“Trust is really important for the next generation, and they really want to see people personally. I think it’s important that we show up personally for people and that we’re not just this big brand that doesn’t have a face.”
Today’s guest is Pinterest Marketing Strategist, Vanessa Kynes. Vanessa needs no introduction because she was our guest back in episode 17, where she talked about using Pinterest to increase brand visibility and website traffic. After we recorded Vanessa’s episode, we actually hired her to do some work on our Pinterest account and we have been so happy with the results—including increasing our referral traffic from Pinterest by 1600%.
In this episode, she’s sharing about few of the things she did in our account to get us those results and she’s also sharing tips for being successful on Pinterest in 2019. If you haven’t listened to her first episode, I highly recommend going back to listen to episode 17, because it was one of our more popular episodes of 2018, and then of course, come back and listen to this one.
More about Vanessa:
Vanessa is a Pinterest Marketing Strategist for creative small businesses. As a YouTuber, blogger, and consultant, she helps creative small businesses blossom by creating traffic-generating Pinterest strategies to increase their brand visibility, grow their email list, and make more sales. Juggling the demands of her own budding business with those of family and home, she specializes in efficient productivity, making the most out of every moment, and every pin!
Hailing originally from the great state of Texas, she has lived in two foreign countries and enjoys traveling with her three sweet daughters and memory-seeking husband while residing in the Pacific Northwest.
Website | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest
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The Transcript…
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:22.3] DJ: Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I’m your host, Davey Jones.
Today’s guest is Pinterest marketing strategist, Vanessa Kynes. Vanessa needs no introduction, because she was our guest back in episode 17, where she talked about using Pinterest to increase brand visibility and website traffic. After we recorded Vanessa’s episode, we actually hired her to do some work on our Pinterest account and we have been so happy with the results.
In this episode, she’s sharing about few of the things she did in our account to get us those results and she’s also sharing tips for being successful on Pinterest in 2019. If you haven’t listened to her first episode, I highly recommend going back to listen to that one, because it was one of our more popular episodes of 2018, and then of course, come back and listen to this one.
Before we get to the episode, if you’re revisiting your website in 2019, we have something for you to check out. We are giving away one of our Showit website templates and you can enter that giveaway by going to giveaway.daveyandkrista.com and you can find all the details on that page. Be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandkrista.com for the resources we mention during the episode and I’d like to hear from you about what kind of content you’d like to see on the Brands That Book Podcast as we move forward.
I’d also like to know what episodes have you enjoyed most so far and why. To leave your feedback, head on over to Davey and Krista Facebook page and send us a message.
Now, on to the episode.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:00.5] DJ: All right, Vanessa. Welcome back to the Brands That Book Show. You’re our first repeat guest. After our episode, we were so thrilled with the episode that we ended up hiring you to work on our Pinterest account. I’m excited to dig into that today. If you have not listened to Vanessa’s first episode, you need to go back, listen to that one first then come back to this one. I think both are going to be awesome. The first one certainly was.
[0:02:24.5] VK: Well, thank you so much. I’m excited to be your first repeat guest. That’s an honor. Thank you.
[0:02:30.2] DJ: Yeah. Well, I’m excited to dig into what you’ve done in our Pinterest account since we hired you. I think I interviewed you in May, right?
[0:02:39.4] VK: Yes.
[0:02:40.0] DJ: Then I believe we hired you what? July, somewhere in there, July, August; June, July, August, somewhere in the summer. It’s a blur to me, because that’s when Jack came and – Again, if you go back and you can read Jack’s birth story on our blog; it’s from my perspective, but Vanessa’s interview was hours before Jack was born. I can’t remember exactly when we hired you.
[0:03:01.8] VK: I love it. I love it. That’s so fun.
[0:03:03.7] DJ: Yeah. We won’t focus as much on your entrepreneurial story, because you’ve already told that. Again, if you haven’t listened to her episode, go back and do that. I want to start out by looking at our account, our Pinterest account, the status of it when you took it over and some of the things that you’ve done in our account since then.
To give some people some background and I’m just going to lead with some results here, from comparing November of this year to November of last year, we have seen a 1,600% increase in referral traffic from Pinterest, which is huge, right? That’s outrageous. I will say, though sort of a caveat there is our Pinterest account and our website way back, our photography website and our design website used to be all the same.
In the past, we used to use Pinterest primarily to send traffic, send referral traffic to our photography website. In the last couple of years, that has transitioned as we stopped shooting. Of course, those numbers – that number specifically might be a little bit inflated. However, just looking from the difference between May of this year and November of this year and May –again, I can’t quite remember when we hired you. I think it was July, so maybe I should have compared June, I don’t know. Point being is that there was still a 209% increase in Pinterest referral from May of this year to November of this year.
Needless to say, we’ve been really happy with the results and what you’ve done. Of course, you add all sorts of extra value in terms of giving us content ideas as you see them. We’ve really, really enjoyed our experience working with you. I’m excited to hear what have you done in our account to create this 209% increase in referral traffic.
[0:04:42.3] VK: Well, it’s magic, right? It’s a wand. No, just like anything else, it’s just hard work and consistently showing up on the platform no matter what platform you’re using. Truthfully, you had all the good bones to succeed on Pinterest. You have a website that converts and books, organized and regular content and beautiful visuals. In the beginning after your client questionnaire, I simply just went through your profile and optimized it.
What I mean is I looked through your boards and made sure that they had keyword titles. If you remember, at Pinterest we don’t want to use board titles that are things like, let’s say we’re going with the desert board, yummy. We want to make sure that they are keyword optimized. For you, I chose board names like creative business, or creative entrepreneur, helpful tips for photographers, marketing tips, things like that that really associate with the types of clients that you want to serve.
The other thing that we did was we confirmed your domain. A lot of people think that having a business account on Pinterest means that you have a confirmed domain. Actually it doesn’t. You have to install code on your website. It was a big change that happened in this spring. By confirming your domain, you’re now giving Pinterest access to all the metadata on your website and Davey can tell you all about that. It just means that Pinterest can actually pull data. It can pull your titles, it can pull the type of content, it can even establish and recognize domain authority and recognize what type of content is being pinned from your website to the Pinterest platform.
That’s a huge important tip that Pinterest is looking forward to be able to share your content. They want to make sure those domains are confirmed. That’s one thing you want to check for. You can look on your profile and see a little globe with a checkmark next to it to confirm that. The major thing that I did is created an automated pin queue using Tailwind, which is a Pinterest and Instagram scheduler, because I wanted to make sure that you were consistently sharing and daily pinning on the platform and the Tailwind app allows you to do that automatically. Those are the main things I did in the beginning. It’s just a big cleanup where you’re making sure that all your boards and your profile are optimized.
The next thing that I did was I sifted through all your old content. Davey and Krista have been blogging for a really long time and they have lots of great value on their website. I knew that that old content from a year ago could still really thrive on the Pinterest platform. I went through and grabbed all your old blog posts and rescheduled them on the platform, giving them Pinterest optimized pinned descriptions. Those are the main things that I did in the beginning, and bringing new life to those blog posts. Have you seen some blog posts, like get new life that you’d written years past?
[0:07:14.9] DJ: Yeah, absolutely. Going back into Google Analytics, and one thing that you had asked us to do was go into Google Analytics, look at our blog posts, look at some of our top performing content, even from a year ago and started creating new pins for that content. Sure enough, what we see are more people now visiting that content more regularly. I think it’s just such a good reminder that content you publish a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, sometimes years ago can still be – it can be evergreen content. It can be content that keeps people coming back to your website.
One of the things that we encourage, especially our SEO and content students to do is a content audit; going back through their old content and getting rid of stuff that’s completely irrelevant or outdated or updating it, and then getting those old pieces of content that are still valuable back in their sharing queue. Because I think too often, we share a piece of content once and then we never share it again. Eight, 10 hours work is into creating this one piece of content and we share it once, it’s great for a day and then people don’t see it again. Working with you has been such a great reminder to go back and like you said, breathe some life into some of this older content.
[0:08:27.3] VK: Yeah. I think that – here’s a quick tip, if you don’t have a lot of popular content and you want to get more eyes and a high converting landing page, and I might define high converting as one that leads to a lot of inquiries, or e-mail signups, or sales, is to create more pin images that lead back to that blog post. We’ve done that with Davey and Krista. They maybe created about three to four pins for me to schedule on let’s say, nine rules for e-mailing leaves; I’m thinking one of their pieces of blog posts. What I’ve done is seen that consistently those four pins get traffic to that particular blog post.
I went in and created even more pin images, because it’s that 80/20 rule that 20% of your blog posts will represent 80% of your traffic. There’s nothing wrong with creating more pins that lead back to the same landing page, especially if they’re converting well. That’s one of my huge tips to focus on, especially if you don’t have a lot of content.
[0:09:17.5] DJ: One thing that I really appreciated about working with you was some of the suggestions you gave us as far as, “Hey, can I have two different kinds of pins here?” One pin that I think you started with what we were pinning and then said, “Hey, would you mind trying this different design?” Then through a quick AB test saying, “Okay, this design seems to get more referral traffic, or reap ends, or whatever.” We knew going forward hey, we should focus on this.
[0:09:43.5] VK: Yeah. I think a big side note to you, if I’m going to give anyone a suggestion for 2019 is to get comfortable with Google Analytics. Pinterest analytics are wildly inconsistent. I mean, they’re helpful for showing new impressions and saves, but in terms of what traffic is actually doing on your website, one you should take Davey’s inquiry system course and two, you should get familiar with it and at least understand what the Pinterest traffic is doing.
Don’t just be blindly happy that you’re getting traffic. Make sure you’re leading and funneling those top blog posts to an e-mail signup, or a contact page, or a shop page. I think it’s important that we just don’t let them diffuse on our website, but that we know where they’re going and we can guide them along the way.
[0:10:24.8] DJ: Yeah. I know you had some questions for me as far as our experience goes. Do you want to go ahead and ask those?
[0:10:30.9] VK: Yeah. Tell me about why you wanted to use Pinterest more in your business and what surprised you most about the platform?
[0:10:38.0] DJ: Yeah. One of the reasons that I was – Pinterest was really appealing to me is that I’m generally the one that goes back into Google Analytics and takes a look at our referral traffic and sees what go – and checks out what’s going on there. One thing that I knew going back to our photography website is just the massive amount of referral traffic that we receive from Pinterest just on a consistent basis.
We’re very diligent about tracking our leads and saying, “Hey, how did you hear about us?” Pinterest, I think was so valuable as a local business, especially as a photographer; people coming in through your website, because they see image that they love and then spending some time on your website, eventually inquiring. Those brides, right? They’re searching for images at the location they want to get married or the wedding they want to have.
It was such a great referral engine for us for our photography business in the past. I mean, websites are still a very visually-based product, right? I figured that it had to be – it could be just as successful for us for our website design and branding business. That’s really the reason that I wanted to focus on Pinterest.
I think one of the most surprising things is just the amount of opportunity there still. I mean, Pinterest is not a new platform. Google obviously is we’re big believers in SEO and trying to get search visibility on Google. It’s a little bit more saturated there and maybe a little bit harder to get visibility there. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, it’s just maybe going to take a little bit more time. With Pinterest, like the numbers I just said, I mean, those increases are massive, right? 1,600% from a year ago and 209% from just a few months ago.
[0:12:20.5] VK: Yeah. No, I think that’s amazing. I think that and Pinterest is quicker than Google. I have to say, I do bow down to the Google Gods and I do think it’s really important to please Google, as well as Pinterest. I think that if you look at – we’ve talked a lot about this Davey, your whole marketing funnel, that there’s not going to be one piece that you should focus on. I think that we should be looking for leads holistically.
Something that I’ve noticed recently in the Pinterest platform and is one of my tips for 2018 is to confirm your Etsy, YouTube or Instagram. If you have any of those accounts, confirm them on your Pinterest platform. The reason why that’s important is it’s going to create this cross-pollination effect for our marketing. They say that you need about seven touches before a follower becomes a customer. I think Pinterest is really playing nice with other platforms.
What I mean is somebody could pin and I see this all the time in the wedding industry and the design industry, people pin content from Instagram onto the Pinterest platform. If you have connected your Pinterest and your Instagram together, you’re going to get attribution and credit for the way that that particular pin performs on the platform. What you’re doing is allowing your users and fans on Instagram to share on the platform.
The reverse is true too, if you pin your content from Instagram on the Pinterest platform, you’re going to allow people to discover that pin, go to your Instagram count and get more information about you. Maybe they’re watching your stories, maybe they are also watching your YouTube videos that you pinned to the Pinterest platform.
I think that Pinterest is actually playing really well into the whole marketing funnel and giving you different opportunities to introduce you to your content in different medias. I love that about Pinterest and I’m seeing a lot of success in certain accounts at getting that attribution from different platforms on to Pinterest. I’m super excited about that and I think everyone should be looking at using that in 2019.
[0:14:11.4] DJ: Yeah. One of the things that I really like about Pinterest is they really – I mean, they truly do play well with other platforms in the sense that they don’t seem to care. They want to deliver relevant content and they don’t seem to care to send people to other places. I don’t think that’s true of other platforms. I think people – Instagram and Facebook, they want people to stay on Instagram and Facebook, even Google. Again, we teach about SEO. We’re believers in getting search visibility.
However, even Google you might have noticed lately these no click results. All that means is you’ve searched for an answer on Google and they give you the answer in the search results, right? In that box and you never have to click in the website to get there. Think about, if you’re a content creator, right, obviously you want people to click through to your results. For Pinterest, there’s so much opportunity there. Google to a certain extent, seems to be taking that away. Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t focus on Google, but again, I just think there’s so much opportunity there on Pinterest.
[0:15:10.2] VK: Yeah. Actually and I’ve been to Pinterest headquarters a few times and I ask them this question specifically, because I know that Facebook specifically didn’t want people leaving the platform, and so I asked Pinterest, “How do you feel about directing people to other platforms to your website? Do you want to keep them on Pinterest longer?” They said, “No.” Their whole goal is to inspire pinners and help them find solutions to their problems.
If you’ve noticed, especially on mobile if you click on a pin and click over to someone’s website, there’s a little top bar at the top that said, “Did you find this content useful?” Or it says something like that. You can click yes or no. What they’re doing is serving and pulling their audience on was this pin worthwhile? Did this website deliver on the type of content you were hoping to achieve? I even like the way that they are using their algorithms to test whether that content was even helpful. I mean, again, I’m all about – I’m a really practical person and I love that Pinterest is about being practical and inspiring as well. I’m a fan.
[0:16:08.0] DJ: Yeah. I want to talk a second too about the kinds of leads that we receive from Pinterest. Like I said, we diligently track that stuff, I think. If people heard me speak before, they’ve probably heard me say that the most important question that you can ask on a contact form is how did you hear about us? It’s still important to have things like Google Analytics set up, so that you can track attribution a little bit more precisely, because somebody when they say – when you ask somebody how’d you hear about us? They might think, well how did you most recently hear about us? The answers might vary there.
For Pinterest, we’re not looking for necessarily – we look in Google Analytics. We treat Pinterest as a top of funnel traffic generator, I think more than anything else. I’m not thinking that people are going to come directly from Pinterest necessarily and enquire. They do, we sent and generally, we use Slack to communicate with the team and Vanessa has a channel all dedicated to Pinterest in our Slack account. If an inquiry does come through Pinterest, or somebody says they heard about us from Pinterest, I always post that in that slack channel.
We definitely see people come from Pinterest, or a tribute hearing about us from Pinterest. To us, we’re really looking for how can we increase the amount of people that go into our funnel? It’s very much a top of funnel tool for us, not so much something that we continually to nurture people on, if that makes sense.
[0:17:30.7] VK: Yeah. Would you say that you are hoping to get them top-level into your e-mail funnel?
[0:17:36.5] DJ: Yeah, I would say that one of the big things is trying to get them onto our website, or in to a lead magnet to try to get their e-mail address. Now one thing that I think is going to be interesting in 2019, we’ve talked about this a little bit and so maybe you can share more about this, as I know that there’s more e-commerce functionality now on Pinterest.
I’m not saying that. I think for any given channel, we might primarily use it in a specific way when we look at our funnel. We might see stories as a great middle funnel, bottom of funnel tool to continue to nurture people and connect with people and engage with people, even beyond them purchasing something from us, right?
However, somebody might come in through Insta stories and that’s okay too. I think content and general, channels in general are going to play a different role across the entire funnel. However for us, I think one of our big goals and something we see as a success over the last six months that we’ve been working with you is that it has increased the amount of people that go into the funnel to begin with. We see it mostly on us at that point, then the burden is on us, right, to get them to convert, right?
[0:18:45.0] VK: Yeah, which is an important piece. You need to make sure that your landing page is helpful, that you do have that contact page and that your website is organized in a way where people know where to seek you or to hire you. It is important as much as I want to send traffic to someone’s website that you do have those high conversions. Even on my own website, my website serves as a testing ground, so I’m testing out different things like video pins. That’s another thing for 2019. I’m testing out different things and seeing how they perform on my website.
I’m a really small niche and I get between 5 and 7,000 sessions a month from Pinterest. It’s pretty considerable the type of traffic that I get to my website. The types of things that I’m looking at is using different types of lead boxes, or graphics that can get people on to my e-mail list, so that I can translate that information to my clients. It’s been really interesting too to have that testing ground for my own website, because some things work really well getting people on your e-mail list and some things just fall flat.
I think it’s important that you have a plan for how you’re going to get those people and nurture them, whether it’s through an e-mail funnel or something else. I think that’s definitely something to consider with Pinterest that you’re not just having them land on your website and then bouncing off.
[0:19:57.3] DJ: Sure. I guess, one thing I do want to talk about some of the more recent e-commerce focus that Pinterest has, even in general some ways that we can use Pinterest to get people into our e-mail funnels as well, before jumping into some Pinterest stuff specifically for 2019. Can we do that?
[0:20:16.3] VK: Yeah. What specific questions do you have about e-comm?
[0:20:19.3] DJ: Just in general, what kind of e-commerce functionality is there on Pinterest? I know there is a shop, something where you can tag products maybe?
[0:20:26.1] VK: Yeah. There is a couple things. There’s been a big switch in the platform in the last, I believe it’s around this fall, where you used to have viable pins where you could purchase the pin – purchase tangible products, not digital products on the platform. They completely ditched that probably because people just weren’t comfortable with purchasing products without seeing a landing page.
Pinterest actually really does have a strong e-commerce focus. One of the things that they’re doing is they have this new feature called shop the look. The shop the look feature was really designed mostly for home decor and fashion, but I think that it’s a really useful tool where you can actually tag pins with products.
For example, if you have a post about websites, nine things your website should have, I can actually tag those pins with three separate products that I think would be fitting for that content. What it’s doing is you see the problem, you’re hoping the pin is going to deliver on a solution and then right below it, you can actually shop the solutions straight to someone’s website. I think this is a really powerful tool on Pinterest right now. They didn’t give us a handbook or guide on how to use it. I’m testing it and playing around with it, but I think that when you utilize that and then there’s also a new feature called carousel pins, which is what you see on Instagram and Facebook, where you can swipe left or right, those two things they like it when people use their new features. When you use those, you can get increased visibility and impressions back to your pins.
I’ve been playing around with this a lot and I’m super excited about them, because I think they make sense. When you go on Amazon and you search for an idea, they often provide products that can fit that idea. I think it’s that same idea. You have a problem, this pin is hoping to answer it for you, oh, and below are a few products that can help you get to that solution quicker. I think that Pinterest really is putting a lot of emphasis into e-commerce, especially in 2019.
[0:22:17.0] DJ: Yeah. I think that’s really exciting. I think looking forward to 2019, one of the things that – one of the steps and you’ve actually been encouraging us really to take this step. Like I said, I’ve been viewing it as goal one was can we get more people to our website? Can it be a better top of funnel lead, or traffic generator? You’ve been really pushing us like, “Okay, now how can we have people on the e-mail list? How can we get people into your shop?” We won’t spend too much more time on the e-commerce stuff here, because this really is more for service-based businesses, service-based local businesses.
However, there are certainly service-based businesses, even photographers might have products like albums and things like that, so there’s probably creative ways that photographers could even use those features, even if they’re not really a product-driven business. I do want to turn our attention to 2019. I know along the way, you have mentioned all sorts of different things that you think are coming in 2019, you think that we should focus on 2019. Can we go through a couple of those, even if you mentioned them already and discussed those?
[0:23:19.5] VK: Yeah. The first thing I put is on my list is video pins. I think that the quote is by 2020, 80% of content is going to be video. Pinterest definitely wants to be a part of that. They have a whole team at Pinterest headquarters dedicated to video. I know one of the guys. They’re a really great team and they’re really working hard at making video a large part of the way content is consumed. Right now, I think for client-based or service-based businesses, there’s nothing on the platform. There’s me and a few other people talking about client, or service-based businesses on the platform. You have a real opportunity to showcase your work.
When I was thinking about this question for a service-based provider, Caitlyn James comes to mind. She’s a lot of B-roll of her shooting and doing weddings, or working. If you could even come up with B-roll of you doing your work as a photographer, a videographer, or even as an educator of you educating and create a video pin with some text overlay so people can be enticed to click over, I think that would be a really valuable thing to focus on in 2019. I know it’s scary.
I have a YouTube channel and I used to care a lot about what I looked like and if I felt ridiculous, but now I just honestly don’t care. You get to the point where video just becomes second nature. That’s something that I’m focusing on for 2019. It means I’m having to learn Adobe Premiere. You can always use iMovie. I think it’s something to just focus on, even if you’re not perfect to keep working towards. Video pins, definitely number one. Number two is that cross-pollination we talked about with confirming your other platforms.
[0:24:54.0] DJ: I’d love to talk about video pins real quick.
[0:24:57.0] VK: Okay, yeah. Let’s talk about video.
[0:24:57.8] DJ: Only, I want to give a shout out to Trena Little’s episode that recently went live. She talked about YouTube in general. Again, I think I’m going to try to focus a little bit more on video. I think this year was a big podcast year. We did do some video stuff as well, so video is definitely on the agenda for 2019. I think that’s that you shared about video in terms of how much content is going to be video-based content by 2020, or whatever it was. It’s mind-blowing.
Again, I think that podcasting for instance, video it’s just such an easy way to break through the noise, because there’s not as much of that content out there as there is written blog post, let’s say. I would also say I had an interesting conversation with Petronella. She’s a photographer. Her episode will go live, I don’t know, some time around – wait, I should have my schedule out in front of me so I can speak – I can tell people when these things are going to be live.
In her episode, she talks about how one of the channels that she’s focusing on as a photography business is Vimeo and YouTube in 2019. I think it’s really interesting to see this trend towards video.
[0:26:06.4] VK: How is she going to – now I’m curious how she’s going to do video on YouTube as a photographer.
[0:26:11.5] DJ: Yeah. She does like – it’s hard to explain and I’m not quite sure I understood it through conversation necessarily, but basically – I’m not going to do it justice, but it sounds like it’s a more – it’s a more heavily produced slideshow that she puts together on YouTube, maybe for her clients, but then also it becomes accessible to other people searching for related types of wedding. She does a lot of multicultural weddings in particular, so the terms that people are searching for are pretty specific around different cultural, I guess different cultural ceremonies and things like that, so she’s able to get some search visibility that way on YouTube, and then that drives traffic back to her website.
[0:26:52.5] VK: Yeah. I think that’s a great idea. My suggestion would be to tie in. If you’re already going to be doing YouTube content and I’ve been doing this, is I just create a short little promo clip, my hook as if you listen to Trena’s episode you can hear about this. I do a short little hook video that comes from my larger video and I’ve been putting that on Pinterest. I’m not giving all the information away on Pinterest. I’m basically introducing them to my face, talking about it and hoping that they click over to the rest of the video. You could lead them to YouTube, or you could lead them back to your blog post where the video is embedded.
[0:27:23.9] DJ: Do you have a preference on where you lead people? Is there a reason why you don’t put the whole video on Pinterest?
[0:27:29.4] VK: I think that people wouldn’t – I personally think that you wouldn’t maintain their focus on Pinterest long enough. I don’t think they’re trained as well to see Pinterest as a video platform. Also, I mean, I totally could do that. Like I mentioned, I use my own website as a test for other things. I think I’m playing around with that. You can have a video up to 30 minutes, but I’ve honestly never seen a video that long. Most of the content on Pinterest right now is really short, probably less than a minute. That’s where I’ve been focusing.
Because another thing that happens is on Pinterest platform and I think this is true on Instagram as well, is when you engage with a pin, so if someone watches my video and engages with it or at least watches it, without doubt, the next time I log onto Pinterest, they’re going to be seeing all my other pins, because they’ve communicated to the Pinterest platform that they like my content and so they’re going to see more of it. It could be that video serves as a way to attract people for the first time and then they’ll be flooded with more of your content in the future. I’m playing around with those features.
[0:28:28.9] DJ: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I’ll be interested to hear how that goes for you along the way.
[0:28:32.3] VK: It is definitely bizarre to see my face on the Pinterest platform.
[0:28:36.7] DJ: Tip number two for 2019 was that cross-pollination you were talking about.
[0:28:40.8] VK: Yeah, exactly. We can say if Pinterest is top funnel so you might have a picture of a wedding that you took in the Bahamas, let’s say you’re a destination wedding photographer. Somebody likes that and they click on over to your Instagram account and there they see even more of your work, they engage with your stories and then let’s say they book you. The only problem I have with it as a Pinterest strategist is like you mentioned earlier, that Instagram might get credit for the booking and you think, “Ah, Instagram brings all my leads.”
If we remember correctly, Pinterest was the original site of that person’s introduction to you. I think that that’s a really interesting way of getting people. Of course you know, if you engage with them on the Pinterest or Instagram platform and follow them, you’re going to see more of their content there. It’s this whole big piece of seeing things holistically pour into that funnel. It’s super easy to do. You just go to settings and you just have to be logged into all those accounts at the Instagram, YouTube and confirm them. That’s super easy to do.
The third thing is smart loop. Tailwind, which is that Instagram scheduler that we talked about, it’s really inexpensive. I think it’s $10 a month or something. It allows you to automate your Pinterest marketing strategy, because I feel it’s really important that we have the automation tools involved in Pinterest, because none of us have time to babysit the platform, right? We need to make sure that we’re working strategically and pinning our content regularly, but on some schedule.
Tailwind has introduced smart loop, which basically is what it sounds like. It loops through your top content. If you remember that 80/20 principle, we want to make sure that smart loop includes those posts that lead 80% of your traffic and make sure that they’re going out on the platform at a consistent interval. I really like this. They introduced it. It’s been in beta for a while, but they introduced it to the public in November. I think it’s good to get familiar with it and get your top content on there, so that if anything, if you ignore the platform for a month, you’ve got something rotating on the platform.
[0:30:39.3] DJ: For Tailwind, you have a course on Tailwind.
[0:30:42.1] VK: I do have a course on Tailwind. It is not the easiest platform to understand and I think, my course cuts to the chase of the strategies that I use to make it really quick and efficient, because I think that’s really important for people to succeed on Pinterest they need to one, write the content and be consistent there, but they also need for their Pinterest strategy to work for them without taking hours and hours a week.
[0:31:02.3] DJ: That might be a nice intermediate step, if you want to get involved with – if you want to get Pinterest going and you want it to be less manual, investing in a course like a Tailwind course, listening to this episode and the first episode that you recorded and getting that going. Then at some point when you can afford it and you can outsource it completely like we have, you can take that step. I think, I mean again, one of the reasons that we hired you is because you’re talking about the smart loop thing and I’m just thinking to myself, “That sounds wonderful and I’m so glad that you’re doing it.”
[0:31:34.3] VK: Yeah. I mean, there’s always going to be people that come to me who want to DIY their Pinterest and I do have lots of resources, YouTube videos, blog posts. Then there are people who just want it to be hands-off and to see the referral traffic. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. I just think I really want and I have a question for you. I mean, I really do want people to see the platform as not another time sucker, but is a really useful way, a driving traffic to your website kind of on autopilot. I think once you get the Tailwind strategy set up, but honestly, the biggest problem I see for service-based providers, and so I’m going to point this back to you, is actually creating the content.
I want to hear since you have an inquiry course and you talk about SEO, I want to hear how you get creative entrepreneurs motivated, why blogging should be important and then how they stay consistent and what is their pain point and what advice you can give to convince them that content creation is worth it?
[0:32:24.7] DJ: Yeah. I mean, content creation is the best way to show that you’re confident in what you do. I think there’s – right? I mean, it is a reflection, it is immediate. Outside of working with the client itself, right? I mean, if you hired – let’s say you hired us for photography, if you work with us and you get your images back, of course you can see that we’re competent. That doesn’t necessarily mean anybody else can see that we’re competent. They could say you could have friends that you refer people to us and all that, but by blogging your images, by creating content around your images, I’m showing everybody else that I’m competent.
It’s not just for photographers. I mean, for what we do with design and branding. If we’re talking about different design elements, or do’s and don’ts of designs, or different branding mistakes to avoid, different concepts around getting traffic to your website and converting that traffic, that’s always that we can show that we’re confident in what we do.
I think number one, just being a good business owner, showing people that you are indeed competent. Two, you can stretch that content, and this is one of the things that we focus on in the course for sure. You can stretch that content beyond just that day that you publish it. Again, we had this conversation at the beginning of this discussion, but once you publish a blog post, you can take that blog post and you can reappropriate as a YouTube post. I could do a podcast episode about it. That’s in addition to the things that we already talked about, which is just sharing that content every once in a while, instead of just sharing it once and then letting it die a slow death somewhere in the bottom of your of your blog archives, right?
We have weddings and this is – goes back to Pinterest. We had a wedding we shot, they’re actually really good friends of ours now, but we didn’t know them at the time and I forget how they found us, but they did a flag day wedding. Every 4th of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, whatever, we’re re-pinning those images, we’re posting those images on our social media accounts and things like that and sure enough, other big publishers out there are looking for content around Flag Day, Memorial Day and stuff like that, so they’re then sharing our images as well.
I think content creation, it’s one of those things, I know a lot of people in the beginning they’re like, “I hate blogging or I hate this and I just want to outsource it,” and I think that’s a mistake on some level. If you’re outsourcing the actual conceptual creation of your content, I think that’s a mistake. I think everybody should learn that within their industry, how to share in an articulate way what they know, all right?
If you’re just outsourcing somebody actually putting the blog post together for you, or producing the video – so for instance, I pay an editor to produce the podcast, but I don’t – I’m not outsourcing the content. It’s not like I’m having somebody write my script for me, or my outline, or sending the outline to you or whatever, if that makes sense. I don’t know if that answers your question. I feel I rambled on a – just got on my pedestal about content, but –
[0:35:28.5] VK: Yeah. No. I mean, it sounds like what you’re saying it’s important for establishing that know, like trust. I know it’s a pain point for people. I do want to ask you. Obviously, you know a lot about the wedding photography field and a lot of wedding photographers utilize Instagram and I am not an Instagram hater. I actually love Instagram. I also love Pinterest. Recently this month, one of my good friends who is a wedding planner who has multiple locations, her Instagram account was shut down randomly. I think it was gone for a whole week.
It did come back thankfully, but I think there’s this – when I saw that, I was obviously really concerned for her, but also this feeling of like, “Okay, if Instagram shut your account down, or if algorithms change, or etc., etc., all these things that are going to happen, how would you feel and how would it change your business if you’re focusing only on one platform?” Can you share specifically why you think it’s important to have other platforms, instead of just focusing on one, like Instagram?
[0:36:28.7] DJ: Yeah. I mean, I think that goes back to the content you’re creating. If you’re creating just content on Instagram, if that’s the only place you’re showing up, like you said that can be taken away from you in the hot second and you have really no control. Have you ever submitted a support request to Facebook before? It can be a nightmare, because you get generally a very standard canned response. Think about it, they have billions of users, right?
It’s just important I think to be creating your own content and where should that content live minimally? It should live on your website. I’m not saying by content, I’m not just saying blogging. They can be video blog posts, or vlogs. It can be audio podcasts like this. When we create a – when we post our podcast episode, we don’t only post it to iTunes. We post it on our website as well. I think that just – that’s why it’s so important to be creating your own content.
As far as showing up on different platforms though, I think really, I don’t think you have to show up on every platform. We don’t show up at all on Twitter. We put honestly probably less effort into Facebook than we ought to put into Facebook. That’s I think maybe one of the 2019 goals too is to figure out how we can get – how we can increase a little bit more engagement on Facebook, so we focus primarily on now Pinterest and Instagram and then of course, the podcast as well. Those are all places that people are showing up.
I think the people who can get away with focusing on a single channel would be like Tyler McCall, let’s says. He’s an Instagram strategist. You could probably get away with just focusing on Pinterest, right? Because you’re a Pinterest strategist. In general, people should be focusing on wherever, whatever those platforms are that their clients are showing up on. Like you mentioned earlier, it takes – the research shows that it takes up to seven touch points for somebody – for you to build trust enough with somebody that they actually purchase for you.
You should expect, like somebody finds you on Pinterest and they go to Instagram and then they see you in the Google search results and they click on your result because your name is familiar, because they just saw you on Pinterest and Instagram, they peruse your website, then maybe they get a referral from a friend, they say, “Hey, you got to go check out Vanessa Kynes if you want to outsource your Pinterest.” It’s all of those things. It’s all of those different touch points that I think make up that conversion.
I think very rarely – yeah, I just think very rarely does somebody come in through Pinterest, or just Instagram, or just your website and just in that one occasion go all the way down the funnel and convert.
[0:39:00.9] VK: Yeah, totally agree. I think, we didn’t mention also e-mail marketing as well. Showing up in their e-mail consistently. No, I think it’s so true. I mean, they say the next generation really needs a lot of trust in people and really want to see people personally. I think it’s important that we show up personally for people and that we’re not just this big brand that doesn’t have a face. Whether that makes you uncomfortable or not listeners, I think it is really important to be showing your face and your voice and just connecting with people in the channels that they’re on.
I will say Tyler does use Pinterest. I think it’s important to use Pinterest, because he’s using Pinterest to attract more people to his funnel. He’s really well-known on Instagram. If he wants to grow – I mean, I’m speaking on behalf of him. I don’t know if you would agree with this or not, but if he wants to grow his influence, he’s going to need to attract people who haven’t heard of him. There’s lots of people on Facebook and Pinterest who haven’t. For him to increase his visibility, he’s going to go to the next platform.
One of the other things I wanted to mention is if you’re already optimizing your blog post for SEO, it’s really not that much harder to optimize for Pinterest. You’ve done almost all the work. Make sure that you have those pins that go into that blog post. Make sure at the end of the blog post, Davey and Krista do this so you can see an example, they’ll include a pin and they say something like, “Did you like this? Pin it for later.” You guys actually sometimes put it in the middle of the post, so that people don’t have to scroll all the way down to the bottom, which I think is a smart idea.
If you’re already writing content, or you already have content from years past, you can absolutely go and add Pinterest pins and be leading people back to that. Don’t feel like today you have to reinvent and come up with this huge editorial calendar. Go ahead and look and see what is performing well already, maybe through different channels and create some pins to lead back to it. I’m a fan obviously.
[0:40:51.1] DJ: Yeah. In our course as well, we talk about just the content workflow. If you have a good content workflow, all of these things, like when you write – whatever piece of content you create, you should be able to share it across your different platforms. Because again, once you actually create the content, 90% of the work is done. Then it’s just a matter of putting it together in the format that it needs to be for whatever that platform is, whether it be Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest or whatever. Yeah, good deal.
Well, I don’t have too much. I do want to mention one – just two things real quick. I have two more questions for you and that’s it. Then we’ll probably end up having you on a third time once we talk about middle funnel, bottom and funnel stuff for Pinterest. Before we go, for those people who have not listened to the first episode and if you haven’t, go back there because Vanessa talks all about intro to Pinterest topics. If people don’t have a design background, do you have any tools, any suggestions on how they should go about creating pins?
[0:41:52.0] VK: Yeah. Canva and I know all the designers are rolling their eyes right now, but it’s a really useful tool. I actually know how to use Photoshop and I use it occasionally, but Canva honestly is so much easier. First step would be if you don’t know even what your pin style is, is to start a secret board on Pinterest and pin the types of pins that really influence you, draw your eye, fit your brand; there’s all kinds of styles.
I use a very minimal style. You can look at my Pinterest account. I use a solid color with just a really simple text and call to action. Have a secret board and spend some time pinning things that really inspire you; colors, patterns, things like that. Then open up Canva and browse through the templates and make a few pins. Again, going back to that principle, create multiple pins for each blog post and you might begin to see and I’ve seen this time and time again what types of pins perform really well. You can just reuse that template. Switch out the stock in the background. You could use SC stock shop. There’s a lot about – a lot of them out there, and change the text and see how they perform. I would say getting familiar with Canva.
The second option Canva related is you can go on to creative market and purchase templates that are created for Pinterest. My only caveat there is they tend to all look the same and you begin to recognize them on the platform as people using the same templates. If you’re really feeling like you need a – if you have a barrier to your entry, then go ahead and purchase those, they’re really inexpensive, and start playing around with those and seeing what performs.
Just to highlight the main optimization rules for Pinterest images, they should be 2 by 3, so they’re long rectangles, or a 1,000 by 10,000 pixels. Try to use a text overlay. What I mean is if you’re an educator, something like how-to, or nine tips for XYZ, some call-to-action, create multiple pins per post and then add a logo. I like to put my logo in the bottom center, because Pinterest uses the bottom right left and corner for features that they have on the platform. If you put it in the bottom center, you’re typically really safe. Those are my tips for creating Pinterest pins.
[0:43:57.2] DJ: Awesome. That was my second question was a couple optimization tips as well. You nailed it.
[0:44:02.7] VK: Awesome.
[0:44:04.1] DJ: People are probably going to want to know where they can get started with Pinterest. If they go to your website, they are searching for what?
[0:44:11.1] VK: At the very top of my website, I have a bar and you can click on that for my Pinterest startup guide and you’re going to get nine tasks to help you get started on Pinterest. I e-mail my newsletter every single week and I’m updating you with the latest platform changes. It can be really helpful to just have someone dialed into the platform.
Davey also mentioned that I do have a Tailwind course, as well as a how to create Pinterest friendly blog posts course, which is an inexpensive little video, a mini course to teach you how to organize your blog post specifically for Pinterest. It is SEO friendly, by the way.
[0:44:44.3] DJ: Awesome.
[0:44:45.1] VK: Yeah, those are some of the ways that you can get started. You of course can follow me on Instagram @VanessaKynes, or you can e-mail me. I typically e-mail people back.
[0:44:53.6] DJ: It is vanessakynes.com.
[0:44:55.5] VK: Vanessakynes.com. K-Y-N-E-S. Yeah.
[0:44:57.9] DJ: Perfect. All right, awesome. All these resources of course will be linked to in the show notes. If you check out the show notes, you can get links to all of that. Thank you again for taking even more time to join us on the Brands That Book Show and to share your expertise and just some of the stuff that you’ve done within our account. I know that we have been super grateful and super impressed and just happy with the results that we have seen from working with you. If you’re interested in working with Vanessa, you can also reach out to her on her website to see if you would be a good fit. Again, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
[0:45:31.2] VK: Thank you so much for inviting me on. I appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:45:37.0] DJ: Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to daveyandkrista.com.
[END]
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