In this episode our host sits down with Kate Ahl founder of Simple Pin Media. She speaks about getting started in driving Pinterest traffic, managing her clients accounts.
HOST BIO:
Visionary, leader, team cheerleader, teacher, podcaster, and lover of all things Pinterest. Using her gift of leadership, she develops, champions, and supports the women of her team at Simple Pin Media to be better every day.
SKIP TO THE GOOD PARTS:
- 00:44 – Kate speaks on how her company was started
- 03:37 – Who is a typical client
- 04:26 – Typical cost and what is provided to the clients
- 07:35 – How does Pinterest traffic work
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Michael 00:11 Hello, and welcome to this episode of the demand mechanized show. Today we have with us, Kate Ahl, founder of Simple Pin Media. Hi Kate.
Kate 00:23 Hi, nice to be here with you.
Michael 00:25 So, we first chatted a little bit I think it was a year or two ago. And I was curious to learn more about what you did at the time. And so, I’m glad that we finally got the chance to connect. Give us a quick intro. How did you get into this and what does your company do?
Kate 00:44 Yeah, I actually got into this back in 2013. It was right when Facebook had changed a lot of their algorithm pages. I was helping a friend work on her Facebook page and they changed the business page algorithm and so all of a sudden there wasn’t a lot of traffic coming to websites. And so, she and I started to do some investigating into. How could we get more traffic from Pinterest?
Because we were hearing some rumblings about it happening, took some webinars and realized that we could get traffic from Pinterest. And so, in 2013, she said, you should try to manage people’s Pinterest pages. And I thought, I don’t know if anybody’s going to go for that.
It sounds like a dumb idea. And she thought, well, you should go forward anyway. So, I did start managing some Pinterest pages and people loved it. They were getting a lot of traffic that was early 2014. And then a few clients turned into more clients and more clients. And now what we do is we manage for clients organically.
And then we also teach people how to do organic Pinterest marketing. And we also do paid ads on Pinterest and then teach people how to do that as well. So, we’ve been investing in Pinterest marketing and just kind of working with the trends and moving over the last almost seven and a half years.
Michael 01:58 Oh, that’s nice. And can you give us some idea of the size currently? How many staff you have or revenue or clients?
Kate 02:09 Yeah. So, I have 38 team members and we have 120 clients on the organic side. And then our community has about almost 200 members in it. And then on the paid side, that fluctuates a little bit more than we have a community of about 300 over there for the ads.
So, it’s definitely grown far beyond I ever thought, I just thought it was going to be a small side business, but people needed to figure out how to use Pinterest. And so that’s where we’re at today.
Michael 02:36 That’s nice. And in terms of Pinterest terms of service are there, any potential issues with you managing someone else’s account or is it completely allowed?
Kate 02:48 Yeah, it is allowed. They’re actually making it even easier these days to actually share your credentials with somebody. It’s a new feature that’s up and coming probably just right now in north America, but they’re allowing you to give somebody access to manage your account, but not give them your login, but it’s been totally fine with Pinterest terms of service and what we’ve looked at and just taking over people’s social media overall for them, when it comes to Pinterest it’s. I haven’t noticed anything, but I have to say I haven’t looked too deep into all the legalese.
Michael 03:23 And do you also manage personal accounts of people or just business?
Kate 03:28 Just business. Yeah, because when you have a business account, you get all the analytics and all the extra features. There really isn’t anything that would go with a personal account.
Michael 03:37 Cool. So, who would be a typical client?
Kate 03:43 Yeah. So, in the beginning, and I would say even still now it’s a lot who are content creators. So, people who are creating blog posts, either food, DIY, anybody that has this consistent content creation. And then we also work with people who are physical product sellers, selling on Shopify, big commerce, or even WooCommerce, some Etsy sellers, and then other people who are selling digital products, whether it’s simple digital downloads.
It tends to be about 50% content creators and about, I would say 50 per… a little less than that, of the physical product sellers and then some digital product seller. So, it’s a good mix.
Michael 04:26 Nice. And so, what would be the typical cost for your service for the client and also what they usually get for it?
Kate 04:35 Yeah. So, our typical cost is starting at $600 a month for our organic management all the way up to about $2,000 a month, if you incorporate ads. So, for us, what we do is we try to take that completely off our client’s plate. So, we go through and we essentially act as them, some clients prefer to create their own images.
So, that’s one thing we might not take off their plate, but other people prefer for us to do their own images or to do videos for them to track analytics and really to allow them their time to be freed up, to work on other things. So, our goal is to figure out where we can engage with the pinner, with their content, whether it’s in the inspiration stage, or maybe they need more information so that people come to their website and take the desired action that the client has.
Michael 05:27 Nice. So, that’s, that’s quite affordable if it starts from $600. So, it’s not just bigger companies that could also be entrepreneurs and even startups basically.
Kate 05:39 Exactly.
Michael 05:41 Nice. And do you usually take clients that already have some existing Pinterest traffic or sometimes you just take someone that’s completely new account that you would grow.
Kate 05:54 Yeah, it’s we do account builds for people. So, we usually take them on and we look at the scope of where they want their business to go. We’ll build their Pinterest profile their page. And then from there we help to work, to create images for them, especially if they don’t have any images themselves.
And then we are trying to figure out a little bit of a hybrid package where we work alongside them while they’re creating some content or they’re getting their products really into their website. But it does help if people. Have more established library of content because it’s good to work with what people already have, but we definitely have started with accounts that have no presence on Pinterest because they realized they were actually already getting traffic from Pinterest by people pinning their stuff.
So, in that sense, it works out as a good fit because they already know that people on Pinterest are interested in what they must read or buy.
Michael 06:50 Nice. So, honestly, I was really excited too, looking forward to his child because we have quite a few sites in our portfolio. It gets some Pinterest traffic, but we generally Don they generally avoid acquiring businesses that rely mainly on Pinterest.
So, I really want to understand a little bit more how Pinterest’s traffic works. So, for someone who let’s say does not have much experience at all with Pinterest, how would you describe it may be compared to other social traffic or even organic traffic in terms of how consistent is it? What, what helps you get the traffic maintain it and things like that?
Kate 07:35 Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I would say Pinterest traffic is more like Google traffic and the habits are very similar to people who are on Google. They’re looking for solutions to their problems or ideas or answers to their questions. They’re not interested in following somebody or at all married to a brand.
In fact, 97% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded, which means that people go there with that same intent like they do on Google. Which we see the traffic patterns of Pinterest being very similar to Google in that it’s long-term. If somebody pins a pin and it becomes high in search for a particular keyword phrase or a key word, it will continue to bring traffic month over month, year over year, because it’s high at the top, similar to how something would be high at the top on Google.
And so that’s great because something that you pinned. Potentially back in 2018 can still be driving sessions to your website. Whereas something like Instagram is very timely and, in the moment, and it’s very much driven by people. You follow, you’re looking to follow influencers or you’re getting lost in the platform.
Instagram doesn’t really have you move off the platform. It’s not very easy, but pinners are primed to move. Once they find a pin. To move off the platform. And so that’s how we distinguish the two between what’s on Instagram and what’s on Pinterest. And we do see with a lot of accounts. Google is number one, or Pinterest is number one.
Those two tend to be hand in hand. And what’s great about that is that traffic seems to be a lot of new users. It’s not always returning users. So, it’s a good place for companies to get new leads, new email leads, or new people to buy their products. Whereas Instagram, it’s hard to get people to move off. And then when they do it tends to be repeat users.
Michael 09:31 And how important is it to have a popular account on being tourist, having many followers’ popular boards, or is it just not matter? It’s just important that you’ve pinned things with other very good so that they get that viral effect initially.
Kate 09:49 Yeah, I would say that it’s not as important as you would see on other social platforms.
It is becoming a little bit more important in the last, I would say six or eight months with some introductions of some new features, but it’s still not super important compared to Tech-Talk or Instagram or any of those others, because Pinterest will show content to people that don’t follow you. So, it’s more important that you focus on.
Like a strong SEO strategy using your keywords and getting great images as opposed to being worried about being popular or getting people to.
Michael 10:25 That’s pretty good. So, that’s great because our main strength is for SEO, a demand magnet. And then I looked at Pinterest. I thought it’s more about kind of a popularity contest with like Instagram.
So, it’s good to know that it’s actually different and more long lasting. However, what I’ve seen at science with mostly Pinterest traffic is that often there are pins that become popular. And that might last just a few months. So, it didn’t seem to last for many years. Yeah. Each would be able to be like a few months, it goes up, it goes down gradually, and then you have to constantly hit this new polarity pins. Is that a good assessment?
Kate 11:12 Well, it depends on when, what type of content it is, and if it is seasonal, Pinterest does have a lot of seasonal components to it. So, if a blogger has been talking about something in a particular holiday or a season, you’ll see it go up every year at that time and then drop back down.
I actually have a pin that is not seasonal, that I pinned in 2017 and it continues to be my number one traffic driver on Pinterest. It pretty much has gone up and stayed the same since that time and brings me right around a thousand sessions a month to that particular blog post, because it’s high up in search.
So, I think it just depends on the seasonality. And then it also depends on the topic. And if people are still searching that particular phrase or keyword, but we have seen in a lot of the data that some of those pins will stay up there and then they’ll stay there for a while or they’ll stay up there.
And then after about a year or two, they’ll drop down in their search ranking. So. Pinterest does want new content. So, we encourage people that if you’re writing new blog posts or creating new images, that increases your chances of getting more of those pins to go, what we call legacy, not so much viral, not this like huge spike and then down, but to get a legacy where it just keeps going and going like a snowball.
Michael 12:36 And in a niche like cooking how long would you say a good Pinterest post can stay on average
Kate 12:46 for some of our clients? Actually, they’ve had things that they’ve pinned back in 2016, 2017, that are still high in Google analytics for actual pins, still bringing them a lot of traffic. It’s not the norm, but I would say any around 18 months to two years, we see is pretty common.
Michael 13:04 Okay, so that, yeah, so that’s pretty good. And how often would you say is best to update, to create new pins, to pin things?
Kate 13:16 Yeah. We suggest that people look at going forward with new content and creating new blog posts or new images. You can update older content with new images and pin that to Pinterest, but.
We suggest if you create at least one new blog post per week, that is super helpful because then you can pin that to Pinterest and it’s this new stuff that’s going on to the platform. We see people’s results better with that, as opposed to maybe having a backlog of content and then going back and just adding new images and then adding it to the platform we’ve seen that doesn’t work out too well because there’s not any of this new creation going forward.
Michael 13:58 And can you repeat your old content? Does that work?
Kate 14:02 Yeah, you can pin it again and you can share it to Pinterest. They recommend a longer period of time between when you do that. So, anywhere between seven days and two months where you’re pinning it to another board so that it’s not back-to-back, like you’re spamming the plot.
Michael 14:19 And how much is it about just luck, like keeping some viral effects or is it just most lines for luck?
Kate 14:27 Yeah, that’s such a great question. I’ve never been asked that before. I would say it’s a combination of. 30% luck, 30% really digging in on those keywords and then 30% the new content. So, it’s kind of this combination of all three, but we see that those who really invest in great keywords invest in great images that tends to pay off for them in the long run.
Michael 14:54 So, having great keywords, great images and pinning regularly seems like the key, right? Yep. And should you also engage the fathers in other things? So, maybe engage with other Pinterest users. Would that help to get more traffic?
Kate 15:13 It used to on the platform, but it doesn’t anymore. Pinterest has told us it’s okay to pin.
Just your own content. And if you want to pin other people’s content, they just recommend you do it because you love that other person’s content. You want to be collaborative with them and share it to your boards, but there’s no algorithm benefit to pinning other people’s stuff.
Michael 15:35 And I’ve heard that there was a big update in the Pinterest algorithm recently. Can you tell me more about how recent was it and what changed?
Kate 15:45 Yeah, I have to dig in on that. I would say that Pinterest algorithm updates are a little bit more subtle. There are some people who try to track them by looking at old pins to see if keywords change on old pins. I think there’s algorithm updates roughly every two weeks, to be honest, because I think Pinterest is continually trying to both.
Get rid of spam, get rid of spammy activity, and then continue to refine their search so that their home feed serves up to the pinner. Exactly what they want. So, when we think of algorithm updates on Pinterest, there was one in July of last year where they said we are changing it to be called to facilitate.
It was, I think they called it controlled distribution. So, what that meant is with video and with our new idea pins, which used to be called story pins, Pinterest said, we’re going to start controlling the distribution of these by giving them to people so that we can see if they engage with story pins or video pins.
So, that was a really the last big algorithm update that they published. Everything else is kind of just. Speculation. If you will, people can guess if it happens, but they don’t really tell us. But July, we do know that they intentionally said we want to get video into their home feeds and we want to get these new story idea pins into their home feed.
Michael 17:10 And so in terms of type of content, what works best? Is it just high-quality images or should we put more videos and stories as well?
Kate 17:21 Yeah, so basic images the standard Pinterest images, of course, really important. We think of it as like, Billboard advertising, driving by making something really catchy and easy to look at and read.
But then video is definitely big on Pinterest. They, Pinterest has said they’re getting about 1 billion video views per day, but the views should definitely be about the project. Not really about you. Like we would see on Instagram or Tik TOK and then story pins, which are now called idea pins. That again, they call the idea pins because it’s showing how you would do something and not the same as a story on Instagram, where you talk about you.
So, the ecosystem of Pinterest still remains the same in these two different types of pins. The pinner wants to know how they’re going to do something or let you walk through the steps or the properties of a product or what’s inside a digital product. So, it’s definitely a good idea to use these in your Pinterest marketing, as it’s another way to get in front of your potential audience.
Michael 18:31 That’s good to know. And what niches would you say are best for Pinterest?
Kate 18:38 Yeah, I would say that obviously there’s food. There’s DIY there’s definitely those who are doing like physical products, but I would say those between. The easy buys, which are 15 to a hundred dollars, their home decor, or they are home design, but there’s also ones that are article based, which are giving tips and tutorials and how to use for how to do something, parenting advice.
There’s also beauty or hair or anything, landscaping, or anything that. You can travel is a huge one too. I would say the only thing I’ve seen, not really work on Pinterest. Is investing advice. It doesn’t seem to have quite the amount of searches we have had somebody try it to see if they could help people with investor advice.
It just didn’t work so well. So, and local is a little bit harder to people who are medical professionals who have local practices. It’s not really the place where people are searching for that, but they might be searching for. Your type of medical practice or putting in, how do I know if this is right for me?
So, there’s a lot of niches that really work on Pinterest. You just have to do a few searches on Pinterest to see what’s out there.
Michael 20:01 So, what you’re saying is, if we were looking for more investors for a new upcoming fund interest might not be the best channel,
Kate 20:09 correct? Correct.
Michael 20:11 And what about B2B kind of services? Do you see that on Pinterest?
Kate 20:17 Yeah, I would say since I’m B2B and in those services, we come at it from the angle of trying to get people onto our email list who are seeing if the service is right for them or that if it’s even an option or how to use. So, it’s not necessarily that somebody is going on to Pinterest looking for.
Let’s say Pinterest management services, but they are looking for Pinterest marketing tips or they are looking for how to do something on Pinterest and they find us and then discover what we do. So, that’s usually how people find their way towards service providers and service providers might talk about certain things that they do or frequently asked questions that they get. That’s another way that you can try to get that Pinterest user to your service, but it’s definitely not a direct.
Michael 21:11 So, what would be a good way for us to find out on Pinterest if it’s worth pursuing traffic and for a specific business specific side?
Kate 21:21 Yeah. There’s two ways actually. Number one is there’s a search bar on Pinterest. Just go on there and search what it is you talk about or the services that you provide just to see what’s already out there and see if it’s, what people are talking about in relation to your business. Or you can go onto what’s called trends.
It’s trends.pinterest.com. And you can look at the search bar there to put in some ideas to see if people are searching on the trends.
Michael 21:54 I just went to trans and it says, sorry, trans is not yet available in your location.
Kate 22:00 Okay. So, I think it might be only UK, Canada, and the us then
Michael 22:06 makes sense. That’s good to know. And so, if you find, if you find that you checked your niche, you find that there is some interest and you want to try to get Pinterest traffic. What would be the third steps to You start doing it.
Kate 22:26 Yeah. The first step is to set up your Pinterest profile simply by grabbing the name of your business.
You can Google set up a Pinterest business account and it will walk you through logging into Pinterest or setting up your first account. And we tell people that when. And they set up their account for their business. You can choose a header and a logo and describe your business to where it looks essentially like a storefront, like the front of a website.
And then Pinterest will prompt you to add what are called boards. And so, we tell people, think of these boards as categories for your business. So, for me, I would have Pinterest marketing tips. Pinterest marketing for e-commerce social media marketing. It’s simply one, two, or it’s two to four words to name these particular boards.
And these boards are really important because once you put pins on these boards, that helps tell the algorithm. What it is those pins are about. And if somebody’s on the platforms interested, Pinterest will grab content from those boards. So, for somebody starting in their account, we tell them, set up five boards.
That’s pretty much it. And then start to put pins in those boards that lead to your content.
Michael 23:43 So, the boards basically different subtopics based on your main business topic. Yes. Correct. And how frequently should you post initially?
Kate 23:56 It’s been definitely less and less what Pinterest has said. So, we, depending on how much content people have, we recommend anywhere between two and five times a day,
Michael 24:06 that’s quite a lot.
Kate 24:09 Considering people used to recommend 15 to 20 times a day. It’s definitely a decrease.
Michael 24:17 And what about all those different automated tools that people often use? Do you still recommend them or is it best to do manually?
Kate 24:26 There are a few automated tools they’re called scheduling tools. If you have, if you see one that is approved by Pinterest, we recommend those there’s one called tailwind or plan only, or later we recommend using one of those because they’re already approved.
I like to have a scheduling tool because I will forget to put my pin my pins on Pinterest. So, this allows me to plan in advance.
Michael 24:52 Yeah. And which, which one do you use or which one do you usually use? Yeah, we’ve actually used it before as well. Some of our slides and but we’ve found that it’s also after, after some of the recent changes, I think last year it kind of became a little bit spammy and the traffic dropped a lot on some sites we’ve noticed because the way it was set up and it was just too to spammy.
Kate 25:21 Yeah, they do have an automated tool called a smart loop. And sometimes people will add too many pins to that. So, it’ll share too much to Pinterest every day. And Pinterest has said, we don’t want you pinning that much per day. So, we’d love for you to just pull back to less and not doing the same thing over and over again.
Michael 25:41 I asked where to use tailwind. Do you just upload the images for like a week upfront and then let it run?
Kate 25:48 Yeah. So, for example, if I had a new post that went live today, I would go into tailwind and let’s say it actually matches five to six boards that I have on Pinterest. I can schedule to those six boards, but I can change what my interval is to be 14 days in between when it goes to those boards.
So, that allows me to stretch it out over the next like six ish. Months, if you will. And so that’s how I use tailwind because I’m not going to remember to go back and pin it again in 14 days. So, I use that tool to choose all my boards, set my interval, and then it’s being dripped out to those boards within what is Pinterest is asking us to do, which is stretch out when you’re pinning.
Michael 26:34 So, so then you say 14 days, 15 days, do you mean to the same board? The same email. Okay. So, different bars, same images, but boards that are under your control.
Kate 26:47 Yeah, exactly. They’re boards where if I’m talking about Pinterest marketing, but maybe my boards can this topic of Pinterest marketing, this pin.
It’s the same image and it goes to the same post, but it goes to six different boards that are similar in topic. So, it wouldn’t be like I had a muffin recipe and I pinned it to like dinner or something like that. I could do baked goods or breads or breakfast, but all far apart.
Michael 27:18 And so the typical bloggers weighed on. Create new posts, two to five times a day, maybe like once a week, how would they find enough different content to pin so many times?
Kate 27:32 Yeah. A lot of them will go back to their older content and they might create a new image or they might create two to three images for that one particular blog post. And that’s why we recommend less per day, because if you have a lot of content or you have enough content that you can support even five to 10 per day, with what you’re creating new and what you have older, you can usually fill that up.
Michael 27:59 No problem sounds good. So, your take your old posts, you take some of your new posts, you put it on tailwind and let the Tron, is there some optimizations with you should do what you can do to improve your chances?
Kate 28:15 Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yep. Definitely putting keywords. Underneath the pin, you can write a pin description and we recommend one to three sentences.
Have it be natural, sounding, not keyword stuff. So, you want to add in then any words similar to what you would do for Google? You can even use maybe a particular. Sentences from the blog posts that have already worked. You can add those in there. And then the image just needs to be really clear, not a lot of text, but just enough text to get people to understand what it is the pen is.
Michael 28:56 Okay. I’ll let us some extra things you can do to really optimize things, or is it just not worth investing too much time and just keep spinning as much as you can or not as much as you can, but it’s in there. Isn’t.
Kate 29:10 I would say the biggest thing is really going to be looking and investigating first, before you choose your keywords, to make sure that people are already searching that on Pinterest, or maybe it’s written a little bit of a different way instead of how you would write it.
So, we tell people the best thing to do before you write your pin description is to look to see are people actually searching it with the phrase that you think they’re searching it. Other than that, there’s not really. A whole lot to do besides being consistent keywording and having really great images.
Michael 29:46 Okay. So, what that sounds like to me is that you’re just a, your thing. You run your own log, your own business, and then you make sure that you’ve pinned a certain amount of times per day and kind of maximize things more or less than optimize, and then you just help for it to hit wireless. And that’s kind the main thing, right?
And if you, do it long enough, and many times eventually some of them will become viral and started traffic while most of the dean’s field program not bringing in traffic, but that accurate.
Kate 30:18 Yeah, that is pretty accurate. Pinterest is it’s very much like you would take to invest in Google. Sometimes it takes a long time for that organic search to really pick up and for Google to recognize what you talk about and who, and what you do.
That’s the same with Pinterest. It takes a little bit of time for them to recognize what your pins are about. And so, we tell people in the beginning, it’s, you’re not getting a whole lot forward movement, but six to eight. Months down the road, you start to see some of these pens start to gain steam and some take off your right and then some don’t.
So, it’s looking at the ones that really do well, making sure your posts are optimized for that traffic coming from Pinterest.
Michael 31:01 Okay. Six to eight months. So, what would actually be the average more or less to target for when the pin might become viral? Is it that long?
Kate 31:10 Yeah, it is that long. That’s what we’ve seen, where for most new accounts, you can try to get that quicker with paid advertising on Pinterest.
I feel like that’s pretty much anywhere. If you want to kind of rise to the top a little quicker, you have to invest some money in that. Or I would say the other thing to do is to invest in video and story pins idea pins, because we know Pinterest is putting some effort behind that.
Michael 31:36 And in terms of videos, what type of videos would be best? How long should they be?
Kate 31:42 Between 30 seconds and a minute 30 up to two minutes, but definitely not long form video. Sure.
Michael 31:51 And are there any other specific tips you’d recommend for videos? So, for example, if you were to make videos of our like short videos of our podcasts for our podcast episodes and put them on Pinterest
Kate 32:04 no, I don’t, it doesn’t really work very well if it’s like the two of us talking, it would be more the videos that have done well for podcasts.
Sometimes it would be those little wave players in just short, but that doesn’t even really do super well. I have to say I haven’t seen podcasts and videos translate. And just because people are looking for something that’s like super catchy that they can see without sound on and they can watch somebody’s hands or they can see something being made.
So, not quite yet seeing the pin, the podcast and the pins go hand in hand outside of just a regular static pin.
Michael 32:45 What about a presentation with some marketing tips?
Kate 32:49 Yeah, definitely. You could do some marketing tips if you’re able to do slides that had just the actual words on them and they kind of overlaid and went. I definitely think that could work.
Michael 33:01 Yeah. And so, it seems like it’s different from SEO because in, in, in Google, you can do a little thing to try to rank better. You can get backlinks, you can keep optimizing your own page, keep getting more and more content. So, it’s, so that’s a bit different than.
And announced take a few months, but we’ve if Google traffic, if you have something good, if it’s ranking, you can generally maintain it for a really long time for many years, and also keep working on it, keep improving. So, if Google, the channel strategy is that you would do a keyword research, you would drive some articles, you’d publish them.
Maybe get some backlinks to them initially, and then you see which ones of them work well and the ones that work well, you can add up more content or back links so that they keep ranking bedroom, I guess in Pinterest, it’s not possible to like improve your existing pins so that they run better. Or is that a thing too?
Kate 34:02 No, it’s not a thing that is the main difference between, Google and Pinterest is that one, Google gives you a lot of tools to see the ranking of things and which keywords and where they rank. There’s just really not that information for Pinterest just yet.
Michael 34:16 And so from our perspective, when we buy a website that has mostly Pinterest traffic what, what are some things we should pay attention to?
Can we be more or less like. Sure, that if we just do the same thing that the previous owner was doing, just pinning, every day, a couple of pins, it will continue or can it be something that’s just going to drop off quickly? Because there were some short-term tricks used, like, like how in SEO, you can use some black hat SEO to rank a website quickly, but then it would drop.
Kate 34:51 Yeah. Yeah. There’s that too. I would say if I was to take over somebody’s website and they were doing a lot on Pinterest or they were pinning a lot. I think the first thing I would look at is what is our content strategy going forward? Because what we have seen is that for our accounts where people have maybe created a lot of content, but they’ve stopped content creation, then they’re just maintaining what was in the past.
Those accounts tend to really fall off. And so those who maintain the one per week, they do much better. So, we look at those and we, I would say for me personally, if it was, if I was in that position, I would say, how can we continue to create new content going forward on Pinterest? So, then we can support what the people were doing.
And even if it’s less pins per day, than what somebody was doing before right now, it seems to be the big factor in indicator Is if the site is creating something new or if they’re just no longer creating anything. So, those accounts that we’ve worked with, even though they have a great backlog of content, they don’t grow on Pinterest because there’s nothing new in the pipeline.
Michael 36:04 Okay. So, the key is to continue creating content consistently, and then you have new things to pin. Do you also need to update existing content at my images? More, more Arctic, more words. Would that help?
Kate 36:22 Yeah, definitely. And creating new I would say new boards are okay to create, if you’re looking at them, fitting into the content that you have already have.
We tell people don’t create any new boards, just create them, but create something. If you’re going to create a category on your site for it, and you’re going to fill up more content for it.
Michael 36:45 And when you take over someone’s Pinterest account when buying a site or a business what are some things that you would pay attention to? What are some potentials risks maybe to keep in mind?
Kate 36:59 Yeah. I think one of the biggest things is what I just said. Like how often are they going to continue to create content or is this a site that was just being bought and kind of held, or is it something where they’re going to come up with a really great content strategy?
Are they also going to create images like Pinterest images? Are they going to keep up on that image creation? Because Pinterest images are different than all the other plans too. So, those are the two big things that we look for. Someone we’ve had people come to us who have purchased websites and want us to manage for them.
And that’s really our first question is. Are you going to continue to create content that is Pinterest friendly or are you just hoping to sit on it? And if somebody was like, well, we’re just going to sit on it, then we probably wouldn’t manage for them.
Michael 37:46 And do you also help clients create content or do you only manage the Pinterest
Kate 37:51 Only manage Pinterest? We can help create images for them, but we don’t do any content.
Michael 37:57 And what do you say that the interest’s content is strategically different from Google content?
Kate 38:04 Know, I would say that the first answer is no, because you can use whatever you can create for Google. You can also use on Pinterest, but a lot of people feel intimidated to structure a post for Google.
It feels kind of labor intensive and they don’t want to do it. So, for those people, we tell them, just write a smaller post 700, 800 words. Even 500 is fine. It’s really just giving the Pinterest user what you’re promising. If they land on it on Pinterest, if it’s five tips for vacation or something like that, just put in your five tips.
And if they don’t want to optimize for Google, then that’s I guess their decision to do in their business. But I would say if you’re doing all the checks, checking all the boxes for Google, you’re pretty much checking all the boxes for Pinterest.
Michael 38:54 Yeah. I think what I’ve seen is that sites with mostly Pinterest traffic, they tend to be shorter posts. I guess you don’t need as much content, just images with Pinterest to hit the traffic.
Kate 39:08 Exactly. People are, they’re not really interested in super long read-throughs unless they’re looking for an article that’s very heavy, informative. Most people are just looking to get straight to the point of what they want to get to learn or buy.
Michael 39:23 So, what would the ideal post for Pinterest look like in a blog? Let’s say it’s a cooking blog or a something, yeah, something in that in an age.
Kate 39:35 Yeah. If it was something like a recipe post, I would say definitely a Pinterest image at the top, the content of it, exactly describing what it is, somebody is going to be getting.
And then that’s pretty much it, the image is one of the biggest things, because a lot of people will forget to create a Pinterest image, which is that two to three sizes. So, we often tell people the perfect Pinterest post is something that has the image and definitely the content that people are looking for.
Michael 40:04 How many images should you put in a post?
Kate 40:07 We actually just do one and then we use a plugin grow by media vine, because we want to specify that when somebody hits the Pinterest share button, it only pulls up. The Pinterest images. So, we have one in the post and then we have one in that plug into as well.
So, we have two for somebody like a food post. They might have three or four.
Michael 40:31 No worries. If Pinterest traffic is mostly women and what would be the percentage more or less?
Kate 40:38 Yeah, it is mostly women. It’s mostly a millennial and even gen Z are coming up. They do say globally that it’s almost getting close to 50% of men, but that’s more women who are using it in north America, but as they grow globally, I know that percentage of men and women is kind of evening out.
Michael 41:01 And monetization wise, what are some monetization trends you see with Pinterest traffic would work best.
Kate 41:09 Yeah, I think it’s just depends on the business model. So, some people come to us and they’re ads monetized or their affiliate monetized. Those are probably the two most popular. And then from there would be digital or physical products.
And then down from there would be services or something that’s like coaching or consultation. So, that number one, really being ads and affiliate, because you can get a lot of traffic to the website. And especially those who are not looking to build their email lists, they might be just looking to get a quick pop-up traffic.
So, those are really the primary ones that we see.
Michael 41:47 And how has the higher intent on Pinterest compared to Google?
Kate 41:53 You cut out just a little bit. So, can you repeat that
Michael 41:56 buyer intent on Pinterest compared to Google?
Kate 42:00 I don’t know much about the buyer intent on Pinterest, so I can’t speak to that.
So, I’ll describe Pinterest and you tell me if Google lines up with that, but I will say that buyer intent on Pinterest is. They are on Pinterest thinking about purchasing a product about three to six months before they actually want to buy the product. So, they’re going there to gather a bunch of ideas.
Let’s say it’s something like a bathroom lighting or a particular trip they want to purchase. They’re gathering as many ideas onto their boards. They’re doing lots of searches so that as they get closer to actually having to take action. They go back to their boards and then they purchase the actual product that they’re interested in.
So, Pinterest is the great informer of purchases, but we do know that this year on Pinterest, they’re trying to make that three-to-six-month timeframe, even shorter so they can do some shop integrations on the platform so that people can see that it’s a product that they can purchase and go to the website.
And purchase, but there’s a lot of buyer intent. It just depends on how quickly they go to buy.
Michael 43:09 Yeah. That’s already interesting. Three to six months. It’s quite a long time. I would say on Google it’s probably within days. So, people who search for something like best vacuum cleaner, under $300, they are just looking to buy like right now or thin days.
Kate 43:29 Pinterest they’re they are much more fact finders. They’re looking to do a lot of research on exactly what it is. They want to be able to see it in the setting, visual and collecting ideas. So,
Michael 43:43 the affiliate cookies often don’t last that long. What can people do to monetize that intent?
Kate 43:51 I think that biggest thing is to create posts that are save able, that people want to go back to because the pinner habit is to go back into the board.
They might spend on their phone an hour and a half and save a bunch all at once. But then when they go back to buy the product, they revisit the board. And click on the pin and go to the website, which is why we don’t recommend people putting affiliate links on the platform. We recommend you house them on your website, in these groups of things that people might want to buy, like the 10 best cooking tools or something like that.
Cause people on Pinterest are much more apt to save that. And then revisit that later, especially if it’s like a gift guide or something like,
Michael 44:38 And. Paid ads. Tell us a bit more about that. Is it helpful in the long? Does it improve your rankings?
Kate 44:47 It doesn’t so, well, I would say it gets you to the search.
And the key word or the targeting that you are looking for. So, if you’re new on Pinterest and you want to get out front of a particular topic or keyword paid ads are a great way to do that. However, they are a lot different than what we see on Facebook or Instagram. They’re not as instance. And that again is because Pinterest has that leg time.
So, we tell people if you’re going to invest in Pinterest ads, do a campaign for a month or six weeks to really get to know who your audience is. Who’s clicking on your pins, who’s actually converting. And that six-week campaign initially is going to give you a lot of information that you need in order to take into your other campaigns or even craft an organic strategy.
So, it’s just a little bit different. It takes a little while to optimize, which can be kind of frustrating because we are used to ads being pretty instantaneous on other platforms.
Michael 45:47 What are some niches or type of products where you had the most success with Pinterest ads?
Kate 45:54 Yeah. One of the ones right away is like digital products do really well because people can instantly buy whether it is like a crochet pattern or if it’s a budget spreadsheet or something like that.
Something that people can instantly download. Physical products are they’re a little bit tougher. We might lead to getting people on an email list with a discount code or getting them warmed up to the product again, because that three to six months exploring and seeing if this is right for them.
We also see people doing email list growth with paid ads because of that warmth timeframe that warming up timeframe that Pinterest users need. And
Michael 46:36 in general, would you say it’s a good idea to, to collect emails with Pinterest traffic? Like more than Google traffic event, maybe.
Kate 46:45 Yeah. I actually like to use them for my website.
We are 50% Google and about 35 to 40% of Pinterest traffic. And we use our Pinterest traffic primarily to grow our email list because there are a lot of new users that are pretty new to us. And so, we want to get them in, through our checklists or our guides or things that teach them how to do something so that they know we’re a resource for Pinterest marketing.
Michael 47:14 Okay. That sounds good. That’s been very interesting, very educational. Are there any other things that I didn’t ask you that might still be really interesting, relevant for people learning to use Pinterest to get traffic?
Kate 47:29 Yeah, I feel like you asked me a lot of great questions. So, I feel like you did cover it all.
No, I think the biggest thing is just giving yourself the patience to invest in it. That’s what I would tell people is it’s not an instant platform, so it just take us a little bit of time.
Michael 47:47 Well, thanks, Kate. That’s been very interesting to, to chat and very informational. Where can people learn more about you and what are some yeah, some, some websites of how can they contact you?
Kate 48:00 Yeah, my website is simplepinmedia.com and I’m @simplepinmedia on all social channels. So, feel free to reach out to us. We also have a podcast, The Simple Pin Podcast, so people can listen or read or look through what we have on our website. Lots of guides, lots of blog posts. So, just start searching for what it is you need. I’m pretty sure we have it.
Michael 48:23 Okay, well, thank you, Kate. And thanks to all listeners. Hope you enjoy this episode. And if you are looking to acquire a Pinterest traffic website, check out our buy manage service, where we acquire and manage and grow businesses and websites for our investors. It’s an opportunity to invest and not have to actually do work yourself and also learn how it works so that you can take over at least yourself.
You can go to domainmagnate.com/buymanage or Google it. Thank you. And thank you Kate again until next time.
Enjoying our podcast? Support us by leaving us a review on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app.