38: Pinterest Tips and Trends With Alisa Meredith, Tailwind

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp, and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my free Facebook and Instagram Ads mini workshop series, which helps you launch a high converting ad campaign in five short days. You can sign up for the free workshop series by going to destinycop.com and I will make sure that this link is in the show notes. And today I have a special guest with me. I have Alisa Meredith. And Alisa is the content marketing manager at Tailwind, where she gets to indulge her incitement about Pinterest marketing every single day on a mention to help every marketer embrace the power of Pinterest to build traffic, leads and sales. You'll often find her being very persuasive on Facebook lives. And if you watch carefully, you'll probably see a cat or a squirrel in the background. A Maine native, she is loving the coastal North Carolina coast and now thinks winter means any day under 60 degrees. Elisa, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to chat with you.

Thanks for having me, Destiny.

So what is the temperature there right now?

Oh. Oh, man, that's a good question. I should be paying attention to that, but I'm not, I can tell you. Yesterday was 65. Yeah. And I had bought this really cozy sweater a couple weeks ago and had no chance to wear it. And yesterday I was wearing it and sweating like crazy, but I didn't care because I don't think we're gonna get winter this year. It's 56 right now.

Okay, 56. So that's still cold. Honestly, you know, I'm in Atlanta, so 56 is still cold to us.

It is. It's cold. Snap. Tomorrow will be 68. Sunday will be. Or Saturday will be 71. So, you know, as it should be.

Well, let's jump right in here. So we're going to be talking about Pinterest today. And a lot of the course creators that are listening here, their goal from Pinterest or whatever content platform they're using is to get that person to click on their content and go to the website so they can convert them to an email subscriber. And that's a lot of our goals here. So can we talk about that process? Number one, why would somebody want to use Pinterest to drive traffic to their website?

Yeah. So Pinterest is one of the few networks that actually wants to send traffic to you. So we know that Facebook and others, they really want to keep you on the platform. But Pinterest is not like that at all. So basically, Pinterest is just a wall of images that link away from their site to yours. So the opportunity there is huge. And there aren't any real recent studies that I've seen, but the most recent there was showed that Pinterest was the number two driver of what they call social traff. So just behind Facebook. And that number came out before the whole Facebook apocalypse thing, where they dropped people's reach even more. So, you know, with 322 million monthly active users, 2 billion monthly searches, there's just a lot going on there. And people actually want your content. They want brand content. So we have 78% of the content on there is free brands, and people actually like it.

So let me ask you this. So some people who are listening here today, they might be kind of considering, should I focus on Pinterest or should I focus on something else to drive traffic to my website? You know, one of the questions that I always get asked is, should I focus on YouTube or should I focus on Pinterest? How would you answer that question?

Yeah, so that those are two very different networks. Right. So YouTube is a lot more social, but I would say, why not do both? So if you're creating content for YouTube primarily, you're creating a lot of video, you can use video on Pinterest as well. So just chop it up into maybe 30 seconds a minute, maybe up to four or five minutes for Pinterest and just give it a try. So if you're already focusing on YouTube, just. Just dip your toe in and see how those videos work for you on Pinterest. Obviously, Pinterest is a lot heavier in the static image department. So if you have a lot of backlog of content with static images that you can link to this content. Yeah, you really need to take advantage of that on Pinterest.

Since you mentioned video, I have to ask about it. How is video doing on Pinterest? Well, it.

I don't have the numbers right up in front of me, but it is something that Pinterest is really heavily invested in, and they really want people to consume that video on the platform. But it also leads to a lot of clicks, so it is doing well. And searches for video content on Pinterest have been growing tremendously year over year. So I would definitely give it a go. It's one of those things where features. It's very obvious in the feed. So as you're scrolling, the videos will autoplay in the feed so it catches your eye. And also sometimes it'll appear first in search results. Because Pinterest really wants people to use video and to see video. So it's one of those kind of early adopter advantages at this point to get video on Pinterest.

So I'm gonna keep kind of digging in this a little bit because this is new to me also. So let's just say that I had like a how to video you, you know, for my business, maybe it was how to set up a Facebook ad or how to set up a Pinterest ad. Would that type of video do well on Pinterest? Or what? Is there a specific type of video that we should consider there?

Yes, you could definitely do a how to. Of course, you want to make sure that you leave something for them to click on to go to your site from there. So you could, you could just show the basic step by step and then say, you know, for more details, click through to my site. Other things that work really well, like the brands that are on there, there's some alcoholic beverage brand, Stella something or other. They do a really great job. And theirs is clearly more for brand awareness than for anything else. So the product features very strongly in the ad. It's just a beautiful kind of lifestyle ad. But you don't want to be dependent on the sound. Right. Because people generally aren't going to turn the sound on. So make sure you use your captions. But. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Now that we're sitting here talking about, I'm like, I've got to go try that.

Yes, you do.

So let's talk about and think about Pinterest as we would a sales funnel. Right. So the first thing that people we need to focus on. Right. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, would be the pin. Do you have any tips or guidance on how to make that image engaging? And what other things should we be thinking about as we create that pin to upload to Pinterest?

Yeah, so I think that there's something to think about kind of a step before that, because you mentioned funnel.

Yes.

Thinking about where Pinterest fits in. So 97 to 98% of the searches that happen on Pinterest and that's where most of the activity happens, is in search, because it is a visual search and discovery engine. 97, 98% of those searches are unbranded, which means that people on Pinterest are way high up in the funnel and usually don't even know what they want. Exactly. There's a lot of inspiration that happens on Pinterest. So maybe you kind of vaguely know you want to redo your kitchen, but you don't know that you want to buy Benjamin Moore paint or that you want a Kohler faucet.

Right.

You just have this vague idea that there's something I want to do. Just help me get started. And that's where Pinterest is really powerful because you don't have that competition with that brand awareness. Anybody can get found in search on Pinterest. So as far as, like, the images that convert, though, did you were going to say something?

No, no, I was just. I was just thinking about it. So, you know, I'm trying to think about it from an online course creator standpoint. So let's just say somebody has a course, right, that walks somebody through how to do it. You know, for me, I'm about to do my basements. So let's just say they have a course that walks you through how to design or redesign or renovate your basement. What would they need to consider for that sales funnel?

Well, that's a perfect topic. I mean, that's exactly the sort of thing people are going to search on Pinterest. They might search with style also. So there's a new tool out if you go to trends.pinterest.com that will show you search trends and how they are, how they're moving. So, like, yesterday I did a comparison and promised you I'll get back to your question. But this plays into it. I did a comparison of Keto and Atkins diet search terms, and it was. It was wild. Like, keto is growing, growing, hugely spiking. Atkins is very flat and very low, which kind of. I expected that, but that would be the kind of thing you would want to search like. All right, if I'm talking about my basement redesign, am I going to talk about a family room or am I going to talk about a recreation room? Like, which term do I want to focus on? So use your trends for that. It's very, very cool. If you don't see it when you're logged in, log out and try trends.pinterest.com it's really, really helpful. But that will help you kind of figure out how to frame it specifically for Pinterest, which will play into how you put your text on your image, what kind of title and description you, and all that good stuff.

Okay. And I will make sure that that link is in the show notes for everybody, so they can go and check that out.

Yeah.

So in terms of the image itself, and we can continue down this path of thinking about somebody who may have a course that talks about renovation or redesign or designing something like that, like a basement or kitchen, what would you suggest they consider in terms of the image and the. Maybe the title in there and, you know, just everything in that pie.

Okay, so. So basic stuff as far as taking the image. Definitely want it to be a professional quality. Right. So there are some ugly pictures that work well on Pinterest, but most of the time, no, they don't. So get your lighting right, your composition right. Make sure, you know, everything looks really good, and that's just a good jumping off point. Make it somewhere you feel like, yes, I want to live here. I want to be here. I want that to be my house, my life. Because it's such an aspirational platform, you really need to kind of give people the dream, but also make it attainable. Okay, so can I think about that?

Should they include. Include hashtags in their pin, or does that matter at all?

Yes, in your descriptions, for sure. Yeah.

Is there anything else they need to make sure they include in their description?

Yes. So keywords are super important on Pinterest. You want to think about what keywords, like, we talked about with trends, so which ones are working on Pinterest. And also they need to be related to your content. So Pinterest SEO is pretty interesting because it's really advanced, like, surprisingly clever. So they look at the image itself. So if you have your picture of your basement renovation, they'll pull out things like, oh, this is a cabinet. This is a bar stool. This is. I don't know what else is in your basement.

Yeah, pool table, maybe, or theater room or anything like that.

Okay, so.

So they're actually pulling. They know that that's. They're pulling the image. I had no idea.

Yeah, it's really cool. So they. There are. They are assigning those keywords to your PIN based on what they see in the image. It's really very interesting. So knowing that you're gonna want to use those same keywords in your title and your description to kind of reinforce to Pinterest. Yes, this is what my PIN is about so that they can properly categorize it for search. And also because, like, your home feed, lot of that is just inspiration. So, like, if. If they know that in the past I looked at something like how to play pool, they might show me your pin. Because they picked up that it had a pool table in it because they think, oh, if she's interested in how to play pool, maybe she wants to buy a pool table or see how it would look in her house. Yeah. You just have to kind of think of all the implications of a Pinterest search to really set yourself up for the most exposure to the right people.

So basically, from an SEO standpoint, it's pulling from the images, it's pulling from all of the words that you have on the pin. Does it pull from your link? I mean, if you, your landing page, let's just say you have the link in there to your blog page. Does it go there and pull that information too?

Yep, about once a day or so. It will go to the linked page and it will check out your title, it checks out the description on your page and the main text itself. So it doesn't. It's not like it has to be word for word exactly the same, but they do want to see consistency across the keywords from your pin to the page itself. And they also look at the boards you save your PIN to. So if you're, if you're saving your, your basement renovation ideas pin to home remodeling, well, that makes sense. But if you save it to gardening ideas, that does not make sense. That can kind of confuse the system. Right. So make sure you're just saving to relevant boards that add context to tell Pinterest. All right, this is, this is what this pin is about.

Is there any tips and that you mentioned the boards made me think of this. Is there any tips or things we need to consider when we are building our boards in our, you know, in our business account.

Yeah. So build your boards in service of the content that you create. So look at all of the content that you have already and think, okay, what would be a good home for these kinds of pins? So again, if we're going to go with the basement remodeling ideas, we're going to have home remodeling, we're going to have maybe even basement remodeling ideas. If you have enough content to support that, you might go for the style. Like, let's say, what style are you going for with your basement remodeling?

We're looking at more of a farmhouse type style.

Oh, perfect. Okay. So farmhouse style decor. Yeah. So you could have several different boards that would all make sense for that pin. And, and so those are the boards you should create. So if you create a new piece of content and you feel like, oh, I don't have. I don't have the boards that really set this up. To explain what this pin is about, then it's time to create a new board.

Okay, Any other tips related to our boards? I mean, I've heard things like you need to have a lot of pins in your boards. Or what if we're just getting started out, you know, we're just getting started in Pinterest. Yeah, yeah. We need to be concerned with.

Well, years ago, what I used to do when setting up a new account is I would create secret boards, load them up with pins, and then set them public so that there was never a board without at least 20 pins on it. But the fact is people are generally not browsing your profile like, they're not looking at your board. So spending time to set up a board cover image is just not a good use of time spending time arranging the order of your boards. It really, unless you are very deliberately sending people to your Pinterest profile as a sales tool, that the profile itself, the way it is laid out, doesn't matter that much. Like, the things that matter are the keywords, the SEO factor. But as far as, like, board titles, all that stuff, how many pins are on each board, it doesn't really matter because people are generally finding you in search or in their home feed where they're seeing one pin at a time.

So that makes complete sense to me. So we need to just make sure that we're focusing on what really matters. And, you know, as we were talking through this, you know, so we're. We've talked about the pen, how to make it engaging, we've talked about.

We spoke. I don't think we've covered that entirely finished. No, what we covered is the image itself. So sometimes you're just going to have an image and you're just going to pin that. So that may work for you in this case. Like the basement redesign tips. Someone may see that in a search for basement redesign tips and think, oh, yes, I want that, I'm going to save that. But a lot of people find that they have to put text on image. So a blogger would. Right. Or a lot, of course, creators would have to give that extra context to. With your text on your image. Another thing to keep in mind is that, yes, Pinterest does read that text on your image as well. So while there are some people who can do just fine with no text on image, most of the time you need it, you want it, it's helpful. So I would suggest testing it and see which are more engaging, which get more clicks for you. But that text on image is super important and just a little beyond that, like a call to action on there. So for yours it could be something like get inspired now. Right. And that could be just text that could look like a button, it could have an arrow, it could, you know, just anything that kind of helps them move along that process. And Pinterest did a really cool study about what leads to certain actions. So adding a call to action on the image and in the Description led to 6% higher sales. So it's something you definitely want to experiment with.

So could you give us some more examples of a call to action? Assuming that, you know, a lot of people listening here, right. Are going to be driving somebody to their website and the opt in will be on their website.

Yeah. So you could put something like teach your dog to stay in five minutes. Maybe that's your lead magnet that gets people into your funnel, that gets them to sign up for your dog training course, you know, whatever it is that you're, that you're trying to teach people. So your pin would probably have a picture of a person and a dog, which is another thing that can build engagement. And then have a, like, it would say teach your dog to stay or yeah, you stay in five minutes or less. And then your call to action would be like, learn how or get started.

Mm.

Right. And then in your description, you would probably want to say something like watch the free, like sign up to watch the free video or sign up to grab the free download. That's especially important to specify that you have to sign up if you're going to promote that pin. Perfect. Yeah. So there are several things. So another thing that can really help with things like more sales is keeping your image consistent with your landing page. So a lot of people ask, well, wait a minute, if I have like five different pin images for one article, do I have to have all those images visible in my post or on my page? No, they're just looking more for like a consistency in theme or design. And there's nothing that says you can't try a little experiment every now and then. So in general you do want people to feel like, oh, I clicked on this image of like pastel glasses and I went to a page that sells pastel glasses. That's a good experience that leads to more sales. So for the example of a course creator, like if you showed a lady just kind of the classic idiot computer with flower on desk right in your pin image and then the image on the landing Page was like neon flowers. It's kind of off putting, destroys some of that trust there. It's not a great experience. So you do want to keep some consistency there. And that can lead to 13% higher sales, which also translates to things like higher signups.

Right. And you know, when we talk about this in the terms of sales funnels, I always, you know, mention you don't want to lose the scent. So that's exactly what you're referring to.

Yeah, Good way to put it. Yeah. Another thing that can lead to higher sales to the tune of 20% more, which, you know, who doesn't want that, is in your images and in your tucked on images to lean into seasonal events and everyday moments. So that's a fancy way to say, make it applicable for now for what people are thinking about now. So the holidays are really an easy example to understand. I think the harder one is when you talk about everyday moments. Well, what does that mean? So if you have a course about, like, how to dress for success as a millennial today, your image is going to be seasonal for what people are shopping for now. And your text on image might be like 10 springtime looks for the office, something like that. Right. So no matter what you do there, you can lean into that seasonality. It's obviously easier if it's like fashion or DIY things that are just super obviously seasonal. But you can instead think about what are people thinking about in general right now. So, like, right now people might be thinking about health and fitness. They might be thinking about their budget because tax time is coming up. Might be thinking about taking like a spring break, because people on Pinterest plan early for everything. So what can you do in your pin itself to appeal to people with that on their minds? And sometimes the best you can do is to go by color. So what I mean by that is I happened to notice over the summer that really bright, like, Caribbean colors were doing very well on Pinterest. And then as soon as fall was starting to come in, I saw more, like orangey colors start to do really well on Pinterest. So that's something that we're experimenting with now is even if we don't change the text on the image and it's the same exact content. Can you play into what people are thinking about now by just changing even the color of the pin that you're saving at this time? And that's where you can be always be seasonably applicable, even if you're not like, obviously seasonal business?

That's very interesting. So Valentine's day is coming up, so probably red, maybe pink hearts, Flowers.

Roses. Yeah. Nice. Very good. And then one more. And this, I mean, it probably could apply to courses. So including a price on your PIN itself can lead to 28% higher sales. So what I like about this is that now, especially if you're going to promote your pin, as soon as somebody clicks on the pin, you pay. So it used to be that someone would click on your pin, see more details, and then click to go to your website and then you'd pay there. Now it is the case that as soon as they click on your pin, they're loading your website underneath it and you've already paid. So what could happen is if you had a course that was, let's say, $15,000, you could end up advertising to a lot of people who would never pay that. Right. So adding that price on your PIN is kind of a way to pre qualify people.

So that's, that's very interesting. So what price points have. If we're adding the price there, have you seen anything like a $500 course might not explain to me. I'm trying to understand this a little bit more.

Yeah. So I think it would take some thought to really think about how you'd want to use it for a course. Some of the examples I've seen are like Everyplate or other meal planning services where it's like 18 meals for $3 and 33 cents, or like FabFitFun will have over $200 worth of goodies for only $39.99. So I, you know, and that's the thing is too, it's kind of risky to put a price on your pin because what if you change the price and then they get to your site from the old pin? So it's something to think about, knowing it can have a huge impact on sales. But think about the trade off there too.

Well, what I like about what you're saying is a lot of the course creators who are listening, they also have digital products that they might sell. Maybe it's a tripwire or, you know, something that's a little bit lower in, you know, that they may upsell to their course later.

That's a good point.

I definitely think that it would be worth kind of testing this from a marketing standpoint for some people. And I have some of these lower priced digital products that I could probably put the price point out there and.

Definitely that would be great. Yeah, I think that would be really smart. And another thing to consider too is if you are trying to directly sell your course from Pinterest and especially from Pinterest ads. That's really tough because a lot of times people are just discovering you on Pinterest, which is a great thing. But then again, to try to say to sell a fifteen hundred dollar course on Pinterest is a tough sell. So what you might want to do instead is get them on your email list, figure out what a lead is worth to you and then nurture them through your email.

Yes. And I definitely think that's something that everybody listening here would be, that would be one of their main goals. Let me ask you something because, and I do want to talk about this. As you know, we talked about this earlier, before we started recording this. I'm a huge fan of T and I've used it, I've used it for a while now and it has really helped drive organic traffic to my website that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. And you know, this has been through the Tailwind tribes and everything. So can you talk a little bit about Tailwind? Explain it a little bit? Some of the folks that are listening may not be familiar with it. Some of them may know what it is, but they've never used it. Can you talk about that a little bit more and some of the benefits of Tailwind?

Yeah, so Tailwind works for Pinterest and for Instagram. So it's basically publishing and some analytics for both platforms. So Pinterest specifically, it allows you to schedule that is like the number one time saving tool. So let's say you're creating five different images for this blog post. Or let's say you're creating 12 different blog post images, like one for every month and playing into seasonality. You do not want to keep a spreadsheet where you're trying to figure out which have I pinned and when did I pin it and all that stuff. So as you're batching your content, you're going to batch your images, you're going to batch your descriptions and titles. So you're going to want to batch your scheduling as well. And we talked about saving your pin to every relevant board. So one thing you can do with that is let's say you have, you have those 12 images, but a lot of those you want to go to more than one board. Well, you don't want them to go out every single day because that can look spammy to Pinterest. You want to space them out. So let's say we have this one pin, we know we want it to go to five Boards. So I could say, all right, I first want it to go to the most relevant board because I want to give Pinterest that really strong signal about what my pin is about. But then maybe a week later I want it to go to this other relevant board and then a week later to this other one. Again, those are things that you do not want to be managing in spreadsheets and with calendar reminders. Just get them all done at once. And then of course we have Tribes, which is where you can find like minded bloggers to help kind of supplement your content sharing on Pinterest, to keep things active and also you can find some people to partner with. So one of the things that surprised me about Tribes, and I was already working at Tailwind when they came out, but I just wasn't expecting to find so many cool bloggers that I'd never heard of before.

You're right, I have too. I've met people.

That's cool. And then there's Smart Loop, which can also reshare your content at appropriate intervals. So we talked about that seasonality. So if you have a pin that every year at a certain time tends to do really well, you can share it out again so that your new followers may see that in the following tab and other places. And it's just one of those things that like set it and not don't worry about it. Like you should go in and look and make sure that your, your pins are still performing. But it just takes a lot of that kind of mindless but annoying and easy to forget. Work off your plate and we automate it for you.

So you talked about looking at the performance of the pins and all of that is intelwind correct?

Yeah. So you can look at its pin inspector and you can look at certain dates of when things are pinned and you can clearly see like which instance of that pin brought in a certain number of engagements. So that's pretty cool. The other thing, I really like Smart Loop analytics because it's going to tell me like overall in all my smart loops, what's my repin rate? So am I getting at least one repin every time I share my pin? And then I can look at each loop itself and say, alright, the average repin right here is two repins every time the pin goes out. But then I'm looking at each individual pin in the loop and I'm seeing that some are at like four or five repins and some are at maybe like 0.2. And because I know that, oh, those point two, they're not very engaging. I'm going to take them out or I'm going to make a new image just so that I'm not constantly sharing things that is not engaging to my followers. Because Pinterest looks at that and determines, like how to distribute your content based on the engagement you're getting.

Very good. And I don't want to. We're about to run out of time, but I have one last question for you.

Okay.

Maybe we need to set up another topic in more detail, but.

Okay.

I know that some people are. Some of the folks listening here are interested in Pinterest ads. You know, Facebook and Instagram ads, you know, the cost per lead continues to ride. When should somebody consider or when do you think they may be ready for Pinterest ads to at least dip their toes in the water?

Now, part of the reason I say that is because on December 26, the competition for Pinterest ads drops like a stone. So before that, you have all the big brands buying up all the inventory. Even if you're not using the same targeting, it's really hard to get the impressions you want for the price you want. Right now, earlier in the year is the time to try advertising. Don't do like the just promote button. It's kind of like the boost button on Facebook, right? It might work, but you'll have better control if you go into the ad manager and just do a little simple targeting. Pinterest is not nearly as overwhelming as Facebook is when it comes to how to target. But I love them because I really like a bargain. And you can still get them on Pinterest depending on what industry you're in and you're targeting. But also when you promote a pin, even after you stop paying for that promotion, you're still getting benefits. So if I pay for a pin to be distributed, and because of that, I get 10,000 more views than I would have before, and I get 1000 repins that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Well, that thousand repins is going to result in more and more clicks, more and more repins that I never would have gotten. But I'm. After I stopped paying for the ad, I'm not paying for any of that. I'm not paying. If you see someone's repin of my promoted pin and you click on it.

And that's just amazing to me because I'm, you know, I work a lot with Facebook and Instagram ads, and I have a Pinterest ad running right now for my own personal business. And I love Pinterest. Ads. Something that in 2020, I definitely want to focus on more. For sure.

Yeah, I love them too. Yeah, and you have to be. Their, their review process is getting more and more stringent. So, you know, just be patient with that. If you get rejected, don't freak out. They will work with you to help you get it figured out. And don't feel bad. It happens to everybody.

Well, very good. Elisa, any last minute tips you want to give the course creators listening here today?

Yeah, I think that going forward this year especially, what you want to think about is fresh content. So Pinterest needs to keep people coming back to the platform and engaged. And if, if there isn't fresh content, well, who's gonna come back if it always looks the same? So when you create fresh content, that's what gets rewarded. And we're seeing that in real life examples. Just create a couple of new pins for the same piece of content and you can breathe new Pinterest life right into it.

And how often should we do that? So I might have, I think I have like 52 blog posts, if I remember correctly when I did my inventory. How often should we go back and repin those?

I mean, I would suggest rather than straight repinning all the time, just like create a new image for it. And maybe if you have 52, we'll just do one a week. Okay. Yeah, well, perfect.

And Elisa, thank you so much for joining us today and all the course creators out there. If you have any questions about Facebook or Instagram ads or setting up your online course funnel, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Facebook or Instagram. I hope you enjoyed the episode today. I would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.