215: Share - Encouraging Others to Pin Your Content, Creating an Instagram Story Series, and Understanding Engagement

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Hello wonderful listener. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I'm Alexa, kind of the co host of this podcast with the one, the only, Bjork Ostrom. And I'm just so excited to be here to introduce today's new episode. But before we get to that, this is the fourth episode of this little test series that we're doing and we would love to hear what you think. So instead of our normal long form interview style episodes where we interview just one person for about an hour, this new series is structured around smaller, more concise interviews surrounding a certain topic. So we had an episode called New where we heard from Bjork, Lindsay and yours truly about creating new blog content and new resources on Food Blogger Pro. And then we had an episode that focused on trends where we learned about site speed feed trends from our expert Andrew, search result trends from Lindsay, and then trends on social media from Abby, our social media manager. And then last week was all about optimizing and we heard from Casey Marquis, Jeff Coyle and Bjork about republishing old posts, content planning and tracking optimizations. You can go back and listen to all of these episodes on your favorite podcasting app, but they're actually episodes 212, 213 and 214. And we make this podcast specifically for you. So we would love to hear what you think of this new series. Any and all feedback is welcome. We just want to know what you think so you can email us@podcastoodbloggerpro.com and we would love to have that conversation with you. But today's episode is called Share, so we're focusing on sharing content on social media. There are so many, so many social media platforms these days and even more like social media strategies. And this episode will help you create processes to help you increase followers and engagement. First, you'll hear from Kate all, who is one of our Food Blogger Pro experts and who owns a Pinterest management company called simplepin Media. And she's here to share information about the common traits of successful Pinners, how to encourage readers to pin your content, and how to control what your readers share on Pinterest. And then Abby, who's just an incredible person and our social media manager for all of our brands, talks about how we're using Instagram stories for Food Blogger Pro. We use a recurring series to engage our followers and constantly deliver value. And then last, Bjork talks through what engagement actually is and how you measure it. We're always talking about how important engagement is and he'll help you understand why that is. We're just so excited to share this episode with you. So without any further ado, let's get some Pinterest tips from Pinterest guru Kate All.

Kate, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me again.

Yeah. So we are going to be talking about sharing on today's podcast. It's the focus for all of the different conversations we're having. And obviously Pinterest is a really important place for people to share things. So let's take a step back before we get into specific tactics around sharing. Can you talk about shareable content? You see a lot of content in the work that you do. What would you say are some of the main through lines, some of the. Some of the common elements that you see with content that is shared a lot as it relates to Pinterest?

Such a great question. So I think right off the bat, I think of these pieces of content that give you the why didn't I think of that? Or the this is going to help solve a problem in my life. Or this is something I can dream into in the future. Something that's maybe even like a small roundup, five or eight or ten of, like, a. A particular idea. Because people, when they go online, they're usually hunting for something, or maybe they're killing time. But even if they're killing time, there's something in their life where they go, I need a solution for that. So when your content provides a particular solution for them, they're more apt to share it. It's why we see things go viral, because they've either hit on a need or hit on something emotionally that resonates with them. So it might be hard to get, you know, a spaghetti recipe to, like, revolutionize people's lives. But if it's something that's like, you can make this spaghetti, like, all in one in your Instant Pot in 15 minutes, people are like, yes, you've hit on the pain point of 15 minutes, not so much the recipe. So I think that type of content is what we see gets really. It's very shareable because people are excited by it and how it serves them.

So can you talk a little bit about when I think of Pinterest, I'm not a heavy Pinterest user, but I have used it in the past. When I use Pinterest, I think of kind of collecting. So I think of looking and saying, like, okay. Lindsay always gives me in. In good humor a hard time about, like, the fact that I'll wear the Same pair of pants for five days in a row. So I was like, okay, I should probably look for something that's like a tiny bit of, of an upgrade and not something that I, you know, a pair of pants that I got 10 years ago for Christmas. So I go onto Pinterest and I look, I kind of think in the mindset of saving versus sharing, is there a difference between the two? On Pinterest, if you're saving something to, let's say a group board about fashion or maybe healthy recipes, is that in essence the same thing as saving? Or how do you. Or sharing. How do you view the difference between saving something and sharing something?

Okay, that's a really great question. So saving, I would think you kind of have to divide it a little bit too between. Well, let me see if I can break this apart. So saving right away is, I am going onto Pinterest to gather a bunch of ideas to save them to my boards to be able to make a decision later. So if I am saving five different light fixtures for my bathroom to my bathroom board, I'm going to go back there and I'm going to decide which one I want to buy and then I'm going to click on it, go to the website and purchase. Now then when it comes to sharing, we see more sharing as something that's done from your website. So a little bit of semantics is I would see sharing more as from a marketer side and saving as from a native user side. So sharing. I'm sharing, sharing onto Pinterest because I want the Pinterest users to be exposed to it and see it. Even if a user goes onto a website, they're still saving it to their board for later. So it's, how is this going to serve me? And sharing is more. Let me show you what I have to see if it can serve you.

Got it. And so it's a little bit of the difference between the mindset that somebody goes into using Pinterest. Somebody who is saving something is probably in the consumer mindset. I'm grabbing and collecting these things to help inform dinner decisions that I'm going to make, or fat fashion decisions that I'm going to make. Their intent probably isn't for a bunch of people to see that, although that will probably be kind of a benefit that comes along with it. If they have a few people that are following the other category, it would be influencers, other creators, people who have a significant following who are using Pinterest in a way where they are kind of building their online Persona, they're trying to get followers. Is that kind of how you would separate those two groups of people out?

Yes, definitely. For sure. That sharing thing is definitely is making. It's almost looking at Pinterest as this really collaborative platform that one is contributing ideas and one is participating in the ideas. And it creates this great little environment where there's constantly. And what Pinterest wants is this fresh content to come onto the platform for a pinner to say, oh, this is new and I have just discovered this and how it's going to impact my life.

Got it. So let's. One of the things that we were talking a little bit about before we hit record on this podcast was this idea of tactics, which are really important and talent. And talent is the thing that's a little bit harder to say. You do this, you do this, you do this, and then you have something good. So it maybe ties into the first question that I asked a little bit at the beginning of the interview. But can you talk a little bit about what does it look like to be talented at Pinterest if you remove the tactics piece of it? How can you be somebody who really understands and is kind of an artist, in a sense, when it comes to leveraging Pinterest as a platform, what are the common traits that you see with people who are really good at Pinterest? People who are leveraging the platform and using it not only as a place to randomly pin stuff, but really getting people to share their stuff on Pinterest?

I think those people who have talent really go back to this place of they are looking at serving their reader in a way that elevates it beyond how do they serve themselves. And so they're looking to say, my person is Susie, who's at home and it's five o', clock, and she's trying to figure out what she's going to make. I'm going to be the person that delivers up quick and healthy, fast recipes for a family, or I'm going to be the person who wants to serve, the person who's having parties. And so when you start back at your content, then you're really delivering on that talent piece where you say, I'm going to use Pinterest to connect with my person and deliver up exactly what it is that they're looking for. It doesn't get you into the weeds yet. You know, the tactics of like five pins a day or my content there. It really keeps it about who it is that you're serving. And I think that is such a Huge winner that we see with all of our clients is that when people are so dialed in at keeping this very clean, they continue to grow long term. But when they begin to second guess how they're serving their person, or they start chasing maybe somebody else's audience, then we definitely see them kind of veer off track. And we don't see Pinterest growing traditionally month over month because they veered off track from what their people love.

Yeah, I think the idea of the person you are serving is such an important concept and. And Lindsay talks about that a lot as it relates to content that she's creating for Pinch of Yum. Specific with ingredients. And she always uses the idea of Super Target or Target, like going to the Target grocery store. Am I able to get all of the things for this recipe at Target or Walmart or whatever it would be? Is this gonna be accessible to people in a way where, you know, our family who lives an hour north of Minneapolis and can't go to, you know, kind of boutiquey grocery store, are they gonna be able to get these ingredients? And I think that exists because Lindsay has this filter, this idea of who it is that she's serving. And that's not every person that's creating recipes. People are going to have different people that they're serving. But I think that ties into what you're saying a little bit. So I think that idea of the Target market, the individual customer, the Persona that you're serving is so, so, so important.

And I would even add on to that really quickly that how you take your photos definitely also adds into that. We've seen that people who want to target this higher end, you know, they want to go to the grocery store that maybe you only can find things, foods. Right. Like, you can't find them in Super Target or Walmart or any of that. Their photography reflects that. It looks very artistic. It looks like it comes out of. Is it savier or is that how you say that magazine? I don't. I don't.

Yes.

Yeah, that's what it is.

Yeah.

You're going to have a specific person that you are targeting with that. That's the person who wants to make a dish for two hours, really get into it. But if your photography is, you know, the 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and it looks very approachable, you are also hitting on them with that. Conn and Pinterest is all about photos. Right. That's your first point of connection and how they connect with you. So just to really also think about it in that sense that what Your images you're using are almost your first line of communication that if you're thinking of Susie at home and that's what you want to come across in your images, you are definitely on the right track. And that's again, another thread of what we see. People have continued growth is when they really pay attention to those small details like that.

Yeah, that's awesome. The analogy that I love to use is this idea. And I, in a previous life would do music and play shows, and so I love to think of comparables. And I think in this world, it's comparable to musicians. And no matter how good your tactics are as it relates to booking a show and showing up on time and the set that you build, if the songs aren't good, then the tactics aren't going to matter. And I think sometimes we can get lost in the world of content online and forget that the content we're building is kind of like songs. And if the content isn't good, the tactics aren't going to matter. And so for people that are listening, I want to remind you that things get shared because they're good, not because of the tactics. And that's why people always come back to this idea of content, content, content, because content is the music, it is the song. And the song has to be good in order for it to be shared. And even though there is still the importance of tactics, like, once you have that good song, what. What tactics do you use to kind of grease the flywheel? I don't know if you actually grease a flywheel, but I always hear that too. Yes. So, so. So let's talk a little bit about tactics as it relates to Pinterest to make good content easier to share. So are there things that you're seeing right now that are important for people to know and be aware of that Pinterest considers to be important? And then tactics that surround those things that Pinterest considers to be important.

Yeah. So first I kind of want to share a little story kind of around what you were talking about is somebody. We were voxering and somebody in the community and they said, you know, I'm just jumping over to Pinterest. What are the things that I can do to get up and running right away? Or what are the hacks that I can use? What is all this? And. And I know better to not go down the road of hacks. But it was even for me, I just have to admit that in that moment, I started to think about all these things. What are the hacks I can use for Pinterest. As I went down it and I came back, I realized the thing that works with Pinterest is just creating the new content and consistency over the long haul. We'll go deeper, obviously, into some other things that you can do. But all that to say for those of you who are listening who have gone down that rabbit trail of tactics, just know that I do it too. And I'm in Pinterest all the time. And I even sometimes can have those days where I second guess myself to say, am I missing something? And I think the thing with Pinterest to know is that there isn't this way to you're not missing anything. And if you really are focused back on creating that great content, you take it over to Pinterest. And Pinterest is desperate right now for what they call fresh content. And this has been something they've come out with just recently, that they want new Pinterest pins coming onto the platform because they want to show, especially because they went public a couple months ago, they want to show their investors that they can keep having new content come onto the platform. So that being said, they always want you to share from your website or if you're using Tailwind, when you pin a pin and Tailwind, it looks like fresh content. So don't pin within the platform. So if I went on to the pinch of yum board and I hit save and put it on another board, Pinterest would say, no, no, no, don't do that pin directly from your site or using Tailwind.

So can you go into that a little bit? So explain the idea of from your site versus within Pinterest. So if somebody's pinning from within Pinterest, what does that look like? They're going in, they're finding their board, they're creating a new pin kind of manually. Or are you talking about repinning? What does that look like?

Repinning.

Got it.

Yeah. No, that's a good clarification. So repinning. So they're just pinning something again somewhere else. And that's how it user operates. And so they. What they have said is let your audience re pin for you, but you put your fresh pins onto Pinterest. Now, let me clarify. Fresh pins can be new images. So let's say you have a post that has three different images. Each one of those images looks like a fresh pin. And so they are. Even though it's connected to the same URL, it's a new pin, essentially. It's a little bit confusing getting into all of that But I'll just say pinning from your site, pinning a new image, those are what Pinterest would classify as fresh images.

Got it. And the two ways you can do that, you're saying using Tailwind. For those that aren't familiar with Tailwind, can you explain what that is?

Yeah. It's a scheduling tool and an analytics tool that you can use for Pinterest so you can schedule out your pins onto Pinterest so that you don't have to always be on the platform.

Got it. And then pinning from your site would be simply going to your site and clicking the pin button from an image. Got it.

And you can upload, too. That's another thing you can do. You can directly upload to Pinterest and that also looks like a fresh pin, but it's. That's a little more time consuming.

Got it. And so one of the things that we were chatting about before, so Tasty Pins, which is wptasty, is the kind of sister site to Food Blogger Pro, and we have plugins there. Tastypins is a really popular Pinterest plugin that allows you to do a whole bunch of things. One of those things is to include a repin id. This is gonna get a little bit technical. It's including a repin ID for an image. The idea being that you can select certain images on a post or a page, and you can say, anytime that somebody pins this, let's credit it as a repin. So it's one central pin that is viewed as a repin as opposed to the fresh content piece that you were talking about. So should people who want to use the repin ID be intentional about only using that in select places or not using that at all? Because they want as much fresh content as possible. How can people be strategic about that? And can you explain a little bit of the history with that? Like maybe at y one point that was more important than it would be right now?

Yeah. So it was really important to get more repins on a particular pin because that seemed to be this correlation that made you higher in search. And so there was a really heavy push to get this engagement on that original pin with the switch. Over the last year, what Pinterest has been telling us is now they're starting to show fresh pins, new pins, also high in search. And so there doesn't seem to be this direct correlation that repins will always guarantee a higher ranking. So that's why we did it before. And what we're seeing again as far as, like, when to use it when not to use it. So on my site, the things that I've tested around with it is I don't do it right away. So on a new particular post, I won't pin it to Pinterest, grab the ID and put it in the plugin. I'll actually maybe do it later down the line, six or eight months if I want to test it, which I have been testing it a little bit. But I want to have as many fresh pins out there in the beginning as possible so Pinterest can see, oh, hey, a ton of people are sharing from this site all these new fresh pins. This is awesome. We're going to show this to more people.

Got it. So to guess a little bit, we don't know exactly what happens, but the idea is behind the scenes, there is a piece of the algorithm that, for Pinterest, where Pinterest is looking at all of the activity that's happening on the Pinterest platform and they're trying to figure out ways to understand what is good content. And what Pinterest is telling you is one of the ways they're doing that is by seeing the amount of activity that is coming from a URL into Pinterest. Is that the general premise of kind of what they're saying?

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so that's why, when going even back to what we're talking about initially, the clients who create that really amazing content that people want to share anyway grows exponentially because people are just sharing it like crazy. So we're not seeing this direct correlation to repins anymore like we were before. Some people might still see in their analytics, those ones with high numbers of repins, which even I do, bringing a lot of traffic. But I think the jury's still out as far as if that's still a direct correlation as we see the fresh pins also rising in the rank.

Got it.

The ranking. Cool.

So it's interesting to me where it sounds like you kind of have a little bit of a. I imagine like one of those tin cups that you hold to your ear and then there's like a string over to Pinterest and you can kind of talk to them. It's not like this open line, like the red line in the White House where they can just call anybody. But what does that look like to get feedback on Pinterest from this stuff? Like, is there somebody that you have that you're able to talk to? I know every once in a while they'll publish PDFs or reports. Kind of like Google, in a sense, where they're saying, here are the things we consider important. And then you know for sure that's important. If they're going to come out and.

Say that, yes, yes, definitely. There's two places we look for that. One is Tailwind does a lot of interaction with Pinterest. So with my contacts at Tailwind and any of the pieces of content that they put out has been approved by Pinterest. And so we look at that and we say, okay, Pinterest has read this article. They've approved it. They will. I know in the future they are going to be creating more of a creator focus to get creator information out there. They've made a little bit of a push over the last year, and we've met with somebody on the creator team, but obviously with them going public, it hasn't been a huge priority. But that being said, when we see them publish anything, we go with it. But there is a lot of gray area. So what I always tell people is take this and then go back to what you're doing with content. Go back to your analytics and start testing it for yourself. Because the important thing to remember with Pinterest is one account does not act like the other because there are two different niches. Their keyword rankings are different. It would be like me saying I could rank like Pinch of Yum as simple pin media. It doesn't make sense. We're just retargeting different things. So that being said, when Pinterest does put something out on their business page, always watch it. It's definitely gotten a little slimmer over the last couple of months. And then Tailwind has a blog, so I would watch that as well, that anything they put out, they're definitely following the guidelines of Pinterest.

Got it.

Great.

So let's continue to think about ways that assuming that we have this quality content, which we're not going to go super deep into what that looks like, but let's say we're getting to the point where we're creating some content that we know is good and we want to figure out some of those additional ways that we can grease the wheel, so to speak, that we can make it more shareable. Fresh content is really important. So for you, as the creator, you want to be pinning from your site, but I'm guessing you also want other people to be pinning from your site. How can you encourage other people as opposed to just yourself and maybe, you know, your friends and family that you can convince to do it as well? How can you convince or encourage other people to help you in the efforts of creating that fresh content. So Pinterest can say, hey, we see a lot of important factors coming from this site and therefore let's prioritize this content. What are the things that you can do to help make that happen?

Okay, a few things are number one is to have a great plugin. You know, Tastypins is great to where it designates the right Pinterest image to go on to Pinterest. Some people just have regular share buttons where you click on it and everything's Pinnable. Or maybe the Facebook image is Pinnable. What you want to make sure is that when people click on whatever button it is, whether it's the Pinterest button, I don't imagine many users are going to be using Tailwind. But you want to make sure that the right image going out. So that would probably be number one is if you haven't paid attention to your share buttons, go back and make sure they're optimized. Or you have a great plugin like Tastypins, just make sure that is in place. The other one is just telling your people that you're on Pinterest. So one thing that I have been testing is towards the bottom of a particular post, and this is especially on something that maybe is a little bit older and already is getting interaction from Pinterest, is you can put a pin widget. Now, I wouldn't recommend a board widget or a profile widget from Pinterest, but a pin widget you can create on Pinterest. It's pretty easy. You put it into the post and you can write above that pin it for later. So it's, it's just another way for them to see it. They don't necessarily see pin it for later. I mean, they're using the pin it button, but it's more of a direct call to action in your post. And then if you have email, one of the things that we're also doing here is we're writing a post and then to the left of it we'll write if you can't, if you don't have time to read this now, pin it for later. And that's the URL pin link. So I would say all of this combined is going to take you probably an extra 10 minutes per post or per email. But just once you get into the habit, what you're doing is you're just reminding your audience, hey, please share this. Or and people, when they read this, they don't think of it as being pushy. They think of it as a reminder, like, oh, yeah, share this for later. The other thing that you can do is if you have an Instagram account with Swipe Up, I like to always test talking about this new recipe that you've created. Obviously there's the swipe up to go to your post, but next would be the swipe up to go pin it for later. Because a lot of people are on Instagram. I know I'm a heavy Instagram user. I'm not the best marketer over there, but I love it when people make it super easy for me in the Swipe Up. I love the Swipe Up. It's amazing. So use that to your advantage to where you swipe up pin it for later. It works pretty seamlessly. It takes them there, save it to a board, and they're done.

That's awesome. So let's talk about each one of those specifically to make sure everybody's crystal clear on that Number one, you talked about making sure that the right image is pinning. So can you talk about how people can actually designate within their post, like, hey, I want this image to be shown, or I don't want this image to be shown. There's. There's actual code that you can add to an image. Is that correct?

Yeah, I use plugin, so I'm not going to add any code. But you can do code to where somebody hits the pin it button. It's just the 2 to 3, 2 to 3 ratio that you want. It's the vertical image for Pinterest and it has the designated Pinterest description. And then I disable pinning on my Facebook image that's in the post because for me, I have a vertical and a horizontal. I don't want the horizontal going onto Pinterest. I just want the vertical.

Nice. So point being with that is. And I remember seeing this in the really early stages when we started to focus more on Pinterest. If you haven't done any of that intentional, we'll call it filtering of the images. What will happen is somebody will come to your post and they might use a generic, generic pin button. Maybe they use Chrome as their browser. They'll say, they'll. They'll click pin and it will show all of the images, literally all of the images that are on that post sidebar, footer. Maybe it's your logo and it's kind of creates an analysis paralysis. Which one of these do I pick? Not only do they pick weird images, like I remember going to Pinterest and you can. There's a URL you can use for Pinterest to see the content that people are pinning from your site. And it was like all of these pictures of, of Lindsay and I for these recipes, and I was like, wait a minute. Like, this image of me giving Lindsey a hug has nothing to do with this fruit pizza. But for some reason, people just pick that as the image. And so you can filter that out. You could use Tasty Pins, as the plugin does that. But there's also actual code. If you don't use that plugin. You don't have to use a plugin. You can go in and do it the manual way and say, this is, you know, it's called no pin code. We can include it in the show notes so you know what it is to filter that out. Or you were saying you actually will say, I only want this individual image to be the image associated with this post. Is that right? Or maybe a couple images.

Yes, exactly. And I have found too, that when people are on the app, what makes it hard is that they. You can't. If they're on their phones, they can't even clearly see which images are long or which images are horizontal. So they just pick whatever. And for me, one of my most frequented pins that sends traffic to my site is actually one of those boxes that Pinterest gives you as a default.

Sure.

So it's not even an image at all. It just says how to clean up Pinterest boards. I mean, it's so boring. But it's the thing that's leaving. I think somebody must have pinned it and then it showed up in a bunch of other people's feeds. And so, yeah, all that to say designated, and then disable pinning on the ones that you do not want pinned.

Got it. That's great. So number two, you talked about actually telling people that you're on Pinterest. So if you want to engage people, a great way to do that is to actually say, hey, here's where you can follow along with me on Pinterest. Now, this isn't necessarily the specific post itself, or are you referring to this as, hey, this is a way where you can increase the number of followers you have on Pinterest. Or are you saying for an individual post on your site, include a call to action to say, you know, save this for later, or I think you had referred to a widget. Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah. So I have actually three ways that I do it. So I did a custom widget in my sidebar that just says, follow Me on Pinterest, it's static. It doesn't change images at all. And it says like PIN with me. So it's just the awareness in the sidebar. I do get a lot of desktop traffic, so I have that there. And then I also have that milotree pop up, which is Follow me on Pinterest. And then in the post, I also have something that says pin this for later or follow me on Pinterest to find more tips about Pinterest marketing. And then I built a PIN widget there that just has that pin, which is the how to clean up Pinterest boards to where they can literally click on it, it opens in Pinterest and they can save it.

Got it. So when you say a PIN widget, can you explain how people can create that and maybe use an example for. I talked about fruit pizza. Let's say we have a fruit pizza post. How would you go about doing that and what would the advantage of that be?

Yeah, so we used to do it actually a long time ago and the code for some reason was kind of broken. So I'll say I'm just retesting this out on simple PIN to see how it works. But basically, if you just do build a PIN widget with Pinterest, if you Google that, it'll take you to the developer site for Pinterest where you can create a little. You grab the URL of the PIN that you want, you put it into this PIN widget builder, and it gives you a little snippet of code and you insert that into the blog post. Got it. The weird trick is, is that you have to be on the HTML side of building this is in WordPress. And then you have to hit update of that post. And then before doing anything else, it's like these weird tricks. So the jury's still out for me as to whether or not this is really an effective thing. But all that to say whether you put a PIN widget or whether you just put into your post, Follow me on Pinterest. I think the important part of that is that when it comes to Pinterest in your site, let's say, you know, you've been creating content for five years, people are not entering through the front door from Pinterest. They're entering into a bunch of different side doors. And so if they're coming from Google landing on this post, tell them you're also on Pinterest and you want them to follow you.

Awesome. And same general concept, but with email, I think that's. I love the idea of including a call to action with the email. So often we're sending out content and it's just the content itself. But what's the next step that people take? What is something that they, that they can do after they read that or maybe if they don't have time for that. So this would be if you are sending a broadcast email and broadcast email, meaning you're going in, you're typing up a quick maybe summary of a post that you just published, maybe it could be an autoresponder as well, I guess. But you're saying probably at the top, I would assume. Hey, if you don't have time to read this, a great way to save it is to pin it for later. Can you talk about how that works in terms of somebody, what happens if somebody clicks on that and then how do you build that link?

Yeah, so that one I've seen done two ways, one at the top, like you said. And all you would do is if I published a post today, I pin it onto Pinterest and then I'll grab that URL, go back to my email builder, write it all out and say pin this for later and then hyperlink that with that pin URL. And so then right at the top they know, oh, I can click on it, pin it for later.

Got it.

Or you can add a list down below. In my particular email, halfway down, I talk about my podcast and what I do is I go back to previous podcasts to say, here's the August trends for Pinterest, slash pin it for later. So just giving them the opportunity so that they don't have to do the work. And you can get super creative with it too. You can say, hey everybody, we're going into Memorial Day or we're going into Labor Day camping, whatever it is, I have this great camping recipes board. You should follow along as I pin to it. And again, people are like, yeah, I need tons of camping recipes done right. So it's more tapping again back into that place of who is your person and how can your Pinterest content in your boards serve them. So there's this really good fluid cross promotion because Pinterest as we see it, it's very much like a search engine. So it's not Instagram where it's a short snippet of time that people are going to see something, but this has the potential long term impact. So that's why we invest in calling to action people to pin it for later.

Got it. And so just to make sure I'm tracking That URL that you're including in the email, people click on that and it goes to a page where it pulls up the individual pin on Pinterest for them, and then they can just click save. Is that right?

Correct.

And they get that URL by the developer page. Or can you just go to like, can you pretend like you're pinning it and then just stop at the point where you actually pin and then copy that URL?

Yeah, correct. Just stop at the point where you pin. Copy that URL. The only time you go to the developer page is just when you want to build that little pin widget in the post. So if that overwhelms you, don't even do that. Just pin it to Pinterest and then open up in that page and grab that URL.

Awesome. And then number four, you talked about that. I love this idea and I think that I love creative uses of one social media platform to encourage people to engage on another. And you talked about using Instagram. If you have the swipe up feature in Instagram Stories to say pin it for later. So would that be using that same URL and then. And then a swipe up to essentially bring them to the page where then they can save on Pinterest?

Yeah, correct. Exactly the same URL that you would grab, do that same thing, and people then can just save it for later when maybe they're just checking Instagram stories really quick and going through. You've now made it easier for them. You serve them.

Got it. And just a curiosity question, when people do that, do you know if. Then they need to. Will that bring. If they have the app on their phone, let's say they're. They're browsing through and they swipe up, will that bring them to the app? Or they do they need to sign in on Pinterest.

So most of the time it does. Why have an iPhone? So it's very fluid for me. It goes straight to my Pinterest account, my Pinterest app, and then it pops open right away and I just hit save. And then it prompts the board. Right. I can't speak for Android. And what that happened, how that works. There have been very few times where it's prompted me to, like, sign in by email.

Sure.

But for the most part, it goes straight to the app and it's super seamless.

Got it. So love that tip. So the idea is you're leveraging Instagram and the platform of Instagram. And the thing that I like about it is a lot of times I know People will say, hey, swipe up to see the full recipe. But what this does is it encourages a little bit of a snowball. It's not a one time interaction. Somebody looking at it and then saying, okay, you know, maybe I'll make this for later. A very, very small possibility that they would like bookmark it or once they're on the actual URL of the blog post post, you know, pin it. Instead it's saying, hey, I'm gonna bring you to a place where the action itself isn't just content consumption, it's sharing of the content. So it's creating a little bit of a snowball effect to help more people share that and to increase engagement on that piece of content, which I love.

Yeah, me too. And one of the great things to note is that some people might follow you on Instagram and have no idea you're on Pinterest. In fact, this happened to a friend of mine who is kind of a native user on Pinterest and she said, I found these great recipes from this particular blogger on Pinterest. And then she shared that she. Or on Instagram, she shared that she was on Pinterest. And now I follow her on Pinterest and I see what she shares. And so I think we have to remember that we as marketers, creators, we're in all these different social platforms, but our people might not know that. And so it's just a way to tell them that.

Got it. That's awesome. One of the things that you had talked about before, Kate, was this idea of the foundational things that you need to be successful on Pinterest. We talked about the content has to actually be good, right? Like a song has to be good in order for it to be shared. The thing you're creating actually has to be good for it to be shared. But you also talked about consistent use. Is there any broad general advice that you could give to people in terms of what it looks like to consistently show up? Like if you're saying, hey, it's important to show up and consistently use Pinterest, what does that mean? And what are some very basic recommendations that you'd have for people?

Yeah, super basic would be at least you want to be pinning five things from your website or five pieces of content to Pinterest every day. And Pinterest has said, go ahead and share 100% of your content every day. You don't have to share other people's. That's always been a big question of whether or not it can be 100% of our own or other people's. I'm going to say, go ahead. If you have five per day, make them all from your site and share that onto Pinterest. That's just to going consistency. And if you have a ton of content, you know, some of our food blogger clients that we work with have eight years of producing content five days a week, so they can probably sustain 30 pins a day and not even touch, you know, any of their archives for a while. Right. Not have to circle back through. So as far as consistency, just be active on the platform, sharing your pins to your boards so that, that they can begin to get into the system. And if five is all you can do, that's what we tell people. Go with five.

That's great. And let's say you have a really popular post. You know, it's gotten a lot of interaction in the past. Do you create a new pin and could you even pin it to the same board? Do you go back and delete a pin? I know those are going to be really common questions that come up, so we'd want to address those.

Yeah, so we don't delete a pin and the time in between boards. Pinterest has said if you're going to pin something to a board again at another time, you want a couple of months in between, but then that's also a little bit of a gray area. You want to play around with that to see how that works for your account. But the whole thing they're trying to avoid with that is that people aren't pinning the same pin every single day to their boards, and that's not a good user experience anyway. You want to have your boards look pretty diversified. So really paying attention to if I have my pin that's doing really well and it's on all of my boards right now, I might go back to a board and say, hey, I haven't pinned that in a couple of months. I'm going to pin it again to that board.

Awesome. That's great. Kay. We covered a lot and I know that there's a lot more that we could cover. You've been doing this for a long time. You've been working with clients and customers in multiple different venues and areas. And we so appreciate you as a food blogger, pro, resident expert on the forums. We're lucky enough to get to interact with you there. But you also have different ways that people can work with you at simplepin Media. So can you talk about if somebody is interested in increasing their shares on Pinterest, their engagement, their traffic from Pinterest and they're interested in partnering with you to do that. What are the different ways that people could connect with you and follow along with what you're up to?

That's a great question. So I feel like if you want us to, if you want to hire us, we definitely have that with management on our website@simplepinmedia.com it's services. And then we also have our membership site, which is the Simple Pin Collective, where if you want to do that yourself and figure out how to really master the Pinterest marketing game, that is also there as well. And if you are somebody who's just starting out and you just need the basics, we have the Simple Pin podcast for you and that is where we have a ton of free content about Pinterest. So you can basically DIY it, get up and running, but then if you get stuck, you can always join the collective.

Awesome. That's great. Kate, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and it was great to talk to you.

Thank you.

Abby, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. Happy to be, yeah.

So on the last episode, we were talking a little bit about trends, we talked about Pinterest hashtags, we talked about how we're intentionally setting up the Instagram profile, kind of the grid that we have, and how we've evolved that and use that structure to help inform some of the content we're creating. Today. We're going to do another little behind the scenes look and we're going to talk about stories. So just hearing a little bit about the approach that we're taking for Food Blogger Pro as it relates to the stories side of Instagram, which is obviously a popular and important side of things. So for those that aren't familiar, my assumption is always, hey, people know about Instagram, people know about Instagram stories. But for those that who aren't familiar with Instagram stories, can you share a little bit about what it is and how it works and how it's different than a regular Instagram post?

Sure. So Instagram stories are more. It's usually more video based, but can be photos as well. And they're kind of the unedited version. Instagram is sort of always the very curated feed. You have a pretty photo, everything is very just so. But Instagram stories is kind of a chance for a peek behind the curtain. So whether that be showing someone how you make a recipe or a photo shoot or something of that sort, it's really a tool to see behind the scenes or to share more or elaborate more about something on your feed or what's going on with your business or your blog.

Got it. It's interesting to see how this was a while ago, and a lot of people who are into social media know this, but it's interesting to see Snapchat come along, get a lot of traction. People talked about how much they loved this idea of this raw, authentic, unedited interaction. And then Instagram was like, oh, we notice a lot of people doing this. We should create something very similar. So kind of inspiration from Snapchat and now is a really important part of Instagram and. And it's a great way to engage and interact with a. With your followers. So can you talk a little bit about some behind the scenes for Food Blogger Pro? How are we approaching stories and do we have a schedule? What does that look like in terms of the Food Blogger Pro Instagram stories account?

So for Food Blogger Pro, we do have a schedule, and that really came out of just knowing we needed to be on stories but not really sure where to start. So when I started in last year, we talked about wanting to get on stories and making sure that we were active there. It was just a matter of what are we going to post? And it needed to be something where I wasn't coming up every day with just something random to post. So through some brainstorming, we found that we wanted to hit some key areas on certain days. We have photography tip day, blogging day, or blogging tip day, podcast promotion, and ask us anything. And now we have a motivation day on Wednesdays with Alexa. So we're kind of hitting a bunch of different areas and still staying within our niche. And being able to do that again really helps us narrow down what we're doing and how we're contributing and making sure it's really intentional instead of sort of hopping on every day and not knowing really what we're going to post or if it's going to be themed or anything of that sort. So it's really great to be able to leverage our whole team, since our whole team jumps on stories. So you, Bjork, do Lindsey Emily, our video person on the Pinch of Yum site, everyone kind of jumps in and is able to contribute their area of expertise and make sure that we're giving as much value as we can through Instagram stories. So we're not only providing a really great feed, but we have a really great peek behind the curtain on Instagram stories as well.

That's awesome. One of the things that I love about what you just shared is this idea of kind of buckets that we're able to put something into. And I think that really helps when you think of. Of creating content to say, hey, this is on. Maybe it's every day, every day you have, or every week you have a certain thing scheduled, kind of like, you know, blogging tip day or motivational day. And I think that that helps in order to funnel down the decisions that you have to make as it relates to, like, okay, am I going to do Instagram stories today? If so, what am I going to do? Simplify that by having a little bit of structure. Structure around it. And I think that can go a really long way. And the other thing that I think is so valuable that you had talked about was this idea of the consistency element, and we had talked about that in the previous episode as well. But just having a consistent, deliverable that you are coming on in every, you know, whatever it would be Monday or Wednesday or every first day of the month, you are doing something. And that just helps with the scheduling side of things so much. So what does that look like when you're creating a story? We put all this time and energy into it. We're recording a video, we're publishing that to Instagram stories. But then how do you actually get people to watch it or engage with it in terms of the interaction side of things? What does that look like and how does that work?

Yeah, so I think one of the big pieces, like you said, is consistency and people knowing that a certain segment or thing is coming on certain days. So people are more likely to engage with it just because they know that on Fridays we have photography tips days. I'm really excited to see what they're offering. But the other thing that we do on the Food Blogger Pro account, on a pretty regular basis, not every time, but pretty regularly, is when we're posting to the feed in the caption, kind of putting a little note in there. Hey, check out our stories for a really neat video tip for making the most of your video footage from our video specialist, Emily. So someone who is maybe seeing that post within their feed, but not necessarily watching the stories on a consistent basis has a reason to jump over to our profile and watch that story and then maybe engage with it or share it with someone. You know, share it with someone else. It's just creating that loop where someone is following us in all the places and maybe seeing all the things, rather than just seeing stories or just seeing hosts on the feed.

It's one of the things that I think we often forget in the content creation process is the next step that people should take after consuming the content. And so if you have a Instagram post like you're saying, and there's Instagram stories that tie into that, what a great way to say, hey, we're gonna deliver something in this post. It's not just a lead in to something else. But if you wanna learn more, check out Instagram stories. Or if you. In talking with Kate from simplepin Media, she talked about going through Instagram stories and then she talked about the idea of swiping up to pin something for later. And there's all these different ways that we can continue to tie in these different accounts that we have. So we're not just leaving people hanging. We encourage them to engage, to share, to take the next step. And I think that's a really important thing to consider as not only content creation creators, but also content promoters. And that's the business that we're in. We're not just creating content, we're also promoting that. And I think the point that you made about including additional steps, additional things that people can do after the fact is really, really important. So, Abby, thanks for coming on again for sharing a little bit of the behind the scenes for Food Blogger Pro. And to wrap up this episode, we're going to chat a bit about engagement and how you can measure that for your brand or your blog or your social media accounts. So that's coming up next. All right, today's episode is all about the idea of sharing content. And one of the important elements with sharing is this idea of engagement. But I thought it'd be helpful to talk a little bit about what engagement actually is, is and how you can go about measuring that. Because what you measure, you can improve. If you don't know what the numbers are, it's really hard to improve it. So as we talk about engagement, so we talk about increasing our sharing. How do we go about measuring that to know if we're being successful? Well, I thought it would be helpful to spend some time talking through that and also to look at it from a few different angles. And what I mean by that is it's important to think about engagement from the perspective of what your goal is with the thing that you are creating. And an example would be, in one case, let's say that you have a website where a blog post where your goal is to get affiliate earnings from that blog post for that specific piece of content. The best way to think of engagement is actually people coming and clicking on a link and then leaving it's actually not something that you'd first and foremost be wanting people to share, although that would be something that would be beneficial. Let's say somebody comes and they find it really helpful, they share that. That would be awesome. But in that specific instance, the best way that people are engaging with that is they're coming, they're clicking on that content, and they're hopefully going to purchase the thing that you are talking about. The type of engagement that I'm going to be sharing about is engagement through social media. So there's a big difference between having a really big audience and a really engaged audience. And the ideal is to have both, to have a big audience that is very engaged. But sometimes you'll see a really big audience, lots of followers, but they're not very engaged. And that's why it's important as we talk about sharing, to also talk about engagement. And I think the easiest way for you, as you think about being intentional with tracking this, is to take all of the metrics that are available to you and to create a little formula that allows you to calculate engagement for certain pieces of content. And I'll give you a really concrete example. On Instagram, one of the things that you can see is how many people comment or favorite or like a post. And. And you can also see how many people have been exposed to that post. They call that impressions. And so a form of engagement, a number that you could get for your engagement number could be the number of people that have liked or commented a certain post, along with the number of people who saw that. And that will give you a number to show you how engaged that audiences. You could also use the number of followers you have if you wanted to use another number to calculate your engagement number. So an example would be, let's say you had a piece of content that had 100 likes and you have a thousand followers. That would mean that if you are using those two numbers to calculate your engagement number, that would be a 10% engagement number. So it's not so much you have to use use specific numbers, it's you deciding what's important for you, you deciding what the most important metric is to track, and then creating some type of system. It could be a really simple system to pull that in. Now, there are tools that will help you do that. But one of the things that we found to be true is at least when you're first starting out, sometimes it's helpful to manually go through and do this, because it's not just getting the number, it's going through the process of getting the number, that will also help inform some of the learnings that will come along the way in doing that. So as we talk about sharing, it's also important to think about engagement and it's important for you to think about what are the things that are most important for me as it relates to my content. The example that we gave before engagement could look like coming and clicking on something and leaving and going to another page. Engagement could look like signing up for an email list. Or if we're talking about social and we're talking about sharing content, it could mean shares, likes, comments. It could be how engaged people are through the interaction with that piece of content. And you can use that as a way to track the engagement number for your content. So I thought it was important to talk about that a little bit as we talk about sharing and as we mentioned, engagement of a few different times on this podcast episode. And as much as possible, spend some time with your content and analyze, hey, what are the things that people are engaging with the most? The things that I publish that people are most interested in. And using that number, using the metrics around that content can help, even if it's really loosely, can help inform some of the decisions that you'll make moving forward with your content. All right, that is a wrap for this episode. All about sharing. It's an important thing in life, right? We like to teach our children to share, but it's also important thing. As you are building a content based business, a blog, a social media following, it's important to think about what are the types of content that people want to share, which is why we dedicated this podcast episode to that concept. Speaking of creating content, that is what the episode is going to be next week. We're going to talk all about content and how, how you can be intentional with your content creation. Obviously a really important thing for people who do the things that we do, which is create really helpful content, recipes. But we know that there's also lots of other people that listen to this podcast. So even if you are not a food blogger, this is the Food Blogger Pro podcast. But we welcome you as well. And in next week's episode, we're gonna be talking about not only recipes, but we're gonna be talking about what quality content in general looks like. So if you have not yet subscribed to the podcast, make sure that you do that in your favorite podcast app of choice. Could be the one on your phone, it could be on your computer, wherever you are. You can just search Food Blogger Pro and subscribe to the podcast. Bonus points if you leave a review as well. I will screenshot it, send it to my mom and reassure her that I'm continuing to do good work. So we would really appreciate that. And last but not least, if you are not yet a member of Food Blogger Pro, you can check out what we are all about by going to foodbloggerpro.com we have an incredible community of people and an incredible amount of value for anybody who wants to level up the type of work that they're doing to level up their content, to think strategically about how they are building a business in the food or recipe space. So we would encourage you to check that out as well@foodbloggerpro.com that is a wrap. We really appreciate you tuning in in and we really hope that you have a great week. We'll see you back here same time, same place. Until then, make it a great week. Thanks.