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Episode 116: Pinterest Trends for 2021
199 Plays4 years ago
Vanessa Kynes is my guest on the podcast today and she is helping us get ready for the new year by sharing what we can do to be successful on Pinterest in 2021. We recap some of the biggest updates of Pinterest in 2020 and chat what users can expect in 2021. This builds on the last two episodes that Vanessa has done on the Brands that Book podcast about Pinterest, so if you're interested in learning more about Pinterest, especially if it's new to you, be sure to check out her first 2 episodes about Pinterest on the podcast.
This episode was recorded live on the Davey and Krista Facebook Page. We're going to start recording all of our episodes live to give our listeners a chance to ask questions of guests in real time. I'll do my best to release the schedule ahead of time, but sometimes that's just not possible. The easiest way to catch a live episode is to be following the Davey and Krista Facebook Page.
For the show notes, visit https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-vanessa-kynes-episode-116/
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Transcript
Keyword Strategy for Pinterest Optimization
00:00:05
Speaker
You really need a keyword strategy. You need to get your Pinterest profile optimized. So whether you're starting a new account or you're optimizing an account that you've had for a long time that needs to be cleaned up. And so that looks like getting really clear on what your keyword strategy is. And that could be as basic as what's the main thing that you do. You know, if you're a brand designer popping in those keywords into the Pinterest platform and seeing what else pops up with it.
Introduction to Brands at Book Show
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Pinterest Strategies for 2021 with Vanessa Kynes
00:00:43
Speaker
Vanessa Kynes is my guest on the podcast today and she is helping us get ready for the new year by sharing what we can do to be successful on Pinterest in 2021. We recap some of the biggest updates to Pinterest in 2020 and chat what users can expect in 2021. This builds on the last two episodes that Vanessa has done on the Brands That Book podcast about Pinterest.
00:01:05
Speaker
So if you're interested in learning more about Pinterest, especially if it's new to you, be sure to check out her first two episodes about Pinterest on the podcast.
Live Episode Recording and Audience Interaction
00:01:15
Speaker
This episode was recorded live on the Davey and Krista Facebook page. We're going to start recording all of our episodes live to give our listeners a chance to ask questions of guests in real time. I'll do my best to release a schedule ahead of time, but sometimes that's just not possible. The easiest way to catch a live episode is to be following the Davey and Krista Facebook page.
00:01:34
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavianChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode. We want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brancetbook podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DavianChrista. Now, on to the episode.
Pinterest Trends and Predictions for 2021
00:01:55
Speaker
So we're in business. For those of you who joined us live, welcome to a live episode of Brands That Book. I got Brands That Book regular here, Vanessa Kynes, joining me to talk Pinterest 2021. We did this episode back in the beginning of 2020. I'm not sure, well, I guess we can talk how many predictions were accurate when it came to 2020. Obviously Pinterest specific. I'm sure nobody's predictions for 2020 were accurate. But anyways, I'm in chat. Yeah, we'll chat.
00:02:25
Speaker
Pinterest for 2021, talk about some trends that you saw back in 2020. And then for people who have never got started with Pinterest before, what they should focus on that will get them started and get them to where they want to be as quickly as possible.
Evergreen Content Strategy on Pinterest
00:02:39
Speaker
But then we'll also talk a little bit for those who already have solid Pinterest strategies in place, really how they need to adjust or level up to make the most of Pinterest in 2021.
00:02:51
Speaker
I guess first, maybe you can just give us briefly a summary of why people should spend time on Pinterest at all.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, well, first of all, one of the things that you just brought up is what I actually said in the 2020 podcast. So I was trying to pull that file up as you were talking, but I didn't get it in time. Why should we focus on Pinterest? We should focus on Pinterest primarily because it acts as another visual search engine. It's powerful for getting your content going from
00:03:22
Speaker
live and timely in the sense that we have to send our customers to it right away, like on Instagram, otherwise it fades away to an evergreen content strategy. And that evergreen content strategy is really important when life hits, like when you need to take a break, when you're on vacation, when you are focusing on a major launch and your content kind of drops or a content production. Pinterest can send people leads to your website
00:03:49
Speaker
on autopilot essentially. So that's why it's important. So if you believe in SEO as important, you should believe that Pinterest kind of works with that.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what makes Pinterest one of my favorite marketing channels is because it sort of acts as like it's sort of this SEO social media hybrid, right? You know, it's like kind of the best of both worlds in my opinion.
Pinterest as a Hybrid SEO and Social Media Tool
00:04:10
Speaker
Honestly, I don't use Pinterest that much, but we've seen a lot of traffic from Pinterest in large part to you and the work that you did for us getting that set up and getting that going over the course of a year.
00:04:21
Speaker
So it's been a really great acquisition channel for us just in getting more traffic to our website. And as somebody who just likes to produce content, a great channel for distributing that content. So if you have questions about Pinterest, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to Vanessa's very first episode back on the podcast. And that was a while ago now. I want to say that was 2018. Kristin was in labor with Jack, so you can really think about when exactly that was.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yep, 2018. And go back and check that out. There's still a lot of really great content in that episode that's still really relevant. So obviously, the platform has changed a little bit. There have been updates, but that'd be a great place to start. And then from there, each episode I think you've done on Pinterest really builds on it, the previous one nicely. So excited to dive into what we've seen in 2020 when it comes to Pinterest.
Pandemic Impact on Pinterest Usage Trends
00:05:15
Speaker
So yeah, tell us about Pinterest in 2020. What were the major updates and trends we saw this past year?
00:05:20
Speaker
Yeah, so 2020 was an interesting year for everything, obviously. And I was thinking back before we focus on Pinterest, Instagram went through a lot of changes and all these platforms really, but those are the two that I probably pay the most attention to. So Pinterest was really popular. We saw traffic soar basically from March with the pandemic announcement.
00:05:43
Speaker
all the way through the end of September, we saw numbers and many, many of the accounts that I managed that we've never seen before, which really mimicked the behavior of people at home, right? Like many of us, specifically between March and May, we really were locked in. We weren't really sure what was going to happen if we left our home. So we saw huge traffic stores. And I would say that in general, online business
00:06:07
Speaker
most people did really well, people who make money primarily through digital products or digital services. So Pinterest really served that. I saw in the home decor world on Pinterest DIY and budget friendly options. And so maybe that translates into cheaper digital products, things that aren't high end expensive, but like small products that people could work towards their business. So that was really, really interesting in terms of traffic to see the power that Pinterest really played in that.
00:06:34
Speaker
And in 2020, they really changed the look of the platform a lot. It still operates very similarly. And we're going to talk more about like beginning strategy in this
Introduction of Pinterest Stories
00:06:45
Speaker
episode. But they introduced Pinterest stories, which if you're familiar with Instagram stories, it's kind of like a rip off of that. It's like the Aldi version of Instagram. And so Pinterest has for a long time struggled as an identity.
00:07:01
Speaker
of wanting to be a social platform. There's followers on Pinterest, but we don't really pay attention to them. It really wants to move and capture that audience that's popular in TikTok, that's popular on Instagram. So they introduce Pinterest stories, which we're going to unpack more. But basically, they don't direct traffic to your website. They're literally just images that you put on. You can do like a slideshow. But I think they're pretty powerful, and they're going to be a big part of the conversation in 2021. Whether we like it or not, how they operate, we do need to use them.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, that's so interesting. I would love to hear a little bit more about Pinterest stories because I don't think... See, I've never really been involved with our Pinterest. Again, it was handed off from you to our administrative assistant, Emily. So she's in there. So this is the first I'm hearing, but I'm smiling because Twitter did the same thing. I think Twitter rolled out with stories. I'm not on Twitter, so I couldn't really tell you about it. But it's just interesting how everybody seems to be going in that direction where there's some sort of live, a little bit less maybe curated
00:08:00
Speaker
you know, element to their platform. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about how people should be using stories on Pinterest.
Repurposing Instagram Content for Pinterest
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So when you, first of all, it's a little bit hard to identify a story. I mean, you do see on mobile, you'll see the profile pictures and they're lit up kind of like an Instagram. You could click on them. But again, what's really interesting is I don't think people use Pinterest or are trained to behave like that on Pinterest. So you may see them more just in your feed. And what you might notice is almost all, at least in most niches, Pinterest stories are at the very, very top.
00:08:37
Speaker
and they have like a little bar on them. It's kind of hard to describe, like a little page. So you know they like different from a pin, even though they're similarly sized or vertical. You know, and just what's really interesting about that is when you see them all floating at the top, it communicates to you that their distribution is ranking higher than a typical pin.
00:08:57
Speaker
Pinterest really wants to use them. So one of the important things about using them is that because they're not clickable, meaning if you click on a pin, a Pinterest story, it doesn't take you to your website. You really have to get creative about what you're doing.
00:09:12
Speaker
They're still vertical, so the official size is 900 by 1600, but you can repurpose square content, video content. It just looks not as great. It's a little bit funky. But if you notice, it's pretty similar to an Instagram story. I don't know exactly what Instagram story size is, but I'm pretty sure. If someone in the comments knows, that'd be great. Pretty sure. So that can help you think. You could repurpose your Instagram stories in a creative way on Instagram without having to create two pieces of content.
00:09:39
Speaker
But basically, you're all about that. Yeah, that of what you already have, because, yeah, I mean, especially if the ratio size is even close, you know, I would just use even if it doesn't look great. I mean, I stopped for things that are shared to Instagram stories that are obviously not created for Instagram stories, you know, like horizontal video, you know, if it looks interesting and engaging, like, yeah, maybe the impact would be just a little bit better if it were specifically formatted for that channel. But
00:10:06
Speaker
I think at the end of the day the piece of content wins in terms of catching people's attention.
Video Marketing Trends on Pinterest
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, that's a huge thing that I've been testing out. Okay. So before I get into like other ways to repurpose, because there's a big one that we can use, you know, so basically it is that two by three, it's a little bit longer. It's 900 by 1600. So if you do your math, that's really almost close. That's almost less than one by two. But some creative ways that I know your audience would be interested in Pinterest stories, because clearly it's going to be really different based on your niche.
00:10:37
Speaker
is if you're a photographer and you love to shoot at a particular venue, create a Pinterest story of all the different shots that you've done at a venue so they can be from different weddings. And then put a title on there saying, let's say it was the Naval Academy that comes to mind since you guys were in Annapolis, you know, the US Naval Academy wedding or military wedding or whatever, have some kind of title on it and then showcase those.
00:11:00
Speaker
If you're a service provider, I think that you could really copy a lot of your services page and create a slideshow of four or five images on what your services provide. Or education, what are the five tips to beginning a branding strategy? And you can create one tip per page.
00:11:17
Speaker
So there's lots of ways that you can probably repurpose things that you've already done. I've repurposed one of our podcasts as a Pinterest story because it was like a five, you know, it was like a five XYZ thing like, hey, one per slide. So that's a great way that you don't really have to come up with brand new content, use what you have. But I want to highlight is I've been sharing clients reels on Pinterest stories. And that's been really interesting and fun because if you're constantly creating reels, why not put it pushed them to another platform?
00:11:47
Speaker
I want to know you can download a reel from Instagram, but it will not download the audio. So it is important to have some kind of subtitle so that people can read it on Pinterest. So as far as the reels go, have you seen more engagement with that sort of story format versus just sharing maybe static images that you're swiping through on Pinterest stories?
00:12:10
Speaker
You know, it's really early in the data because I think a lot of my clients are really new to using Instagram rails. But so I would say that I've seen results from all kinds of things, but most of the ones I've posted in the last four or five months have been like education post.
00:12:27
Speaker
like swipe through kind of education posts or venues, but I have seen Reels take off. I've seen TikTok videos, not for my clients, rank really high in Pinterest. Like the actual video, they just literally copied and pasted it over. And so that communicates to me that video content even on Pinterest is going to perform. It's going to capture people's attention. So Reels are early though. I feel like some people really master them, but they're still pretty new to most people.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And we've been using Reels on Big Spring Cattle for that business's Instagram, but I don't make them. Jill is so good at those or creating those. So she's usually the one that makes those, but I need to go in. I need to check out on how those have been performing versus just regular stories for sure. In general, do you think video is kind of the way of the future even for Pinterest? I mean, video content does perform. So I have multiple clients in different niches from B2B to Comme de Cour who have
00:13:21
Speaker
million impressions of video. So we're shifting to video pins, which is different from a story. They have over a million impressions and it sends a ton of traffic. So I would say that before they introduced Pinterest stories this year, Pinterest video, which I'm sure should definitely be an episode that we did about a year ago.
00:13:39
Speaker
We're doing really, really well. So yeah, I would say so. I mean, one of the things that you should look at is where the ad revenue dollars going. And when you look on Pinterest, most of the content that big brands are paying to put on Pinterest are in video form. So that can kind of communicate to you, but that shouldn't scare you because we've just about different ways that you can repurpose what you've already created.
00:14:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's the gist of it, especially for people who are just getting started out or just getting started. What you mentioned too about like home DIY stuff is really interesting, reading a newsletter from Robinhood, which is like the stock trading app, right? Yeah. So they have a great weekly Monday newsletter, but one of the things they mentioned today was, and I forgot what they called it, but how all these home company stocks have just been through the roof. So, you know, Home Depot, Lowe's, Restoration Hardware was one they mentioned.
00:14:30
Speaker
that even Restoration Hardware are interesting because you had mentioned about maybe people trying to DIY stuff. Well, Restoration Hardware for sure is also a high-end luxury brand. So, they've been doing well too. So, people have been focusing on their homes. Now, what they mentioned too, this is just sort of an aside because we're talking about Pinterest here, is they're predicting maybe what they're calling some level of revenge spending.
00:14:52
Speaker
in 2021. And what they mean is spending money on things that you couldn't spend money on in 2020. So vacations, nights out, you know, stuff that people just couldn't do over the last year. But I think to your point, it was really, you know, businesses that were set up online to do any sort of business online were well positioned for 2020. And I think a lot of people realize that even going hopefully into a year where things
00:15:20
Speaker
return to some semblance of normalcy. I think there's still a lot of people out there. Well, I need to make sure that there's something, there's an element of my business that I can do online or if I need to, I can serve people online seamlessly just in case to handle something like that again.
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah. You know, another important aspect of Pinterest is that if this year was hard for you for various reasons, maybe you were ill. I mean, I actually had coronavirus and, you know, maybe you were ill or recovering or you just kind of couldn't hang, which is totally reasonable way to respond to how difficult things were. Pinterest was working in the background for you. SEO was working in the background. I took a pretty long Instagram break.
00:15:58
Speaker
And I don't believe my business suffered from it because I was still receiving traffic from various sources. So that's a good reason to invest in strategies that have evergreen value. And that's really interesting about revenge spending because
00:16:14
Speaker
I'm not in the travel industry, so I don't know if I'm gonna see those trends, but home, just anything that revolves around being home, I mean, we moved, you moved, we were buying tons of stuff online, but that was really more related to our move. So it'll be interesting to see what happens, but I do think that DIY researched because people just kind of found a new passion for it. And so I'd be interested to see if they saw those trends in cooking and recipes, which I don't work with
Consumer Behavior Shift to Online Shopping
00:16:41
Speaker
food, yeah.
00:16:41
Speaker
I'm sure I'm getting a ton of ads for Masterclass lately. But anyways, getting off track here, I do think that even as things shift back to more in-person experiences, hopefully in the relatively near future in the next year or so, I still think that the way that people do business will have changed or shifted at least in a little bit. I would imagine, for instance, we've been picking up our groceries every week from the grocery store. You drive up, they put them in the back of your car and you drive away.
00:17:10
Speaker
I don't know if we'll ever go back to actually spending a significant amount of time in the grocery store again. It just, like why? Because it's free to do the grocery pickup and so why would we go back to that? So I think these trends are important to pay attention to. So as we shift our attention back to 2021, or shift our attention rather to 2021, what are some things that you think people should be kind of on the lookout for? What do you expect to see from Pinterest in 2021?
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, so we actually have talked a lot about these things already. We kind of jumped the gun to some of these new features, but I would say I would just really sit down and map out a piece of content that's been popular in the past on any platform and look for ways that you can repurpose it across platforms, not just to printers, obviously different ones.
00:17:58
Speaker
But I mean, I want you to get really creative and get really strategic about what you share. And so that's repurposing those reels. If you're on TikTok, repurposing those, doing teaser clips. So like if you have a great podcast or a YouTube video doing a short teaser clip or building that into your workflow that you share on Pinterest, either in story form or even the Pinterest video form.
00:18:22
Speaker
Because again, Pinterest is that big funnel brand awareness kind of platform, meaning it's where people don't go for branded search. They go for idea search through keywords. And if you can just pick their interests enough and they engage with your pins and they get to your website, they're going to see more of what you do. But also if they engage with your Pinterest story, they're going to see more of your content and their feed. So just think about what you already have and repurpose that.
00:18:48
Speaker
I think the Pinterest platform, one thing we didn't really talk about, it went through some awkward changes this year too. They said they didn't have a major spam cleanup, but that affected a lot of healthy accounts. And so there were people experiencing that. I think that was more in the DIY kind of home decor recipe world. But because of that, they really have kind of gotten more strict about how much content you're sharing. So really you don't have to share quite as much content as people think you do.
00:19:14
Speaker
So even 10 quality pins a day using a scheduler like Tailwind can really make a difference. So, but I would pour all in into video content if I could, because those get way more distribution and Pinterest stories, especially for a new account. Yeah, I'm gonna have to start investigating that a little bit more. I was just kind of wondering, I wonder if there's a way to stream live to Pinterest. No, I haven't seen. There's no, there's no, there's no like Pinterest live. But hey, you know what, they probably will try it.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so. So and for those of you listening, trying out a new, it's not a new app, but it's new to me, Restream, which allows me to go live to multiple accounts at once. So trying that out a little bit this morning. And if you want to help us out, if you want to leave a question for Vanessa in the comments, let us know. One, I just want to kind of see how that works through Restream here. I'm using it in conjunction with Ecamm Live. So hopefully it works as normal. And I just
00:20:06
Speaker
see it here in Ecamm and am easily able to respond to those. But if you have a question, go ahead and drop those in. And before we wrap up here, I will make sure that that gets to Vanessa. All right, so let's real quick talk about people who have nope or little presence on Pinterest.
Beginners' Guide to Pinterest: Keywords and Optimization
00:20:23
Speaker
It is, you know, we're going into 2021. If you were them, what should they focus on in order to ramp up here?
00:20:30
Speaker
Well, thankfully that's pretty much the advice that's been around for a long time. Really need a keyword strategy. You need to get your Pinterest profile optimized. So whether you're starting a new account or your optimizing account that you've had for a long time that needs to be cleaned up. And so that looks like getting really clear on what your keyword strategy is. And that could be as basic as what's the main thing that you do. You know, if you're a brand designer popping in those keywords into the Pinterest platform and seeing what else pops up with it.
00:20:58
Speaker
going to be things like web design, branding strategy. If you are a photographer, you're going to want to focus heavily on location keywords, on where you like to shoot. If you're another B2B business, again, you just need to start to get that keyword strategy and optimize your profile. And that means cleaning up boards that you do not use for content. So I like to say, if you're really into avocado recipes, you've been saving those, but you never create content on
00:21:23
Speaker
anything related to probably food and avocados, you can make those boards secret. So what you're trying to do is communicate heavily to Pinterest what kind of content you produce and whatever's public on your profile is that. So there's that getting your keyword strategy down, maybe picking your top 10 most popular pieces of content. Maybe you look at Google Analytics,
00:21:44
Speaker
which is a helpful tool or even on Instagram and you start sharing those pieces of content. Sharing multiple pin images for blog posts is a great way to fill up your queue. So your tailwind queue. So like literally Davy and Krista can create five different pin images, something they've always done three to five that go back to the same blog post. That's a great way to start to pump out volume without having to create tons of content.
00:22:08
Speaker
So there's really a lot you can do. If you've already created content, you're not brand new business, just brand new to Pinterest. You probably have a lot of stuff you can share. The other thing I would do is probably take those popular pieces of content, create pins that point back to Pinterest. And if this is confusing, I'll go back and listen to some of the other episodes because I unpack this in a more basic way there.
00:22:29
Speaker
But go ahead and create Pinterest stories that connect to those. Try to send as many connections back to your profile and these pieces of content to really send a message to Pinterest on what you're about. And that's important. And obviously, being consistent on the platform, you don't have to pin live. You can use a scheduler, which is a great aspect to Pinterest. It can kind of run in the
Optimizing Existing Content with Analytics
00:22:50
Speaker
background. But you do need to show up and create content for it, at least ideally weekly. But I know that's hard for people. So let's say biweekly every other week.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think a few things to what you said I think are important. One, if you've been in business for a while and you've been creating content, you're not new to business, right? You're just new to Pinterest. And so there's a lot that you can make do with from past content that you've already created. So, you know, that's the hard part, right? Is actually creating the content, creating the graphic. Like it might be hard the first time you do it, but you're going to figure it out, right?
00:23:20
Speaker
So it's something I appreciated also just about getting started to you have a course on Pinterest. I'm not sure if enrollment is open for that right now, but that is something that people and I'm big fans of those types of courses, not only because people get to learn from somebody like you who this is what you do. I mean, you specialize in Pinterest. You know everything about what's going on in the Pinterest ecosystem. So not only are you super qualified and a great teacher, but in addition to that, I'm a big fan of courses that teach specific skills like that.
00:23:48
Speaker
You go into a course like that and you know exactly what you're gonna get out of it and why you're doing it, whereas there are certain courses that I think people invest in that I'm like, I don't know. Anything that teaches you sort of a hard skill, and of course I think people would disagree that Pinterest or anything digital marketing is necessarily a hard skill, it's not like carpentry or something like that, but in the online world, anything that teaches a hard skill like that I think is maybe worth investing in because you can very much understand, hopefully, what return you'll get out of it.
00:24:17
Speaker
It's a long game strategy. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. But that's why I really like thinking about Pinterest not in a vacuum, but as you're focusing on content overall, really that content marketing kind of umbrella. Because if you're taking the time to develop a great blog post that might rank on SEO,
00:24:40
Speaker
you should take the time to optimize it to get traffic from Pinterest or whatever you're creating through the YouTube channel. Putting it on your website is a great way to boost its search function, but also get some traffic from Pinterest. They work together. Another weird aspect of Pinterest, I don't know why I call it weird, is that Pinterest pins and boards rank in search engines. So you could search for a venue and see one of the results as on Pinterest
00:25:08
Speaker
and it's someone's board. It could be your board on that particular venue. So there are lots of other ways that it works without necessarily having someone to search for it in the platform. Yeah. I also want to highlight another change that we didn't get on is hashtags have kind of basically been dropped. And that was Pinterest really trying to be a social platform and they just
00:25:31
Speaker
they drop them. So if you still have them in your old descriptions, it's not going to hurt you, but you don't have to focus as much on hashtags. Yeah, not quite being on Twitter. I wonder if, because I don't really use them on Facebook, you know, and I certainly don't use them on Instagram. You know, not saying that they're not worth using on those platforms, but I just, you know, I guess they're not
00:25:53
Speaker
they might not be as quite of a big part of the strategy. But then again, you know, people shouldn't be taking their Instagram advice from me. So maybe people are like, no, Davey, you absolutely should be focusing on hashtags. And yeah, machine learning is just so smart now. It can just tell so many different things about it's really probably mostly engagement. It just knows how content goes out. If it's going to engage, increase the distribution. Yeah. So it's it's way smarter than us, or at least me.
00:26:21
Speaker
Sure. Well, I would love to wrap up by hearing about, you know, if you have a Pinterest presence, you really want to level up what is, you know, sort of the one thing that you should focus on in 2021.
Creating Dynamic Video and Story Content
00:26:31
Speaker
I think I could guess your answer. Well, I guess your answer. Sure. Go for it. And you can totally tell me if I'm wrong, but video content.
00:26:40
Speaker
Yes, video content. Well, what I'm going to say is have a piece of video content, a Pinterest story and still pins for everything that you create. A third of the way there. Yeah. So try to find ways to incorporate them all. I want to point out a video pin
00:26:57
Speaker
So you guys are designers. I am not. So you can use something like Canva, right? You can buy great templates, actually, on Creative Market, probably Etsy. And Canva has templates as well. So you can animate a pin on Canva with a little sticker, they call it. It could just be an arrow that moves or a line. Guess what, guys? That's a video pin.
00:27:17
Speaker
So create a still pin, add a sticker to it, save it as an MP4 and upload that to Pinterest. That counts as a video pin. So that took a second more to create a video pin. But try to have those three pillars for every piece of content that you create. And that's all pointing back to one blog post that probably took you a couple hours to create. But those things took you like a second to just modify.
00:27:40
Speaker
Okay, so the thing that I do want you to do if you've been on Pinterest and you have a solid strategy, take a look at Google Analytics and let the data tell you what to do. So look at your top 10 posts, go through those, create a Pinterest story from each one of those posts if you don't already have one, create fresh pins like new pin graphics that point back to those URLs.
00:28:03
Speaker
create more content based on that. I have one client who just makes it basic. Well, we're all like this really 80% of our traffic comes from 20% of our posts. So don't feel bad like about reincorporating those because that's what people are searching for. And that's what they want to learn about. So use that data as well.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I read an interesting article about a search engine optimization test. Basically, if you've Googled anything, you've probably noticed there's a little bit of a trend in the title. So when the search results page shows up, the search shows up at the end of the title, it'll say something like updated 2020 or updated May 2020 or, you know, something like that. And so they ran a test basically testing, appending something like that to the article.
00:28:46
Speaker
versus not having it. And they found that it actually does make a difference. So people are more likely to click on stuff that says, you know, updated December 2020 versus something that maybe you're unsure about how long ago it's been updated. But my guess is that for most of those articles, and I don't know this for sure, is that they may not have been updated, you know, or maybe a sentence has changed. So you don't have to rewrite the article to do that. You can literally go in and just change the title. You don't make sure that the link doesn't change, the actual URL doesn't change.
00:29:15
Speaker
but go in and change that to the title. I mean, maybe and see if you get an easy boost from doing something like that, if the content is still good, of course. Yeah, that's a great tip. Actually, for the last three years, I've updated a post. So I'll have to I actually was thinking about this for this episode, incorporating
00:29:31
Speaker
the audio clip or whatever it's called into that blog post and then kind of highlighting it and updating it. But it's the same post, you know, and when you see a pin on Pinterest, that's Pinterest strategy for 2018, no one's going to click
SEO Boost by Updating Content Titles
00:29:43
Speaker
on that. So it's kind of dead in that sense. But I still have all the Google juice from that popular post. It was on page one. It probably it may not be if other people have already updated it to 2021. But that's a great, great strategy. So I love that. Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
So interesting, simple things that you can do. And you learn those things just kind of along the way by doing it, you know? So that always seems to be the gist of each episode is just to get started. And one day I'll get started with video content, although I feel like this comes to at least some extent, right? Well, I was talking to my husband about podcasting because I mean, I think there are people who love to listen to podcasts who just aren't gonna watch videos. So I think what you're doing is enough, you know? Yeah, we'll see.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, maybe the best of both worlds. I don't know. The hard part is figuring out how to distribute on. I mean, there's YouTube, of course, but this seems like a whole other channel. It has its own strategy, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Conclusion and Guest Appreciation
00:30:40
Speaker
Well, Vanessa, thank you so much for spending the Monday after Christmas with us chatting about Pinterest for 2021. I know that the Pinterest for 2020 episode was really popular. So, gotta imagine this one will be also popular and helpful for people as they prepare for 2021. What does this week look like for you to usually take this week off?
00:30:59
Speaker
No, so we, well, I guess when this goes live, it won't really matter. So we are actually in Virginia with my husband's family and he loves watching football, all the bowl games. And so he promised me he'd help me with homeschooling. I don't know if I mentioned this to you or if this was just the earlier part of the episode. And so we're staying the week and hanging out, but
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah and so fun and stuffing our faces but yeah I'm gonna be working this week he's gonna be helping out with the homeschooling so yeah and it's it's the goal is so that when we get back I'm not like totally stressed out he just goes to the office by honey and I'm like oh my gosh I have so much to catch up on I don't like feeling that way.
00:31:35
Speaker
I don't really get it. This is probably one of the few weeks during the year that I typically just take off. As I said, have a little bit of work to do this morning, definitely a little bit of work to do tomorrow morning. But then after that, hopefully an otherwise pretty relaxing Christmas, you know.
00:31:52
Speaker
But you're a farmer now, so the animals still need to eat. So that's the thing. I mean, that's the one thing about farming, right? Is that, you know, regardless of whether you're taking off or whether you're sick or whatever, you have to go and you have to feed the animals and make sure that they're taken care of. So yes, of course, still have to do that. You know, fortunately, we can split those chores up a little bit among the group. And, you know, it's kind of stuff that you can do on your way out. And yeah, so we'll see. I guess you don't really get a break from farming.
00:32:20
Speaker
No, it's hard work. It really is. But I think people just love it. And it's a passion. So they stick with it. It's been great. Well, thank you so much, Vanessa. I will make sure that any questions we get, get sent your way. And of course, if you want to get in touch with Vanessa, you can check the show notes for all the different places that you can follow along with her. And like I said, if you haven't heard Vanessa's first, I think we've done two other episodes on Pinterest specifically.
00:32:46
Speaker
If you haven't checked out those episodes, be sure to go check out those because I think each of them build on each other in a helpful way. And even though the first one was released in 2018, still has some great advice that is still relevant for today. Yeah, I think especially key wording, that's just something you have to figure out before you can really take off.
00:33:05
Speaker
Same with search engine optimization, but like if keywording sounds technical and scary to you, I mean, you can get really technical with it, but you can also make it pretty simple, you know? It's what you do every day by searching. There's a lot just by the Google searches that you perform around what you do and looking at the suggestions that Google makes, you know, and starting there. And then again, it's just a matter of learning one more thing after that and building on that. But anyways, thank you, Vanessa. Really appreciate it.
00:33:35
Speaker
Thanks so much.
00:33:59
Speaker
you