nutshell. Now you know how to use Metricool to schedule your Pinterest pins. It’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward. There’s even that built-in UTM code right inside of their scheduling tool and they have some AI functionality. 

It’s not my favorite tool, but it is there with some good applications, and it does make things a little quicker if you would like to use it. If you want to learn how to use different Pinterest-approved schedulers, you can click here and see all of the tools I have tested and which I highly recommend. Because there are a myriad of different tools out there. See you there!

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