157: More Clicks, Subscribers, and Sales with Pinterest with Kate Ahl

In this episode, I talk about how to be Zen with your phone. And we are having a conversation with Kate, all from simplepin Media, about how to grow your traffic and engagement on Pinterest. Hello, hello, hello, this is Bjork Ostrom and you are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. And I am excited to share with you today a tasty tip that I know is gonna have a really big impact for some people. It might just be you. I might be speaking to you, yes, you for this tasty tip. For those that aren't familiar, the Tasty tip is brought to you by WP tasty, which is the go to place for WordPress plugins. We have been building wptasty for a year and a half, almost more now, and we have been building up a lot of traction with people that are in the food and recipe space. But, but also we're going beyond that now. We started with a recipe plugin called Tasty Recipes, but now we also have two other plugins, Tasty Pins and Tasty Links. So if you run a WordPress blog, and especially if it's a food blog, check out WP Tasty. And if you have any questions, we have an incredible support team, both Raquel and Ann, and they are there to help and to answer any questions that you have about WP Tasty. So what is the Tasty tip? Well, every week we do a quick little tip brought to you by wptasty about something specific to Pinterest or search engine optimization and sometimes nothing to do with those. And that's what today's tip is. It's all about being Zen with your phone. And one of the things that is true about technology is that it is an incredible resource and it's also an incredible distraction. We can do really amazing things with a computer and a phone. And we can also do terrible things that waste time, waste energy, and in some ways can be wasting our life. It kind of chips away at the value of our life. And so we need to be appropriately engaged with the technology that we have in our life. And today I think there are going to be some people that are going to hear this tasty tip and say, that is for me, this is really important. And the tasty tip today is for your phone with notifications, have a mindset of not opting in, but opting out. And here's what I mean by that. My challenge to you, and especially those of you that are often distracted by your phone and the notifications, is to go into the notifications area and it's gonna Be different for each phone. But if you're on an iPhone, you go into the settings area, and then in the settings area, there's gonna be an area that you can go and click on called notifications. It's a red little icon. And my challenge to you is to go through every single app that you have and turn off the notifications. Just all the way down the list, turn all the notifications off. And then the only thing that you are going to do is do a quick scan through that list and maybe go back and turn on the really critical notifications. For me, the critical notifications are messages. So anytime that sends me a message, phone is really important. And then to think through, okay, maybe there's some other apps that I'm not thinking of that you need to have notifications on. But after that, after you've hit those critical apps, don't turn notifications on for apps ever. So when you get an app, start by defaulting to having it off. And then if you find yourself thinking, oh, it would be really nice to have notifications whenever this happens, whatever that might be, then you can go and you can turn them on. But. But the default state for when you install an app and for all of the different apps that you have on your phone is to have those turned to off, and only when you stop and think about it. Okay, I need to turn that on for some reason. I need to know when a phone call comes in. I need to know when a message comes in, I need to know when work email comes in, something like that. Have those turned on, but only at the point where you think proactively, I need to turn that on. We don't want to just turn them on randomly because the app suggests it. And what I think that you'll find is that you'll be much more zen about the. Your interaction with your phone, and that will allow you to not have to task switch. That's one of the hard things about having a phone is that a phone with notifications on is that you're working on something. You get a notification, you have to task switch, meaning your brain is focusing on one thing, and then you shift to focus on another thing, and that's really difficult to do. It's difficult to task switch, and we lose a lot of momentum with it. So that's my challenge to you. That is the tasty tip. It is to go through and do a notifications purge and then slowly build that up. If there are things that you realize that you need to turn back on. And I think what you'll find is that you will really, really enjoy not being interrupted all the time by your phone. So today's interviews. Today's podcast interview is with Kate All. She is a Food Blogger Pro expert. So those of you that are Food Blogger Pro members, you probably know her from her interactions in the community forum. So whenever a Pinterest question comes up, Kate is a great resource in the Food Blogger Pro community forums. And she's also been on the podcast before, and we wanted to have her on because she's going to be sharing some of the takeaways that she presented at a conference. And at that conference, we just heard a lot of positive feedback by lots of different people that attended that in terms of how you can grow your Pinterest following. And she's going to talk about some really applicable, actionable things that you can be doing in order to grow your following and also grow engagement and therefore traffic. So a really great podcast interview with Kate. Let's go ahead and jump in. Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah, it's gonna be really fun here. This. These podcast interviews are always fun when you are interviewing another person who does a podcast. Uh, you have a good mic, you know how it works, you're comfortable with it. So before we jump in, Kate, can you talk a little bit about what it is that you do and in that you can talk about your podcast as well?

Yes, absolutely. I run a company called simplepin Media, and it's a Pinterest management company. But we also have the podcast where we teach marketing tips for you for people who want to DIY their Pinterest marketing. So we try to serve both of people who have grown in business pretty significantly and they just don't want to do Pinterest. So we manage for them. But we also know we have a large community of people who cannot yet afford our services. So the podcast is a way to teach people how to do it, and it's really fun. I love podcasting and love teaching in that realm. So it's the Simple Pin podcast, and we do an interview every Wednesday.

Love that. And we'll link to that in the show notes. We were. It was fun to be on the podcast. It was a few months ago now when we launched Tasty Pins, which is a Pinterest plugin that we have for WP Tasty. And I love that you talk about serving both of those audiences. So you have the free podcast for people that are doing the DIY in the early stages. Essentially what they're Doing is they're building, they're growing, and then they'll get to a point where they're big enough to come on board and work with you as they start to scale up. So it's not only are you offering a service to those people by giving free information and helping them out, but. But also it's kind of like you're building this little onboarding into your service, because if they follow what you teach, eventually they will be big enough to be able to bring on a team.

Yeah. And it's really fun to hear their testimonials, too, about how that's happened for them, that they just listen to the podcast, they start implementing these tips, and then they say, I think I'm ready to hire you. Because it was kind of their goal this whole time was to get to this point where they could hand it off to us and they could focus on other areas of their business. Which is why Simple Pin was started, was because I knew bloggers, business owners, had so much on their plate that Pinterest is just one section that if they can take off, they've now freed up four to five hours a week of their time that they can be creating content, which is how you keep, you know, the business moving forward.

Yeah, that's great. And a fun connection here. We were at a conference, and we did a Food Blogger Pro meetup after that. So we had some members that got together and, uh, this was a conference called Everything Food, and it was a conference that you spoke at as well. And one of the members of Food Blogger Pro, his name is Joe, came in and he said, I listened to Kate's, her little session that she did and started to implement some of the things that she talked about. And already overnight, I'm seeing my Pinterest traffic start to grow, which was the ultimate case study in the ultimate testimonial for the strategies that you talk about. So I said, hey, let's have Kate on the podcast to talk about some of those important things. You've been on the podcast before, but with any of this stuff, it's always changing and evolving. So we're going to be talking about kind of three important areas using Pinterest or a Pinterest marketing plan for more clicks, subscribers, and sales, which is something that we're all interested in. So can you talk about kind of at a high level, what people can expect from this podcast interview?

Yeah, I really want people to be thinking strategically about what their traffic from Pinterest is doing for them and how to get more of it through the images that you use through the keyword descriptions, and then how to really convert them in a strategic way instead of just going, okay, well, I'm going to work on the images and the keywords and then not having a backup plan of what happens next, there has to be this whole funnel, if you will, and how we take them through. So this really is talking about how do we take them from the top of the funnel where they're coming kind of a cold user, they don't really know a whole lot about you, into this tiny funnel where maybe they purchase a product of yours or click on an affiliate link or become part of your email tribe. So we're going to walk them through that process.

Awesome. That's great. And I'm going to be using kind of as a guide as we talk through, through this, the actual presentation that you did. So I'm going to try and describe that to people as much as possible as we go through it. But obviously it's a podcast, so we don't have any of the visual elements, but for the most part, we'll be able to describe this and talk about the really important takeaways on the podcast and describe what people need to do and the steps that they need to take. So first up here, we want to talk a little bit about the challenges that come along with Pinterest. It's some things that are a little bit different from a mindset perspective and just from a application as a tool within your business perspective. So what are some of the challenges that people should keep in mind as it relates to Pinterest?

I think number one is just patience. It's really, really hard to invest in a platform that is what they refer to as long tail marketing. It takes a while to build up. We kind of equate it a little bit to Google that. It's this slow stoking of the fire, if you will. And that's very different than Instagram and Facebook, where our main metrics on there are engagement. On Pinterest, there's not a whole lot of engagement simply because it's more. The joke is it's the introverts platform. People like to go there. They like to search around and be in their own world instead of worrying about what people are doing with their content or how they're interacting with it or if they're liking it, any of that. So I think number one really is the mindset of it takes a long time for this platform to grow. And if you don't have that at really the Onset, you're going to get incredibly frustrated over time. So. So for example, it can take a new blogger today, let's say they're starting on Pinterest right now. It's going to take them a good six to nine months to really see what's happening, how the Pinterest user is interacting with their content. So if you go into it saying it's going to take me a while to build this up, that just eliminates the frustration from the get go. So number one is you have to be patient with the platform. It is not instant by any stretch of the word.

Yeah. And when you say so six to nine months until people start to see some traction with that. What, what does that look like? Like what's happening at that six month mark or that nine month mark.

So what I would say is we look at month over month. So maybe month over month is about a 1 to 3% growth, maybe even 5%. It might be a few followers here and there, a few clicks here and there. And once we get to the six to nine months we might see something like a hundred sessions per day. And 100 sessions, one month turns into 150. It's hard to tell with each individual content creator just because their niches are so different and how people interact with the content. But for the most part we see this really, you know, 100 leads to 200 leads to 300 kind of that month over month growth. So if you're about six to nine months, I would expect between 800 to, to a thousand sessions from Pinterest. But don't get too hung up on the number that I say there. But that's a good range that you're trying to aim for to build towards that.

What I hear you saying is it's not like tactics that you can implement and then the next day see thousands of people coming to your site just by one little trick or tip. It's, you have to layer it on and build the foundation. And the good thing is if you do that, if you're intentional about doing it, it will pay off. And it's not. There are some spikes and some virality for sure with it. But also one of the nice things is that if you lay that foundation then it sounds like there's kind of some of that slow growth over time, which is a great thing.

I would definitely agree with that and just add in kind of a little piece of caution to that is a lot of food bloggers especially, we're all in these Facebook groups and people will share graphs about their growth. And I always caution people not to compare your story, your blog to somebody else's graph because there's a whole different slew of factors. And each Pinterest account has its own culture. And so just don't get too caught up in the comparison trap because it'll really kill your motivation.

Great, great advice in general for Pinterest, but also in general with what we do. So what are some other challenges that people can expect when they think about really focusing in on Pinterest?

So the Pinterest user is what I refer to as this cold user. They're searching around, they take a long time to make decisions. So sometimes they might save a pin and then act on it six months later. So you have to really be thinking about who your person is and how they might use your content now and even six months down the road. And so trying to get them to click is a little bit tougher. You can repins, they want to save things for later. That's a typical habit of them. But to get them to click is a little bit tougher. And we'll go into that when we go into images and how to really engage them right away. But just know that it can take a little bit of time to get those clicks, clicks moving and get that cold user into being more of a warm, engaged user. And so that again, I guess goes back to the first one we talked about with the challenge is just knowing this person, who is your person on Pinterest, who is your avatar and what are the things that they're buying, what are the things that they want to cook, what are the ways that they do cook in the kitchen? Really tapping into that is going to help you long term.

Great. Uh, and there's two other things, and these maybe tie into kind of that slow consistent growth that you'd mentioned. One was this idea that it's not Facebook and the other was the, the importance of consistent effort and that being a challenge. Can you speak to each one of those?

Yeah, a lot of people will come to us and they will be incredibly frustrated again with their growth because maybe Facebook engagement has grown by such and such amount or even on Instagram. And you can't translate how you market simply because Facebook or Instagram a post is about a 15 minute shelf life life. Whereas a pin on Pinterest can live for years, there's traffic, it can bring for two, three, four years in a row. So you can't take, they're apples to oranges. You just can't compare them. And then the other piece, and I lost my train of thought. So I'm trying to remember what happened. Consistent effort. Okay, there we go. Consistent effort. Pinterest has said the best thing you can do is be a daily, daily pinning to the platform. This helps build over time. And so pinning five pins today and then not pinning until next month is not really a good plan for you. You need to have a plan where at least five pins are going out each and every day. So just knowing you can schedule that ahead of time, you obviously don't need to be on Pinterest every single day, but you definitely need to have pins going out day over day.

Got it. Great. And then you had kind of started to talk a little bit about this, but I think it'd be an interesting thing to spent some time on this idea of the buyer's journey. And Pinterest obviously is a platform where people go to gather ideas. And a lot of times those ideas have to do with something that they're buying. And you talk about a user, a click, a subscriber, and a sale. So in the case of somebody who has a food blog where maybe they're not selling something, some people do, but for the most part, people are thinking about traffic, which translates into dollars through display, advertising or sponsored content. Does the sales piece of the Pinterest buyer's journey still apply? And if so, how?

Yeah, I really think it does. Especially if you're thinking about who the person is, it's going to be making your dish. So that could be somebody who's the 15 minute cook and they want things pretty instant right away. Or it could be the person who's planning a party and they're gathering up all these ideas for appetizers, or they're just collecting, if you will, and then they want to make their decision when the time comes. And so I see it a lot like, you know, it's hard not to go back to products, but I think we can draw the example here. But when somebody's going to do a party or they're going to do even a remodel on their house, what they do is they collect all these pins and then they go back to that board and then they make this decision about which one they're going to click on and take action. So again, when it comes to food, maybe they're gathering everything to their baby shower board or their wedding shower board, and then they go there right before the shower, and then they take action. So that could be when they take action, they go to your site and maybe you have a product on this specific post, maybe it's a special way to make like deviled eggs. And you have this thing on Amazon. It could take them down that path where they engage with your content, they love your recipe, and they're going to buy this special tool that allows them to make that recipe. And so we always want to open these doors to be able to take them through that journey. And even if they don't get to the point of clicking on your affiliate link and buying that particular product, we do want to at least open up the path of click on it, save it or repin save it, click on it in three to six months, go to actually make the recipe and then potentially buy the product that you're suggesting.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about that. The there, there could potentially be a big gap between the time that somebody saves it and the time that somebody actually goes back and clicks on it. I think when I think of Pinterest, I think of people going and like, you know, clicking over and looking at a bunch of stuff. But it makes sense that people would first be in gather mode where they're putting stuff together and organizing and then later on go into kind of activation mode where then they are moving on and taking action on the thing that they saved. So I think it's helpful to have that perspective. Another perspective that I think would be helpful is to think about who these people actually are. And you talk about that in your presentation. You talk about the divide between gender and then also the type of device that people are using. And 81% female and 80% mobile, which is crazy. So can you talk about why that's important from a content perspective? As we think about what we're doing.

On Pinterest, I think it goes back to the avatar and really knowing what your person is doing when they're either seeing your content or engaging, engaging with it. So if they're women, they're probably, they could be running to and fro with their kids or in between work meetings or whatever it is, and they're looking on their phone for these ideas or they're searching for a way to decorate their bathroom in like six months or something like that. But you want to be thinking, okay, how is it that I'm going to create an image that's going to pull them in and speak to these needs. And that really, for a cook, for a food blogger specifically, is thinking, am I helping out the woman who is at home? It's 4:30, she needs to make a recipe. She just needs to Make a decision quick. Is that who my recipes serve, or am I the type of person who's creating something that's more unique and different? It takes a long time to cook, and maybe they've pulled up your recipe in the store and it's a specialty store. They need to go to Whole Foods. That's a totally different type of food person. So really, even just drilling down even more, you know, outside of just women and being on our phone, is how can you solve your. Their problems through what it is that you're creating? I mean, you. It's hard to ask that for every single thing that you're creating, because sometimes we just want to create a chocolate chip cookie. But you really do want to be thinking deeper about what are they doing in the moment that they could engage with my content. Maybe they're killing time. Maybe it is really 4:30 and they don't know what to make. The other thing to note too is that in just a recent thing that I saw come out is that men really are gaining steam on Pinterest and They've grown by 50% new enrollments in the last year on Pinterest. And so that is something to be thinking about over the next couple of years. That if you think that any part of your audience does have a male component to it, really thinking about how your images interact with them, how your content speaks to them before they even click through to your site.

Yeah, that's great. I think the other thing, and I'm trying to get better at this, but it's hard when I spend 90% of my day sitting in front of two really big screens. Like I have, I have dual monitors and there are these really big, nice screens. Yeah. But the idea that, you know, I. We talk about it all the time and how important mobile is, but I'm trying to develop some type of catchphrase that I can tell myself. But like looking at a desktop design and saying like, well, doesn't matter because the only thing that matters is mobile. Now obviously that's an exaggeration, but just to really get the point across to myself that in anything that we're doing on the web, for the niche that we're in at least, which is food and recipe sites, it's. The vast majority of people are going to be consuming that content on mobile. And Pinterest is an example of that. And as much as possible as people are thinking about what their content looks like, to do that on a mobile device, which requires you to shift where you're creating that content and to look on a mobile device.

So one of the things I tend to think about is I have a couple friends who, they're not in the online space and they use Pinterest a lot. So I will ask them, how do you use it? What do you, you know, look at it on? A lot of times it's like an iPad mini.

Sure.

Or on their phone. And I just even asking them like, what draws you in? Like what do you see on here? And one of the biggest things is can you see the image on that 5 inch screen? Can you make it out? Because we think of this Pinterest user, they're thumbing by. You have three seconds to grab their attention. And if they can't see something like their eye doesn't connect with it, it's gone. I mean, I would Say even, say three seconds is generous. It's going to be probably 1.5. And so when you're taking these pictures or when you're, you know, creating your post after you publish, open up your phone and just look at it. If you were a user, can you pin from your site, you know, can you follow the path of, from Pinterest to site to wherever you want them to go? And if you don't find it easy, then your user is not finding it easy. So it's always checking yourself to go, can my people see this?

Yeah, yeah, that's great. And we're going to talk about actually some of those really tangible ways that we can implement some of the stuff that you talked about as we think about creating that content that is serving our users and what the positive results can be from that, from a business perspective. And one of the first things that we think about with Pinterest, especially in our niche, is how do we get more clicks, how do we get more traffic? So can you talk about some of the things that we need to keep in mind? Some of the things that you've seen as success, not necessarily metrics, but success variables that people can implement in order to start to get more clicks and therefore more traffic from the content that they are, that they are putting onto Pinterest or that they're creating for their blogs.

Yeah. So the two things that I always tell people that are, number one, most important are images and keywords. Pinterest functions on those two basic things right there. And they're really, really easy to breeze past because you've spent all this time taking pictures creating content that it's easy to just overlook them. So number one is going to be a pinnable image and Pinterest has changed our ratios a little bit, especially as it pertains to food bloggers is they no long will distribute what they refer to as the giraffe pins. Those are the really, really long ones. So we want to keep your images 600 by 900, no longer than 1260. And they're very specific about how they, they don't want these long pins on there anymore and they will just not show them to people. So when you do have your image, thinking about, do you want an in process shot, do you think your user will engage with maybe like three shot, three images that have the same steps, you know, from raw chicken to cooked or do the ingredients pull people in? We have seen some case studies where people have included this shot of ingredients and it tends to get the user engaged a little bit more. And they tend to click through because they see, oh, I have diced tomatoes. Click. The other one is the text that you're using on the photo. It doesn't necessarily have to be the name of your post. It can be something creative, like Five ingredient. Well, that's kind of the name of the post, but like really getting creative with what are the buzzwords that you know, your people are going to engage with? Do they want easy, do they want healthy? Those are those really great buzzwords that you can use with your text. And the text has to be easy to read and I would suggest strain from white or black simply because Pinterest has a white background. So something that has some color definitely will appeal to people and get them to click even more than, you know, an image without text. And Pinterest has talked about that as well, that it draws people in and gives it context. So if you're looking at something that's on the beach, you can paint that, you know, image a hundred different ways based on your text. So if I know a lot of food bloggers that we've worked with in the past, they have a hard time with the text because they are so proud of their photography and they want it to stand on their own. And so what I suggest to them is they create a separate image that either you hide through the Tastypins plugin that you guys have or just even directly upload to Pinterest because maybe they want to keep the purity of their photography without text. And that's okay. That's a great thing to do. Just know that you would want to compare the two. Which image on Pinterest gets more engagement and what we have find over and over is it, it is the one with the text.

Yeah, that's great. So to clarify that for people who aren't as familiar or who kind of, you know, haven't heard about this before, you're saying essentially that totally okay to leave your images as images on the blog, but if we're talking about Pinterest strategy and you want more traffic and more clicks from Pinterest, what you found is that images with text, with some type of prompt or some type of information perform better on Pinterest. So it's like, okay, let's figure out ways to do that. And if you don't want to have that on your blog, you can either, like you said, hide it. So when somebody clicks pin on your blog, then that image shows up, but it doesn't show it when they are reading through it. So it's a hidden Pinterest image on the blog. Or you can take an image, you can mark it up with content, additional words, and then just take that image and upload it straight to your Pinterest account. So you are taking that and pinning it into Pinterest. Now, the disadvantage with that is people then have to find it through your Pinterest account, right? Correct.

It's nowhere on your blog, which that's why I love the plugin that you have because it keeps it on the site too. So that you're getting this, you're taking advantage of your audience sharing for you, which is such a powerful tool on Pinterest.

Yes, I was just going to say that that's one of the great things about Pinterest and it was actually one of the, in the early stages of Pinch of Yum. It was one of the main traffic drivers and it still is. And we didn't have a Pinterest account. Like, that's the power of Pinterest is you don't have to be an influencer. Your content can be influential in and of itself. Even better if you also have a really successful and well maintained profile. So kind of the one, two, punch with that. So offering on your blog post the best possible images while also optimizing on your Pinterest profile as well. So that makes sense. So be intentional to think about ways that you can create images that have prompts and information around them, whether that be, you know, if you're not feeling creative, just the recipe title, but if you are feeling a little bit more creative, kind of putting some intentional content and copywriting around the image to, to encourage people to engage with it or click with it, or click on it. But then there's this other element that's really important for Pinterest. And it's this idea of keywords. And I think a lot of times when we think of keywords, we think of the keyword that we're trying to rank for on a Google search. Is it the same thing with Pinterest or how does that work?

You can definitely use that same approach because Pinterest has very similar to Google, where people go into the search bar and it has search predictions. So you can see the words that people are most commonly searching for on Pinterest. And you want to find a way into that search path by using those particular keywords. And there's three places I always suggest people use them. Number one is your profile. And you can add keywords into your profile description or even into your profile profile name. So I've added to mine simple PIN Media, Pinterest management and marketing, so that people know right away and Pinterest can even pull that information to say, this profile is about this. The second is in your board names. So board names allow Pinterest to do what is sometimes referred to as like keyword mapping. So they can see, okay, this particular board is about this particular topic. And I always suggest going more narrow than broad. So something like dinner recipes is an okay name, but it might be better, especially if you specialize in easy chicken dinner recipes, because you know that you've produced 50 chicken dinner recipes and people are going to be searching for this. So having that as your title and then a description for that board that has chicken dinner recipes in it. And then you pin your image or you pin from your site this chicken dinner recipe. And in that, the pin description is probably the most important place that you can keyword. And the best way to do this is one to two complete sentences, not keyword stuffing, but making it sound very natural. Easy chicken dinner recipe that you can make in 20 minutes or less, something along those lines. And then you want to create four to five hashtags after that that match up with some of the keywords that you've used in your sentence. And a caution is you never want to replace a keyword in your sentence with a hashtag like you would maybe on Instagram. You want to keep it very pure. One to two sentences exactly how you think you know some keywords that people would search and then your hashtags. And when somebody engages with your pin or your people share it, it gives Pinterest information. Oh, this is a chicken dinner recipe. On a chicken dinner recipe board, we might show more of the followers These chicken dinner recipes or even people who have never, maybe there's somebody who shared your PIN and they don't follow you. Well, Pinterest is going to show more of these chicken dinner recipes to them because they engaged with that particular pin on that board. So, you know, just to kind of wrap that all up, you want to make sure that you're telling Pinterest essentially what your PIN is about, what your boards are about, what your profile is about, so that it can serve up the content to the right searcher. And if you don't, if you don't add in keywords, and if you don't fill in the Pinterest description on your image on your site, you're also missing out on your audience sharing again. And you brought up that great point about your audience sharing for you even before you had a Pinterest account. When your audience shares pins from your website, it is so powerful because then it adds them onto the platform. And Pinterest sees this wave of pins coming over and, and they're going to show it to more people who are either interested in that topic or could potentially be somebody who would follow you down the road. And I see keywords as just as important as images. And if you're not adding in the Pinterest description, you know, using tasty pins, I love that plugin. You're not filling that in and you're leaving it just as either the alt text that you've written for Google or image 08315. You're completely missing out on search traffic.

Yeah. And for those that aren't familiar with, from the technical perspective, how that works at a really high level. So when you have an image in WordPress, we're going to just talk exclusively about WordPress because that's probably 90% of people that are blogging are using WordPress. When you upload an image, there's all these different options that you can use for it. And, and two of the most popular one is alt text, which, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast, Alt text is describing the actual image itself for search engines and for screen readers. So people that are visually impaired that are using a screen reader and for search engines to understand that recipe, there's the title text, which is what you can see like if you hover over an image. A lot of times that used to be more popular, it's not being used as more. And it's actually hidden in WordPress now. You can still get to it, but that's another area for images. And it's not used as much, but that's an option. And then there's the ability, but it's not built natively into WordPress to create something just for Pinterest. And that's what one of the things that tastypins does, is it gives you that option to create an optimized Pinterest description. And what we're talking about here is this that allows you to have the keywords area in the description for an image if somebody else is to was to come to your site and do that. Now it's also possible to do it through alt text or through the title text, but this just creates a really clean separation between those. So you can use alt text for what it's meant for and you can use the Pinterest text for just the Pinterest description. And then for us, we don't use or touch the title text cause we don't want anything to show up when you. Somebody hovers over it. But then the other thing that I think is important to point out and I would have questions about is some of the stuff that's happening on Pinterest. So you talked about how it's your profile and then the boards and then a Pinterest description. So do all of those things influence the other ones? Or like if somebody's searching for easy chicken recipes, is is your board going to show up as a search result? How does that work and how do those interact with each other?

Yeah, number one, Pinterest shows pins. So when you go onto Pinterest and you do a search, you're going to get a list of pins, but at the top you can definitely go between people boards and Bible pins is another one. So you can definitely drill down to see that. But what Pinterest had said when we. I was at Pinterest a couple weeks ago and one of the things they specifically talked about was that when a user pins a particular pin. So let's say they search, they find a pin, they pin sends to them a signal about what this pinner is interested in and what they want to see more of. So if they can definitely keyword map and go, oh, this particular board. And the example they used was women's fashion. And women's fashion was very broad. And so they said you might want to drill down to go fall women's fashion. Because if somebody, you know, likes a pin, that's summer on a women's fashion board and then Pinterest tries to serve up more pins from that board and it's winter, they're not giving them the correct match, but if they have a fall women's fashion board in, somebody pins from here and they want to serve up more fall fashion, it creates a better chance that the user's going to engage with your content because it's more greatly matched with what the board name is. So they talked about how one informs the other and how that really creates the ultimate smart feed for a user.

Got it. So, and then let's talk about the description a little bit. You had said two natural language, as you would write kind of nice, normal sentences and think about including the keyword in that and then the hashtag. So let's talk about the description first. Is there a limit on that? Like, should you just have that be as long as possible or as short as possible? Or is two sentences always what you should do? What would your advice be for kind of optimized length of that area?

Pinterest hasn't said that they've limited it, but I would say probably no more than 250 characters is where I would probably put the limit. That's why I say, like, the one to two sentences, you could even go three sentences. But any more than that, your user's not really going to read much more. They're really just going to read those first couple sentences. They've looked at the image. The image has been the first thing that's really sold them. Now they've read this and you're really, if we really get down to it, you're really writing for Pinterest. Got it. So adding them in there is going to be ideal. You could go, I've seen people write a ton, but it just starts cutting it off after a certain point. So I would. I wouldn't waste time on that.

Yep. And then with the hashtags, how does that work? Are people using hashtags on Pinterest like they do on Twitter? Or. It seems more like when you search for a keyword, you would search for to use the fall fashion example, or maybe to stay within our niche. Like the easy chicken recipe that they would use, that they wouldn't go to the hashtag EasyChicken recipe.

I would say, like, the jury's still out. So Pinterest has said no hashtags until August of last year, and they were very adamant about that. And then all of a sudden you can use hashtags. And what we've tried to see over the last nine or ten months is how do users actually interact with hashtags and do they use them? And from what we heard at Pinterest, they did tell us that users are starting to use them more. But you do need to know that hashtags go into their own feed. So they go into what's called a chronological hashtag feed. So if you click on chicken dinner as a hashtag, it's going to pull up for you all the pins that have a hashtag of chicken dinner and when they've been pinned. So 30 seconds ago, five minutes ago, etc. So that's why we tell people you don't want to update any of your old pins with hashtags, because they won't update and go into this feed. It has to be a new pin coming onto the platform with this hashtag, and then it will go into that particular hashtag feed.

Got it.

So I always tell people to choose a branded hashtag too. That's something we're testing out. So for me, it's like hashtag simplepin Podcast. Or for you, it could be hashtag foodbloggerpro. So that when somebody does click on the hashtag, they're served up all of your content under that hashtag.

Oh, got it.

So we don't. We haven't seen any studies out, but we do know that Pinterest said you can use up to 20 hashtags. I would not recommend more than four just yet. Four to five. Just because we don't. Again, we haven't seen any studies to see how typical users use it. So just optimizing as best you can for this timeframe until we know more.

Got it. And to clarify, when you say not updating an old piece of content, you mean a pin that you have pinned to your Pinterest profile. It doesn't necessarily help to go back and add hashtags to that, but if you have content on your blog and you're optimizing those Pinterest descriptions, it would still make sense to do it, because those pins will be new to Pinterest if somebody comes in pins from your account, is that right?

Correct. In fact, a really good strategy for people who have not used hashtags in their pin description, and maybe they have a ton of pins out there, is to go to the pins that are getting the most traffic already from Pinterest, and maybe you also see people sharing that post to some of your audience. You would want to optimize your pin description on your site. So then whatever is now shared by an audience member or even shared by you can now go into this hashtag feed.

Got it. That. That makes a lot of sense. Cool. And and, and it's interesting, like you said, some of these things are things that Pinterest are changing and it was different two years ago, and now they say, hey, hey, now we recommend this. Which is the blessing and the curse of the industry that we work with is that it's always changing and shifting and adjusting. But it's why it's so great to have you on a podcast, because then you can explain what's going on. So that is keyword rich descriptions. Really important to think about your keyword and how you're crafting that. The last thing that I'll ask here is do you have any advice for people that don't know what keyword to pick for us? If you're creating a recipe, should it just be your recipe name? How do you know how much traction there'd be or how many people search it? Or is that still kind of hard to tell at this point?

Well, at this point, there's no tool for Pinterest like there is for Google to see how many searches or anything like that. So you have to really do a little bit of digging on Pinterest. So what you can do is you can just simply type whatever title you're thinking into the search bar on Pinterest and look at what some of this, the terms are in the prediction. And then when you click on it, let's say you click on Easy Chicken Dinners. Pinterest will then bring you to another page with these small guided search boxes of different color right along the top of your screen. And they may have even. They're mostly just one or two keywords there. But the, the thing we've seen is that as you go from left to right of those keywords, we have heard, but not of course, confirmed from Pinterest, that left to right is of most importance. So, so I would do, you know, sometimes before I do a post is I'll go onto Pinterest and I'll see how many other people are writing about this particular topic, what keywords are they're using, and is there a little bit of a different slant I can take that maybe nobody's talking about on Pinterest that I could use either in my text on my image and then also in my keywords in my pin description. So that's the, the best we have right now as far as keyword searching. And you definitely want to see, you know, if everybody's doing a chocolate chip cookie recipe or Easy Chicken dinner, maybe yours needs to be different. Easy Five ingredient Chicken dinner. Just really be thinking about how you can spin it just a little bit based on what people are already searching.

Got it. That's great. So let's talk a little bit now about this idea of subscribers. So we talked about image, intentional images. We talked about keyword rich descriptions. But how about building up your subscriber base? Why is that important? And what are some considerations we should have as we think about doing that?

I love email lists and I love, you know, subscribers because I think they're a deeper way to connect with your audience. And Pinterest users are very, the term everybody likes to use is bouncy. They're very quick to come to your site or very quick to move away. But we forget that there are those people who find our content, engage with it and they want more. And so we want to provide them an opportunity to sign up for our email list. And the, the best way I like to do this. So I'm going to kind of go backwards. If we have the plan here of, you know, the end user is you want to make a plan of writing consistently to them something that is a little bit more personal and not an RSS feed, mostly because that allows them to get to know you a little bit more and you get to direct them to new places so on your site or give them more information. So what we want to be thinking about is as this Pinterest user comes to your site, what is a really easy way to sign up for your email list? Maybe through a free thing that you give them, often called an opt in or a lead magnet, or maybe you write special posts. I was just observing another blogger who she was talking specifically about her secret posts that she sends out to her email list. And it feels very extensive, exclusive. And so trying to give them something where you give them more pieces of yourself that maybe you don't give them on the blog. And I find that this is a really powerful way to build community, but it does take a lot of work. So a lot of people will come to me and they're like, I just, I can't turn off my rss, like I don't have time or I don't know how to do this whole email thing. So when I do talk about that, I'm talking about something that does take a little bit more investment and communication into your community. And how do you get those Pinterest users into that so that they're long term tribe mates, if you will. I don't know a good word for it. So for me, how this works is I will often create special checklists for my posts that are getting the most traffic from Pinterest. So one of mine is how to clean up your Pinterest boards. I have a checklist, here's thing you can print off and then you sign up for my email and then I talk with them every Wednesday about things that are going on Pinterest on with Pinterest, and I don't do that anywhere else. I want this to be kind of an exclusive community just in my email. So I guess I say that with caution just because I know I've worked with a lot of food bloggers where I know this is a really tough thing for them to embrace and really get on board with.

Yeah, no, but I think it's really important too because, because you think about the types of users that are coming to your site from Pinterest and like you said, they're kind of bouncy, where they'll come and then they'll leave and maybe they'll save a pin and only come back for that specific pin. But they're not necessarily somebody who is tracking along with and really knows you and is checking in on your site. And that's one of the most important things you can do, is to connect with people on a human level where they feel like, I know who you are, not just, just I love this specific recipe, but you're able to connect with them. And one of the best ways to do that is consistent communication. And an example would be, and I'm sure this is true for you as well, Kate. The people that feel most connected with me are the people that listen to the podcast because we have these one hour conversations every week and publish that. And people are like, hey, when I talk to you in person, you're like the person that is on the podcast and I know you and, and understand you and what a valuable thing that is. And with a online business, it's even harder to capture that type of interaction and community because people are going to come and they're going to leave. And so what is one way that you can kind of introduce yourself and say, hey, let's stay connected over the long term. Let's not just have a one specific thing that we share in common, but let's get to know each other a little bit more. And one of the best ways to do that is through email. And especially if you have a specific service or offering that at some point throughout the year that you like to offer. For us, it is a membership to Food Blogger Pro. So we mentioned that occasionally on the podcast whenever we do open enrollment for you. Obviously you do Pinterest related services. But then there's this balance where you're not just asking them, hey, come and sign up for this thing that I do. It's saying, hey, here's some really important things. I'm going to continue to do whatever I can to help you. And also, if you're interested, I have this other thing that might be important for you to know about or would be helpful for you. So how do you go about balancing that? When it comes to your email, it's getting a little bit away from Pinterest. But when you get somebody that you're able to engage with, take the next step off of Pinterest. Maybe it's not a direct sales page that you're going to, but you're saying, okay, eventually this person would have the potential to become somebody who is a client. And what does that look like for you?

So for us, it really looks like a warming up period and a getting to know. I think, like you said, the podcast is really key and you never know how people find you. So, you know, since we're specifically talking about Pinterest, when people come and they do this, how to clean up Pinterest boards, my first email to them, let's say they do sign up, is like, I want to welcome you and here's the ways that you can interact with me. Maybe it's Instagram, maybe it's the podcast. Whatever it is, I want to lead them through this path and nurture that relationship. To say, here's a little bit more that will help you. And providing, I think this is a big one, is being so helpful that when you do get to a point where you are selling something, people are invested. And a great example that I heard shared at a conference I went to, they were talking about content marketing, was think about, you know, pbs. PBS puts out this content all year long. And then for two weeks in the summer, they do like a PBS telethon, right, where they're raising money. But we've all had this, you know, 12, you know, 11 months of them investing in us and giving us great content, not asking for anything, that when we do get to that point, we go, well, yeah, I can see they've, they've given us this great content I want to give back. And these email subscribers, I find too, they are your most loyal fans. They are the people who want to be a part of your community, who want to hear, you know, what it is you're talking about. And it's amazing to me And I hear this a lot in conferences that I go to is that there's this general feeling that people don't read blogs anymore, they don't engage in communities. And I have a good friend who is not an online marketer and she found a great recipe on Pinterest for a Weight Watchers thing that she was doing. She ended up continuing. She made the recipe, loved it, went back to the site to make more because this one recipe had proved that it fit her and it was great. And then she ends up up signing up for her email list and following her on Instagram and becoming part of her tribe. And now she sends recipes to me all the time. Like, you should make this. It's amazing. And that's, I think what happens too is that once they become invested in you, they share with their community so it broadens your reach. And I don't know if that specifically answered the path that we're going down, but for me, that's my end all. That's why I use Pinterest. I use Pinterest to open up as many paths as I can towards my newsletter because I know once they're on it, I can talk with them in a new way, in a deeper way that shows how much I'm ready to really help their business. And that's great.

So yeah, yeah, no, I love that. And were you able to finish that thought? Was there more to that before?

I could have gone on forever because I can go on about this, this for a long time.

Okay, great. And I think it's such an important takeaway is to think about the people that are, whether it be from search or from Pinterest or from a link that was shared, the people that are coming to your site, what are the ways that you know you're continuing to engage with that person? Because so many people will come and leave and either never come back or will come just to that specific piece of content and, and to think strategically about opening up that conversation is such an important thing and such an important takeaway and such a good reminder. We're coming to the end here, but one of the last things that I wanted to make sure that we have time to talk about is this idea of stats to track. And in the presentation it looks like you kind of have three different tools that you talk about. Obviously Pinterest is one, but then it looks like maybe Tailwind and then Google Analytics. Analytics as some important resources to use to get stats and metrics. And that's such an important thing to track along with and we so often don't do that. We just look at kind of general traffic, and that's the only thing. But the more educated we can get on the analytics and the stats, the better, because we'll start to understand the rhythms of our traffic more. So can you talk about each one of those and for the podcast listeners, what are some things that they can do to track some stats and to build some rhythms with tracking those stats?

Yeah. Number one, Google Analytics is the place we go to first. Whenever we manage for an account, we want to go in there and see what's happening with traffic. And this gives us the best picture. And we look at how many sessions are coming from Pinterest in a given month. We tend not to look at traffic week over week on Pinterest simply because there is a delay. When you pin a pin, you know, it can go out and seed to just a few people. It can take two weeks, two months, who knows? So we definitely want to look at it in chunks of 30 days or quarters or even a year. Looking at your sessions from Pinterest in a full year, when you have a full year under your belt, you're able to see, do you have a seasonality component to your traffic? For most food bloggers, It's September to February 15 and February 16. All the traffic falls off. Seems like this is just the time when food goes crazy. And if you're a healthy living blogger, your time to shine is going to be January into mid February. So you want to take stock of that because it's. You don't want to get to this place where you hit March and you go, I don't know why my traffic's down. Well, if you look at this big picture in Google Analytics, when do you get the most traffic from Pinterest? That will help settle some fears, if you will. So in Google Analytics, we're doing that overall. But then we're going a little bit deeper to look at Pinterest and look at what. What specific pins are driving the most traffic? And do those pins change over the seasons? Are they the same year round? How do we. And then how do we take those pins that we're seeing and optimize them on our site? And especially if it's an older piece of content, maybe one that you created in your first year of blogging and you don't love it, you don't think it's great. But guess what, you're getting a lot of traffic to it and people are finding value. Well, then you can optimize it in Whatever way fits best for your audience. But if you don't know that, if you didn't go into Google Analytics and find that this particular easy chicken dinner recipe is getting, you know, 4,000 sessions a month, you would be missing this way to kind of welcome the Pinterest traffic to your site.

Yeah. So before we get too far away from it, how do, how do you find out where that is?

Okay, so I'm not the best, but I will. I have a dashboard, actually that I just click on because I. I always forget the path. But I believe it is all traffic. And then it's acquisition, and then I believe it's referral, and then you'll see, you know, Facebook, Pinterest, all of these. The other thing I like about finding that path to see which social networks are bringing the most traffic. If it is Pinterest or if it is Facebook, whatever it is there, you can then know where to allocate your time and your investment or how you want to, to increase or decrease whatever you want to do there. But if you don't know, you're kind of flying blind. So Google Analytics is definitely number one to give us the most information.

Got it. That's great. And then do you use Tailwind? Is that a service that you use? And what should people know about Tailwind?

Yeah. So Tailwind is a scheduling service for Pinterest, number one, but they have a lot of great analytics about how well your boards are performing. So group boards have been around on Pinterest for quite a long time, but they've been losing the ability to perform well. And by that, I mean you get a lot of engagement on them. Well, pin Tailwind can tell you which boards are actually getting the most engagement. So when you pin a pin to the board, these pins are getting, you know, such and such amount of repins. This is a good engagement engaged board. Well, maybe you have another one that you is just not getting good engagement. If it's a group board, you can leave it. It's your own personal board. Maybe you can make some changes to the title or you can add more pins to it or do whatever with it. So it really gives us a picture of how the boards are performing on our profile. And then the next layer of that is it really shows us how much interaction a pin is getting. So you can't see easily. You can dig for it on Pinterest. The repin numbers for pins, you can see that in Tailwind as well. And they have a lot of other features that make scheduling really easy. But as Far as analytics, the pin inspector inside Tailwind is one that we use quite often to see our pins that we're pinning to particular boards getting engagement. And if they're not, we need to evaluate why and if we need to leave the board, great.

And so using those analytics in those stats, you're able to get a better idea and like you said, then decide, okay, hey, maybe I want to optimize that. We're actually working with on Food Blogger Pro, we're going through and doing, we're calling it an action group with SEO. And one of the things that we're doing is we're focusing on the things that are most successful, which is a little bit counterintuitive. But if you have a pin or a piece of content that's doing really well, if you make that 10% better, the result is going to be awesome because it's already a really high performing piece of content and you, you improve it 10%, it's going to do that much better. And it's sounds like with Pinterest you can do the same thing. Think about the things that are working really well and how you can literally and figuratively double down on that and if you are able to double that, how much more successful that would be than if you're, you know, just kind of doing a random improvement to a post for that you don't know if it's performing well or not and then.

It'S not wasting your time.

Yes.

I mean, you know, you could. Yeah. The other thing I was going to mention too with Pinterest analytics is they are getting really good at right now. They're about a two hour delay, but they're trying to get it up to where it's real time analytics. So you can see on the pin, specifically 7 day, 14 day and 30 day results and you can see the impressions, the repins and the clicks. And one thing that's really important to note about this is if you have a PIN that has a very high number of impressions, which means that it's, it's seen somewhere on Pinterest that could be a smart feed or in search, but you have a very low number of clicks, you have to ask why people are seeing it but not engaging. And then if you have a very kind of close comparison of, you know, some high number of impressions and a high number of clicks, that's a good sign that people are seeing it and they're taking action. But if we see this big discrepancy, high impressions, low click, we want to ask why aren't they engaging with my pin and maybe I can try a different image.

Yeah, that's great. And some great action items for people to take away from the interview. And one of the things that I love best about interviews like this is you have these kind of marching orders. People know, okay, these are new things I can try and new areas I can explore and I think that's so valuable. So as we wrap up here, Kate, any other last words of wisdom or piece of of advice that you'd give to people as they think about building their Pinterest following and traffic?

Yeah, I would say try to also leverage your other social channels. If you have been using Facebook for a long time and now you're going to focus on Pinterest, or even if you're new, try to kind of cross pollinate across those social channels to tell people you're on Pinterest. So share a particular board on Facebook to say that you're pinning all things. Chicken dinner, what's your favorite hop over there, follow repin a few, try to see if that will get some interaction going on Pinterest for you if you're really wanting to try to boost it and you know, test it for a month and see if it works and if not, move on to something else.

Awesome. That's great. So Kate, we talked a little bit about what you do and your business and you're one of the incredible Food Blogger Pro experts. So Food Blogger Pro members are lucky enough to interact with you over there occasionally with our live Q&As on the forum. But can you talk about what one more time? Simple pin media, what it is that you do and how people can get in touch with you if they're interested in working together.

Yeah, we primarily do Pinterest management. So you come to us and you tell us that you're frustrated and you're done with Pinterest or you just need to take it off your plate. And we walk through you through a process of onboarding, we figure out your branding, we get access to Google Analytics as well so we can figure out what's working inside there. And then we take over your daily management for you. And if some people aren't quite ready for daily management, we also do one time services of consults or cleanups. Maybe you have a board that's kind of out of control and you don't even know where to begin. We do that. And then in addition to that, obviously we have the podcast and I have a Facebook community where people who aren't quite ready to afford our services can definitely go there to interact and get the resources that they need to improve their Pinterest marketing.

That's great. And we'll link to those in the show notes. And thank you Kate for coming on, for having this conversation and for sharing your insight. I know people will get a lot out of it.

You're so welcome. Thanks for having me. Hey, hey, hey.

Wonderful listeners. Alexa here bringing you the review of the week. And this one comes from Katie from 24karatlife.com and it says Lindsay and Bjork at Pinch of Yam not only run into me amazing food blog but have also created numerous resources to help other food bloggers out there. This podcast is just one of them and I have already picked up a number of tips that I will be implementing on my blog. Thank you Bjork and Lindsay for helping me and so many food bloggers by sharing inspiring content and tons of helpful information. Thank you Katie. Such a great review. We really appreciate it. And remember guys, if any of you want to be featured in this this section of an upcoming podcast episode, all you need to do is leave a review on itunes for us. And I wanted to leave you with a bit of inspiration. I know that summer can be a bit difficult for food bloggers just because our numbers typically aren't as high as they are at other times of the year and we just kind of want to relax and spend some time outside enjoying summer. And my advice to to you is do that. You only have summer of 2018 once. So while work and blogging is super important, remember to take some time for yourself and to enjoy this awesome, awesome summer. So thank you so much for tuning in. We so appreciate all of you listening out there today and from all of us here at fbphq, make it a great week.