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Episode 32: Vanessa Kynes - Pinterest Trends for 2019
146 Plays6 years ago
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.
Recommended
Transcript
Building Personal Connections
00:00:05
Speaker
The next generation really needs a lot of trust in people and really want to see people personally. And 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.
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:21
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.
00:00:33
Speaker
Today's guest is Pinterest marketing strategist, Vanessa Kynes. And 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.
00:00:58
Speaker
And she's also sharing tips for being successful on Pinterest in 2019. If you haven't listened to our 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.
Engagement and Feedback
00:01:14
Speaker
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 show it website templates and you can enter that giveaway by going to giveaway.davianchrista.com and you can find all the details on that page.
00:01:31
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavianCrista.com for the resources we mentioned 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 the DavianCrista Facebook page and send us a message. Now, on to the episode.
Pinterest Success Story
00:02:00
Speaker
All right, Vanessa, welcome back to The Brancet Book Show. You are 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. And so 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. And I think both are going to be awesome. The first one certainly was. Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be your first repeat guest. That's an honor. Thank you.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, well, I'm excited to dig into what you've done in our Pinterest account since we hired you. So, I think I interviewed you in May, right? Yes. And then I believe we hired you, what, July? Somewhere in there, July, August, June, July, August, somewhere in the summer. It's kind of a blur to me because that's when Jack came and met. You know, 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.
00:02:58
Speaker
So I can't remember exactly when we hired you. I love it. I love it. That's so fun.
Strategic Pinterest Optimization
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah. So we won't focus as much on your entrepreneurial story because you've already told that. And again, if you haven't listened to our 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,
00:03:28
Speaker
We've seen a 1600% increase in referral traffic from Pinterest, which is like huge, right? That's like outrageous. So, I will say though, sort of a caveat there is our Pinterest account and our websites way back. Our photography website and our design website used to be all the same.
00:03:45
Speaker
So, in the past, we used to use Pinterest primarily to send traffic – send referral traffic to our photography website. And so, in the last couple of years, that has transitioned as we stopped shooting. So, 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.
00:04:13
Speaker
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.
00:04:42
Speaker
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. But truthfully, you had all the good bones to succeed on Pinterest. You have a website that converts in books.
00:04:55
Speaker
organized and regular content and beautiful visuals. So in the beginning, after your client questionnaire, I simply just went through your profile and optimized it. And what I mean is I looked through your boards and made sure that they had keyword titles. So if you remember at Pinterest, we don't want to use board titles that are things like, let's say we're going with a dessert board. Yummy. We want to make sure that they are keyword optimized. So for you, I chose board names like
00:05:21
Speaker
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.
00:05:43
Speaker
And it was a big change that happened in the spring. And so 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. But 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. So 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.
00:06:13
Speaker
So that's one thing you want to check for. You can look on your profile and see a little globe with a check mark next to it to confirm that. And 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. So those are the main things I did in the beginning. It's just like a big cleanup where you're making sure that all your boards and your profile are optimized.
00:06:42
Speaker
So the next thing that I did was I sifted through all your old content. So Davey and Krista have been blogging for a really long time and they have lots of great value on their website. But I knew that that old content from a year ago could still really thrive on the Pinterest platform.
00:06:58
Speaker
And so I went through and grabbed all your old blog posts and rescheduled them on the platform, giving them Pinterest optimized pin descriptions. So those are the main things they 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, you know, years past?
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Going back into Google Analytics, and one thing that you would ask us to do is 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. And sure enough, what we see are more people now visiting that content more regularly.
00:07:35
Speaker
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 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, getting rid of stuff that's completely irrelevant or outdated, or updating it,
00:08:00
Speaker
and then getting those old pieces of content that are still valuable back in their sharing queue.
Tracking and Analytics
00:08:07
Speaker
Because I think too often, we share a piece of content once and then we never share it again. And so, you know, 8-10 hours work is into creating this one piece of content and we get, we share it once, it's great for a day and then people don't see it again. So, 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.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, and 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 on a high converting land page, and I might define high converting as one that leads to a lot of inquiries or email signs up or sales, is to create more pin images that lead back to that blog post. So we've done that with Davey and Krista. They may be created about three to four pins for me to schedule on, let's say, nine rules for emailing leads. I'm picking one of their pieces of blog post.
00:08:53
Speaker
And what I've done is seen that consistently those four pins get traffic to that particular blog post. But I went in and created even more pin images because it's that 80-20 rule that
00:09:03
Speaker
20% of your blog posts will represent 80% of your traffic. So there's nothing wrong with creating more pins that lead back to the same landing page, especially if they're converting well. So that's one of my huge tips to focus on, especially if you don't have a lot of content. 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 kind of pin that I think you started with what we were pinning and then said, hey, would you mind trying this different design?
00:09:31
Speaker
And then through a quick AB test saying, okay, this design seems to get more referral traffic or repens or whatever. And we knew going forward, hey, we should focus on this. Yeah. And I think a big side note too, if I'm going to give anyone a suggestion for 2019,
00:09:47
Speaker
is to get comfortable with Google Analytics. Pinterest Analytics are wildly inconsistent. I mean, they're sort of helpful for showing you 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. So don't just be blindly happy that you're getting traffic. Make sure you're leading and funneling those top blog posts to an email sign up or a contact page or a shop page.
00:10:18
Speaker
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. Yeah. I know you had some questions for me as far as our experience goes. Do you want to go ahead and ask this? Yeah. Tell me about why you wanted to use Pinterest more in your business and what surprised you most about the platform.
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, so one of the reasons that I was... Print Church 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 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 received from Pinterest.
00:10:56
Speaker
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, they're searching for images at the location they want to get married or the kind of wedding they want to have.
00:11:24
Speaker
And so, it was such a great referral engine for us for our photography business in the past. And I knew, you know, I mean websites are still a very visually based product, right? So, I figured that it had to be, it could be just as successful for us for our website design and branding business. And so, that's really the reason that I wanted to focus on Pinterest.
00:11:48
Speaker
I think one of the most surprising things is just the amount of opportunity there still. Pinterest is not a new platform. Google, obviously, 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.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's just maybe going to take a little bit more time. With Pinterest, like the numbers I just said, those increases are massive. 1600% from a year ago and 209% from just a few months ago.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. And I think that Pinterest is quicker than Google. But 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.
Leveraging Pinterest Features
00:12:30
Speaker
But I think that kind of 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 kind of like holistically, and something that I've noticed recently in the Pinterest platform and is one of my tips for 2019.
00:12:46
Speaker
is to confirm your Etsy, YouTube, or Instagram. If you have any of those accounts, confirm them on your Pinterest platform. And the reason why that's important is it's going to create this cross-pollination effect for our marketing.
00:12:58
Speaker
They say that you need about seven touches before a follower becomes a customer. And I think Pinterest is really playing nice with other platforms. So 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. So 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.
00:13:26
Speaker
And so 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 account and get more information about you. Maybe they're watching your stories. Maybe they are also watching your YouTube videos that you pin to the Pinterest platform.
00:13:49
Speaker
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. I'm seeing a lot of success in certain accounts at getting that attribution from different platforms onto Pinterest. I'm super excited about that. I think everyone should be looking at using that in 2018. One of the things that I really like about Pinterest is they truly do play well with other platforms in the sense that
00:14:17
Speaker
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. And I don't think that's true of other platforms. I think Instagram and Facebook, they want people to stay on Instagram and Facebook. Even Google, and again, we teach about SEO, we're believers in getting search visibility. However, even Google, you might have noticed lately
00:14:37
Speaker
these no click results and 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 and so think about you know if you're a content creator right obviously you want people to click through to your result.
00:14:54
Speaker
you know, and so like for Pinterest, there's so much opportunity there. And Google, you know, 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.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, actually, and I've been to Pinterest headquarters a few times and I asked them this question specifically because I know that Facebook specifically didn't want people leaving the platform. And so I asked Pinterest, you know, how do you feel about directing people to other platforms, to your website? Do you want to keep them on Pinterest longer? And they said, no, their whole goal is to inspire painters and help them find solutions to their problems.
00:15:32
Speaker
So 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. And you can click yes or no. And what they're doing is kind of serving and pulling their audience on, was this pin worthwhile?
00:15:49
Speaker
Did this website deliver on the type of content you were hoping to achieve? So I even like the way that they are using their algorithms to test whether that content was even helpful. So 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. So I'm a fan.
00:16:07
Speaker
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 kind of stuff, you know, I think. And if people have 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?
00:16:23
Speaker
It's still important to have things like Google Analytics set up so that you can track attribution a little bit more precisely because when you ask somebody, how did 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.
00:16:50
Speaker
I'm not thinking that people are going to come directly from Pinterest necessarily and inquire. They do. 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.
00:17:10
Speaker
in that Slack channel. We definitely see people come from Pinterest or a tribute hearing about us from Pinterest, but 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.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah, so would you say that you are hoping to get them top level into your email funnel? Yeah, I would say that one of the big things is trying to get them onto our website or into a lead magnet to try to get their email 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, is I know that there's more e-commerce functionality now on Pinterest.
00:17:55
Speaker
So 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. So 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.
00:18:15
Speaker
However, somebody might come in through InstaStories and that's okay too. So I think content in 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.
00:18:38
Speaker
And we see it mostly on us at that point. Then the burden is on us to get them to convert.
Holistic Funnel Strategy
00:18:44
Speaker
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. And so it is important, as much as I want to send traffic to someone's website, that you do have those high conversions.
00:19:02
Speaker
And even on my own website, my website kind of 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 five and seven thousand sessions a month from Pinterest. So, you know, it's pretty considerable the type of traffic that I get to my website for sure. And the types of things that I'm looking at is using different types of lead boxes or
00:19:29
Speaker
graphics that can get people onto my email list so that I can translate that information to my clients. So it's been really interesting too to have that testing ground for my own website because some things work really well at getting people on your email list and some things just fall flat. And so 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 email funnel or something else. So 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.
00:19:56
Speaker
Sure. I guess one thing I do want to talk about is some of the most more recent e-commerce focus that Pinterest has. Even in general, some ways that we can use Pinterest to get people into our email funnels as well before jumping into some Pinterest stuff specifically for 2019. Can we do that? Yeah. What specific questions do you have about e-commerce? Just in general, what kind of e-commerce functionality is there on Pinterest? I know there's a shop, something where you can tag products maybe?
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah, so there is a couple things. So there's been a big switch in the platform in the last, I believe it's around this fall, where you used to have Bible pens where you could purchase the pen, purchase tangible products, not digital products on the platform. So they completely ditch that probably because people just weren't comfortable with purchasing products without seeing a landing page.
00:20:45
Speaker
So Pinterest actually really does have a strong e-commerce focus. And one of the things that they're doing is they have this new feature called Shop the Look. And so 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.
00:21:02
Speaker
So 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. And so 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.
00:21:23
Speaker
So, I think this is a really powerful tool on Pinterest right now and 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 kind of 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. And so, when you use those, you can get increased visibility and impressions back to your pins.
00:21:49
Speaker
So I've been playing around with this a lot and I'm super excited about them because I think they make sense. Like when you go on Amazon and you search for an idea, they often provide products that can fit that idea. And I think it's that same idea. Like you have a problem. This pen is hoping to answer it for you. Oh, and below are a few products that can help you get to that solution quicker.
00:22:10
Speaker
So I think that Pinterest really is putting a lot of emphasis into e-commerce, especially in 2019. Yeah, I think that's really exciting. And 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. You know, like I said, I've been viewing it as you know, goal one was can we get more people to our website? You know, can it be a better top of funnel lead or traffic generator?
00:22:34
Speaker
You've been really pushing us like, okay, how can we get people on the email 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
Video Pins and Smart Loops
00:22:53
Speaker
and things like that. There's probably creative ways that photographers could even use those features even if they're not really a product-driven business.
00:23:02
Speaker
But I do want to turn our attention to 2019 and 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 discuss those? Yeah. So the first thing I put is on my list is video pins.
00:23:23
Speaker
I think 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.
00:23:42
Speaker
And so right now, I think for client-based or service-based businesses, there's nothing on the platform. There's like me and a few other people talking about client or service-based businesses on the platform. So you have a real opportunity to showcase your work. So when I was thinking about this question for a service-based provider, Caitlin Jaynes comes to mind. She has a lot of B-roll of her shooting.
00:24:02
Speaker
and doing weddings or working. So 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 kind of 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
00:24:31
Speaker
video just become second nature so that's something that i'm focusing on for two thousand nineteen it means i'm having to learn adobe premiere you can always use i movie but i think it's something to just focus on even if you're not perfect to keep working towards
00:24:46
Speaker
So, video pins, definitely number one. Number two is that cross-pollination we talked about with confirming your other platforms. I'd love to talk about video pins real quick. Okay, yeah, let's talk about video pins. Yeah, only I want to give a shout out to Trina Little's episode that recently went live. She talked about YouTube in general. And again,
00:25:05
Speaker
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. Video is definitely on the agenda for 2019. I think that stat you shared about video in terms of how much content is going to be video-based content by 2020 or whatever it was.
00:25:25
Speaker
is sort of mind blowing. But again, I think that podcasting, for instance, video, it's just such an easy way to kind of break through the noise because there's not as much of that kind of content out there as there is written blog posts, let's say.
00:25:40
Speaker
And I would also say, I had an interesting conversation with Petronella. She's a photographer. Her episode will go live sometime around. I should have my schedule out in front of me so I can speak. I can tell people when these things are going to go live. But 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. So I think it's really interesting to see this trend towards video.
00:26:06
Speaker
I'm curious how she's going to do video on YouTube as a photographer. Yeah. It's hard to explain and I'm not quite sure I understood it through conversation necessarily. I'm not going to do it justice, but it sounds like 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 weddings. She does a lot of multicultural weddings in particular.
00:26:36
Speaker
So the terms that people are searching for are pretty specific around 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.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And so 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 you know, if you listen to Trina'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. So 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.
00:27:17
Speaker
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. Do you have a preference on where you lead people? Is there a reason why you don't put the whole video on Pinterest? 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. Sure.
00:27:39
Speaker
Also, I mean, I totally could do that. And like I mentioned, I use my own website as a test, you know, for other things. Sure. So 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. So that's kind of where I've been focusing. Yeah. Because another thing that happens is on Pinterest platform, and I think this is true on, you know, Instagram as well.
00:28:04
Speaker
When you engage with a pen so if someone watches my video and engages with it or at least watches it without doubt the next time I log on to Pinterest they're gonna be seeing all my other pens because they've communicated to The Pinterest platform that they like my content so they're gonna see more of it so it could be that video kind of serves as a way to like and
00:28:22
Speaker
attract people for the first time and then they'll be flooded with more of your content in the future. So I'm playing around with those features. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'll be interested to hear how that goes for you along the way. It is definitely bizarre to see my face on the Pinterest platform. So the tip number two for 2019 was that cross pollination you were talking about. Yeah, exactly. So we can say if Pinterest is top funnel, so you might have a picture of a wedding that you took in the Bahamas. It's your destination wedding photographer.
00:28:51
Speaker
Somebody likes that and they click on over to your Instagram account and there they see even more of your work.
00:28:57
Speaker
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, it's Instagram brings all my leads. But if we remember correctly, Pinterest was the original site of that person's introduction to you. So I think that that's a really interesting way of getting people. And 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.
00:29:26
Speaker
So it's like this whole big piece of seeing things holistically pour into that funnel. So 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. So that's super easy to do.
00:29:38
Speaker
The third thing is Smart Loop. So, Tailwind, which is that Instagram scheduler that we talked about, it's really inexpensive. I think it's like $10 a month or something. And it allows you to automate your Pinterest marketing strategy because I feel like 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 kind of schedule.
00:30:05
Speaker
And so Taowen has introduced Smart Loop, which basically is what it sounds like. It loops through your top content. So if you remember that 80-20 principle, we want to make sure that Smart Loop includes those
00:30:17
Speaker
posts that lead 80% of your traffic and make sure that they're going out on the platform at a consistent interval. So I really like this. They introduced it. It's been in beta for a while, but they introduced it to the public in November. And I think it's good to kind of 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. And for Tailwind, you have a course on Tailwind.
00:30:41
Speaker
I do have a course on Tailwind. It is not the easiest platform to understand and I think my course kind of cuts to the taste of the strategies that I use to make it really quick and efficient.
00:30:51
Speaker
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. That might be a nice intermediate step. 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,
00:31:16
Speaker
And then at some point where when you can afford it and you can outsource it completely like we have, you can take that step. So I think, again, one of the reasons that we hired you is because you're talking about the smartly thing and I'm just thinking to myself, that sounds wonderful and I'm so glad that you're doing it. 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, and then there are people who just want it to be hands off and to see the referral traffic.
00:31:46
Speaker
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 as a really useful way at driving traffic to your website, kind of on autopilot.
Content Creation Importance
00:31:59
Speaker
I think once you get the Tantwin 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.
00:32:08
Speaker
So 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.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, content creation is the best way to show that you're competent in what you do. I mean, it is a reflection. Outside of working with the client itself. 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. But 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.
00:32:54
Speaker
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. 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 all ways that we can show that we're competent in what we
00:33:20
Speaker
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. 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.
00:33:37
Speaker
And 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. And 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 blog archives.
00:34:05
Speaker
We have weddings. This 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. I forget how they found us, but they did a flag day wedding. Every 4th of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, whatever, we're repinning those images. We're posting those images on our social media accounts and things like that. Sure enough,
00:34:29
Speaker
other big publishers out there are looking for content around, you know, Flag Day, Memorial Day and stuff like that. So they're then sharing our images as well. So I think, you know, 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. Like 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.
00:34:57
Speaker
how to share in an articulate way what they know. If you're just outsourcing like somebody actually putting the blog post together for you or producing the video. For instance, I pay an editor to produce the podcast but 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 like I kind of rambled on a
00:35:25
Speaker
just, you know, got on my pedestal about content, but... Yeah, I know. I mean, it sounds like what you're saying. It's important for establishing that no, like, trust. Yeah. And I know it's a pain point for people. I do want to ask you, so, you know, obviously, you know a lot about the wedding photography field and a lot of wedding photographers utilize Instagram and I am...
00:35:42
Speaker
not an Instagram hater. I actually love Instagram, but I also love Pinterest. And recently, this month, one of my good friends who is a wedding planner who has multiple locations, her Instagram account was shut down like randomly. And I think it was gone for like a whole week. And, you know, I think 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 like feeling of like, okay, if Instagram shut your account down, or if
00:36:10
Speaker
algorithms change or, et cetera, et cetera, all these things that are going to happen, how would you feel and how would it change your business if you were focusing only on one platform? And so, can you share specifically why you think it's important to have other platforms instead of just focusing on one, like Instagram?
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, 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?
00:36:44
Speaker
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. Where should that content live minimally? It should live on your website. By content, I'm not just saying blogging. It can be video blog posts of blogs. It can be audio podcasts like this. When we post our podcast episode, we don't only post it to iTunes. We post it on our website as well.
00:37:13
Speaker
I think that's why it's so important to be creating your own content. As far as showing up on different platforms though, 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. I think maybe one of the 2019 goals too is to figure out how we can get
00:37:38
Speaker
how we can increase a little bit more engagement on Facebook. 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 say. He's an Instagram strategist. You could probably get away with just focusing on Pinterest because you're a Pinterest strategist. But in general, people should be focusing on wherever
00:38:06
Speaker
you know, whatever those platforms are that their clients are showing up on. And like you mentioned earlier, it takes, you know, the research shows that it takes up to seven touch points for somebody, you know, for you to build trust enough with somebody that they actually purchase for you. So, you know, 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
00:38:27
Speaker
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.
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, I just think very rarely does somebody come in through Pinterest or just Instagram or just your website, you know, and just in that one occasion can go all the way, you know, down the funnel and convert. Yeah, totally great. And I think we didn't mention also email marketing as well, like showing up in their email consistently. No, I think it's so true. Like we just I mean, they say the next generation really needs a lot of trust in people and really want to see people personally.
Pinterest Optimization and Tools
00:39:15
Speaker
And 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. So 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.
00:39:29
Speaker
in the channels that they're on. I will say Tyler does use Pinterest, and 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, but 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 gonna need to attract people who haven't heard of him. And there's lots of people on Facebook and Pinterest who haven't. And so for him to increase his visibility, he's gonna go to the next platform.
00:39:57
Speaker
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. So make sure that you have those pins that go into that blog post. Make sure at the end of the blog post, Dave 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. And you guys actually sometimes put it in the middle of the post.
00:40:24
Speaker
so that people don't have to scroll all the way down to the bottom, which I think is a smart, smart idea. So 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. So 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.
00:40:48
Speaker
So I'm a fan, obviously. Yeah. And in our course as well, we talk about just the content workflows. 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. And 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,
00:41:18
Speaker
you know, whatever. So yeah, good deal. Well, I don't have too much. I do want to I do want to mention one, just two things real quick. I have two more questions for you. And that's it. And then, you know, we'll probably end up having you on a third time once we talk about, you know, kind of middle funnel bottom funnel stuff for for Pinterest. But 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 kind of intro to Pinterest topics, if people don't have a design background,
00:41:46
Speaker
Do you have any tools, any suggestions on how they should go about creating pens? Yeah, so 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. So first step would be if you don't know even what your pen style is,
00:42:07
Speaker
is to start a secret board in 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.
00:42:20
Speaker
and call to action, but have a secret board and spend some time pinning things that really inspire you, colors, patterns, things like that. And then open up Canva and browse through the templates and make a few pins. So 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. And you can just reuse that template, switch out the stock in the background, you could use SE stock shop, there's a lot of them out there.
00:42:50
Speaker
and change the text and see how they perform. So 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. But 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.
00:43:19
Speaker
So just to highlight the main optimization rules for Pinterest images, they should be two by three. So there are long rectangles or 1,000 by 10,000 pixels.
00:43:29
Speaker
try to use a text overlay. And so what I mean is if you're an educator, something like how to or nine tips for XYZ, some kind of 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. So if you put it in the bottom center, you're typically really safe.
00:43:54
Speaker
So those are my tips for creating Pinterest pins. Awesome. And that was my second question was a couple of optimization tips as well. So you nailed it. Awesome. So people are probably going to want to know where they can get started with Pinterest. So if they go to your website, they are searching for
Vanessa's Resources and Conclusion
00:44:10
Speaker
what?
00:44:10
Speaker
So 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 email my newsletter every single week and I'm updating you with the latest platform changes. So it can be really helpful to kind of 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 post course, which is an inexpensive little video to kind of mini course to kind of teach you how to organize your blog post
00:44:40
Speaker
specifically for Pinterest and it is SEO friendly by the way. Awesome. Yeah, those are some of the ways that you can get started. You of course can follow me on Instagram at Vanessa Kynes or you can email me and I typically email people back. It is VanessaKynes.com.
00:44:55
Speaker
VanessaKynes.com, K-Y-N-E-S. Perfect. All right, awesome. And all these resources, of course, will be linked to in the show notes. So 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 and Books show and to share your expertise and just some of the stuff that
00:45:12
Speaker
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've seen from working with you. So 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. And again, I don't think you'll regret it. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I appreciate it.
00:45:36
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to davianchrista.com.
00:45:58
Speaker
you