The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 108. Optimize Your Pinterest SEO with Michelle Stevens

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Are you ready to optimize your Pinterest SEO? Well, get ready for this episode with Michelle Stevens, Pinterest manager and strategist. She is bringing tips and strategy to help you with your Pinterest SEO. She shares tips on optimizing your Pinterest profile with keywords and even gives her recommendations on things like number of boards, creation of video pins, and call-to-action prompts. If Pinterest has you feeling overwhelmed, this episode is a great one to check out! Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsWe would love to have you join us in the Ultimate Blog Membership in 2024. HERE is the link to join!Check out Tailwind, the Pinterest scheduling tool we recommend.Check out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode108

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Well, we are kicking off the new year with another episode about Pinterest because this is just one of those topics that you guys love hearing about. And honestly, we love sharing with you because we know the impact that Pinterest has on your blog. We know how these 2 married together can really help drive traffic to your blog. Today, we're interviewing Michelle Stevens, who is a Pinterest manager and strategist who has a these two married together can really help drive traffic to your blog. Today, we're interviewing Michelle Stevens, who is a Pinterest manager and strategist who has a passion for helping businesses thrive on the Pinterest platform. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Michelle. I'm super excited to be here. Thank you.

Well, we selfishly love talking to people about Pinterest because we get to ask all the questions that we have, like these burning questions. And so we are really excited to talk to you today, Michelle. And when you and I were conversing beforehand, and I asked if you wanted to come on and share, we talked about SEO in regards to Pinterest. And we've had several episodes on Pinterest on the podcast here, but we have not specifically dove into this topic. So let's just get right down into the goods here. Michelle, can you talk a little bit about what SEO for Pinterest is? When you say that, like how somebody can do that? What exactly does that mean? So Pinterest SEO, and here's the thing, like when I first started, I thought it was super complicated. Like, oh my gosh, this is really something I have to learn. The way I always explain it, it's just things that people are searching for. So when you start off like trying to find keywords on Pinterest, the best way to start is just think about, oh, what would I be

searching for if I was looking for this blog post or if I was looking for this product. And that's a really good place to start. And then, you know, even just using Pinterest itself to find more keywords is super easy, really, once you learn how to do it, it's not super complicated. So really, when you get into that mindset of finding the the keywords, it becomes a lot easier than you think it's going to be. So it's not something to be scared of. And that's one thing that I learned from when I very first started to when I really got deep into SEO on Pinterest is that, oh, this is not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. And let's talk about why that's important. Because I think some people may think of Pinterest as more like a social media platform. But in reality, people are coming to Pinterest and they are searching for things.

So they're using it more like maybe Google. Are they using it kind of in the same way? Yeah. Instead of thinking of Pinterest as a social media like Instagram or Facebook or something like that, it's more like YouTube or Google than it is like Instagram and Facebook because people are going in and they're actually searching for things. It's a visual search engine. So when you're creating those pins, you want to remember that it's a visual search engine. So how can you make that pin stand out? How can you draw people to

that pin? So they're not just going to usually just happen upon your pin on a regular course, right? You have to find a way for them to find you. And that's what those keywords on Pinterest and Pinterest SEO really does for you. It really helps attract your ideal clients. And that's who you want seeing your stuff anyway. Totally agree. I think about using Pinterest myself just as a user, not as a blogger. And I do think that that gives some perspective. I know that some people are bloggers who are like, well, I never even used Pinterest. I don't know about you, but that would be a recommendation that I would give

just right out of the gate is become a Pinterest user yourself. Because then you kind of know how that platform works. Yeah. A lot of people, I think, because I'm in the Pinterest world, I sometimes will take for granted that everybody knows exactly how to platform works. Yeah, a lot of people I think, you know, because I'm in the Pinterest world, I sometimes will take for granted that everybody knows exactly how to use Pinterest, but they don't. So that's one of the things that I really educate people on is how people are using Pinterest. So Pinterest categorizes the people that are pinning as creators and the people that are using as pinners. So you have to put

yourself in the mindset of a pinner and how you're searching for things on the platform to find what you're looking for. And that is a really good start on figuring out what kind of keywords you're going to want to use for your blog post. And then you can actually utilize like the search bar, you can just type in, you know, your speed keyword or the keyword you're thinking of and see what else kind of pops up as you're typing, just like you would in Google. And you can find additional keywords that way. Also, Pinterest makes it super easy because it has the colorful little bubbles after you click the search bar where you can find some additional keywords there.

The other thing I always do is once I have that keyword, I'll scroll through the page and just kind of see what pins are there. Is it a lot of photos? Is it a lot of texts? And see what I can do to break up that feed to make my pin stand out. Sometimes it's fully text with your keywords

on top of the pin, right? Sometimes it's a beautiful picture, but whatever you're trying to do, you wanna to try to create a pin that's going to stand out. And then going through that feed, again, they have these little related searches, which is another place you can find keywords. So as you're clicking through, you're just finding multiple keywords based on that original keyword you were searching for. And it really helps open up a lot of different options as far as pins you're making and maybe even blog posts you decide to make. So that was going to be my question. So as a creator,

are you doing this process of finding keywords on Pinterest before you ever write your blog post? Is this helping you to form like the actual content that you're going to create? It can. What I recommend doing is determining what your content pillars are for your blog, and then also your Pinterest account, right? They should be similar. So once you do that, like say you have your five content pillars for your blog, you can also take those five pillars and break those up into a couple more where you're creating more boards based on that. And then when you're searching for keywords, I do a couple different things.

First is just a brain dump, like just get everything out of your head that you can think of for keywords. And then you're going to go to Pinterest. I always do the search bar next, see how many keywords I can find from the search bar and that feed and the related searches. So that's my next step.

And I'm keeping all of these keywords on a spreadsheet. So we're just keeping it right in like a Google Doc or Excel, whatever. And then I go to the trends tab. So searching for what's trending and that search, you're going to want to do maybe once a month or so see what's trending for your niche, go to the trends tab, you can actually click down like yearly, monthly or weekly, and then type in the keyword you're looking for. Sometimes it comes up, sometimes it doesn't, you have to be pretty broad on the trends tab. And then you'll kind of see what's trending. And then after I do that, then I head over to the ads tab. And you can actually find

hundreds of keywords in the ads tab. So once we go through that, and I can walk you through that if you guys, because that's a little bit more of a process. Okay, I'm just going to break up. I have never heard the ads thing. No, let's talk about it. Let's walk through the ads tab. I like to do it in real life so that I give you the steps

because it's just, it's kind of a steps thing. But in your Pinterest, you can see on the top bar, there's that ads with the drop down. You're going to click the little drop down arrow and click create campaign, and then manual campaign and get started. Then I always hit drive consideration. You can hit anything. It's really, it doesn't really matter. And then just active and you put in a budget. Don't worry, we're not really going to spend it. And then you hit continue. On that next page,

it's going to have the ad group details. And then underneath targeting details, you have the audience lists and then interest and keywords. You're going to click interest and keywords. If you ever want to do by interest, you can do that too. But that's another topic.

All right. So if you get there and it's locked, then you want to just click find new customers. And then you'll get into where you have the option of searching for interests and keywords. So we click that drop down arrow. And then you're going to see on the left, there's add interests on the right is add keywords, click the add keywords. And then you'll just put in your seed keyword. So for me, I'm just going to pop in quick workouts and then you get this entire list of ab workouts,

fitness, gym outfit, different keywords there. And you can actually click see more and it gives you even more. And a really quick way to get all of those keywords where you can copy is click add all results. There's a little plus button on the left where it says add all results. Just click that and it pops it over to the little box on the left. And you can go through, delete any that really aren't going to make sense for your niche.

Like there's always going to be a few in there that don't make sense. And then you can just copy them and paste them right into your Google Doc. Oh, man. So you can do that with multiple different ones. You know, you don't have to just stick with one keyword, but if say you want to do quick workouts, ab workouts, you can try that. Anything that you're trying to search for, if it's a recipe, chicken casserole,

and it'll come up with more keywords for you. And then you can just pop them right over and copy and paste them into your doc. So this is another way to get ideas for what people are actually searching for, essentially, because if they're in the ads, keywords results, then people are obviously looking for these things. Exactly. Yeah. So and that's, you know, people are running ads based on these keywords. People are searching for them. So it's one of my favorite ways.

Number one, it gives you a huge amount of keywords without a ton of work on your part, which isn't always nice when you can speed things up. So definitely, that is a huge way to find a lot of keywords for your niche. And just having those in the Google Doc, it kind of helps you, I think, when you're writing your blog, and when you're trying to create those pin titles and descriptions too. So that is the way that I use Pinterest for keywords. And you really don't have to do much other than use Pinterest for keywords. But I do have a couple other ways too, that I can share. So I also use Keywords Everywhere on the Google extension, Keywords Everywhere. And it really helps find like the volume people are searching for on Google.

My opinion is if they're searching for it on Google, they're probably going to be searching for it in Pinterest. So when you do that, you can come up with more long tail keywords through Keywords Everywhere. And then I take those keywords and just cross reference them in Pinterest. Just pop that keyword right into the search bar and see what comes up. Does it make sense for your blog? Is it maybe something that somebody hasn't fully answered the real intent of that keyword? And that's a really good opportunity for you to grab that keyword and write a blog and Pinterest pins in relation to that. So I use that. You can also use ChatGPT to find long tail keywords. If you have the Keywords Everywhere and ChatGPT on the same browser,

they actually have a template that you can use within ChatGPT. So you can click on that Keywords Everywhere template, and then you just go to Pinterest and find long tail or related keywords or long tail keywords, either one works, put in your seed word, and it comes up with a list of related keywords, I would take those and then cross reference them in Pinterest also. But it's another option to where you can find additional keywords. So once you have this massive spreadsheet of keywords, I like to organize them. So and you can do this as you're going along. But I would pick the keywords that you really want to be known for, like your branded keywords,

and keep those in one column where you know you're going to use those a lot. And then I take my content pillars and I kind of try to separate them out. It makes sense for me that way. You can do it multiple different ways. Do what makes sense for you. For me, I like the content pillars. You can also separate them by like awareness keywords, product-based keywords, consideration-based keywords.

If that makes more sense for you, you can do it that way too. It's really what makes sense for you, you know, as far as the organization portion of it goes. Gotcha. So you're brainstorming your list based on the data that you find. You're creating an organized list of keywords. Now we're at maybe the step where you're going to figure out which ones you want to use. Is there any criteria you apply to be able to figure out which keywords you want to use to write your next blog post or create your next set of pins? So I do like to grab the keywords everywhere for that too, because it shows volume and having like

a high search volume, lower competition. That is really helpful if you want to, you know, really be able to try to rank for that keyword. So I use that for that. I also use key search, but it's a little bit more of an expensive tool. But I think you guys use it too. It's amazing for finding those low competition keywords. So that's what I use to determine, okay, am I going to write a blog post on this? Or am I going to, you know, you may have some blog posts out there that match a keyword already. And then you can create fresh pins using that keyword. And it makes sense for that blog. You can absolutely do that too.

So you don't have to just stick with those same phrases that you've used in the past. You can come up with a new one if it's a new search volume and it matches your blog. That was going to be one of my questions. If you have a blog post for the specific title, can you create pins for that blog post with a different title? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And you should. I mean, Pinterest wants fresh content, right? But we don't want to have to create a fresh blog like every other day. So that's a really good way where you can take those older blog posts and kind of

repurpose them into a different angle, as long as it still makes sense with what your blog is. I mean, I wouldn't recommend, obviously, just using a random keyword that looks good on a blog that doesn't match. But if it matches what the search intent for that word is, absolutely use it on there. It's going to reach maybe a different audience. So we never know what people are searching for at that time. Let's kind of dive into that. You said an important key phrase there that I think is going to be helpful. And that is what Pinterest wants. And I think that that's always up for discussion. What does Pinterest want today? And just for the sake of this, we are recording this at the end of November 2023. It is going to be January when this launches. So I just want to once again,

say those dates because I think that that's important. But today, what does Pinterest universally, what are the key components for what they are looking for in regards to content? So I think it's similar to Google's new update of relevant content, right? Educational. So the content that does really well on Pinterest, which is why blogs do really well on Pinterest, is going to be educational. How to. They're not looking for things that you might find on Instagram, which is like a funny reel. That does not translate at all to Pinterest. What they're looking for is relevant content that people are searching for. And then Fresh Pins. And Fresh Pins is so confusing, right? Like what's a Fresh Pin? Yes. It doesn't have to be like a brand new blog. It's great if you're continuing to create content. Like that's great

for you and for Pinterest. But you can also take new pin designs and maybe put a new text overlay on it. And that's a fresh pin. So it can go to that same link and still be a fresh pin. Welcome to 2024. Is this the year that you want to go all in with your blog? Are you ready to learn new things and connect with other bloggers to level up your business? If you're ready, we are ready for you in the Ultimate Blog Membership. The Ultimate Blog Membership is our blogging membership that is for the blogger who wants to stay up to date

on the latest and also build a network of blogging buddies to hold you accountable and push you toward your goals. We have two coaching calls each month. One is a live Q&A session where you will join us both and ask any and all questions you have about your blog or blogging in general. The other call is a coaching call where we bring in guest experts or teach ourselves and teach you new ways to level up your blogging business. You also gain access to us all month long to answer your questions in our online forum, discuss new opportunities you're considering, connect with other bloggers and keep you

accountable in your blogging business. If this sounds like what you've been missing in your blogging business, click the link to apply in our show notes. We hope to see you in the ultimate blog membership in 2024. Okay, so let's talk about pins for a second, too, because I think that this is helpful. You mentioned earlier about it can have a different title on your pin than it does for your blog post. But it needs to be... Obviously, it has to make sense. Because Pinterest is going to ding you if, let's say, you have a ham and bean soup and you make a pin for chicken tortellini soup. That's going to totally ding you. I just use that as a very out there example. But in regards to pin creation, is there a benefit to creating multiple pins for

one specific blog post? How do you recommend? I know what we do, but I want to hear what you do. Yes, absolutely. There is. I wouldn't pin them all in the same week. I would space them out and schedule them so that your content is constantly getting, you know, bumped up there. So yeah, absolutely. There is a huge benefit. Think about Pinterest, like you're leaving breadcrumbs for all of your stuff around pinterest right so the more pins that you have out there the more chance that your audience is going to find you so some people will go crazy for two weeks and just like pin 10 pins a day and then they get totally burnt out and they quit. Well, that's going to give you with, you know, a few pins.

Like what? Maybe 140 pins on Pinterest because you pinned 10 pins a day for 14 days. I don't know if my math is right, but I think so. You're good. The better way to do it is to build this strategy where you're pinning different pins throughout the time period, like throughout the whole year, because you're just leaving those breadcrumbs for your people to find.

So you're not gonna be able to make a blog post, a fresh blog post, you know, three times a week. At least I can't. So creating fresh pins for each, you know, five pins, maybe for each blog post and then scheduling them out, that is a great way to do it. And you don't have to kill yourself doing it with brand new descriptions, titles, everything, every time. But if you have those keywords just in that

spreadsheet, you can pull from it super easy and even use ChatGPT to help you with the titles and description. And it's pretty easy to come up with new fresh pins for Pinterest. So Pinterest isn't asking for new blog posts, YouTube videos, etc. But they do want a fresh pin. They don't want the same pin repinned a million times. That used to be a strategy where you just repin the same pins. That's not necessarily the best way to do it anymore. You can still repin your high-performing pins, and I recommend that you do that. But I wouldn't just repin everything constantly the same pin. I would do a new color, a new photo, a new text overlay, make it something fresh. Something I want to say there is what Michelle's referring to is you

repinning your pin. Now, if other people are repinning your pin, that's awesome. Pinterest wants that. You want that. That is awesome. So I just wanted to make sure that we clarified on that. But that, like, repin all day, every day there. That's really what we're wanting to happen. Because then you're working smarter, not harder. And you've all but said that in this episode so far. Just these are the ways to make Pinterest work for you. And I realized that if you've never done any SEO or keyword research, you might look at this like, Well, that is really complicated. But I think that you have to allow yourself to be a beginner in this space and just be willing to learn how you can think about creating content differently. If your traffic is not growing on

your blog, or maybe you used to have Pinterest traffic, but you don't anymore because Pinterest felt like it used to be easier than it is. Or maybe you're a brand new blogger who has never had a Pinterest strategy at all. I would just really encourage you to listen to these tips that Michelle has given today because they're really helpful. People pay a lot of money for these tips. They pay a lot of money to have somebody like Michelle do this for them. And it allows you to think outside the box, I think, and not get stagnant in being a blogger as well as how can I continually like look for new content to be created? Because I think that's a fear that a lot of content creators have is, well, how am I ever

going to come up with enough ideas? We've given like some really great ways to do that. Yeah. And you know, sometimes that's not a brand new idea, even you're coming at it from a different angle, different people learn different ways. And maybe you explain it in a different manner another time. And you know, you're using those different keywords. And the real benefit to doing this keyword research all in one setting is number one, you're in the mindset, right? We all know how that works. So time blocking, it's like you're in that mindset, you're in the SEO mindset, and you're developing this huge spreadsheet of different ideas. And then you don't have to worry about doing it every single time you're pinning, or every single time you're creating a

new blog, you can just go back to your spreadsheet. I do recommend hitting your trends tab about once a month to kind of get the updated trends for your niche and using that. But outside of that, you don't have to do it super often. You can refer back to that spreadsheet, do some updates here and there, but the bulk of the work is all gonna be done at one time. So I feel like that is a huge time saver. And we're all juggling about 500 different things at the same time.

So anytime I can find something that's gonna save me some time and make my life easier, I'm all for it. So that's why I save me some time and make my life easier, I'm all for it. So that's why I started using that method. Yeah, I think as bloggers, we can kind of get in a rut of just doing the same thing over and over again and not really thinking about it. So I think this just gives us a little bit of a different perspective. And you kind of take that step back and say, okay, as a blogger, as a content creator, my ultimate goal here is to serve

my audience on Pinterest and to attract people to the content that I am creating so that they will come to my blog to read more because we all want blog traffic. So can we talk about even some other ways that you can, I guess, optimize your profile or optimize your pins to get those eyeballs on your content that you're creating and putting out there on Pinterest. Absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up because having an optimized profile is huge. So you can, you know, that's the first step to me. Like when you're setting up your business account, having your profile optimized, and I'll go through exactly what optimized means,

is really one of the most important things that you can do. So having an optimized profile really means that everywhere you can put those keywords, those branded keywords, you're going to put them. So when you're creating your business account, you're going to have a space where you can put your name, and then you can actually add some keywords behind your name. So for mine, I have pin manager because they don't let you use Pinterest, pin manager and marketing strategist digital content. So all of those are searchable keywords. And then I have learned to leverage Pinterest with a Pinterest marketing strategy designed to drive traffic to your offers as digital products or content creator grow your e e-commerce store, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel with Pinterest plan. Increase sales on your digital

products even as a Pinterest beginner. So that has a bunch of different keywords like Pinterest beginner, Pinterest marketing strategy, digital products. All of those are keywords that I have targeted. So having those in there makes you even more searchable. So making sure that you have that description, and it needs to be not really about you, it's really about your target audience. So what they can learn from you, what they can learn as they're following you. I think that is like the golden rule of blogging, almost, is that it is not about you. And just like you just said, it's the same for Pinterest. I think often when we become bloggers, that's a question that we ask ourselves is, well, how much of myself do I have

to share here? It's not really about you. It's not to say that you can't interject some personality, of course, like you want to do that. But really, when a user is coming, whether they're finding your content on Pinterest, or they're coming to your blog, you hope that they're doing both, they're looking at your content asking themselves, how is this benefiting me? So I think that that's a really good tip when creating not only blog content, but also Pinterest content is, does this really attract the user? Is this a solution to a problem that somebody's having? Whether that is to have a morning routine, whether that is a quick workout, like you mentioned, whether that is how to get dinner on the table, whether that is how to learn to cross stitch, what is the problem

that you are solving for that person? And when we take off this cap of this is all about me, and instead put on the cap of how can I help others, I think that we can think about blogging in a whole new light. And it can take some of the pressure off, honestly. Absolutely. Yeah. For me, that was huge too. And then just asking your audience, asking people, what do you need to learn? Because sometimes we get so down the lane with what we know. We're deep into it. We forget. When I first started using Pinterest, I was like, where do I even create a pin, right? Like, I didn't even know that basic information. So you may think that having that basic information or something like that is is too basic, and it probably isn't. So taking a step back and taking a look at what your audience needs to learn is huge. So definitely when you're creating your profile,

think about it that way. The other thing I definitely recommend is using that banner to if you have a promotional, you know, say you have a freebie or something like that, you're going to put that in that banner. Because every time somebody visits your profile, they're going to see, oh, I can get this free thing from them. Let me get on their email list because we're always trying to do that also. So definitely a huge part of optimizing is just making sure that you have your keywords everywhere throughout that profile. The next place you really want to pay attention to is your boards and board descriptions. So your board should have be titled the keyword that you're really looking for,

you know, your content pillar keyword. And then throughout the description, you want to use five keywords in that description. So you can use chat GPT for this. I do it all the time. Put your five keywords you're looking for, ask them to create a description. It's going to be way too long, and you will probably have to reword it as you should. But it's a really good starting place. And then you can pop that in for your board description. And it's going to help make that board searchable. So Pinterest likes things neat and tidy is how I always think about it, right? Like your boards are a file. And so everything in that board should make sense for that board. You don't want chicken noodle soup recipe along with Pinterest tips, right? Like it doesn't make any sense. Right. So having that

board with the description on there should tell everybody what those pins are all going to be about. So think about the five keywords you're going to use for that board. And then that's really kind of the basics of how to get your board optimized. And then I also this is a bonus tip. When you're creating your board covers, make sure that you link it somewhere because people will click on those pins as pins and not just covers. So link it back to a blog post, link it back to your website, something because people will use that you don't want those dead, dead pins on Pinterest either. Are they 1000% necessary? No, but it does make your Pinterest

very easy to understand, right? People are going on your profile and they see these board covers that say exactly what you are all about. Yeah. So definitely highly recommend getting some board covers on if you don't have them already, just make them they don't have to be fancy, make them clear, easy to read. That's the most important part. They don't have to be, you don't want them ugly, but they don't have to be like, you know, filled with script. As a matter of fact, I would recommend using just a very easy to read font. Tailwind is an amazing tool that allows you to schedule your blog posts directly to Pinterest ahead of time. We are all about batch working here at Spark Media Concepts. And when you can schedule out your Pinterest, it can take that task from time consuming and productive with just a

few clicks. We also use Tailwind to schedule our Instagram content, which we find to be much more productive than creating a post each time we need to share. We really believe in working smarter, not harder and utilizing Tailwind as a no-brainer for our business and also our independent blogging businesses. The cost of Tailwind each month is less than what takeout for one meal would be. And it has the capability to save you hours of time. If you want to learn more about adding this time-saving tool to your blogging business, click the link in our show notes to learn more about Tailwind. I think it brings up an interesting point though, in that we don't have to overcomplicate this

process. And once you create your board cover or you write your board descriptions, that's going to help boost your SEO. Just because like you just said, Pinterest likes things like neat and tidy. Not only does Pinterest, but so does a user coming in. I don't know about you, but just think about anything in your life when you go into it, and it's really disorganized. It's a disorganized, chaotic mess. It's just our natural human nature to not want to engage with that. You want to run the other way. So think about that as somebody's coming to your Pinterest too. Are we giving them an invitation to come in and join the party, essentially? Or are we telling them,

Hey, get out of here. This is a crazy mess up in here. You don't want any part of this. So I think that just taking a little bit of time and this is probably something that somebody could do in a day or two, depending on how many boards that you have. Hey, that brings up a good question. Speaking of how many boards, do you recommend that somebody have a certain number of boards per account? What do you recommend for that? Or does it just depend on the blogger and what they're pinning? It really depends on the blogger. I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule. I would say try to start with around 10. And I think that that's good because then it gives you kind of broad range on what you can blog about too and pin. And as new things come up, you can create

new boards. So you don't have to start off with what you're going to end up with. As a matter of fact, you'll probably end up with way more boards than you start with. But I always say start small, start with what you can do at the time. You don't have to be at 10 pins a day within two months. Like the first thing you want to do, get consistent, try to pin one pin a day, have 10 boards, make sure your profile is optimized. And that's a really perfect starting spot. And then as you're creating more content, you're creating more pins for each blog post, you're naturally going to have more pins per day coming up. So, you know, start small, start with what you can do. We can't all just focus 100% of our time on Pinterest. Like, if you can, great, like the more the better. But it's not like an

all or nothing situation. And I think we do that with a lot of things like, oh, I have to get to 10 pins a day. And then Pinterest seems like the most overwhelming platform of all time. And when you think of it like that, yeah, it would. So start small, start with what you can do. Consistency is key on Pinterest.

Just be consistent. And for me, like we were talking about the boards, one way to know if you're telling Pinterest the right things about your boards is go on your board. And when it says like, find more pins like these, if it's within your niche, you did a good job of telling Pinterest what that board is all about. So if you have a board and then all of a sudden it's coming up with this random stuff or more pins for that board, then you need to look at your board description and your pins again. That's a great tip. I have never heard that. That is a good tip. You're just full of knowledge, Michelle. I just feel like I've learned a lot today. I love talking to so many

different people in the Pinterest niche because you all have such different ideas that if you can look at everybody as a whole, it's really cool to see how you can really utilize this platform. And one of the reasons that Jennifer and I enjoy Pinterest is because sometimes social media can feel very draining. And we hear that a lot from our students. We hear that a lot from people in the blogging industry is that we constantly feel like we're chasing a goal stick that is constantly being moved on social media. I'm not saying that people don't feel like that on Pinterest sometimes. But with Pinterest, you can create a strategy and then growth in time will happen.

And I'd like to talk just a little bit about that growth. Because I think being really realistic about what it looks like to build on Pinterest is important. What do you tell your clients as you begin working with them? How do you know when to switch your Pinterest strategy? Let's say you do start. You're going to start pinning every day. You have an optimized profile. You're working diligently on your Pinterest SEO. What's the encouragement that you give them for the timeframe with what does it look like to realistically build on Pinterest? It's a slow burn. That's what I say on Pinterest. It's slow. It's like this,

you're climbing a mountain. So give it at least six to nine months. You have to give Pinterest time to index your pins, to see what you're about, to start driving traffic to your pins, your website, everything like that. Give it six to nine months. But when you are looking at a strategy, give it time to work. You're not going to just do it for a month. One month is doing nothing on Pinterest. You have to keep those strategies between three and six months before you decide, okay, I'm going to switch everything up. I'm going to try something new. I can tell you right now, what's really getting pushed on Pinterest is video. So creating video pins, and not all of them have to be face videos. You can do some animations. That shouldn't be your full video strategy, but you can absolutely take a pin and animate it to try to get that additional boost.

Those pins seem to be getting a little bit more reach than a static pin does. And then if you can do a behind the scenes or a how-to video, even if once a week, that's gonna help grow your account a little bit faster than if you just did static pins. But yeah, you have to give it time. Pinterest takes some time to build. And I see pins from nine months ago

starting to pick up traffic. It takes some time. So just know that when you're going in. I wouldn't even look at your analytics on a brand new account for the first three months. Don't even worry about it. Just focus on consistency. I think that's such good advice in general when it comes to blogging. You've said a lot of really good things here because it's a slow burn. It takes time. Create your strategy and let it work for a while. I think one thing that's easy to do is you may decide Pinterest is going to be my traffic driver. I am all in. And you're trying to do so much so fast that you burn yourself out and you only last a month or two versus if you went in slowly and you thought of it as a long-term strategy, like, okay, I don't need to do five pins a day. I can start

with one a day. Like you said, I can start with one video a week or maybe even less than that, but just doing it and getting in the habit of it and creating that strategy over the long run, that's going to get you a lot further than burning yourself out right off the bat. And just being really intentional about your goal with Pinterest and how you want to serve people and then in turn,

how that will bring traffic back to you. Yeah. And I think a few years ago, it was a little bit more common to all of a sudden go viral on Pinterest. It's not happening like that anymore, but it is something that if you stay consistent, you're going to see results. If you are putting your keywords where you need to do, you have an optimized profile, and you're pinning quality content, you have no other choice but to grow. And slow and steady is a lot better than just like, boom, all of a sudden you had one

thing go viral and then it kind of comes down and you feel like, oh, now what? I tanked, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So then there is the one piece that we haven't talked about yet in terms of optimization, and that is on your actual pen. What can you do to the pen itself to optimize it? And where are you putting these pins? Are you only creating

them on Pinterest? Or how are you allowing other people to pin your content? So for the pins, as far as the keywords, I would put a keyword on your text overlay. So your hook, right? Try to have that have a keyword in it. And then you're going to want to have a keyword in your title and a couple keywords in your description. I like to do two to three. But even if you just have one, just make sure that keywords in your description. So it's going to be text overlay title should have the keyword and couple in your description. And I will pin obviously a bunch of pins on Pinterest, but I also have them within my

blog posts. So I use the Grow app, I believe. Yeah. And it allows you to add a couple different images in there. And that way when people hit the Pinterest button on your blog, then you have the pin for them to pin. So that is also super helpful with people pinning your stuff for you, which is what you want, right? If you want people... Like if you have a goal of that pin that you want people to save it, you need to tell them to save it. Say, save this pin. If you want them to go to your blog, you need to tell them, click on the pin to read more. So tell them what you want them to do within that pin. Huge game changer.

You wouldn't think you'd have to, but you do. You have to tell them. You do. And I think that that is good advice for all content creators on any platform for that matter. Whether you're on social, whether you're on your blog, whether they're opening an email from you, Pinterest, we have to tell people what we want them to do. Because we all are like, it's information overload. So people are very used to seeing your content. And unless you're telling them exactly what you would like them to do with it, they might not even think otherwise to engage or do anything like that. And so... Or it might give them the idea of, Oh, I can save this pin for later. Yeah, I will come back to that.

And by somebody saving that pin for later, it's saving it to their boards. That's just once again, giving Pinterest a boost of your content, which just makes you even more relevant on Pinterest. And it allows that pin to work for you from a different account in front of all new people. So just think about how that can benefit you, not just at this given day. That's the difference in social media and Pinterest. It's social media, it's that given day. But on Pinterest, I mean, it's like evergreen content. Yeah. And that brings me to one other thing. I always say that Pinterest is the perfect platform for introverts because they get to create their content posted on Pinterest and they don't have to worry. Like it's nice to have some followers on Pinterest.

It's not a hundred percent necessary. It's not like Instagram where you want to get a thousand followers and then you get, you know, you don't have to have a ton of followers on Pinterest, it's not 100% necessary. It's not like Instagram, where you want to get 1000 followers, and then you get, you know, you don't have to have a ton of followers on Pinterest to have your content be seen. So really, what does that what tells Pinterest that your content is quality is the saves people saving your pins, clicking through to your website, engaging, just engaging with that pin will tell Pinterest that people are interested in what you have to say. And then they start showing it to more people. So those called actions are huge. Must be why I like Pinterest. I'm an introvert. I am too. I'm a total introvert. That's why I was attracted to it in the first place. I'll get on Instagram and I'm doing my best. But yeah, it's nice to be able to create a blog post and then make some pins or, you

know, I'm on YouTube and I do that and I create some pins for that. And yeah, I like that. And it feels like it's more worth it because you can post a pin that you're going to see people clicking through four months from now. It's not just that one day or maybe a week if you get lucky with a reel. Or even years. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Some of my best pens are like five years old. So that's encouragement to any new blogger that if you're putting pens out there and you're in that building phase and you're like, I am not getting anywhere on Pinterest. You never know when that pin that you're creating today,

you never know how it's going to serve you in like one year's time, two years time, three, five, 10. I mean, it can continually serve you again and again and again. Absolutely. So don't forget that you're planning. You've said seeds a lot. And I love that you're using that word

because I think that that's important in so many different ways. Pinterest and blogging is... A lot of what we're doing is just planting a lot. And I love that you're using that word because I think that that's important in so many different ways. Pinterest and blogging is a lot of what we're doing is just planting a lot of seeds. And then we just we have to keep nurturing it and giving it what it needs to grow. And that's just being consistent, like you've said, making sure it's optimized, and being willing to pivot when we need to and make changes when we need to, but also giving it time to actually grow and just leaning into our content on a regular basis and learning what people are engaging with, what are people liking, and how can you create more content that they're going to want to click on, quite honestly,

because that's the goal. The goal isn't for them just to see the pin, like an impression. The goal is to actually, just like you said, Michelle, is that call to action. Get them over to your blog. That's the ultimate goal. So how do we continue to do that? And I think that you've given some really, really good tips that we have not shared here on the podcast before about how people can do that in a pretty simple way. And it is going to be thinking outside the box for some. But I hope that if you're listening to this, I hope you'll go back and pull up your Pinterest account if you're not driving and look at that ad specifically. I really enjoyed that tip. That was something that I had never done before. But to go into the ads and look how different keywords could be found there.

And maybe you'd never use the search bar either. And I think those are just really, really actionable tips that you can take away from this particular episode to take this knowledge into 2024 and maybe revamp your own Pinterest strategy if it hasn't been working or create your own if you have yet to have one. So thank you, Michelle. Michelle. Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, if, if you still are not quite clear on how to optimize your profile, I actually do have a mini course that's free that you can grab and it comes with tutorial videos. It has a PDF and I also give you 30 pin templates, some banner covers and board covers. So it's a good freebie. So it's free. It's, I feel like it's a really solid course. So, and it'll really get you started on the right path. That's amazing. That is a lot of free. That is a lot of free goodness there. I know. When I was doing it, I was like, this is too much. Oh, well.

That's awesome, though. I think that it just goes to show that people in this industry really do want to help other people succeed. And that's awesome that you're willing to do that. So we will for sure put that in our show notes so people can get that resource. Can you also tell people where they can find you? And how also do you help people with their Pinterest accounts? I do offer done for you services where I'll just take over your Pinterest account and get everything optimized, ready to go, do all of your pin design, pin scheduling, all of it. You don't have to worry about anything. So I do have that service. I also, though, have a one-on-one strategy session. So if you just need some help getting going with your Pinterest strategy, then what we

do is I take a look at your account and we go through how to get it all optimized specific to you and then build a strategy for you. And then you just take that over and you do your pins and all of that. But I help you, okay, let's do some keyword research. Let's get going and really kind of get you on the right path. So I offer that as a service, just a 60's a 60 minute call. Plus, you know, you're going to get more things. After that, you're going to get your PDF outline of what we talked about, and then a full Pinterest audit. And speaking of Pinterest audits, I do a Pinterest audit also, which is basically just a video where I'm walking you through

where I would make improvements or give you any feedback on what I see on your profile. You need to do some cleanup. I'll kind of tell you where that needs to go. And that's just a video that you're going to get. You can keep it forever. And that also comes with a PDF, just kind of giving some highlight steps for you to get your profile optimized.

So I always recommend like get the mini course first, do your optimization, and then have me do an audit. And then we can take a look and see if there's any further improvements we should make. Awesome. Such value. Like that is amazing value. So please visit our show notes, get that freebie from Michelle. And if you want any additional help with Pinterest, make sure to reach out to her. And thank you so much, Michelle, for sharing some really awesome tips today. I'm going to dive into my Pinterest now. Well, thank you for having me. It's a really good time. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at Spark Media Concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the

ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.