Podcast appearances and mentions of alisa meredith

Ever wonder how a content marketer becomes a product marketing powerhouse?In this episode, we sit down with Alisa Meredith, a seasoned marketing professional with over 20 years of experience in content strategy and product marketing.Alisa shares her journey from running a marketing agency to creating and leading a production unit at Tailwind and refining her project management skills at Semrush. Along the way, she opens up about the challenges she's faced, offers advice for young women entering the marketing field, and discusses how she's embracing the future of AI.Known for her compelling storytelling, strong analytical skills, and expertise in content marketing, Alisa provides a candid look at her path from content creator to product marketing manager. Whether you're an aspiring marketer or a seasoned professional, this episode offers an inspiring and insightful glimpse into her evolution in the ever-changing digital landscape.Follow Alisa Meredith:LinkedIn: Alisa MeredithAdditional Links:SemrushChat GPTHubSpotPinterestLet's connect! Send us a message and say hi. It's the end!No it's not! There's more. There's always more. Every Tuesday at 5AM EST we release new audio and video episodes. Come find us!But wait! Explore a wealth of tips, tricks, and insights on our various social channels:

Welcome to the Simple and Smart SEO Show!

I have Brandon Gaille on the show from The Blogging Millionaire and RankIQ. Brandon has been teaching bloggers how to grow their traffic for years with his podcast. And now with his tool, he helps bloggers identify keyword opportunities to explode their businesses. Here are some of the topics we dive into: How a health crisis turned Brandon into professional blogger How he identified an opportunity for traffic, and started sharing about it How the key to traffic success is low competition keywords How RankIQ helps you identify these keywords Why you don't want to keyword stuff Why you don't want to spend time on posts you can't rank for If you are looking for rapid blog traffic growth, this episode is for you. Enjoy! Show Notes: MiloTreeCart MiloTree Pop-Up App Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes Leave a Podcast Review on iTunes MiloTree on TikTokMiloTree Clean Eating Kitchen The Blogging Millionaire Podcast RankIQ Brandon Gaille Catch My Party Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify Amazon Music Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes your might like: How a Paid Workshop Helps You Grow Your True Fans with Carrie Forrest Best Ways to Build Your SEO Traffic in 2022 with Casey Markee What Is This New SEO Surround Sound Strategy with Alisa Meredith? Join The Blogger Genius email list to get my 4 Favorite Tips from each episode!

In this episode, I'm interviewing SEO strategist, Casey Markee, about what you need to know to build your Google traffic in 2022. We dig into pressing SEO topics such as: The Google May Core Update The five factors that determine Google's search results The pros and cons of using AI writing tools Link building strategies Duplicate content Domain Authority And whether Google actually punishes bloggers for transgressions This episode will give you all the information you need in 2022 to grow your blog traffic with confidence. Enjoy! Show Notes: MiloTreeCart MiloTree Pop-Up App Google Analytics Cheatsheet Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes MiloTree on TikTokMiloTree Casey Markee Jasper RankIQ Copy AI Frase Writer Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify Amazon Music Intro 0:04 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I'm your host, Jillian Leslie. And I'm a serial entrepreneur, I founded Catch My Party, the MiloTree pop-up app and our new payment tool called MiloTreeCart to empower creators, like you to easily sell and get paid for digital products on the internet. Jillian Leslie 0:33 So, digital product is anything from a paid workshop, to a membership, to coaching to services, to eBooks, to digital downloads, if you have an audience and are not selling digital products directly to them, you are missing out on thousands of dollars in income. Jillian Leslie 2:20 MiloTreeCart is something you all should be using; especially you creators who want to tap into new income streams who have audiences and who are intimidated by complicated tech. Check it out milotreecart.com. Email me at jillian@milotree.com. I'd love to help you get set up. Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to: Get More Traffic with These Cutting Edge SEO Strategies + New Google Update with Casey Markee What Is This New SEO Surround Sound Strategy with Alisa Meredith? 5 Quick SEO Wins to Get You More Traffic with Paula Rollo Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

What Is this new SEO surround sound strategy? I've got my good friend, Alisa Meredith, back on the show to talk about it. Alisa now works at SEMrush, a tool used by online businesses for SEO and content marketing. The "surround sound strategy" is all about being where the conversation is already happening in your niche. You can use SEMrush to help you find opportunities, or you can DIY it yourself. The goal is to look for roundup content published by other blogs or websites about your niche that might mention your competitors, but not you. Then your job is to see if you can reach out to get yourself added. Ask yourself... Where are people already talking about what you talk about, and how find more ways to get in front of them? Show Notes: MiloTree Easy Payments Paid Workshop Idea Worksheet Join The Blogger Genius Newsletter MiloTree Pop-Up App Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes MiloTree on TikTok Alisa Meredith SEMrush Subscribe to the Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify   Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

What's so "pinteresting" about Pinterest? A lot! What if I told you that Pinterest can... - Reach engaged users looking for new ideas and products? Yes! - Ever heard of Pinterest drama? Nope! Because we don't do drama on Pinterest... it's all about you and your products! - Extend the life of your content from today to evergreen - Boost your videos! Pinners love videos, watching close to 1 billion videos a day on Pinterest. On this week's Social Media News Live, we've invited Pinterest expert, Alisa Meredith, to discuss the best practices and trends that are working on Pinterest.

Are you ready for the next big thing? Before you see it everywhere, you'll see it on Pinterest. Pinterest marketing expert, Alisa Meredith, joins Jeff and Grace for this week's Social Media News Live! We're covering Pinetest's prediction around the biggest consumer trends in 2022 and how you can use this info to reach new customers! We'll also talk about leveraging video on Pinterest to drive sales and how its user base is evolving to include more men and “novelty-seeking” Gen Z this year.

We had a great episode with Alisa Meredith about tools that help us with our Art Alisa does fluid art so her tools were more to help abstract art. Some of the tools we talked: - Chelsea Art Studio Lavender Brush Cleaner -Respirator, gloves -Baby oil -Min-Wax Pre Stain -The puffy 2000 -pink soap to clean acrylic brushes -indigo - liqui acrylic - Daler Rowney - liquitex iridescent bright gold - condiment cups - lyndy's gang pigment products -Deco Art Extreme Sheen 224 k gold - R & F oil paint sticks - Williamsburg oil paint Leave your voice message to the podcast https://www.2worldsart.com/podcast Thanks for listening check episodes notes at 2worldsart.com/blog . Connect with me on Instagram: Jana_2worlds https://www.instagram.com/jana_2worlds/ Sign up to my collectors club bit.ly/join2worldsart Subscribe to my Youtube 2wordsart.live

On this week's show, we talk to Alisa Meredith, Pinterest Expert and Content Marketer from www.alisameredith.com all about Understanding The Power of Pinterest.  The Social Media Talks Podcast is created to help business owners who want to learn more about Social Media Marketing, presented by Alan Hennessy Head of Digital at Kompass Media Alisa Meredith Biography. Alisa has been in marketing for over 20 years. She started in e-commerce website development and content marketing (before it was called content marketing). Soon, she was running a social media and blogging agency, which became a HubSpot partner agency.   Along the way she hosted several shows, including The Superheroes of Marketing where she got to interview marketing visionaries like Neil Patel. Alisa also has a live weekly show where she shares marketing tips and interviews smart professionals in the industry.  

Pinterest has undergone a few major changes lately, and the word on the street is, quality over quantity will get you favored these days. Pinterest expert and friend of the show, Alisa Meredith, stopped by to give us the low down on all the recent changes happening at Pinterest affecting marketers, including explaining why curating boards is a thing of the past, and why ‘idea pins' might just be your new best friend.

Today I'm discussing how and why to use Pinterest Ads with Alisa Meredith (formerly from Tailwind) You can find Alisa's info at https://alisameredith.com/ I help female entrepreneurs go from feeling overwhelmed with trying to grow their business to successfully booking their ideal client. As a marketing Strategist (specializing in Pinterest), I help them to use smart and easy marketings systems to make their life. job easier and I'd love to help you too! Free Resources (like repurposing content, a list of 80 Calls to Actions, and more): https://jenvazquezcoach.com/resources Pinterest Strategy Academy Membership: https://jenvazquez.thinkific.com What I use and free trial if possible (includes affiliate links where I make a small stipend if you choose to purchase): Tailwind Trial: https://jenvazquezcoach.com/tailwindtrial Pixifi (CRM): https://www.pixifi.com/?r=160b0a Cloudspot.io (galleries): https://cloudspot.io/?affiliate=8ce96b63-cbba-4a52-87b2-d40c18c095fd Find me: Website: https://jenvazquezcoach.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ1zWw82FpMqwic8f3WRFAg Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/jenvazquezcoach Private FB group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/jenvazquezcoach Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenvazquezcoach Email: jen@jenvazquez.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marketingstrategyacademy/message

There are different stages to growing a consulting business: the strategies you adopt when you're getting established can be different to those you use to scale later.  Several weeks ago I attended a marketing conference called The Uprising, an event run by Mark Schaefer. I spoke with many of the attendees and speakers. One of the people I met was Alisa Meredith, and when we spoke, she invited me to come on to her live stream to talk about growing a consulting business.  This is our conversation, which covers topics from referrals and positioning, to pricing and product ladders.  My thanks to Alisa for having me on her show, and allowing me to use it as a podcast episode here! “In terms of the number of clients that I need, I'm standing under the Niagara Falls with a small glass I need to fill up.  If there's somebody next to me filling their glass, it's not going to hurt me.” -- Alastair McDermott “If you're starting a consulting business, try to build up a nest egg of cash first. That gives you the power to say no to bad projects.  You've got to get yourself into the situation where you can say no to poor fit projects as quickly as possible.” -- Alastair McDermott

Do you sell products? Steal this strategy from Susan Bradley, ecommerce marketing expert. In this episode, we talk all about what goes into building a successful ecommerce strategy. We talk about product validation (which goes beyond asking your mom), finding your audience, how to talk to your customers in an authentic way, how to build excitement around your product, and what your metrics and conversion rates should really look like. We also talk about imposter syndrome, how building a company is hard work, and how the answer is always consistency. If you sell products or are thinking of starting (and you know I think this is a pillar of every successful online business today), don't miss this episode. Stop Giving Your Content Away for Free! Come to My Live Training! Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie. And I'm so happy you are here. I don't know if you can tell, but I have a smile on my face. And it's because David, my husband and partner and I have been so busy rolling out our new product called MiloTree Easy Payments. What I wanted to share was my why, why did we create this. And it's really because of you, because of my audience because of the creators that I interact with on a daily basis. So, I'm always so blown away by what people build and create and the content that they share. And there are two pain points that I continually hear creators struggle with, and one is how to monetize. They're giving so much away for free. And they're feeding the algorithms, but they don't have as much to show for it as they would like. And the second is that they have to deal with all these platforms. And that technology is tricky and difficult and frustrating. So, David and I said could we find a way to help creators monetize their audiences and what they know, by creating memberships. Teaching workshops, selling their services. And make it so easy for them to get paid to sell their offerings to manage their back-end businesses and make the technology lean and simple. On November 17th, Alisa Meredith and I are hosting a training for $10 to teach people how to set up paid workshops in under 60 minutes. And in order to set up a paid workshop, let's assume it's going to be an hour long teaching session. The only technology you need is Zoom, an email service provider like Mailchimp, or ConvertKit, or MailerLite and three, MiloTree Easy Payments. I would love it if you came to this workshop. In order to sign up, all you do is you go to workshop.milotreecart.com. Take a look at our sales page. This took me about 10 minutes to set up. And with your easy payments account, you will get one just like this and we'll host it for you. Just briefly how can a workshop move the needle for your business? One, you are monetizing your audience monetizing what you know instead of putting out so much free content. Two, you get to show up live for your community and hear what they're struggling with. So, you know what direction to move your business. Three, because the platform is so easy to use, you can experiment with memberships or coaching. And the best part again with you in mind is there's no monthly fee to use MiloTree Easy Payments. We charge a small transaction fee so we don't make money until you make money. This way we are 100% aligned. Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to: How To Grow a Successful Business as a One-Woman Show with Lisa Steele How To Figure Out What To Sell with Kaycee Geeding How to Win Selling on Shopify with Elle McCann Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Alisa Meredith is a Pinterest Product Specialist at Tailwind, a social media scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram that helps your content get real results in less time. She's also the founder of Alisa Meredith Marketing in which she delivers traffic and leads to businesses with content, social, and especially visual marketing. She believes sharing ideas for how Pinterest can grow a business is thrilling and loves helping businesses that don't have much time to spend on their marketing. In this episode, Alisa shares how we can use Pinterest for B2B marketing to drive growth predictably. Insights she shares include: Why Meredith considers Pinterest to be more of a search engine than a social network.Why should B2B businesses consider Pinterest marketingHow should businesses decide if Pinterest marketing is right for themHow Pinterest can help you meet your business objectives.What type of content Pinterest creators are adding to the platformWhether Pinterest followers really matterHow you should be thinking about story pins todayHow you should be divvying up your time creating content for PinterestHow to optimize for lead generationHow to grow your follower baseExamples of poor Pinterest B2B marketing and good Pinterest B2B marketing And whether repinning is still a thingand much much more ....

In this episode, with Emily Eggers from the food blog, Legally Healthy Blonde, we're talking about how to 10x your traffic using Facebook Groups. Over the last year, Emily grew her blog traffic from 1,000 sessions to 100,000 sessions by strategically targeting Facebook groups on niche food topics with millions of members. She figured out how to share her recipes in these groups, and optimize them for maximum engagement. And she's done this by only targeting 3-4 groups! Topics Emily and I discuss in this episode: How to target the right Facebook groups How to structure your posts for maximum engagement How often to post and when How to convert your Facebook traffic into email subscribers and affiliate sales How to work on SEO at the same time Ready to 10x your traffic? Don't miss this episode! Show Notes: “How to Get Paid for Your Knowledge” Workshop MiloTree MiloTree Easy Payments Free MiloTree Blog Post Checklist Legally Healthy Blonde Mediavine Food Bloggers Central Facebook Group Casey Markee Cooking with Keywords Course Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes Subscribe to the Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify Amazon Music Join our Nov. 17th Workshop to Learn How to Get Paid for What You Know Jillian Leslie 0:11 Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Jillian Leslie. And I want to invite you to a special workshop I'm hosting with my friend, Alisa Meredith, she's a marketing expert. And we are hosting a workshop to teach you how to set up a paid workshop in under two hours, using MiloTree Easy Payments. I've been asking in my Become A Blogger Genius Facebook group. By the way, if you are not a member, please go to Facebook and join. I've been asking people, if you could set up a paid workshop easily would you do it? And the answer I'm getting is a resounding yes. So Alisa and I decided to host this $10 workshop. So, we're doing a paid workshop to teach you how to run a paid workshop. We're going to go step-by-step it is much easier than you think it is. And I'll show you how to use MiloTree Easy Payments as the best and easiest way to get paid for it. What are the advantages? One, you start monetizing your audience. Two, you start learning from your audience. Three, you start to build out other products like other workshops or a membership just by doing it up. And four, this is going to give you the drive to get out there and just start. So, head to milotree.com/paidworkshop to get on my email list. And I will email you all of the details. It's going to be November 17th, at noon Central Time, but you're going to get a recording of the Zoom call afterwards. I'd love you to show up live but you do not have to. We're also going to give you a PDF that steps you through setting up your paid workshop. I think this is going to be super cool. I would love to see you there. So, head to Milotree.com/paidworkshop and you will get all of the details. Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to: Smart SEO Strategies To Get You More Traffic with Casey Markee (Rebroadcast) How a Facebook Group Can Catapult Your Business with Christina Jandali Why It's Worth Growing an Engaged Facebook Audience Right Now with Melanie Ferguson Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

In this episode, with my friend and marketing expert, Alisa Meredith, we're talking the truth about courses vs. memberships. If you've thought of creating one or both, you don't want to miss the episode. I think you'll be surprised by some of our conclusions. Topics we discuss in this episode: Yes, there is a group of people willing to pay your for your expertise, call these your raving fans Setting up a membership or workshop is easier than you think Course are tricky and get outdated People join memberships for the content, but stay for the community People are more forgiving if you show up live We all want connection! Less is more! Please join the workshop ($10) on Nov. 17th Alisa and I are hosting, showing you how to set up a paid membership in under two hours. It's going to be fun! If you're looking for new ways to monetize your blog and online business, I think you'll find this episode very interesting! Show Notes: MiloTree MiloTree Easy Payments Alisa Meredith MiloTree Easy Payments Workshop Catch My Party Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group Free MiloTree Blog Post Checklist 5 Secrets Successful Bloggers Already Know Cheat Sheet All Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes Subscribe to the Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Stitcher YouTube Spotify Amazon Music   Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to: How to Start a Membership to Inspire Others with Roland Denzel How to Grow a Successful Membership by Loving Your Members with Amy Sadler How to Set Up a Paid Membership Program with Ease with Melissa Lanz Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Alisa Meredith talks with Jason Barnard about how to use Pinterest for B2B marketing. Alisa Meredith is a Product Marketer, Pinterest Nerd, fluid painter, and a cat person. She believes in the power of visual marketing and is in love with Pinterest advertising.  Over 20 years in the marketing industry, she has achieved a lot: she ran a social media and blogging agency that became a HubSpot partner agency, she was a Content Marketer at Tailwind, and has hosted several shows, including The Superheroes of Marketing where she interviews smart professionals in the industry like Neil Patel. Today, she has a weekly live show where she shares incredible marketing tips. You might imagine that Pinterest is a bad choice to promote your B2B company, but in this groovy episode, the delightful Alisa Meredith explains to Jason Barnard that is an incorrect assumption ;) She starts by sharing the B2C industries that work best on this highly visual platform, and then goes on to mention some of the B2B industries that work on Pinterest, such as finance - a topic you would not imagine performing on a visual platform!  Alisa explains why: Pinterest is about planning for your best future. Over the 40 minutes, she shares a multitude of juicy tips and insights: the right content marketing approach for infographics, actionable tips for idea pins, dealing with keywords, tagging and linking for your pins, and commenting on the pins of your target market which can bring visibility for your brand, follows to your account and visits to your site ;) This is a super marvelous chat full of fun, tips & tricks, and experiments. Tune in! What you'll learn from Alisa Meredith 00:00 Alisa Meredith and Jason Barnard00:17 Alisa Meredith's Brand SERP and videos vertical03:18 What works best on Pinterest?05:20 How does B2C work on Pinterest?08:23 Everyday shopping pins on Pinterest09:23 Pinterest audience insights. Which interesting topic comes first?10:54 Pinterest is about planning for your best future12:12 An infographic trick to drive traffic to your website13:45 Pinterest user demographics have changed16:03 Stories (ideas) that last forever19:45 Examples of B2B pins 25:13 How to deal with keywords on Pinterest?29:39 Tagging and linking 31:11 User personality types on different social networks32:27 Why commenting on idea pins is powerful33:35 The Pinterest algorithm37:05 Planning and creating pins for B2B This episode was recorded live on video October 12th 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Alisa Meredith talks with Jason Barnard about how to use Pinterest for B2B marketing. Alisa Meredith is a Product Marketer, Pinterest Nerd, fluid painter, and a cat person. She believes in the power of visual marketing and is in love with Pinterest advertising.  Over 20 years in the marketing industry, she has achieved a lot: she ran a social media and blogging agency that became a HubSpot partner agency, she was a Content Marketer at Tailwind, and has hosted several shows, including The Superheroes of Marketing where she interviews smart professionals in the industry like Neil Patel. Today, she has a weekly live show where she shares incredible marketing tips. You might imagine that Pinterest is a bad choice to promote your B2B company, but in this groovy episode, the delightful Alisa Meredith explains to Jason Barnard that is an incorrect assumption ;) She starts by sharing the B2C industries that work best on this highly visual platform, and then goes on to mention some of the B2B industries that work on Pinterest, such as finance - a topic you would not imagine performing on a visual platform!  Alisa explains why: Pinterest is about planning for your best future. Over the 40 minutes, she shares a multitude of juicy tips and insights: the right content marketing approach for infographics, actionable tips for idea pins, dealing with keywords, tagging and linking for your pins, and commenting on the pins of your target market which can bring visibility for your brand, follows to your account and visits to your site ;) This is a super marvelous chat full of fun, tips & tricks, and experiments. Tune in! What you'll learn from Alisa Meredith 00:00 Alisa Meredith and Jason Barnard00:17 Alisa Meredith's Brand SERP and videos vertical03:18 What works best on Pinterest?05:20 How does B2C work on Pinterest?08:23 Everyday shopping pins on Pinterest09:23 Pinterest audience insights. Which interesting topic comes first?10:54 Pinterest is about planning for your best future12:12 An infographic trick to drive traffic to your website13:45 Pinterest user demographics have changed16:03 Stories (ideas) that last forever19:45 Examples of B2B pins 25:13 How to deal with keywords on Pinterest?29:39 Tagging and linking 31:11 User personality types on different social networks32:27 Why commenting on idea pins is powerful33:35 The Pinterest algorithm37:05 Planning and creating pins for B2B This episode was recorded live on video October 12th 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Alisa Meredith talks with Jason Barnard about how to use Pinterest for B2B marketing. Alisa Meredith is a Product Marketer, Pinterest Nerd, fluid painter, and a cat person. She believes in the power of visual marketing and is in love with Pinterest advertising.  Over 20 years in the marketing industry, she has achieved a lot: she ran a social media and blogging agency that became a HubSpot partner agency, she was a Content Marketer at Tailwind, and has hosted several shows, including The Superheroes of Marketing where she interviews smart professionals in the industry like Neil Patel. Today, she has a weekly live show where she shares incredible marketing tips. You might imagine that Pinterest is a bad choice to promote your B2B company, but in this groovy episode, the delightful Alisa Meredith explains to Jason Barnard that is an incorrect assumption ;) She starts by sharing the B2C industries that work best on this highly visual platform, and then goes on to mention some of the B2B industries that work on Pinterest, such as finance - a topic you would not imagine performing on a visual platform!  Alisa explains why: Pinterest is about planning for your best future. Over the 40 minutes, she shares a multitude of juicy tips and insights: the right content marketing approach for infographics, actionable tips for idea pins, dealing with keywords, tagging and linking for your pins, and commenting on the pins of your target market which can bring visibility for your brand, follows to your account and visits to your site ;) This is a super marvelous chat full of fun, tips & tricks, and experiments. Tune in! What you'll learn from Alisa Meredith 00:00 Alisa Meredith and Jason Barnard00:17 Alisa Meredith's Brand SERP and videos vertical03:18 What works best on Pinterest?05:20 How does B2C work on Pinterest?08:23 Everyday shopping pins on Pinterest09:23 Pinterest audience insights. Which interesting topic comes first?10:54 Pinterest is about planning for your best future12:12 An infographic trick to drive traffic to your website13:45 Pinterest user demographics have changed16:03 Stories (ideas) that last forever19:45 Examples of B2B pins 25:13 How to deal with keywords on Pinterest?29:39 Tagging and linking 31:11 User personality types on different social networks32:27 Why commenting on idea pins is powerful33:35 The Pinterest algorithm37:05 Planning and creating pins for B2B This episode was recorded live on video October 12th 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Simon Cox talks with Jason Barnard about it's OK to be a webmaster. Simon Cox is a jack of all trades (and proud of it) - technical SEO consultant, webmaster, designer, typographer, developer, blogger, model maker. In this fantastic episode, Simon and Jason Barnard talk about the idea of leveraging multi-skills and high-level understanding for project oversight in the web development process. Simon explains what it means to be a webmaster and why companies, either big or small, need a generalist. Jason responds with a fun analogy comparing ultra-experts to a wonky table, something you definitely should watch out for. They go on to exchange stories and insights into why it might be a good move to be a generalist and not be dragged into specialisation. The roles and opportunities for a generalist are probably more varied and interesting than you imagine. Simon shares his experience with the Badger Trust, but also how he “killed” the Linotype machine operators' jobs by being one of the first Mac desktop publishing experts in the UK. Plus you'll also get his predictive insight of where the ultra experts in the fields will end up if they don't take some time to get bits of experience from other fields. As always, the show ends with passing the baton…Simon groovily hands over to next week's stunning guest, Alisa Meredith. What you'll learn from Simon Cox 00:00 Simon Cox and Jason Barnard00:48 Simon Cox's Brand SERP04:47 What was the role of a webmaster in the 1990s?10:43 Why we need webmasters today more than ever12:54 Where a webmaster really shows their value16:26 Is the role of webmaster only appropriate for small businesses?17:46 The problem with being an ultra-specialist SEO21:55 The foundational skills a generalist SEO needs23:52 Knowing where to look is more important than knowing26:56 Dangers of over-specialisation in SEO30:53 Example: Simon explains his role at The Badger Trust36:06 Variety is the spice of life… even in SEO41:43 Passing the Baton: Simon Cox to Alisa Meredith Helpful Resources: SimonCox.com This episode was recorded live on video October 05th 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

Simon Cox talks with Jason Barnard about it's OK to be a webmaster. Simon Cox is a jack of all trades (and proud of it) - technical SEO consultant, webmaster, designer, typographer, developer, blogger, model maker. In this fantastic episode, Simon and Jason Barnard talk about the idea of leveraging multi-skills and high-level understanding for project oversight in the web development process. Simon explains what it means to be a webmaster and why companies, either big or small, need a generalist. Jason responds with a fun analogy comparing ultra-experts to a wonky table, something you definitely should watch out for. They go on to exchange stories and insights into why it might be a good move to be a generalist and not be dragged into specialisation. The roles and opportunities for a generalist are probably more varied and interesting than you imagine. Simon shares his experience with the Badger Trust, but also how he “killed” the Linotype machine operators' jobs by being one of the first Mac desktop publishing experts in the UK. Plus you'll also get his predictive insight of where the ultra experts in the fields will end up if they don't take some time to get bits of experience from other fields. As always, the show ends with passing the baton…Simon groovily hands over to next week's stunning guest, Alisa Meredith. What you'll learn from Simon Cox 00:00 Simon Cox and Jason Barnard00:48 Simon Cox's Brand SERP04:47 What was the role of a webmaster in the 1990s?10:43 Why we need webmasters today more than ever12:54 Where a webmaster really shows their value16:26 Is the role of webmaster only appropriate for small businesses?17:46 The problem with being an ultra-specialist SEO21:55 The foundational skills a generalist SEO needs23:52 Knowing where to look is more important than knowing26:56 Dangers of over-specialisation in SEO30:53 Example: Simon explains his role at The Badger Trust36:06 Variety is the spice of life… even in SEO41:43 Passing the Baton: Simon Cox to Alisa Meredith Helpful Resources: SimonCox.com This episode was recorded live on video October 05th 2021 Recorded live at Kalicube Tuesdays (Digital Marketing Livestream Event Series). Watch the video now >>

I had a great conversation with Alisa about this technique new to me called Dutch Pour, Alisa is a product manager and former manager at Tailwind a Pinterest scheduler. Get in Contact with Alisa: Her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisammeredith/ Her Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/alisammeredith Her You Tube with Pinterst Tips: https://www.youtube.com/c/AlisaMeredith Our Blog https://www.2worldsart.com/blog Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jana_2worlds Join our Newsletter https://bit.ly/join2worldsart You tube https://www.youtube.com/c/Jana2Worlds

Are you posting on Pinterest and not getting any traction? Level-up your Pinterest strategy to get more saves and clicks on your pins, leading to more traffic to your blog or website. Join us and Alisa Meredith, Marketing Manager at Tailwind, as we discuss tips to get more engagement on Pinterest. You'll learn: what Pinterest users are looking for how to optimize your pins so they show up on search what Pinterest thinks is spammy and will get you suspended To watch a video of this conversation visit The Blogger Union YouTube Channel. Want to be part of the live audience during our next episode? Register to become a member at thebloggerunion.com/register and you'll receive email notifications for upcoming webinars, in-person events, and other opportunities. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thebloggerunion/support

Want to promote your live show and podcast? Have you thought about using Pinterest? In today's show, the fabulous Alisa Meredith is going to show us how to use Pinterest as a powerful part of our live video marketing. We'll be looking at promoting our live shows and the replay as well as podcasts.  Alisa is a Pinterest Product Specialist and Marketing Manager at Tailwind. A sought-after speaker and teacher on the topics of Pinterest marketing and Pinterest ads, she's spoken at Social Media Marketing World, Agents of Change, and appeared on The Art of Paid Traffic and Social Pros podcasts. She's run a digital agency since 2005 which now focuses primarily on Pinterest ads. She lives and paints in coastal North Carolina with Pepe the couch potato Cavapoo, and more cats than she'd like to admit to. Download my live video confidence guide and get notified when I next go live → https://confident.live/subscribe (https://confident.live/subscribe) (

Here's how to create content for Pinterest so you can reach a new audience and drive traffic to your site. With my special guest, Pinterest expert Alisa Meredith, we're covering: How to figure out the right kind of content to get results The simple process to turn one piece of content like a blog into 10 pins to share on Pinterest. The tool you can use to create pins quickly and easily that can outperform even professional designers' graphics. People used to share the same pin over and over again. It used to work. Here's why you need to stop now. How to create pins in less than two minutes with the potential to get more than 300% more engagement. Why it's important to stop worrying about followers Why you're sitting on a gold mine if you've been creating content elsewhere Game on – getting my groove back on Pinterest – and how you can follow along.

If you're not sure how to use Pinterest for business you're in good company – lots of people feel that way. Pinterest expert Alisa Meredith joins me to share all her top tips for how to make Pinterest work for your business. And to bust a few myths about the different niches you'll find there. It's a much bigger opportunity than most people realise! In this episode, Alisa shares her advice on how to use Pinterest for business, including: The results her very first Pinterest client is still getting – five years on! The results I'm still getting from using Tailwind for Pinterest even though I haven't been active for a couple of years. Who should be on Pinterest (spoiler alert there are some surprises, like sport being in the list of top interest categories and there's one other ‘surprise' top one as well). The search habits of Pinterest users that make it possible for small businesses to compete with the big brands. The most important thing to consider if you want to be ‘found' via search in Pinterest. How to create content that will draw potential customers to your website. How to avoid looking like you're ‘going in for a kiss at the beginning of the first date' on Pinterest. The important differences between marketing a physical product and marketing services or digital products on Pinterest. How Pinterest is becoming more social as a platform. The new opportunity emerging that opens up Pinterest for people who thought they'd ‘left it too late'.

In this episode, your host, Ben Cummings speaks with Tailwind's Alisa Meredith about helping people plan, create, and post to their social media, the untapped potential of Pinterest, utilizing the power of Pinterest, and more. Check out Tailwind at https://www.tailwindapp.com/

If you think Pinterest doesn't drive traffic to your website, think again.

Have you considered using Pinterest to grow your business? The power of Pinterest is in the platform's ability to reach people long before they know what they want—get your ideas out there early and you'll become part of their planning! In this episode of the ROI Online Podcast, Pinterest product specialist and marketing manager, Alisa Meredith shares everything you should know about Pinterest, how to use it for your business, and learning how to make money from it.Alisa is currently Pinterest Product Specialist at Tailwind, a social media scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram that helps your content get real results in less time. She's also the founder of Alisa Meredith Marketing in which she delivers traffic and leads to businesses with content, social, and especially visual marketing. She believes sharing ideas for how Pinterest can grow a business is thrilling and loves helping small businesses that don't have much time to spend on their marketing.Using Pinterest can help you reach different audiences, and with the right strategy you can get Pinterest's 416 million users to discover your best content and click through to your site.Among other things, Alisa and Steve discussed:When and why Alisa decided to plant her flag on PinterestHer experience working at Tailwind as a Pinterest product specialistWhat Pinterest is actually aboutHow to use Pinterest to grow your businessPosting on PinterestHow you can make money on PinterestWhether Pinterest is a real social mediaWhat it takes to grow your followers on this platformYou can learn more about Alisa here:Follow Alisa on LinkedInFollow Alisa on InstagramFollow Alisa on TwitterYou can learn more about Tailwind here:https://www.tailwindapp.com/Read the books mentioned in this podcast:The Golden Toilet by Steve BrownThinking of starting your own podcast? Buzzsprout's secure and reliable posting allows you to publish podcasts online. Buzzsprout also includes full iTunes support, HTML5 players, show statistics, and WordPress plugins. Get started using this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card and to help support our show!Support the show (https://cash.app/$stevemfbrown)

This is episode 147 of the Pam Sowder Podcast, with your host, Pam Sowder! Pam has over 2 decades of field and corporate experience and was voted one of the most influential women in direct selling. She helps match the daily needs of distributors to everyday life challenges. Today, Pam is joined by an extremely exciting guest — the Pinterest Pro herself, Alissa Meredith! Alisa is a huge believer in the power of visual marketing and has seen for herself the massive transformations that take place when a business utilizes Pinterest. In this episode, Alisa shares all of her Pinterest tips, tricks, and knowledge so you can leverage it to increase your sales, attract new leads, and grow your audience! She shares how Pinterest can work closely with your content marketing, how you can use Pinterest in conjunction with the other social media platforms you are currently leveraging, how to network more effectively using Pinterest, and how to be as effective as possible with your pins! If you’ve never thought to use Pinterest before, this is a not-to-miss episode to learn all about how truly powerful this tool can be!   Key Takeaways [:30] About today’s conversation with Alisa Meredith! [1:37] About Alisa and how her interest in Pinterest began! [3:03] How to draw in leads via Pinterest. [4:30] Alisa speaks about a client she has had and how Pinterest elevated their business. [6:06] Alisa’s Do’s and Do Not’s for those using Pinterest in the nutrition industry. [7:00] How to use Pinterest in conjunction with the other social media platforms you use. [8:00] Alisa suggests some ideas for pins to create on Pinterest. [9:30] The key to pinning success on Pinterest. [11:06] Where you should start if you’re new to the platform. [12:47] About Pam’s book, Rich Girl Poor Girl. [13:09] Other platforms and tools to keep in mind outside of Pinterest. [15:49] The importance of consistency. [16:29] How to network without ‘doing the work’ (and see massive results!) [18:35] Alisa highlights some current trends she is seeing. [19:51] How Tailwind makes pin creation faster, easier, and more successful. [20:33] Alisa gives some recommendations and advice to the busy mom entrepreneur who wants to be a rising star in her company. [23:04] Weighing the pros and cons of using Facebook and Clubhouse. [24:24] Alisa gives some final key pieces of advice on Pinterest and why you want to be utilizing it for content marketing. [27:38] A cool thing that Pinterest does annually: Pinterest Predicts, and how it can help you. [29:30] Pam thanks Alisa Meredith for joining the podcast!   Mentioned in this Episode It Works Alisa Meredith’s Website @AlisaMMeredith on Twitter @AlisaMMeredith on Instagram @AlisaMMeredith on Pinterest Tailwind on Youtube @TailwindApp on Twitter Rich Girl Poor Girl: How to Become the Rich Girl You Were Always Meant to Be, by Pam Sowder Clubhouse Trends.Pinterest.com Pinterest Predicts 2021   Continue on your Adventure Find more episodes on PamSowder.com/Listen Reach out to her at PamSowder.com/Connect   Reach out on Social Media! Follow Pam @ItWorksPam on Twitter — Tweet her and use #askpam #pamsowder!  

What's working on Pinterest in 2021? Isn't that the question we are all asking ourselves? I've got Alisa Meredith from Tailwind back on the show (her fifth appearance), to share what their internal data crunchers have discovered, based on their Tailwind user base. Given how Pinterest is constantly changing, Alisa's insights are extremely helpful as we all fine tune our own Pinterest strategies. Today we discuss: What type of content Pinterest creators are adding to the platform Whether Pinterest followers really matter (yes, they do!) How you should be thinking about story pins today How you should be divvying up your time creating content for Pinterest And whether repinning is still a thing! If you want the most up-to-date info on Pinterest this is your episode! Show Notes: MiloTree Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group My 4 Biggest Takeaways Newsletter The Blogger Genius Podcast Episodes Catch My Party Tailwind Tailwind Create Tailwind PDF Pinterest Creator Festival Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy… If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you. Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we'd love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Find your best CRM for sales for free here. Get all of the notes and links for every episode of The Sales Podcast. Overcome your toughest sales objections with these sales training flashcards. Get a signed copy of Wes's book here. Grow your sales with this on-demand video series, Make Every Sale. Know your sales numbers with this free Sales Calculator. Connect with Wes: Twitter LinkedIn Instagram Facebook

On this week's episode of the Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast, we chat about Pinterest opportunities in home building with Alisa Meredith, Pinterest Product Specialist and Marketing Manager at Tailwind. She shares a bunch of tips and tricks on how to implement Pinterest in your home builder marketing plan. Show Notes: https://www.buildermarketingpodcast.com/episodes/59-pinteresting-your-way-to-selling-home-alisa-meredith

Do you know there are nearly one billion video views every day on Pinterest? Or that Pinterest users are 2.6x more likely to purchase after viewing brand video content on the platform? Alisa Meredith, Pinterest Product Specialist and Marketing Manager at Tailwind, joins us on this week's Social Media News Live to talk about Pinterest's newest marketing tools, video ad placements, and what's ahead on the product road map.

In this podcast episode, I chat with Alisa Meredith who is the Content Marketing Manager at Tailwind about 2020 Pinterest tips and trends. Are you using Pinterest in your business? Want to know some of the latest trends (e.g. video)? Curious about how SEO works on Pinterest? Wondering if you should focus on YouTube or Pinterest? Interested in learning about Tailwind and how it can help expand your reach? Specifically, we discuss: The difference between YouTube and Pinterest and why to consider using both in your content marketing strategy Using video on Pinterest and how it works How your prospects search on Pinterest and things to consider when creating your content Hashtags, call to action and tips for creating an engaging, clickable pin SEO and how it works on Pinterest (hint: you may change the way you create your pins!) Why to consider Pinterest ads in 2020 Links mentioned in this episode: ✅ Research Pinterest Treds: https://trends.pinterest.com/ Follow Destini on social media: ➡️Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/destinicopp/ ➡️LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/destinicopp/ ➡️Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/destinicopp/ ➡️Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/destinicopp/ ➡️Episode show notes: https://destinicopp.com/podcast/38 If you love our podcast we would LOVE a review. Here's how to leave a rating or review for a podcast from your iPhone or iPad: https://destinicopp.com/podcast/podcast-rating-and-review-in-itunes Thanks so much for your support! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/destini-copp/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/destini-copp/support

Today, I have my friend, Monica Froese from Redefining Mom on the show. She will be sharing all things promoted pins and how to make promoted pins work for you. We talk about not only why it might make sense to pay for Pinterest Promoted Pins, but we break it down and share how Monica promotes her course using Pinterest and Facebook advertising. Why Advertise On Pinterest? Monica believes that advertising serves very different purposes from one social media platform to another. The first thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about Pinterest ads, aka Promoted Pins, is whether or not your demographic is even on Pinterest.  Pinterest is mostly women, mostly in the US, and mostly millennials. If your target audience is older men, you're probably not going to find them on Pinterest. It's important to understand the difference between Pinterest and social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram. When you open Facebook, you do not hope to be served an ad about wedding planning. But if you are actively wedding planning, you will most likely be served an ad about that, simply because their targeting and retargeting strategies are the best out there. With Pinterest, you come with a problem, and you're proactively searching for the solution. When you open your Pinterest app, you come in with a buyer's mindset. You have a problem, you want a solution, and you're ready to pay for it. Will Promoted Pins Increase Sales? It's important to note that an ad on any platform won't solve a broken system or a broken funnel. If your product isn't selling organically, ads are not going to fix that problem. It's important to make sure your product sells from the platform that you're going to be promoting on. If you can't get any sales from Pinterest organically, you should not dive into Pinterest ads. You need to prove your product organically and build a relationship with your audience before you just jump into Pinterest ads. If you have proven your product, then you can even sell it to a cold audience on Pinterest. How to Market to a Cold Audience A cold audience is one that has no familiarity with you or what you sell. They have not interacted with you in any way. A warm audience is someone who has seen you or your product somewhere online. They have had an interaction with you. Most marketers are going to tell you to only target a warm audience; that a warm audience is going to convert better into monetary returns. On Pinterest, people are looking for a solution to their problem, so if they see a solution to their problem, whether they know that person or not, they are more willing to buy the service. They are not looking for someone they know, they are looking for answers. Warming Up An Audience to Get Them to Buy The caveat to selling to cold audiences on Pinterest is that the higher priced your product, the less likely a cold audience will buy it. The solution to this problem is to warm up your audience. Help them get to know you. There are several ways to do this, but Monica shared her favorite strategy with us. Strategy to Sell to a Warm Audience Run an ad on Pinterest People click on your ad and go to a landing page on your site You offer a freebie on the landing page You now have their email address Send an email with one of your products at a reduced price Add that person to your automated email list Nurture that relationship and turn them into a warm audience Pinterest is e-commerce focused and mostly on lower-priced products. So, Monica focuses on funneling those types of products to her audience. And then, when she wants to nurture for a higher-priced product, she focuses on building her email list from Pinterest. How to Get Email Subscribers From Pinterest Keep in mind that Pinterest is content driven. Most bloggers drive their ads to a blog post where they ask people to sign up for their email list. Monica turned that strategy on its head by driving people to a landing page through her ads. And then she uses "tripwires" once they've signed up for her email list to get them to make a purchase. Tripwires are an easy way to get people to buy from you immediately by reducing the price of the product for a limited amount of time. Pinterest Ads for Pageviews - Does it Make Sense? The question isn't whether you should want to drive page views, it's why do you want to drive page views? You have to understand your strategy before you promote it. It's not about increasing your page views; it's about what you are doing with those page views? If you're being paid by a brand to promote them, it's worth it to spend some money promoting your pins, so you get more page views. Look at how much money you're generating, and make sure it makes sense to be putting money behind promoting pins. If you have a funnel that you know works, page views can be very helpful if your strategy is to get those people into your funnel. Dig into your analytics, to know whether what you're doing is working or not. Monica's Courses Monica's Pinterest Ads course, Pin Practical Promotions, is open for enrollment through June 10, 2019. If the course isn't open for enrollment when you check it out, Monica offers a free course called Pin Practical Ads which is a great way to get started on your journey with Pinterest Ads. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp Intro 5:23 Why Advertise On Pinterest? 10:20 Will Promoted Pins Increase Sales? 10:25 Marketing to a Cold Audience 18:17 Warming Up An Audience 27:15 Email Subscribers From Pinterest 35:16 Pinterest Ads for Page Views 40:58 Monica's Courses Read the podcast transcript HERE:   TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE  Pinterest users are ready to pay for a solution to their problem. You must prove your product is viable organically before promoting on Pinterest. If you are selling higher priced products, try getting people to sign up for your email list so you can warm them up to a purchase. Most users won't buy a higher priced product straight from your Pinterest ad. Before paying for ads to drive page views, know why you want more page views. More Blogger Genius Episodes You'll Like? #030: The Easiest Ways to Make Money as a Blogger with Monica Froese (Part 2) #029: How to Start a New Business When You're A New Mom with Monica Froese (Part 1) #019: How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith    

Pinterest continues to make changes to their platform for the good of the user. The latest update is video. Yes, you can now upload video pins to Pinterest. Listen to this episode to learn how to get traffic from video on Pinterest. Today I'm talking about Pinterest and video with my guest, Kristen McDonnell. She has a very successful Youtube channel, Studio Knit, where she teaches people how to knit. Her Youtube channel has over 90K subscribers, and she has published over 300 videos. Kristin is sharing what she's discovered on Pinterest with video and how to succeed. Knitting A Business Together Kristin's background is in marketing and communications. One of her hobbies is knitting. In January of 2014, she started her YouTube channel to offer better quality videos to teach knitting. Kristin was working full time, and after a couple of months on YouTube, she was signed on by a company for her videos. How to Do Video on Pinterest While it seems like video on Pinterest has good reach, many people are not seeing people click through to their sites. That has not been Kristin's experience however. Kristin has been focusing on video with Pinterest since December and she has seen amazing results. Out of her top 20 pins that are driving traffic, 18 of them are videos. Why You Should Start Experimenting With Video on Pinterest Kristin makes her videos for herself on her own time. Pinterest's three goals this year are IPO, video, and creators. If Pinterest identifies video as a priority, it's something you want to take seriously as a marketer. Monetizing Her Knitting Business About 50% of Kristin's income is from her website ad revenue. She uses MediaVine as her ad network. At MediaVine, they are very interested in video. Kirstin can track her RPM, (revenue per thousand) on YouTube and her blog. The money she's making per view is higher from people watching videos on her blog versus from YouTube. It's another reason Kristin is pulling back from focusing solely on YouTube. She makes more money driving people to her site. YouTube ads, Facebook videos, Amazon affiliates are all sources of income for Kristin. Kristin also sells digital products, such as her knitting patterns. Getting Click Throughs Kristin is going through her video library and re-editing everything specifically for Pinterest. A lot of people are posting videos that were made for a different social media platform, but the vertical video is doing better for Kristin. Pinterest is clear that for the static videos, they want 2x3  size videos. Kristin has lots of horizontal and square videos, but she's putting in the work to give Pinterest what it wants. Kristin will use a video with a static photo under the video, showing the final product. The most popular tool for making videos is called Filmora. It is a good way to get started editing videos for Pinterest. Preferred Video Format on Pinterest Kristin doesn't just use a static image with a video underneath. One simple video you can make is using a static photo, and having it move around. You can add some text over it, and just have the photo moving for extra depth. Kristin's best-performing image begins with a static photo of a piece of knitting and ends with a short video of her hands knitting. Kristin's videos range from 15-30 seconds. They're just long enough to entice people to repin or click through to her site. Kristin has done longer videos, about three minutes with her talking, but for the most part she has short, silent video. You need a call to action in your videos to give people something to respond to. Adding Videos To Pinterest To add a video to Pinterest, you just download the file and upload it like you would with a picture. Videos cannot be scheduled through Tailwind as of right now. Pinterest does have a scheduler. You can schedule up to 30 videos, but it seems a bit glitchy after 25. Kristin uses an Excel spreadsheet to make sure her videos are going to the right boards at the right time intervals. When Kristin is scheduling videos, she pulls up the website, and once the video is on Pinterest, she can add the click through, just like with a photo pin. Find your video on your desktop, add the title and description, your keywords, and hashtags. Kristin puts out three to four videos a day. Most are old pins that she is pinning to a new board. Sharing Videos Elsewhere Kristin will take the vertical videos she created and put them on Facebook, where they are performing very well. You could also take those videos and share them onto your Instagram stories or IGTV, because they are both vertical views. Using MiloTree For Blog Growth MiloTree is one of the very first things that Kristin did when she began to be intentional about growing her blog. She has had it since the fall of 2016. Kristin immediately started using her MiloTree Pinterest pop-up, and then after YouTube was added, and she began using that. Last week after listening to a podcast episode about Instagram, Kristin went to MiloTree and also got our pop-up for Instagram to grow her followers. The newest popup is for Etsy. It takes people from your blog to your Etsy shop. Kristin is also just starting to use that one. Kristin only just began focusing on Pinterest about two years ago. When she started using tactics from the Simple Pin Podcast, her website exploded over a short period of time. Since then she has been able to quit her job and move to full-time entrepreneur. Because of the MiloTree app, Kristin went from 0 to around 80K new followers. Paying For Ads on Pinterest Kristin promotes her blog on Pinterest, but once they're on her site, they can see all the other avenues she has, and products she offers. Pinterest ads are interesting because even though you stop paying for them, they continue to promote your pins. Kristin has put some money into a video pin to see what happens, and she is getting good return on that investment. Before, it was a long term game, but now videos are giving returns so much faster because Pinterest is promoting them above all else. Riches Are In the Niches People want to do so much, but I want to encourage you to go deep on the one thing you are passionate about. Kristin is the perfect example of that. She found her sweet spot and has dedicated her focus to that. Pinterest has invited Kristin to Knit Con, which is an employee conference. Kristin is going to Pinterest to teach a knitting class at the conference. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP Intro 2:21 Knitting A Business Together 10:45 Video for Pinterest 12:00 Process For Creating Videos 12:58 Monetizing On Knitting 17:53 Getting Click-Throughs 24:04 Video Format 28:45 Adding Videos to Pinterest 33:45 Sharing Videos Elsewhere 35:03 Using Milotree For Growth 40:40 Paying For Ads on Pinterest 43:42 Riches Are In the Niches   Read the podcast transcript here:   Want to learn more about how to use Pinterest to grow your business? Here are more podcast episodes we recommend: #065: How to Keep Your Pinterest Account Growing and Out of Trouble with Alisa Meredith #059: What You Need to Know NOW to Get More Traffic From Pinterest with Kate Ahl #053: Powerful and Easy Pinterest Tips from Pinterest Insider, Tori Tait #044: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest #019: How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith #012: How to Expand Your Business Using Group Boards on Pinterest with Kim Vij #009: How to Grow Pinterest NOW with Kate Ahl

For most bloggers, Pinterest is one of the top tools in our arsenal for getting traffic to our blogs. So it's important to know how keep your Pinterest account safe so you don't jeopardize that traffic stream. The main question is how can we be active on the platform by staying within Pinterest's good graces, and not be accused of spamming and risk getting our account banned? In today's episode, I have my good friend Alisa Meredith here to talk about Pinterest and how to remain in good standing on the platform. Alisa is a Pinterest consultant, strategist, and the content marketing manager at Tailwind (affiliate link). Defining Spam on Pinterest and How To Avoid It One of the reasons people are concerned about getting their account marked as spam is that that can cause their account to be suspended. Pinterest has shared on its website five different behaviors that can be interpreted as spam and get you in trouble on the platform:   Porn Violence Self-harm Hate speech Misinformation If you take someone's image off of Pinterest and you link it to your own content, you will get flagged for that. You could also be sharing stolen pins without knowing it, so be sure to click through the link to see where it leads. This prevents you from accidentally contributing to this problem of stolen pins, which is super prevalent right now. Tailwind tribes are a good way to share content from people you know so you don't have to worry about bad links. Just remember that any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way, but if you're in a tribe of people you know and trust, then it's helpful to not have to click through on every link. Pinterest is monitoring what they call “unnaturally high-volume behaviors.” This includes: Commenting on too many things in quick succession Following too many pinners in a short period of time Saving too many pins from one website too quickly Sharing the same pin to the same board over and over Any of these behaviors can result in your account being suspended. Pinterest is looking for behaviors that a normal pinner wouldn't engage in. HELPFUL TIP: Use common sense rather than looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. If you had a friend watching you pin over your shoulder, would they think you were being spammy? If not, you are probably okay. HELPFUL TIP:  Look at your recent pins option for your cover photo and if it's too repetitive, you need to change your strategy. How Many Pins Should You Pin Per Day? The most important numbers are the ones you test yourself. The problem is when people think they have to pin fifty pins a day and they just pin anything. Some people are spending more time on that than creating their own content to pin. There is nothing wrong with sharing other people's content, but the biggest benefit to using Pinterest is sharing more of your own content. The best practice for bloggers using Pinterest is to always be creating new pins. In the past, Pinterest stated that you could change the description or hashtags for an added distribution benefit but that has changed now. Now that the descriptions are being cropped, those aren't showing for the end user. Pinterest users see images, so you need to make new pins rather than changing the description on an old pin. To Make More Pinterest Content, Take More Photos Quantity is key here. You have to be creating more content on a regular basis. When you write that blog post, take more photos. Use different angles, use different lighting, anything to make it different. You do not want to stack your blog post with photos that all look similar. That is a pain for your readers who are looking at your site on mobile. Save some of those photos to use for pins by using a plug-in that allows you to hide those photos within the post. Create images with text on them because Pinterest reads text on images. Pinterest wants the experience to be fresh and new every time someone logs on or searches for something. If you are making new content for the user, it makes a great experience for them. If Your Account Has Been Flagged If you have been flagged as a spam account, there is something you can do. You can email Pinterest. Go to the "Help" page and there is an option to say that you have been suspended and you want it to be reviewed. If you haven't done anything to actually be suspended, Pinterest has no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts. They will reinstate you if there was a mistake. Videos On Pinterest Pinterest is really pushing video right now. They would like to see that take off. Alisa has found that her videos received a lot more impressions than her static pins immediately, but got few click-throughs and the impressions dropped off fairly quickly. You need to create videos that tease people into wanting to click through to see more. You may see tons of views at first but not a whole lot of click-throughs unless your video leads them to want to see more of what you're offering. New Ads for Pinterest - Conversion Ads Conversion ads are something you can use only if you can set up your event tracking. It will allow you to say, “An email sign-up is worth three dollars to me. Go out and get me email sign-ups for three dollars." Pinterest will go out and get them for three dollars. They have it set up so you can say, “I only want it to count within one day of a click. No talking about impressions or engagements, I just want to know that within one day of clicking through my ad, they became a new email sign-up." You pay per impression. So because of that, you have to go all-in on it. It can take a while for Pinterest to figure it out. They recommend you waiting several weeks for them to figure out how it best works for you. Another recommendation is to set it up so there are three conversions for a day's budget. If I want to sell sign-ups for three dollars apiece, then I need to have nine dollars set aside so they have room to figure it out. They are trying to optimize those three dollars per conversion. You're paying for impressions, while they figure out how to get conversions. It's working better right now for E-commerce, but anyone can use it for email sign-ups. One of Alisa's favorite features on Pinterest Ads is "Act Alike Audiences." If you find that your email list converts really well to customers, but after a while, you exhaust that audience, you can try to create fresh ways to hook your audience, or just gain a new audience. You can use "Act Alike" to get a fresh audience. Alisa says that if you compare what you're paying to target people on Facebook with what you'll pay to target them on Pinterest, you will likely come out ahead on Pinterest. For retargeting, you're going to come out far ahead on Pinterest. FYI - Pinterest is the only platform that we use here at MiloTree for advertising. Before you can worry about advertising, you need traffic. And her at MiloTree, that's our specialty. We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. And right now, you can get your first 30 days completely free! If you're trying to grow your Pinterest traffic and you're not using MiloTree, you're missing out.  We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. Head over to MiloTree to find out how our pop-ups can help you! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! For most bloggers, Pinterest is one of the top tools in our arsenal for getting traffic to our blogs. So it's important to know how keep your Pinterest account safe so you don't jeopardize that traffic stream. The main question is how can we be active on the platform by staying within Pinterest's good graces, and not be accused of spamming and risk getting our account banned? In today's episode, I have my good friend Alisa Meredith here to talk about Pinterest and how to remain in good standing on the platform. Alisa is a Pinterest consultant, strategist, and the content marketing manager at Tailwind (affiliate link). Defining Spam on Pinterest and How To Avoid It One of the reasons people are concerned about getting their account marked as spam is that that can cause their account to be suspended. Pinterest has shared on its website five different behaviors that can be interpreted as spam and get you in trouble on the platform:   Porn Violence Self-harm Hate speech Misinformation If you take someone's image off of Pinterest and you link it to your own content, you will get flagged for that. You could also be sharing stolen pins without knowing it, so be sure to click through the link to see where it leads. This prevents you from accidentally contributing to this problem of stolen pins, which is super prevalent right now. Tailwind tribes are a good way to share content from people you know so you don't have to worry about bad links. Just remember that any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way, but if you're in a tribe of people you know and trust, then it's helpful to not have to click through on every link. Pinterest is monitoring what they call “unnaturally high-volume behaviors.” This includes: Commenting on too many things in quick succession Following too many pinners in a short period of time Saving too many pins from one website too quickly Sharing the same pin to the same board over and over Any of these behaviors can result in your account being suspended. Pinterest is looking for behaviors that a normal pinner wouldn't engage in. HELPFUL TIP: Use common sense rather than looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. If you had a friend watching you pin over your shoulder, would they think you were being spammy? If not, you are probably okay. HELPFUL TIP:  Look at your recent pins option for your cover photo and if it's too repetitive, you need to change your strategy. How Many Pins Should You Pin Per Day? The most important numbers are the ones you test yourself. The problem is when people think they have to pin fifty pins a day and they just pin anything. Some people are spending more time on that than creating their own content to pin. There is nothing wrong with sharing other people's content, but the biggest benefit to using Pinterest is sharing more of your own content. The best practice for bloggers using Pinterest is to always be creating new pins. In the past, Pinterest stated that you could change the description or hashtags for an added distribution benefit but that has changed now. Now that the descriptions are being cropped, those aren't showing for the end user. Pinterest users see images, so you need to make new pins rather than changing the description on an old pin. To Make More Pinterest Content, Take More Photos Quantity is key here. You have to be creating more content on a regular basis. When you write that blog post, take more photos. Use different angles, use different lighting, anything to make it different. You do not want to stack your blog post with photos that all look similar. That is a pain for your readers who are looking at your site on mobile. Save some of those photos to use for pins by using a plug-in that allows you to hide those photos within the post. Create images with text on them because Pinterest reads text on images. Pinterest wants the experience to be fresh and new every time someone logs on or searches for something. If you are making new content for the user, it makes a great experience for them. If Your Account Has Been Flagged If you have been flagged as a spam account, there is something you can do. You can email Pinterest. Go to the "Help" page and there is an option to say that you have been suspended and you want it to be reviewed. If you haven't done anything to actually be suspended, Pinterest has no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts. They will reinstate you if there was a mistake. Videos On Pinterest Pinterest is really pushing video right now. They would like to see that take off. Alisa has found that her videos received a lot more impressions than her static pins immediately, but got few click-throughs and the impressions dropped off fairly quickly. You need to create videos that tease people into wanting to click through to see more. You may see tons of views at first but not a whole lot of click-throughs unless your video leads them to want to see more of what you're offering. New Ads for Pinterest - Conversion Ads Conversion ads are something you can use only if you can set up your event tracking. It will allow you to say, “An email sign-up is worth three dollars to me. Go out and get me email sign-ups for three dollars." Pinterest will go out and get them for three dollars. They have it set up so you can say, “I only want it to count within one day of a click. No talking about impressions or engagements, I just want to know that within one day of clicking through my ad, they became a new email sign-up." You pay per impression. So because of that, you have to go all-in on it. It can take a while for Pinterest to figure it out. They recommend you waiting several weeks for them to figure out how it best works for you. Another recommendation is to set it up so there are three conversions for a day's budget. If I want to sell sign-ups for three dollars apiece, then I need to have nine dollars set aside so they have room to figure it out. They are trying to optimize those three dollars per conversion. You're paying for impressions, while they figure out how to get conversions. It's working better right now for E-commerce, but anyone can use it for email sign-ups. One of Alisa's favorite features on Pinterest Ads is "Act Alike Audiences." If you find that your email list converts really well to customers, but after a while, you exhaust that audience, you can try to create fresh ways to hook your audience, or just gain a new audience. You can use "Act Alike" to get a fresh audience. Alisa says that if you compare what you're paying to target people on Facebook with what you'll pay to target them on Pinterest, you will likely come out ahead on Pinterest. For retargeting, you're going to come out far ahead on Pinterest. FYI - Pinterest is the only platform that we use here at MiloTree for advertising. Before you can worry about advertising, you need traffic. And her at MiloTree, that's our specialty. We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. And right now, you can get your first 30 days completely free! If you're trying to grow your Pinterest traffic and you're not using MiloTree, you're missing out.  We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. Head over to MiloTree to find out how our pop-ups can help you! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

My guest this week is Jennifer Priest from the blog, Smart Fun DIY, and the social media marketing firm, Smart Creative Social. Jennifer shares awesome advice about how to get more Pinterest traffic by crushing the Pinterest algorithm. By putting yourself in Pinterest's shoes, you can understand what they're looking for, and how by giving it to them, you will grow your traffic. We talk about optimizing your overall Pinterest strategy, using hashtags on Pinterest, what Pinterest communities are all about, and so much more! If you are trying to grow your Pinterest traffic, this episode is a must-listen! Plus, Jennifer is one smart cookie!   Resources: Smart Fun DIY Smart Creative Social MiloTree Catch My Party Sharer Brothers Social Media Examiner Smart Fun DIY Instagram Smart Creative Social Community MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group Transcript: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:10 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I'm really excited to introduce my guest. Her name is Jennifer Priest. And she started 15 years ago in the online space as a DIY blogger. She has been doing that for this long, she's still doing it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:34 She has a digital marketing consulting firm. So we're going to talk about both of those sides of her business. So welcome to the show, Jennifer. Jennifer Priest 0:45 Thanks so much. I'm really glad to be here. Why going to conferences is good for bloggers Jillian Tohber Leslie 0:48 We are trying to figure out when we met, but we have been circling each other. We've been at a variety of conferences. We definitely met at Vid Summit last year. We both believe in conferences and like going to conferences. Jennifer Priest 1:04 Yeah, oh, my gosh, conferences are like one of my favorite, favorite things to do. Jennifer Priest 1:11 I think, you know, one of the things is we work from home alone. And so it's nice to go and see other people and interact. And it's nice to put a face to the name. I've heard of MiloTree for so many years, and to be able to then go and like meet you in person and talk to you. There's nothing that can replace that face to face connection. Jennifer Priest 1:31 Even if we're doing Facebook Lives, it's so different to actually interact with someone in person. So I love just the networking aspect of it. And then there's also the learning. Jillian Tohber Leslie 1:42 I so agree, and it's funny. It's exactly what you just said. As soon as you meet somebody in real life. It is like that friendship is so solid. Jennifer Priest 1:55 Yeah, you feel like you're like absolutely friends. And you're like, we literally talked for five minutes. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:00 But it's like, I would trust you with my child. Jennifer Priest 2:04 Yeah, I have a friend that we've actually been friends online for two years. And a couple years ago, or we were friends online for two years before we met in person. And a couple years ago, we planned this retreat, where like, six of us were bloggers and artists decided to go on this crazy trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and it was really fun. Jennifer Priest 2:22 And we met in a restaurant, and then we're going to carpool from the airport the rest of the way, to the place where are camping, and I was like, this is the first time we've actually met in person. And she's like, no way. And I'm like, Yeah, because we've known each other online and through texting for two years. But, you know, that's one of the great things about doing conferences is you can meet these people in person. Jillian Tohber Leslie 2:44 Yes. I think it's kind of what you were talking about. We work alone at home. And there is something to meeting another online entrepreneur that you're, you have this feeling of like, I understand your world. Jennifer Priest 3:03 Yeah, I mean, I don't know anyone in my town who does anything remotely like what I do. I'd probably have to drive an hour to find someone local, that would even understand. Jennifer Priest 3:14 My family, my husband and my kids get it. But like my extended family, they're just like, you do something on the internet. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:20 Right, right. So there is that sense of what it's like to sit at your computer in your pajamas, you know, working on something that needs to get done for tomorrow. Jennifer Priest 3:34 Yep. Yep. Or getting up at five in the morning. Because you're like my blog post due today. I didn't finish it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 3:41 Yes. I think there is that kindred spirit element to when you meet somebody in real life. And you can say, hey, let's talk SEO. And you both know exactly what that means. Jennifer Priest 3:55 That and I think too, when you meet in person, the guard comes down. So we were talking earlier that we had we had been to the Adthrive Conference together. And while we were there, a blogger that I have known online for years, I have seen her conferences, but we never really talked, we had a mutual friend. Jennifer Priest 4:11 And so the three of us, we went out kind of adventuring in Austin. And it was the most fun tim. We started talking about family and our lives, and I feel so connected to her. And it's like you, you can't replicate that. Jennifer Priest 4:26 It's the commonality that we have that kind of breaks down the barriers, and then the conference gives us that opportunity to get those deeper connections. That's not even about blogging anymore. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:36 Right. It's why I say, I trust people, I would trust you with my child. You know, it's weird. And there is an intimacy to it. Jennifer Priest 4:47 Definitely. Jillian Tohber Leslie 4:48 Let's hear your story. Because I don't know it. Jennifer Priest 4:53 So it starts quite a long time ago. I've always been entrepreneurial, like when I was nine years old, I had my first craft fair, selling earrings. Jennifer Priest 5:03 I've always been crafty, always been entrepreneurial, always kind of a busybody. I used to organize the kids in the neighborhood to like, gather cans and bottles to recycle. And then we would amass the money together and go buy candy and stuff. I was always an organizing kind of person. Jennifer Priest 5:24 And so when I had my daughter, I started doing scrapbooking. And I got a mail order kit. And I got really into it. And I started teaching classes. And I joined a direct sales company. And the direct sales company kind of came at the time that I had just graduated from college, and two bachelor's degrees, and I could not find a job because the economy was really bad. Jennifer Priest 5:46 So I joined this direct selling company and I worked my way up the ranks. And within six months, I was like the number two consultant in California. Jillian Tohber Leslie 5:53 Now wait, what is a direct selling company? Jennifer Priest 5:55 So it's like, Stampin' Up or Tupperware it's multi level marketing where you order from catalogs, you do parties in people's homes and that kind of thing. And so that was kind of my entry into it. Jennifer Priest 6:08 I started doing email marketing to promote that. So previous to that, my online experience was to get through college, I used to sell like my daughter's baby clothes. And I would go and buy things and sell them on eBay for a markup. Jennifer Priest 6:22 So we'd go to like estate sales or yard sales and find something really expensive, and buy it for a good price, and then resell it. And that's a lot of how I got through college was was doing my eBay business. Jennifer Priest 6:33 So then I was doing this online thing with email marketing, because I was like, I don't know how to build a website. And so I did. I built that online business with email. And I was teaching in scrapbook stores. Jennifer Priest 6:44 And meanwhile, I ended up getting a job working for the local county. And I was doing grant writing, a mix of grant writing and contract management. Jennifer Priest 6:55 Working with all of these different contractors who provided substance abuse services for the county. I ended up losing my job, they're very crooked. And the day that they fired me was when they're being investigated bya grand jury and I was turning over records and they're like, No, you're gone. Jillian Tohber Leslie 7:11 Oooh interesting. Jennifer Priest 7:13 Yeah. Very shady. So I was devastated because I was going to school to get my masters. And I thought that I would work in government for a long time. Jennifer Priest 7:23 I tried to go to class because I was getting my masters. I tried to go to class my professors, like you're a mess, you need to go and so I went to the scrapbook store, because that's where my friends all hung out. And I had I had kind of taken a moratorium from teaching because I was commuting really, really far. Starting a blog through teaching scrapbooking Jennifer Priest 7:42 I go in the scrapbook store. And I'm like all teary eyed because I lost my job and wounded my pride and stuff. And they're like, good, you can now teach classes here more often. And I was like, seriously? Jennifer Priest 7:53 And so my husband, he end up getting a promotion the next week, and because I was making a lot of money doing what I was doing and, you know, his promotion didn't equal to what we were making before. But He's like, you know what, stay home, do your thing, go work this business, I know you're really passionate about it. Jennifer Priest 8:11 And so that's what started it all. And that was back in like 2005. So I started teaching at all these different scrapbook stores and still doing some different direct selling companies, and making kits and selling them and making things on eBay and selling them. And I had clients in like Japan, and they were just order stuff over and over and over. Jennifer Priest 8:36 And then as at this one store in 2007, that was a pretty big scrapbook store in Southern California. And telling people about my classes in my emails. And they were like, you know, we really would love to be able to share this stuff, can you put put it on a blog, share your classes on a blog, and then we can tell our friends. Or, why aren't you on Facebook? Jennifer Priest 9:00 I was a technophobe. And I was like, I don't need all that I don't need a cell phone. I didn't have a cell phone forever. I didn't have texting forever. But if I needed it for my business, I learned it. Jennifer Priest 9:12 And so I was like, Okay, I'm going to get on Facebook. And so my intention with Facebook from day one was a business thing. And my intention with the blog from day one was to promote my offline business, which was sell these craft kits. Jillian Tohber Leslie 9:28 Are those craft kits you were putting together, or was this these companies? Jennifer Priest 9:33 I was putting them together. So at that point, I had transitioned over to ordering the supplies wholesale, you know, going down to the garment district in LA and sourcing all these like, really unique things, making some of the supplies like die cutting paper and, and sewing little applications and stuff like that. Starting an Etsy shop as a craft blogger Jennifer Priest 9:51 And I would put these kits together in mass, and not only teach my classes with them, but then I would sell them on Etsy. And so in 2007 is when I learned about Etsy, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is like eBay handmade. For me, that was my reference point. And so I also started promoting my Etsy business in my emails and on Facebook. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:14 And where are you collecting these emails? Jennifer Priest 10:17 I was using Constant Contact. So I had a paper notebook that people would fill out. Jillian Tohber Leslie 10:26 When you were teaching, you said, Here, give me your email address? Jennifer Priest 10:29 Yeah, I would have them fill out this paper notebook while I was teaching or like, if I did a booth at a craft fair, or scrapbook expo or whatever, I would have this little thing, you could sign up on my email list. And then I actually started making those and selling them to other people. And I would decorate it for their businesses. Jennifer Priest 10:48 And I would sell like the printable. I'd be like, oh, I'll make it custom for your business. I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Jennifer Priest 10:55 And so I had a paper book. And I remember this one time as using Constant Contact at that time, because they were the gold standard. So anytime Constant Contact was like, hey, do you actually have that this person signed up and, and they're like, we're getting a few spam reports. Jennifer Priest 11:09 And so I sent them photos of my book, the pages we used to have to do that. I mean, can you believe that we used to have to keep a paper record that they gave us their email address. Jennifer Priest 11:21 And so everything kind of evolved. In my circles, I started becoming the go-to person for blogging and social media advice, because I was using it for my business. Getting into social media management as a blogger Jennifer Priest 11:31 In 2009, I booked my first corporate client, and so somebody where I manage their social media and for their company, and posted the things and manage their design team, and just did all of that stuff in the craft industry. Jennifer Priest 11:46 And so from there, I've gained more and more knowledge because I'm learning it for my business anyway. Jennifer Priest 11:54 I gained more clients and then workin in social media on different client accounts, really eye opening to see like, how different things can be, you know, between a multimillion dollar company and my small little blog, but also to see the commonalities in there. Jennifer Priest 12:11 And the challenges that they still face, like money is not the answer to everything. And it's given me a lot of really interesting insights into how to work social media. Jillian Tohber Leslie 12:23 What are the commonalities? Jennifer Priest 12:29 Yeah, so to break it down as far as the commonalities, that's like more than a podcast. But I think one of the things is the methodology that you have to use, and looking at things that's the same. Using analytics and creativity to grow a business online Jennifer Priest 12:46 So you kind of have to approach it from more of a scientific mindset, where you're looking at the evidence, looking at the data, really analyzing it doing, you know, some level of creativity, so you've got to have both sides of your brain working. Jennifer Priest 13:01 So you look at, you look at the data, and you're really good with analytics. But if you you can't think of creative ways to then get to your goal, you're not going to be successful. Jennifer Priest 13:13 So I do a lot of studying the numbers, looking at what the platform is telling us based on how does our content behave, what happens to it when we post something on Facebook? And then what happens after that point. Jennifer Priest 13:26 But also looking at stuff like the signals that they're saying in the news, what their press room says, what is on their blog, what is Pinterest posting on their engineering blog,on Medium that gives us signals as to where they're going, and how the algorithm is performing. Jennifer Priest 13:44 And then I can take that information and also be some of my experience and the trends and say, Okay, this kind of content is going to perform well. If we put the content out in this manner, based on all this evidence, I think it's going to perform well. Jennifer Priest 13:58 And so every piece of content that we put out on social is an experiment we're trying to see, like, okay, I've hit check on these boxes that I think are going to make it work now. Let's see how it performs, and then go back and reanalyze it. Jennifer Priest 14:14 And so it's this continuous process of analysis and testing, analysis and testing. And I think that's where a lot of people get in trouble. Wwe go to a conference, or we take a course, and we're like, awesome, this person gave me a checklist of all the stuff I gotta do. Rainbows and unicorns are going to shoot out of the sky, I go home, I put it in place, everything's amazing. Jennifer Priest 14:37 And then tomorrow, the algorithm changes. And that stuff doesn't work. Because those are tactics, those are steps, those are tasks. And we're not learning how to think about the platform. Think about the platform and the algorithms of the platforms you're using to promote your business Jennifer Priest 14:50 And so that's the major thing that I've learned through all of this is just thinking about the platform and realizing the algorithms are here to stay, because there's just a fire hose of information. And they have to be there in order to give us a good experience on the platform. Jennifer Priest 15:05 I mean, if I saw everything that my family members were posting on Facebook, I would just delete it, delete it, because it's just too much. And so the algorithms have to be there. So we got to accept that they're there. Jennifer Priest 15:18 But then the second thing is what are the algorithms there to do? They're studying our behavior, and then making rules that help them get the outcome that they want. So we can do the same thing. If we study the platform's behavior, we can make rules to get us the outcome we want. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:38 I think that is so powerful. In fact, the thing that I always say is, so Pinterest is very valuable for Catch My Party. It drives a ton of traffic. Jillian Tohber Leslie 15:49 And I say, when Pinterest says something, I pay attention. If they tell me, okay, we don't want these long pins anymore. And this is like, they come out and they say, 600 by 900, it doesn't matter if I don't like that. I'm not going to second guess what they say. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:12 I'm not gonna go well, my long pins have worked so well. I know they're saying this, but I'm not gonna listen to it. Oh, my God, I'm going to be the first one listening to it. Jennifer Priest 16:23 Yeah, when you think of these companies, they don't do things flippantly. And there's this huge machine behind them that then it's almost like, I think of like, a big alligator. Like, they don't move that fast. They're kind of or a dinosaur moving so slow. And so everything they do is very deliberate. And there's meetings after meetings and focus groups. Jillian Tohber Leslie 16:49 And testing. Testing everything. Jennifer Priest 16:54 Yeah. And they're not making those announcements, because they just decided we're going to make it hard for bloggers. But that is that is the thinking that is pervasive in many Facebook groups with bloggers, is this idea of the platforms are just out to get us. The platforms are not out to get us as bloggers Jennifer Priest 17:13 They don't care. They just that is not their purpose. Like every single platform that's out there. And I feel like Pinterest is so good about being transparent about this, they have a mission. Pinterest's mission is to help people discover new ideas and go out into the world and try them. And so that's at the heart of everything that they're doing. Jennifer Priest 17:33 So if they're saying that this needs to be a two to three ratio pin, we can go and say, Okay, why is it that they're saying that because 80% of their users are on mobile, and they look better on mobile? Jennifer Priest 17:45 Have you tried to look at a giraffe pin on mobile, you can't see it. And so if that is what they think is going to help them get back to their mission to help people discover new ideas. Awesome. I'm going to help people discover my new ideas on their phone. Jennifer Priest 18:04 And so I think that the thing is, kind of a little bit of a mindset shift in how we think about these platforms. They are not out to get us, they absolutely know they need content creators to be on there putting stuff on there, whether it's Facebook, or Pinterest, or YouTube or whatever, but they have a mission. Jennifer Priest 18:23 And so if we accept that, and we stopped fighting it, and just take the signals that they're giving us and and then adjust our strategy to those signals. Jennifer Priest 18:33 First, we can have an ever evolving strategy. So that saves us a lot of grief. But second, we're going to have more success, because we're not wasting time. Jennifer Priest 18:44 I hate to kind of sound like I'm on a soapbox, but we're not wasting time with stuff that doesn't make any sense. And that is somewhat a level of immature thinking in our business to think that a platform is going to care about a blogger, even a 5 million views a month blogger to say, I'm going to make this change and platform to make that blogger's life hard. Jillian Tohber Leslie 19:03 Yes. And again, you have to think that these platforms need to monetize, these are businesses. So you have to put yourself in the mindset of Pinterest, or Facebook or Instagram, and they're trying to give the best experience they possibly can to their visitors. Jennifer Priest 19:24 And they're all still free. They're not charging us and people say well, it's just pay to play. There are always outliers, always people on the fringes that are all of a sudden they're going viral, because they're doing something that captures people's attention. They're doing something that works within the algorithm. How to work the algorithms to your advantage Jennifer Priest 19:46 And sometimes people don't have a plan. They just have some kind of magic touch. But really, a lot of the people have a plan. Like if you look at these guys, the Sharer Brothers they are two college brothers, they decided we're going to start a YouTube channel. Jennifer Priest 20:01 They're very methodical and how they did it. They started in January of 2017. By October of that year, they had over a million subscribers. You can totally work the system to your favor. And I think it takes a mindset shift of instead of seeing a difficulty, a roadblock, first looking at it as a challenge. But then looking at it as an opportunity. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:27 Absolutely Jennifer Priest 20:30 A differentiator. Jillian Tohber Leslie 20:31 Would you say that Pinterest is where you focus your time or where you are the biggest expert? Jennifer Priest 20:39 So you know, one of the things that's been a challenge, I had this discussion with Michael Stelzer from Social Media Examiner. And this is something that I'm going to share the story because it's a little bit embarrassing, but it's also something that we need to think about in our businesses, especially as a lifestyle blogger. Jennifer Priest 20:58 You asked me what kind of blog I'm like I say, DIY, because I'm doing stuff. We're kind of all over the place, right? Where I do recipes, I, I fixed my house, I make crafts, it's hard to communicate. Jillian Tohber Leslie 21:09 Do you have travel? Jennifer Priest 21:11 I travel, Disney, Mexican food, there's a lot of stuff in there, right? And so we're trying to be all things to all people. And so I was talking to Michael Stelzer because he was like, Hey, you've kind of been on my radar for a while, but I didn't understand what you do. Jennifer Priest 21:29 And that was such like a heartbreaking but also revealing moment, because you can't be all things to all people. And so I think for us, when we're talking to people about what we do, if we can communicate like one thing that we're really solid on and that could be like our entry point. Jennifer Priest 21:48 And so I say, I'm DIY craft because that's something I'm really solid on. And that's an entry point into my craft blog. But I have recipes on there, too. Jennifer Priest 21:59 And so as like the Pinterest thing, I'm really solid on Pinterest. I have a course on Pinterest that makes sense for people to understand and know. But it's not the only thing I do. Jennifer Priest 22:08 I have a YouTube channel. I've had virals on Instagram. This year, I doubled the size of an Instagram account within a couple months and hit well over the 10,000 mark with it. So I can do stuff on lots of social media platforms. But I needed something that made sense for people to understand that, okay, she gets Pinterest. That's something bloggers need. That's something that businesses need to get traffic. Every blogger needs a niche -- a point of entry Jennifer Priest 22:31 And so that's like my entry point. But it's not the only thing. And so something for any of us that are like lifestyle bloggers to think about is like, what is our entry point that we can get people in and then they can learn all this other stuff. Because if we just say, I can do everything at the beginning, there's nothing for people to attach to. And they don't understand. Jillian Tohber Leslie 22:51 I get that. When I was at Mom 2.0 this last year, I went to an Instagram talk and I forgot who was leading it but she said this that I thought was really powerful, which you'll relate to. She said "lifestyle" on Instagram is not a niche. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:09 On Instagram you want to niche down and just how you said you know, Pinterest is kind of your way in, like if you are lifestyle blogger, pick your lane and really dig deep in that lane. Jillian Tohber Leslie 23:25 Maybe you do more food than travel, or you like food better than travel, or like travel better. Go so that somebody can see you and go oh, travel well then you can add some food and stuff, but you do want to in the world of the internet, it's so easy to get lost. And so do think where could I... where's my comfort place? Where is my sweet spot? Jennifer Priest 23:51 Yeah, and I think you know, the idea to of having this one branded Instagram I mean I'm up against this too, I have a Smart Fun DIYs Instagram it is slow is slow growing. And I know why that is. It's because you look at it,and you're like I don't know what this is about, and people in less than a fraction of a second are making that decision and assessment where I have other accounts that are niched way down, and those are growing crazy. Jennifer Priest 24:22 Like in the same time period of three months on Instagram, Smart Fun DIY, this summer grew 1000 followers, it has 29.1000 followers. So not a lot bigger thousand in the same time period, I grew a niche to count from 7000 to 13,000. Jennifer Priest 24:42 It's going to be more than Smart Fun DIY before the end of the year. And it's because people look at it, they get it they're either in or they're out. They don't have to think hard. Their lazy lizard brain is like, I get it, I want it, I don't want it. And then they're in or they're out. Create niche Instagram accounts for your other content as an influencer Jennifer Priest 25:00 There's nothing that says and this is something I'm experimenting with. And I know other bloggers have experimented with this too. There's nothing that says that you can't take that and create other niche accounts. Jennifer Priest 25:10 So if I am doing let's say, food crafts and Disney and I have three different niche accounts that in interact with my lifestyle branded account, and I'm putting that content out in multiple places. Now, again, this is more of an Instagram thing. But why can't you do that. Jennifer Priest 25:28 And if you think of Pinterest, we have boards for different sub topics, you could treat Instagram like your boards to and have different sub topics. Now you need to be maintaining those. So there's a question of scale. You can't do it on 84 topics. Jennifer Priest 25:44 But it's something to think about of how do I get people in the door and then I get them to follow my main account just like I'm using Pinterest to get people in the door. But I do all kinds of other stuff for companies. Jillian Tohber Leslie 25:57 Right. And I would say for Catch My Party, guess what if you go to our Instagram account, we're going to show you beautiful dessert table after beautiful dessert table and and we have over 150,000 followers. But you like it or you don't. Jennifer Priest 26:14 It makes sense to people. They have to understand it. You know Walmart's confusing, it's big and huge. You don't know what they do. You go into Pier One. You're like decor. I got it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:24 Yes. And by the way, I get overwhelmed at Walmart. Jennifer Priest 26:28 Right, Costco, the same thing. It like hurts me a little bit. Like, I have to figure out how to get my cereal and my motor oil. Like it's too much. Jennifer Priest 26:38 I go to Target. And I only shop in one side of the store. I'm like, I'll shop in the grocery side for groceries. And then I'll make another trip to go get candles and notebooks and like, it'll probably be a different trip to get clothes. Because it's too much. Why the Pinterest pop-up from MiloTree can help you grow your Pinterest followers Jillian Tohber Leslie 26:55 As a blogger myself, I know that there is a lot asked of us. And sometimes it's too much. If you're trying to grow your traffic, then you definitely need to grow your Pinterest followers. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:08 There's a direct connection to active, engaged Pinterest followers and growth in traffic. Because those are the people who are going to interact with your early pins and Pinterest is going to show it to a larger audience. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:22 If you have not tried MiloTree head on over because we will help you effortlessly grow your followers. In fact, if you have a friend who's using MiloTree asked them what they think. Jillian Tohber Leslie 27:36 The best way we've grown, our business is through word of mouth. And also if you sign up, you get your first 30 days free. You get added to my newsletter. I send weekly emails, sharing actual tactical tips, but also some ways to think about your business and manage the different things that we struggle with as entrepreneurs. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:02 So again, head on over to MiloTree.com, sign up, install it on your site. If you have any difficulty. Reach out to me at Jillian@MiloTree.com. And now back to the show. What are Pinterest communities and what are they for? Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:16 So while we're talking about Pinterest. Right before we recorded, so this is October 5, when we're recording this. And two things I want to talk about with regards to Pinterest. One is hashtags and one is communities which have just launched on Pinterest. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:34 You have a Facebook group which I saw you talking in. And what is your Facebook group called? Jennifer Priest 28:42 It's called Smart Creative Social Community. So not very original name. Jillian Tohber Leslie 28:48 Definitely join her Facebook group. Because I saw you in there. And you were talking about communities. And I was like, oh, and then you are going to be on the podcast. I was really psyched about that. So, definitely join the Facebook group. Secondly, let's talk about hashtags and communities. Jennifer Priest 29:11 Yeah, so you've got to date it. Because like everything we know about social media today is a snapshot in time, and it could change tomorrow. So that is the challenge, right? Jennifer Priest 29:23 So first, let's talk about communities. Communities are relatively new. They talked about them, Pinterest did like this kind of a town hall conference where they invited people up to their headquarters this summer and told them about all these things. And communities was one of those things. Jennifer Priest 29:42 And luckily for us that didn't get to go. There were people who went who came back and share that information like, Alisa Meredith and Kate Ahl. They shared a lot of that information, which is really nice. Jennifer Priest 29:53 And so communities was one of those things. So we knew it was coming. We knew it was in beta testing, you could email and ask Pinterest to start a community. So now they've turned it on, essentially. And so the gist of it is, it's like if a Facebook group where you can talk and chit chat had a baby with a group board on Pinterest, it will be community. Jennifer Priest 30:16 So you can stick pins in there. They don't want it to be self promotional. They don't want it to be like a group board where, you know, I feel like bloggers come in and they break things. Jennifer Priest 30:26 So it's like, Hey, we started this new, beautiful thing called a group board. You can collaborate and their intention is something like my group board called Dream House, where my husband and I and my daughter are putting stuff on there that were like, Oh, I like this. Jennifer Priest 30:41 And bloggers were like, Hey, we can game the system. We're going to put 800 bloggers on here. We're just going to slam it with all our stuff. And we're gonna get it like a ton of traffic. And so Pinterest was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we wanted this like, collaborative thing, like, what's going on here. Jennifer Priest 30:55 And not that bloggers are bad for breaking it, I think it's really good to push the boundaries of what something can do. Because Pinterest answer to that is, oh, we still want this mission, we still have this thing that we want to do, we need to put that in a different package. Jennifer Priest 31:11 And so they didn't take group boards away, which is nice. So they've got communities, and communities, they're like, we don't want self promotion, we want this to be a place where you can discuss things, where you can share things, where you can connect with one another over the Pinterest platform over those visual search results within the Pinterest platform. Jennifer Priest 31:29 And so if you think about it as something the way you're going to manage it should be a lot like a Facebook group. You need to nurture it, you need to curate the people that you're inviting to it, you need to go in there every day and check. Jennifer Priest 31:43 I started a community. I've been in there once in like three days. So I definitely need to make sure to make it a priority. Jennifer Priest 31:50 I wouldn't start a community just because you're like, I want to snag the name or I want to snag that topic. I wouldn't start a community for that reason. Jennifer Priest 31:59 I would start it because you genuinely want to be there, experiment with it, experience it and build this additional community, additional resource for your people where you're going to be connecting, because it's not about just dumping pins. It's more about let's talk about this thing, Jillian Tohber Leslie 32:17 So I started a MiloTree Mastermind Community, and I kind of don't know what to do with it. Jennifer Priest 32:23 Yeah, so you can start discussions in there, you can ask them questions, you can share information, you can pin posts, which is basically like a sticky note, you can sticky note the post so it stays at the top. So like, I made some guidelines for my community and, and put those at the top. Why you want to be a social media early adopter as a blogger Jennifer Priest 32:40 So yeah, you can put pins in there, etc. But it's still pretty unclear. It's still pretty new. And I I've heard some people being kind of skeptical of like, well, we don't know if they're going to still have communities, and there's glitches and I don't know if it's useful, so I'm not going to be on it. And I think that's fine if people want to do that. But I think they're missing the boat. Jennifer Priest 33:00 One of the great things about adopting something early on is that you learned early on. You learn and evolve with it over time. So it's the same thing as like kicking myself, because I did not start that YouTube channel back in like, 2010. And I started a couple years later, it was harder and trying to start a YouTube channel. Now, I don't know how anyone would do it, because it's so complicated Jillian Tohber Leslie 33:25 And crowded. Jennifer Priest 33:26 Yeah. And if you learn early on, you can navigate it. And as they add new buttons and new things, and you're learning it incrementally as it as it evolves, instead of it being this really complicated thing. Jennifer Priest 33:40 So the other thing is people that are skeptical, going, like, Oh, this is a dumb move, and they should have made more research. Like I said before, it's this big, slow animal. And Pinterest has a reputation for doing things really slow compared to all the other social platforms. Jennifer Priest 33:55 You know, Facebook's motto is like, let's break stuff. Like, that's literally their motto. And Pinterest is like, we want everyone have a good time. And so they're just going really slow and they're very like methodical, and really intentional with everything they do. Jennifer Priest 34:12 So if they think this is a good thing to do, it is worth paying attention to, because they didn't make that decision lightly. And it is an extremely expensive decision to make, it cost them a lot of money to do it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:28 What would you recommend for somebody like, let's say me, so I heard about it. I went on, I created my MiloTree Mastermind. I also have a MiloTree Mastermind Facebook group, anybody out there wants to join, please find it. And you know, and sign up. Jillian Tohber Leslie 34:46 And so what would you say, now? I've got now I go, Oh, God, headache. I now have to have two groups that I have to manage. So what would you say to somebody like me or somebody out there. When to start a Pinterest community as a blogger Jennifer Priest 34:58 I would not start a community until you are ready to put the time in to nurture and grow it. I would just go and be in other people's communities and talk to them because you don't want people to join your community and have it be a ghost town. That same with the Facebook group. Jillian Tohber Leslie 35:13 Okay. So people don't join my Pinterest community until I'm ready. Jennifer Priest 35:21 Or get a couple people who are active in your current Facebook group. If you have a thriving Facebook group, ask a couple people who are active in there and say, Look, I've got this community, would you guys like to come over and kind of help me keep it going. Jennifer Priest 35:32 I don't have the time to be in there every day. But I would love for you guys to be like moderator types. And I don't know if that's a setting or if that's if that's something that would be coming, but but engage those other people to come over and help them bring their energy to your community. If it's something that you're like, I want to grow it. But literally, the holidays are coming up. I cannot do this. Jennifer Priest 35:55 So that it's there. But you know, and know that if it's there, and you're not using it that it may be I don't know, it may be removed, it may just sit there and die. But I think at a minimum joining other people's communities and being active in it is a good idea. Even if you're like, I'm not sure I need one. Go be familiar with it. And get active with it. Jillian Tohber Leslie 36:14 Yes. Get your feet wet. See what people are doing and copy best practices. Jennifer Priest 36:20 Yeah. And I mean, sometimes something someone else is doing will spark an idea for you. That's totally different, which is awesome. So go try that. Jennifer Priest 36:28 There's no, there's no real rules right now, other than the one thing that I would say to do is Pinterest has community guidelines, which has nothing to do with communities. It's the same word. These are guidelines for overall Pinterest. Rather, they want you to do things. Jennifer Priest 36:43 So just google Pinterest community guidelines, and they tell you what to do, what not to do to be authentic. Don't spam don't incentivize people to like, you know, artificially boost your numbers, blah, blah, blah. So read those. And they just kind of keep that in the back of your mind as you are doing things in your community to make sure that it fits in with what Pinterest wants on their platform as a whole. Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:07 Got it. Great. I think that's all great advice. And we'll keep kind of checking in to see what happens if people have great ideas about their own communities. Please email me Jillian@MiloTree.com. I'd love to hear what you're doing. So that I can get Jennifer back on the podcast. And we can talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:27 Yeah, yeah, that would be really fun. And just kind of leads into the hashtag thing. How to add hashtags on Pinterest pins Jillian Tohber Leslie 37:32 Let's talk about it. Jennifer Priest 37:33 Yeah, so last year, hashtags. Hashtags, just had their one year birthday on Pinterest. And recently, last year, Pinterest, turned on hashtags. And again, the naysayers were like, Oh, that's dumb, it doesn't work. No one's going to use those. Jennifer Priest 37:47 And again, it's like for them to be able to turn that on, they had to pay a lot of developers to do it, they had to do a lot of research. And it makes sense, if we look at hashtags overall. And I've kind of become somewhat of an expert on hashtags. I also have a course on hashtags. Jennifer Priest 38:03 It was just serendipity that I had this membership, where I provided research, hashtags, lists, hashtag lists to people last summer. And they were like, I was giving them these lists, and then realizing they don't know what to do with them. Jennifer Priest 38:18 So I was making a course and then Pinterest turned hashtags on. And so I had this captive audience that was like, hungry for hashtag info. And I was like, Okay, you guys, let's test it. And they were so awesome, because they all jumped in and started testing. And we found out a lot of really awesome stuff about hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 38:35 Now, first, when you were creating this course, and sending people list of hashtags, was it all for Instagram? Jennifer Priest 38:40 It was. The list of hashtags were Instagram focused. And then I realized people didn't know how to use hashtags. The basis of hashtags really, is it's a tool to index content yet, if you remember, back when we had books like encyclopedia you would have an index at the back end, then you would say, okay, the banana shows on page 17, 21 and 842. Jennifer Priest 39:06 And really, that's what hashtags are for. Hashtags are a way to index that content. So you put hashtag banana on something on a platform, you click the hashtag, and that thing shows up for people looking for that topic. Jennifer Priest 39:22 That functionality is the same everywhere, from Instagram, to Twitter, to YouTube, to everywhere, that has hash tags, and that's the thing, Pinterest turned hashtags on last year, LinkedIn turned hashtags on two years ago, YouTube very silently rolled out hashtag functionality, there is a reason that these platforms feel that they need to make content easier for people to find. Jennifer Priest 39:47 And so not just this move by Pinterest as a signal that, hey, they've invested a lot of time, money thinking, mental power, etc, to figure out if they should do this, but that all these platforms are doing it. Musically has hashtags now. Jennifer Priest 40:01 So there's all these apps and platforms that are that are putting hashtag functionality in place. So and Instagram was stories. I mean, it's just, it's just all over the place that we can use them. Jennifer Priest 40:13 So it was like, okay, Pinterest, how do we use hashtags on there, because it is different than how we use them on Instagram. And so my first thought, like, we're trying to do hashtag searches and stuff, and it wasn't chronological. Jennifer Priest 40:25 Now, hashtag searches on Pinterest are chronological, these still are missing things. So I would think of it a lot like in that way, a lot like Instagram, you search for the hashtags, you're not going to see everything in the results. That's for that hashtag. But you're going to see the vast majority of stuff show up chronologically in real time. Jennifer Priest 40:47 So that's the same as if you search the hashtag on Pinterest. But where it gets really interesting, and where I feel like the power of hashtags is, and I have a free guide on how to do this on my site, you just get to a right from the front page of site. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:00 I'll add it in the show notes. Jennifer Priest 41:02 Yeah, so the real power is in keywords. So making hashtags out of your keywords, not thinking about, okay, I'm putting this hashtag on here, because somebody is literally going to type in hashtag cauliflower recipe. I'm putting this hashtag because I want my cauliflower recipe to show up in searches for cauliflower recipe, not as a hashtag. Jillian Tohber Leslie 41:28 Wait, say that again. Jennifer Priest 41:29 Yeah, it's a little complicated. So if you take a keyword and turn it into a hashtag that is like an additional signal to Pinterest about the topic of your content. Jennifer Priest 41:43 So if I want my content to show up for searches for like buffalo cauliflower recipe, I'm going to put those keywords in the description. I'm going to put those in the title of the blog posts, etc. And also a new thing on Pinterest this month is you can edit the titles of your pins, so that it's different from the metadata on your site. Jennifer Priest 42:04 So I could split test different titles with different keywords. Like there's some cool stuff. Jillian Tohber Leslie 42:11 That's very cool, yes. Jennifer Priest 42:13 Yeah. So let's say that I'm giving all those signals to Pinterest what the content is about, but the hashtag seems to be like a jab, like a like a double whammy of, Hey, if you don't know that, this is about buffalo cauliflower. Here's hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag cauliflower recipe, like putting those hashtags on. There's like this extra punch that really make sure that Pinterest knows it's about that content. Jennifer Priest 42:41 So no one out there is searching for hashtag buffalo cauliflower recipe, they are searching for buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower recipe, easy cauliflower, vegetarian cauliflower recipe, they're searching for those things. Jennifer Priest 42:56 And so the hashtag is a way that that keyword, very specific the hashtag is a way to make sure that that content shows up in Pinterest, search for the keyword. And when you talk to normal people, like Pinterest says, and I've heard them say this at multiple conferences. They're like, use broad hashtags. Use keywords as hashtags on Pinterest for search Jennifer Priest 43:15 So in that case of the buffalo cauliflower, Pinterest would say use hashtag recipe, use hashtag cauliflower, which cauliflower is probably a little more specific than they would go, and that will get you if people are searching hashtags. And they're searching these very basic ones that'll get you in the chronological search for that. But if that recipe showed up in a search for #recipe alongside a blueberry pie, who knows what they're looking for. Jennifer Priest 43:45 So there's that. But there's also that every single non marketer, non online business person that I talked to, doesn't even know how to use hashtags. They think it's a joke that you say, like, hashtag funny or whatever. And they don't notice they're on Pinterest. And they're definitely not searching for them. They're searching for best sangria recipe. Jennifer Priest 44:11 So that's how we were doing hashtags back in the beginning. With my group is we were like, less hashtag keywords. Let's try different things. And we found that when you put the keyword as a hashtag, it shows up higher in the search. Jennifer Priest 44:25 Now, I don't have any numbers that say it shows up higher in the search other than evidence that's somewhat anecdotal. Like I put my keywords as hashtags on a sponsored blog post two weeks before Thanksgiving. And it was about Thanksgiving, so it should have bombed and it went viral. Jennifer Priest 44:47 There's those stories that we have for that, but there's nothing that I have that says, Like, if you put hashtags in your pin, it's going to show up 20% higher in the search. I don't have that kind of data, and my brain starts to hurt when I think about doing that. I'm more from the angle of try it, test it, refine it, test it again. Jillian Tohber Leslie 45:09 So would you then recommend the broad hashtag, if I'm doing let's say buffalo cauliflower recipe? Would I do a hashtag of recipe like Pinterest says, would I do cauliflower? Would I do cauliflower recipe? Would I do buffalo cauliflower, hashtag buffalo cauliflower. Like, how would you parse it out? How to come up with the right hashtags on Pinterest Jennifer Priest 45:27 I would brainstorm and also search on Pinterest, all of those things. First, I look at the keywords and then I would brainstorm my hashtags. And so those will be usually be about 30 hashtags or so. Jennifer Priest 45:41 I only want to put like five or six on a post. I mean, if I'm being like, really aggressive, I'll put more but you want to avoid the appearance of keyword stuffing. It's very easy to do. But there have been some indications from people whose accounts have been suspended. Jennifer Priest 45:57 Now Pinterest hasn't come out and made it a formal announcement about any of this, but there has been some indication that there was a level of keyword stuffing with hashtags and to where you know, it's like 30 hashtags of like cauliflower, buffalo cauliflower, cauliflower buffalo, they don't want that kind of thing. Jennifer Priest 46:15 I would take like the 30 that I have and then split them up and maybe sets of five, so I might have hashtag buffalo cauliflower, hashtag recipe, hashtag vegetarian, hashtag Quito, as the hashtags on one post, and then the next post might be slightly different hashtags. Got it? Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:34 Yeah, that's smart. Jennifer Priest 46:35 So I'm still hitting all those hashtags. Yet, I'm not doing it in a spammy way. Jillian Tohber Leslie 46:40 Yep. Yep. And again, think about it from Pinterest's point of view, which is they want the user experience to be good. They want those hashtags to help inform the searcher not annoy the searcher. Jennifer Priest 46:55 Yeah. And I mean, if we look at the hashtags, we are putting the hashtag to help people who are looking for that content. Discover it. Yeah, that is straight up all we're trying to do. What is a fresh pin strategy? Jennifer Priest 47:06 And so there's another strategy that I use, I call it my fresh pin strategy, okay. And so this is where I have more than one pin for post. That's how I'm able to take that block of 30, sometimes at 50 hashtags, and I am rearranging them and putting them on lots and lots and lots of different pins, and then putting them out over the course of time over the course of the year, usually, to see how they perform. Jennifer Priest 47:33 And I've been doing this strategy since February. And again, I say, pay attention to those signals that the platform tells you Pinterest engineering blog, well, it will make you go cross eyed, because you're like, Oh, my gosh, they're talking about UX and UI. And also, I don't know what all this stuff is. It gives you all these amazing signals about what the heck they are doing. Jennifer Priest 47:54 Back in February, they started talking about a new AI, artificial intelligence they were using to read images into read posts, and help Pinterest generate fresh content based on like, the other content you've looked at, etc. And so this topic of fresh has come up multiple times when I've seen Pinterest talking on Facebook Lives or at conferences, or in some of their announcements and documentation. Jennifer Priest 48:21 And I think it's coming from there was a while there on Pinterest, where you would go and your home feed would have the same pins and data over and over there were the same like most popular pins, but you're like, dude, I've already seen that cleaning hack like six times, your house is clean. Jennifer Priest 48:38 So yes, yeah, we were annoyed. And so I think this is a response to that. Because now when you go to your feed, it is different every single time. And vastly different. I'll be like, wait, I saw that pin I wanted to pick and I didn't pin it like, you know. And so it's like, it's vastly different. Jennifer Priest 48:56 And so how can we capitalize on that? Because we have the same old content four years ago, that still amazing good content? I've updated it. I've done all this stuff. How can I keep that going? Well, you need fresh content. So fresh is new. But fresh, could also be maybe new graphics, maybe new descriptions, maybe new hashtags. Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:16 Are you then putting these new images in the post, or you separately uploading them? Jillian Tohber Leslie 49:21 Let's say you do a post on January 20. And then, like you've created some images, and you post one image, let's say in January, and then you wait two months, and then you're going to post another image. But is that image already living in the post? Are you adding it separately? Jennifer Priest 49:42 No. So what we're doing is we're taking what we think is going to be the best performer and we're putting that at the bottom of the post. And then we're putting the rest of the pins out through Tailwind or through Pinterest. And then through Tailwind, because there's a little bit of a strategy there. And then I'm putting them out at a different frequency. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:02 But you are uploading them directly to either Tailwind or Pinterest? Jennifer Priest 50:06 Yeah, yeah. And then we do split testing and paying attention to how is this performing because of something rises to the top, that will now become the image on my blog post, because of this one image is driving more traffic, I want other people pinning that too. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:21 So you're going to put that at the bottom. Jennifer Priest 50:23 Yes, And I don't do this for like, every single post. I'm not watching 500 posts, and going Oh, ok. post 499, we got to change the pin. I'm just looking at the cream of the crop at the top. The 80/20 rule in blogger and life Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:33 Great. Yep, yep. And again, remember, like the 80/20 rule, which is this idea that you can chop up things in terms of it usually takes 20% of the effort to go 80% of the way. And then it takes the last 80% of the effort to do that last 20%. But it works in all these different scenarios. Jillian Tohber Leslie 50:57 So most of your traffic, 80% of your traffic is coming from, say, 20% of your pins, or 20% of your blog posts. So you want to take the cream of the crop and you want to optimize the hell out of that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:11 And you do not want to optimize the hell out of the stuff at the bottom. That's not really driving any traffic, because you're not getting any value from that. But you're getting a ton of value from the stuff at the top. Jennifer Priest 51:23 Well, and then you also can use those signals, right? So like, what content do people want from me, they're telling me and the same, not just on my blog, but I've a YouTube channel. They're like, Hey, lady, we don't want your recipes at all. Only 40 of us watched it. But if you put up a craft room tour, 10s of thousands of people will watch that right. And I don't want to listen to their signal. I'm still making recipe videos. Jillian Tohber Leslie 51:48 Right? That's funny. That's funny. Okay, and why are you not listening to their signal? Jennifer Priest 51:55 Because sponsors want me to make recipes. So if they're gonna keep paying me money, and and you know what I've thought about taking those recipe videos, and slowly moving them over to a recipe only channel, which I have enough content that I could probably do that for a new video every week for two years, and not run out of anything. Jennifer Priest 52:15 And seeing if it performs better, because, again, niching it down, they don't understand what Smart Fun DIY is about on YouTube, because it's all over the place. Jillian Tohber Leslie 52:23 It's so interesting, how much of your time are you splitting between Smart Fun, DIY, and then also your consulting/social media management company. Jennifer Priest 52:38 So I'm first Smart Fun DIY, if I have a sponsored post and probably spending like maybe 10 hours on the the blog a month. And if I don't have any sponsored posts that month, usually I do have one. But if I don't have any, I'm literally working on it, like three hours, maybe four hours. Jennifer Priest 52:59 I do have a VA, she does a lot of submission stuff. For me, really, what I'm focused on this year with that site isn't so much making new content, but really dialing in on my SEO and, you know, making those those fresh pins and making sure that the content, when they get from Pinterest to my site is valuable. And you know, there's meat to it, and that it's going to give them some good information. Jennifer Priest 53:23 So I have, you know, there's I'm always up for trying like crazy stuff. So there are some low quality posts on my site that, you know, I was trying something out and it's just is not a good experience for people when they get there. So I'm, I'm really working on fixing that stuff. Jennifer Priest 53:37 But Smart Fun DIY, literally is a part time gig compared to what I'm doing at Smart Creative Social. So I've got two courses there, and a membership. I have corporate clients where I do strategy for. Jennifer Priest 53:53 I do have one client I'm still doing management for, but that is a service I phased out. So I only do strategy consulting, because I'm not here enough to do management, you know, management, you need someone that's available 24/7 or has staff available 24/7, you know. Jennifer Priest 54:12 So they can email you on Friday, have a holiday weekend and be like, I need these 50 pins up now. And you can do it and I don't think that lifestyle was super fun. And I know people that like love it. It was super fun for the years that I did it. But I'm like I'm retiring from management. Jennifer Priest 54:28 Because I feel like I can't do that service well, and there's a lot of people who can, but what I do well, is strategy. And so I also have some coaching clients. I have group coaching and that kind of thing, that I do where it's not just social media. I mean, there's so much stuff that we know these interlocking pieces, and that's more what I do in those areas. Jennifer Priest 54:45 And that is more than 40 hours a week. Just because I really like it. I have a lot of fun. You know, I'll be on the phone with clients at night. Or, you know, especially if it's a coaching situation or doing group calls with my course people. And that part is super duper fun. So I love that. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:07 So Jennifer, if people want to reach out to you see what you're doing. What is the best way to do that? Jennifer Priest 55:14 they can go to smartcreativesocial.com. And you can get to everything from there. Or hit me up on Instagram. If you go to Smart Fun DIY on Instagram. Let me say it slower. Smart fun. DIY on Instagram. You can message me anywhere if you find me on Facebook or anywhere you can message me and that Facebook group that you had talked about. I mean, I'm pretty easy to find. Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:44 I love it. Okay. Well, Jennifer, thank you so much for being on the show. And I hope to run into you at a conference in 2019. Jennifer Priest 55:53 Yeah, definitely. And thank you so much for having me on. It's been so much fun. I totally love dishing about this stuff. Please rate The Blogger Genius Podcast on iTunes Jillian Tohber Leslie 55:59 If you're enjoying The Blogger Genius Podcast, please do me a favor, head on over to iTunes and rate us or write us a review or both. I would so appreciate it. Okay. Until next week...

Today I'm talking with Alisa Meredith, Content Marketing Manager at Tailwind, and owner of Alisa Meredith Marketing. If you were wondering how to get started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest, this is the episode for you! We go deep and explain everything! You will learn exactly how to set up your first promoted pin campaign on Pinterest and why it's such a powerful platform to drive sales. Resources: Tailwind Alisa Meredith Marketing DevaCurl MiloTree Some links may be affiliate. Subscribe to The Blogger Genius Podcast: iTunes Google Play Stitcher Transcript – How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith Jillian: [00:00:03] Welcome to the Blogger Genius Podcast by Milo Tree. Here is your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian: [00:00:10] Hey, Everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, my guest is Alisa Meredith. Jillian: [00:00:16] Alisa is the content marketing manager at Tailwind, which is a company we've talked a lot about on the show. She also has her own marketing agency where she focuses on promoted pins that is called Alisa Meredith Marketing. So Alisa, welcome to the show. Alisa: [00:00:35] Hey, Jillian. Thank you so much. So happy to be here. It was so great to meet you in person finally. Jillian: [00:00:41] I know. We were friends online and then obviously, we meet people in real life. Jillian: [00:00:45] I Remember we talked about hair because your curly hair looks so good. You gave me all your tips, you showed me all your products and we bonded over that from the beginning. Alisa: [00:01:00] We did. But I have been neglectful in following up on this. Jillian: [00:01:03] In terms of how my hair is going? Alisa: [00:01:06] Yeah. Jillian: [00:01:07] Well, I'm getting my hair cut and then, I'm going to launch into the products. I'll send you a photo after. Alisa: [00:01:15] I thought your hair was fabulous anyway. I think that's how the whole conversation started, but I'm anxious to see what you think if you try this method. Jillian: [00:01:22] Yes. Yes. But if anybody wants to know the special curly hair method, just email me and I will share it. I'll share what Alisa shared with me and the special products. Alisa: [00:01:33] Now, what are we talking about again? Jillian: [00:01:35] I know. I know. So let's talk about Pinterest. Pinterest comes up a lot on this show, and you were saying that you discovered it back how long ago? Starting to use Pinterest in the early days Alisa: [00:01:48] It was 2012 or 2013. Jillian: [00:01:50] Okay, and you, like me, loved it from the beginning. Alisa: [00:01:53] Oh, my goodness. Yes. I used to be a terrible bookmark hoarder in my browser. I just found that I never knew where anything was and of course, you never name them properly. Alisa: [00:02:08] Having this visual system to keep all these articles I want them to refer back to or wanted to read when I had time later, I loved it from the second I found it. Jillian: [00:02:18] Totally, for us, my husband is my partner, he's a technologist, I kept saying to him for Catch My Party, please build me something where I can bookmark stuff because then, I would use the content from our own site and blog posts. Jillian: [00:02:32] I never had a place to save stuff. All of a sudden, Pinterest showed up, and I was able to bookmark all of our own content for myself. Jillian: [00:02:39] And then what I realized was it was driving us traffic and then we were like "Whoa, this is weird. This is awesome." Jillian: [00:02:48] That's also why we then built Milo tree because we need to double down on Pinterest. We need to grow our following. We need to grow this because this is a juggernaut for us. Alisa: [00:03:00] Yes, indeed. And you must be really excited by some of the new stuff that came out from Pinterest recently. Jillian: [00:03:06] Like? Alisa: [00:03:07] Like the following tab that's rolling out to everybody. Jillian: [00:03:10] Yes. Can you explain what that is? Alisa: [00:03:13] Yeah, sure. A couple of years ago, if you went to your Pinterest home feed, you would see the pins from just the people you follow in the order like in reverse chronological order so the newest stuff first. Alisa: [00:03:25] Then when smart feed came in, they added all these filters because there was just too much content coming out, and Pinterest wanted to make it a great user experience.They kind of tried to prioritize what they show, when and to whom so the feed changed up a lot. Alisa: [00:03:39] A lot of people love it because you can discover new stuff but on the other hand, some people really miss the option to have that curated follower feed where you could decide what people and which boards to follow so you could really choose for yourself what you want to see. And now, we can do both. Following tab on Pinterest Jillian: [00:03:58] Yes, yes and there's a little tab on mobile. I haven't explored it on desktop but there's a little tab on mobile that says "following," I think, and if you click it, you will see the pins from only the people you follow. Alisa: [00:04:12] Yeah, I don't even have it on mobile yet. I have it on desktop. Jillian: [00:04:15] Oh, interesting. So weird how they roll stuff out. Alisa: [00:04:19] Yeah. And then there's a page on the Pinterest site that I have bookmarked, and I check all the time because they're always changing it. Alisa: [00:04:26] It's Setting Yourself up for Success on Pinterest page, and they've just changed it to let us know that they are sending out our content to our followers first and then based on the reaction of our followers, that's how they decide what should be seen more. Jillian: [00:04:41] Yes. In fact, I was just at a conference and a woman from Pinterest was there, sharing best practices. She said this interesting piece which is Pinterest tests your content. Jillian: [00:04:51] What they do is they show it initially to your followers to see what kind of response it gets. And if it gets a good response, that's content then that they will show to other people. First five pins of the day on Pinterest get priority Jillian: [00:05:04] The other piece of information this community manager from Pinterest shared is your first five pins of the day are prioritized and show to more of your followers. So if you're going to be optimizing your pins, focus on those five pins of the day. I would recommend that that be all of your content rather than pins from other people. Alisa: [00:05:31] Yes, that's a great idea. There are a lot of questions that came up after that was shared. I love that they're sharing more of that kind of deep dive tactical information. Alisa: [00:05:40] But of course, everyone wanted to know what are the first five? What time zone? So I did contact them, and I got a message back from support that it is midnight UTC. Jillian: [00:05:51] And what is UTC? Alisa: [00:05:52] GMT. Jillian: [00:05:52] It's Greenwich Mean Time. Alisa: [00:05:58] Yeah. It's the same thing. Here on the East Coast, we're on Daylight Saving Time. So I think now, we're four hours behind that. So for me, my first pins of the day start at 8 p.m. Jillian: [00:06:11] Got it. OK. So here in California then, it would be 5:00 p.m. Look, I could do that math really quick. Alisa: [00:06:18] Yeah, I did. I'm impressed. Jillian: [00:06:18] So one thing that you focus on is promoted pins. I feel like promoted pins do not get the same kind of attention that ads on Facebook do, and that people don't quite know how to start with promoted pins or what promoted pins will get them. How to get started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest Jillian: [00:06:39] Can you, in a nutshell, explain what promoted pins are, and what the value is behind them? Alisa: [00:06:49] Sure. I think that there's a good reason for that. On Facebook, if you don't pay, you don't get reached. On Pinterest, that's not the case. Alisa: [00:06:55] Pinterest is very generous in giving us exposure for our content. So I think a lot of people can get really great results on Pinterest without promoting. Alisa: [00:07:04] But If you're on a time crunch or you just want more, promoted pins are the way to go because all it is is just an ad but it is a pin that you've already pinned. Jillian: [00:07:16] So it's taking your clientele and kind of accelerating it. Alisa: [00:07:21] Exactly. It has fewer options in Facebook which, to me, is a good thing because it's not so overwhelming. But it does have one really cool feature which we can talk about in a bit but I don't think any other ad platform has. Alisa: [00:07:38] It is absolutely worth a look especially as you know prices start to rise on other networks as it gets more crowded. Fewer people are using promoted pins so there is room to get started. Alisa: [00:07:49] It Is the way it converts too. We know that 97 percent of the searches on Pinterest are non branded which means that people don't come into Pinterest with a preconceived idea of exactly what they want to buy and from whom. Alisa: [00:08:03] You have the opportunity to get into their minds at a much earlier stage in their decision making process which does mean that you have to be a little bit more patient with your ads on Pinterest, but it also means that you have a better shot against the people with the big ad budgets on Pinterest than you may somewhere else. On Pinterest you can get into the mind of the shopper earlier Jillian: [00:08:21] And what do you mean by that, that you can get into their minds earlier? Alisa: [00:08:25] So, when you're on Google or Amazon, you pretty much know exactly what you want. If you're on Pinterest, you're probably a lot of times in the beginning stages of planning for something. You may be planning a house remodel, and you might be looking for ideas on refreshing mid-century modern bathroom. Alisa: [00:08:46] You're not necessarily searching for a Moen faucet. You are searching for those bigger ideas. You can start to get people into your site, learning about your content, get them on your email list long before they're ready to pull the trigger. Alisa: [00:09:01] I mean people do buy from Pinterest promoted pins quite a bit. 1 in 2 have said they've purchased from a promoted pin but you can get in much earlier which is a huge benefit for smaller business. Jillian: [00:09:14] Got it. Let's walk through. Let's say I have an Etsy shop and I sell jewelry. Talk to me about how you would recommend, I used promoted pins. Jillian: [00:09:24] Let's say I'd take a bunch of photos of my bracelets and rings, and I'm pinning them to Pinterest. What would you say to me? How can I increase sales using Pinterest? Alisa: [00:09:40] The first thing to know is that lifestyle images convert at a much higher rate than do straight product shots. Jillian: [00:09:46] Right, so you don't want just that white background. Alisa: [00:09:48] If you look at the fashion pins on Pinterest and especially take note of the ones that are promoted because people are probably spending more time on those, you'll see very few faces. Alisa: [00:09:57] If it is a product like that, you do want to zoom in on it so people can see exactly what it is. You don't have to put the text on the image. Should you add text on your Promoted Pins on Pinterest? Jillian: [00:10:06] Got it. Would you recommend text on the image? Alisa: [00:10:09] It depends on what it is. In this example, we're talking about a piece of jewelry. If it's obvious what it is, no, you don't need that. I think it could be distracting and take away from it. Alisa: [00:10:19] If it's a service offering or something, absolutely, texts on images are really important. For products, not necessarily. Jillian: [00:10:27] Okay, so I've got this photo or this pin of a bracelet that I made, and it's doing well. It's got a bunch of free pins. And people seem to like it so I'm going to say, "That would be probably a good pin to promote." Jillian: [00:10:44] Would you agree with that as a strategy like put it out there first, see if it gets any kind of organic traction and then, choose that as a pin to promote or do you recommend "I'm going to start fresh, new pin and promote it then"? Alisa: [00:11:00] You can do either but I would say that we're probably not looking at the right thing. I would back up a little bit and see which products are converting from Pinterest. Alisa: [00:11:10] I'm not really familiar with the backend of Etsy. I've done quite a bit in Teachers Pay Teachers so I would want to know which products convert well when people come from Pinterest. Jillian: [00:11:21] Like let's say your Teachers Pay Teachers Page. Alisa: [00:11:25] Yeah. And that you can tell pretty well. But if we're talking about Etsy, hopefully, there's a way to do that. Is there? Jillian  [00:11:35] I think there is, that you can see which products of yours are selling. Alisa: [00:11:38] Yeah. Okay. And hopefully, you can tell what source they come in from. If not, you kind of probably have to give your best guess. Alisa: [00:11:47] Generally speaking, I think the lower priced items do better on Pinterest promoted pins if you're looking to get sales immediately. Of course, little impulse buy. Alisa: [00:11:58] But instead of starting from the pin, I will start with the product. Think about what's going to convert. If you then can look at your pins, you have one that leads to that, it gets great engagement, it gets a lot of re-pins, then that's the one I would do. The real value of Promoted Pins on Pinterest Alisa: [00:12:13] The great thing about promoted pins of course is that it's already an existing pin. You promote it. You show it to tons of people. It gets a ton of re-pins. Anyone who clicks on any of those re-pins, you don't pay for the traffic to your site. Jillian: [00:12:27] Wait. Say that again. So explain that. This is where I think the value of promoted pins is really obvious. So explain. Alisa: [00:12:38] If you like a bargain, you want to hear this. When you promote a pin, you are paying to have it shown to many, many, more people. As many, many, more people see it and those many people re-pin your pin, if others then see those repackaged versions of your promoted pin and they click on it, you don't pay for those clicks. Jillian: [00:12:59] Great. So I've got this pin of my bracelet. You like it. You pin it. So it shows to you. I pay for it to show to you. Then you re-pin it. Jillian: [00:13:12] It's now in your Fabulous Jewelry board. And then somebody, your friend or whomever is following you, sees it there and they click on it. And they even end up on my shop. I'm not paying for that. Best bargain on Pinterest is Traffic Campaigns Alisa: [00:13:26] If you're using a traffic campaign, though that's where you get your best bargain that way, yeah. Jillian: [00:13:35] Okay, so versus what is it like, conversion, like where there's actually a purchase. Alisa: [00:13:40] No. The other options are you can pay for awareness. That one, it can generate re-pins but I find the best bargain overall is with traffic campaigns. Jillian: [00:13:52] Got it. Alisa: [00:13:53] Yes. Awareness really is just to get it in front of people. You're not paying for any action on it. You're just paying per impression. Alisa: [00:13:59] You c an pay for an engagement ad which I thought this will be good because I thought maybe I can increase the number re-pins for very little money and then, get clicks from that. . Alisa: [00:14:11] In My experience, and please try everything because it might be different for you, but in my experience, what I ended up paying for were close ups where people click on the pin and look at it enlarged, and then nothing else happened. Jillian: [00:14:24] That was when you were paying for that with engagement. Yeah. So engagement, you're paying any time somebody clicks on the pin but doesn't necessarily go to your site. They're just looking at it. Alisa: [00:14:33] Yes, so I always stick with traffic campaigns. Now, I tried to make that work for me but it just didn't. Jillian: [00:14:41] That's interesting. So I am going to promote this pin, my bracelet pin, and I'm going to do a traffic campaign so it just gets shown to more people. Alisa: [00:14:52] And you're paying for the clicks only. Jillian: [00:14:54] I'm paying for the clicks only so it's being shown to many more people than the number of people clicking. Alisa: [00:15:02] That's right. And so in effect, you're getting awareness on top of it. Jillian: [00:15:06] That's terrific. And then what do you recommend? Do you recommend a follow up pin? What else would you put in that stew? Alisa: [00:15:18] Okay, so what you could do with that, let's see, you have just the bracelet. I think for a product like that, a standalone promoted pin campaign can work really well. You don't necessarily have to get into a funnel if you're selling a piece of jewelry. Alisa: [00:15:35] What you could do then on top of that is you could build another traffic campaign where you're targeting people who engage with that pin. How to target people on Pinterest Alisa: [00:15:47] And here's why that might be cool: if you target your promoted pin by people who have engaged with it, and bear with me because I may have to say this twice, you could say "I want to target people who have not clicked on this pin. They've done something else with it but they haven't clicked on it." Jillian: [00:16:09] Clicked on it, meaning to see a big version of it or to actually go to my site? Alisa: [00:16:16] Close up. Click would be going to your site. I can then target anybody who has engaged with any version of that pin. Alisa: [00:16:27] So if I take, I have the bracelet product page URL and I'm going to say, "Okay, Pinterest, I want to target anybody who has engaged with my pin but has not clicked yet. This is the pin, whatever pin it is, has to lead to this page." Alisa: [00:16:42] So Pinterest will go out and find every version of every pin of the links to my page. It doesn't have to be something I pinned. It could be something you pinned or somebody down the street or somebody across the world. Alisa: [00:16:56] I can now target people who have engaged with my content even if they don't follow me or they didn't click on my particular instance of that pin. That's the one that I don't think is available on any other network. Jillian: [00:17:12] Wow. Okay, so back to that bracelet pin, if you pinned it, somebody sees your pin, had enlarged it, done a closeup of it, I can then target that person who doesn't follow me, who's never seen my account on Pinterest but I can then target that person? Alisa: [00:17:32] Right, because basically, what you're doing is saying, "I know this person showed some interest in this pin or one of the pins that goes to this page at some point but they didn't click on it to go to my website." Alisa: [00:17:43] So now, I want to hit them with a pin that takes them to my website. Jillian: [00:17:47] Wow. That's terrific. And how much are we talking about in terms of paying for promoted pins? Alisa: [00:17:56] Right. It's an auction like Facebook is. So it depends on your targeting and the competition of your targeting. You don't have to spend a ton of money. How to set up an ad group on Pinterest Alisa: [00:18:09] When I set up a campaign, I will typically set up multiple ad groups inside of it. Those ad groups will be separated by what kind of targeting I'm using. Jillian: [00:18:19] Is that the same? Explain what that means. Are you using the same pin but targeting different groups with it? Alisa: [00:18:25] Yes. So typically the way that I organize a campaign is the campaign will be for one product or one article. Underneath that campaign will be the different ad groups which are divided by targeting types. Alisa: [00:18:39] I might have one that's targeting by search keywords. I might have another one that's targeting by visitors to my site. I might have another one that's an act like audience of some audience that does really well for each of those ad groups. Alisa: [00:18:56] I would never want to try to make it work with less than five dollars a day. Because it will take forever to figure out if it's working. Jillian: [00:19:07] Exactly. And I just wanted to go over that again which is so we've done some for MiloTree. We've done some paid promotion on Facebook and Pinterest. Jillian: [00:19:17] And it's this weird thing which is you just put five dollars in per day. What you're really trying to do is learn. Jillian: [00:19:25] At five dollars a day or less than that, it's really hard. Your stuff is not going to be shown very much. What you're trying to do is get data. So in a weird way, you do want to spend upfront so that you can learn quickly. Alisa: [00:19:41] That's right. You have to consider too that even if it doesn't convert really well right away, you are building a re-targeting audience so that you can later on target people to that page because they saw your pin or you can use re-targeting on Facebook because now, they've been to your site. It's a little bit of an investment upfront. Jillian: [00:20:02] Yes. Let's say, you create a campaign and in it, you've got the same pin but you're targeting different audiences. You would put at least five dollars toward each of those pins, each of those audiences? Alisa: [00:20:23] Yes, absolutely. I typically will have a lot more than that. Usually, you have 12 to 14 because I also separate it out by mobile and on desktop. Because your cost per conversion can be so incredibly different. Jillian: [00:20:45] Interesting. What do you find because, do people buy on mobile? Alisa: [00:20:48] Yes, they do but it depends on your product. If you have a SaaS product or if you have a software product, people are probably going to find it on desktop. Jillian: [00:20:59] MiloTree, for example. We get very few conversions on mobile. You're not going to sit there on your phone and be optimizing your pop up. Almost all of our conversions are desktops so when we have run ads, we only target desktop. Can you get sales on mobile on Pinterest with Promoted Pins? Jillian: [00:21:17] If I'm a jewelry designer, could I get sales on mobile? Alisa: [00:21:21] Oh, totally and just talking to my ad rep at Pinterest, she shared with me that it doesn't matter what industry you're in, the vast majority of the conversions, the sales are happening on Apple products like your iPhone and your iPad. Jillian: [00:21:39] How about like Apple computer or does she mean more mobile? Alisa: [00:21:43] She's talking more mobile because Pinterest is so mobile. What we promote a lot of times is somewhat unique. We're not selling a physical product. Alisa: [00:21:52] For physical product, you're going to probably get a lot more on mobile but you might find it super expensive, and you still get a few on desktop, I would try it anyway. Jillian: [00:22:04] So you are now promoting to 12 to 14 different audiences at five dollars a day. Alisa: [00:22:10] Yeah. Jillian: [00:22:13] That is an investment. Alisa: [00:22:14] It is but you know what? I'm a bargain hunter. No one knew this about me. Jillian: [00:22:20] I like that. Alisa: [00:22:21] Because I told you to find some products on Groupon. Jillian: [00:22:25] Groupon. Totally. You just have to say the name of the hair products just so in case anybody sees. Alisa: [00:22:29] Yeah, Diva Curl. Jillian: [00:22:31] Diva Curl. Alisa: [00:22:36] So if I had an Etsy shop and I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, "No way", can I do 12 ad groups at five dollars a day for a month to figure this out? Alisa: [00:22:46] I totally understand that especially if you had 10 products you wanted to promote. It's just impossible. Alisa: [00:22:53] So there are two different ways you could do this. One way is you could create a promoted pin that had a whole collection of items that you wanted to promote. Jillian: [00:23:03] Within the pin? Alisa: [00:23:05] Yes, like a collage. That can work really well. Pinterest even recommends a strategy having multiple items in an image because it appeals to a much wider range of people when they see it. Jillian: [00:23:17] That makes a lot of sense. Alisa: [00:23:19] Yeah. And then, that's a way to really figure out what kind of audience is going to work for you without having to manage and pay for 10 different campaigns. Alisa: [00:23:29] You just have one and then, the pin would lead to a page where you would have all those items very easily purchased. Alisa: [00:23:38] Target does this really well. In my presentation for Social Media Marketing World, I showed a pin that they had of two different dining room setups and then if you click on that pin, it takes you to all their dining room setups. Alisa: [00:23:52] So you could do that in the pages. It's basically a catalog page with just all items that's easy to buy, easy to put in your cart. Jillian: [00:24:01] So I make bracelets. I have a variety of bracelets in a collage. I put, let's say, three bracelets and I link it to my bracelet page. So instead of just those specific products, I could link it to some sort of catalog of all of my 20 bracelets. Alisa: [00:24:21] That's right. You could do that. So that's one way to kind of keep the cost down when you're just starting. Alisa: [00:24:28] The other way is to try to prioritize your ad groups, prioritize what kind of targeting you're going to try. Different way to use Pinterest targeting Alisa: [00:24:37] There are a bunch of different ways you could target. You could target by broad match keywords which is basically Pinterest looks at your keywords, matches them to a prescribed interest and serves them up in the home for people they think might be interested in it. Alisa: [00:24:53] That's one way to reach strangers. You can also use phrase in exact match keywords which only will show your pin when somebody searches those terms. Broad match vs. exact match on Pinterest Jillian: [00:25:04] So broad matches exactly what it says which is if it's an exact match, you would have to say pearl bracelet. Somebody has to be searching for pearl bracelet but if it's a broad match, it could be some other type of bracelet or just the word "bracelet" like some sort that Pinterest knows. Alisa: [00:25:26] No. Jillian: [00:25:26] Okay, tell me. Alisa: [00:25:27] What you just described is exactly what you would think. And that's what I thought too. But then I exported some of my promoted pin campaigns that were just using broad match keywords, and I found that they were showing up in the home feed. Alisa: [00:25:43] And I said to Pinterest "What's this about?" Because I thought it would be people searching these broad topics. They said "No, it has nothing to do with search." Jillian: [00:25:53] Wow. That is different than Google ads, just so you know. Alisa: [00:25:57] I think it's different than everything. Jillian: [00:26:01] Definitely look into that. Broad match is not what I think it is. Alisa: [00:26:04] It is not. Jillian: [00:26:05] So broad match means it's going to show up in somebody's feed that they're not searching for bracelets. Pinterest thinks you might like bracelets so my pin's going to show up in your feed. Alisa: [00:26:16] Yeah, and they do have good reasons to think that. So they can look at the boards that I create the pins, that I engage with and think that person might be interested. Alisa: [00:26:23] But I ran an experiment, and the results will not surprise you. So I did two sets of 74 identical ad groups, same pin, same descriptions, same everything. Alisa: [00:26:34] The only difference in the two sets is that one, I used broad match keywords; the other one, I use the phrase in exact match type keywords. The phrase in exact match converted at 60 percent higher into sales. Jillian: [00:26:51] Interesting. Alisa: [00:26:53] The broad actually gave me, I think, it was two thirds more re-pins which makes a lot of sense because it's searching what you are going to buy. People who are just interested are probably going to save it for later. Jillian: [00:27:07] Exactly. They are higher up in the funnel. Alisa: [00:27:12] Yeah, which is fine. There's value in that as well. Jillian: [00:27:16] That's interesting. Alright. So sorry. I had taken you off the path. Alisa: [00:27:20] I know. We kind of had to go there because it was confusing to me as well. So we have our broad match, our phrase and the exact match. So those are how we can target strangers really easily. Alisa: [00:27:38] If I were going to do like three ad groups to start, I would probably do one that's phrase and exact match. Then I would do a visit or audience. Alisa: [00:27:47] So, depending on how big your email list is, you can just target people who went to any page on your site or you can really break it down. Alisa: [00:27:55] On Etsy, I don't think you can do this unfortunately because you can't put the pixel. If you think you're ever going to want to run a promoted pin ad, do this now. Alisa: [00:28:07] So go to your conversion tracking in Pinterest ads, grab the pixel, put it on the header of every page of your site. What that does is allows Pinterest to collect information on people coming to your site. Alisa: [00:28:21] You can even break it down by "I want to target someone who went to this page" or this list of pages but didn't go to this page, and that's how you can create a funnel once you get enough information. Alisa: [00:28:33] The tricky thing about Pinterest, of course, is it's not as big as Facebook or Google. So audiences that are below 100,000 in size, it can be difficult to scale. Alisa: [00:28:45] So for an Etsy seller , it's probably going to be tough to scale that kind of audience. Jillian: [00:28:52] So what you're saying is that you need at least a hundred thousand visitors? Alisa: [00:28:57] Yeah. Jillian: [00:28:57] To your site. Alisa: [00:28:59] Yes. Jillian: [00:29:00] Is that per month or there's a total? Alisa: [00:29:02] No, you can set the time frame. So when you create your audience, you can put in - I want to target people who've been to my site in the last, and it goes up to almost two years, I think. Jillian: [00:29:12] Wow. But remember, those people who came to your site two years ago are much less valuable to you than the people who came yesterday. Alisa: [00:29:19] That's right. Jillian: [00:29:22] So this might not work as well if you are a small shop, a small Shopify store, let's say. Alisa: [00:29:33] Getting into Etsy mode, I'm still going to stick with the phrase in exact match keywords. That's going to help us reach a new audience and then, it might make more sense to try to do an engagement audience. Alisa: [00:29:47] So, people who have engaged with pins that go to your site. Particularly if you have a lot of re-pins out there. You're probably going to get a bigger number that way and then, what else would I want to do? Alisa: [00:30:01] I think in that case where you don't have a lot, like you don't maybe have an email list, we'll say you don't have an email list, you don't have much of a visitor list. Alisa: [00:30:12] Phrase and engagement, and maybe try the broad match keywords. So that would be my three I would start with. Targeting your email list on Pinterest Jillian: [00:30:29] Okay. Now, if I do have, let's say, I happen to have a big email list, tell me what I could do with that. Alisa: [00:30:36] You could upload it and target those people who ever Pinterest could find. Jillian: [00:30:42] That's pretty interesting. I'm collecting emails on my site, let's say. So if I've been an Etsy shop member, I can't collect them on Etsy but let's say, I have a blog, which I highly recommend you do, that links to my Etsy shop. Jillian: [00:30:54] On my blog, I can collect email addresses. Again, you can do it with MiloTree. You can do it with a whole host of tools. You can give content away in exchange for their email address, whatever. Jillian: [00:31:06] Let's say I've got 40,000 email addresses. Alisa: [00:31:12] Awesome. My first question would be is it segmented at all? Jillian: [00:31:16] Let's say, and what that means is like I've tagged certain groups like maybe I collected a group of e-mails who loved my How to Clean Jewelry free content or something, like I know these people are interested in jewelry. Jillian: [00:31:33] I know this group is interested in scarves, let's say. Maybe I have added tags to those different emails, email addresses based on where they came from, how they got on my list. Alisa: [00:31:46] Yes, you can upload each of those separately. That's a different audience so then, you target smarter. Jillian: [00:31:52] So I've got my jewelry list, I've got my scarves list. Alisa: [00:31:55] You probably have a customer list too. Jillian: [00:31:58] Yes, definitely, who have actually made purchases. Alisa: [00:32:01] Every time you come out with a new item, you can promote that to them. Jillian: [00:32:05] So then I am going to upload these email address lists and then Pinterest is going to say "I know people's email addresses who are on Pinterest." Jillian: [00:32:15] If there's a match, if somebody is searching on Pinterest with the same email address that I have, I'm going to show them that promoted pin. Alisa: [00:32:25] That's right. Jillian: [00:32:27] And if they've purchased from me in the past, then chances are they might purchase from me again. And so I will put that in my, let's say, purchase email list, target and those people are probably the most valuable to me. Jillian: [00:32:42] That is incredibly cool. How have you found that working? Alisa: [00:32:47] It depends on the quality of the email list and what you're promoting. I always try everything. That's where I would start with the three. Alisa: [00:33:00] I would start with just a few to keep your budget down and then after a month or so, look at whichever one is not working as well as the other two. You can turn that one off and try something else. How long should you run ads on Pinterest? Jillian: [00:33:09] Okay. That's my question. How long does it take to learn? Alisa: [00:33:39] Count on about twice as long as other platforms. Jillian: [00:33:18] Because like Facebook, I've heard at least run them a week. Alisa: [00:33:20] Yes. I would go more than that for Pinterest. Jillian: [00:33:25] So you would go up to four weeks? Alisa: [00:33:28] You can tell in a couple days if it's just not going to get any impressions and then, you try something else. But as far as waiting to see about sales, yeah. Jillian: [00:33:37] And the one thing that I struggle with, I see my results, my early results, I want to get in there and I want to start mucking around. I want to start. It is hard. Jillian: [00:33:49] I want to let you know it is hard to watch that money going like you are spending. Every day seeing your bank account go down, and you're going, "Oh my God. It's just not working." Jillian: [00:34:02] I want to get in there too early and start turning ads off, turning ads on. And I kick myself. I really have to not look, force myself not to look at my results because my human nature is like I could figure this out. Bleeding money, how do you deal with that? Alisa: [00:34:24] I have the same issue. I mean if you're on Etsy, too, it's really hard because you're not seeing the conversion data. Alisa: [00:34:32] So on a site that you own, you can install pixels that will allow you to tell which promoted pins and which targeting is actually resulting in sign ups, resulting in purchases, resulting in add to cart, all these cool things. Jillian: [00:34:48] Can you explain what that means? Alisa: [00:34:50] Yeah. So when you install that conversion pixel on your site, all you're able to do at that point is basically track clicks and also keep track of the people who go to your website. Alisa: [00:35:05] So in your Pinterest ad dashboard, you're going to see conversions but you don't really know what that means. Was it converted to a click through to your website? Was it a sale? What was it? Alisa: [00:35:17] But if you do a little more advanced tracking, which I highly recommend for people who are going to spend a lot of money on promoted pins and/or who have a lot of products to sell and you really can't do it on a site like Etsy or Teachers Pay Teachers. Jillian: [00:35:32] Right, because you don't own that. Alisa: [00:35:35] So you'd want to do it on a store that you own. Unfortunately, I know that's not one of the options for everyone but if you can do that, then when you go to your ads dashboard, you're able to see over time what targeting does to impact your sales. Jillian: [00:35:51] Right. So when there is a sale, Pinterest can determine whether that sale came from that promoted pin so you're going to actually see, "Oh my God. I spent $20 on an ad but it drove $50 in sales." Alisa: [00:36:12] That's right. Jillian: [00:36:13] And that was good. That's worth investing more money in. Alisa: [00:36:18] Right. You can also do it with UTM codes. In Teachers Pay Teachers, they have a dashboard where you can see where the sales come in and you can see if there's a UTM code used. Alisa: [00:36:29] We can kind of figure it out that way but ideally, you want to be able to see it in the Pinterest ads dashboard if you can. I'll tell you what happens to me when I go in there, I had to do a little test to calm myself down. Alisa: [00:36:44] But when you go in and look, it'll be like a month ago, things were going along pretty good. And then, the last two weeks or so, it just tanks. It looks like you got no sales at all. Alisa: [00:36:56] But if you're patient and you wait a week or two and then you go back and screenshot that exact same time frame, you'll see the conversions were good all along in the past because of the way Pinterest tracks the conversion. Alisa: [00:37:12] If you saw the bracelet pin on April 1st and maybe you re-pinned it, then on, let's say, April 15th, you did a Google search and you ended up on that same bracelet page, then you bought it, Pinterest looks at that sale and says, "That was because of the promoted pin." Alisa: [00:37:35] It attributes that to April 1st, that day you acted on the pin. Not to April 15th." So on April 15th, you're looking at your ads dashboard and thinking nobody bought anything that day, but they did. It was just on April 1st to get credit. Understanding sales on Pinterest using Promoted Pins Alisa: [00:37:50] Got it. Jillian: [00:37:50] It's crazy but that plays into our little panic. Alisa: [00:37:55] Is this really working? Should I change it? Do I need to turn it off? Try to give it time. Go into it. I like how you said it's about learning so make a commitment that you're going to stick it out until you learn something. Jillian: [00:38:09] Yes. And a couple of other things: one, UTM parameters. I just want to say what they are. It's a unique URL. So I've got my URL to my bracelet. And then what I can do is I can add some code beyond just the regular Etsy URL that makes it a very specific URL. Jillian: [00:38:30] If somebody buys from that URL or comes to my site via that URL, I can get data on that specific URL which is going to land me on the same page, the same bracelet page but it's going to look different. Jillian: [00:38:44] I can tell where my traffic is coming from which is how you would describe it. If you don't know how to set up, Google it. Alisa: [00:38:52] It's really easy. You're right, and that's how we use it for Teachers Pay Teachers. But the limitation on that is if they don't purchase in that moment when they're using that UTM code, we aren't able to capture the sale. Alisa: [00:39:07] So if there's any way you can put that conversion tracking in that event tracking pixel on a website you own, that's what you want to do. Jillian: [00:39:16] Okay. Here's the other thing: Tell me if you think this is true which is you want your data to direct you to what is working. Jillian: [00:39:26] However, there are other times where, for example, we were running Facebook ads for MiloTree. We could not connect exactly how that sale came to our site but when we were running ads, our sales went up. Alisa: [00:39:44] Yeah, and I think a lot of people do it that way. Jillian: [00:39:46] So it's like it wasn't this direct. You want to be able to say ,"Wow, I read this ad. This ad led to this many sales. I can see that direct line. I could see the conversion pixel." But sometimes, the story is murkier. Alisa: [00:40:05] That is so true. Jillian: [00:40:07] So this is where by getting in there, experimenting and trying, you start to get a sixth sense. Do you agree? Alisa: [00:40:15] Yeah, I do. Jillian: [00:40:17] And so when you can't fully determine it, you have to look at it and say "Wow, I started ads on April 1st. My sales went up." I don't know. I can't tell you why or how that happened but they did so I'm going to keep running those ads or you can then do an experiment, turn off the ads and see if your sales drop. Alisa: [00:40:41] Yeah. And I think that's why it's important to not change anything else. If that's what you're relying on, then don't turn off your Facebook ads. Leave it all running to leave everything the same so you only change one item, and that's how you know it's working. Jillian: [00:40:57] And this is another piece of human nature that I fail this test and I have to like literally tie my hands. Jillian: [00:41:08] I wanna start changing more variables and then gets me in trouble because you want to only test one change at a time so that you can identify, "It was this, and I want to get in there and start changing audiences, whatever." And I then learned nothing. Jillian: [00:41:29] So I've spent a ton of money. Maybe I've gotten sales. Maybe I haven't. But at the end of the day, I know nothing. Alisa: [00:41:34] I know, like easier said than done. I totally understand. Jillian: [00:41:38] So if in fact, you're in this situation and you're like me in that you want to know immediately, you don't want to be kind of bleeding money, just know that your instincts are probably not going to help you. They might hurt you. Alisa: [00:41:53] Right. But over time, like you said, you will start to intuit it what's going to work, what is working and you'll be able to trust that a bit more. Jillian: [00:42:02] Exactly. Again, we talked and you were talking about promoted pins, do you recommend them? I am a small Etsy shop, and I sell bracelets, should I dig in, spend the time learn how to do this? Is it worth it? Alisa: [00:42:18] Yes, you should. Particularly, if you have tried advertising elsewhere and in it, the price has gone up. Alisa: [00:42:29] I wouldn't say if you've tried elsewhere and nothing works and you don't get any sales, then maybe there's a problem with the pricing, the presentation or something but if you're feeling priced out of other options for sure or if other things are working, you just want to try a new audience, yeah. Alisa: [00:42:46] You know your people are on Pinterest. You know you're getting sales from Pinterest. Yeah. Jillian: [00:42:52] And that is a really good point. I mean Pinterest's audience keeps growing, keeps evolving but if you are in that sweet spot of women who love beautiful things, who want to remodel their house. Isn't food like the number one category on Pinterest? Alisa: [00:43:11] I think so. Jillian: [00:43:15] Go where your people are. If they're not on Pinterest, don't advertise on Pinterest. But if on Facebook, there probably is that audience on Facebook Alisa: [00:43:26] Yeah. So if you know where your traffic comes from, if you know where your sales come from and you're seeing it's coming from Pinterest, obviously it's a good bet for you. Jillian: [00:43:36] Wow. I have learned so much. Jillian: [00:43:38] Dissect this with me: We ran two ads on Pinterest for MiloTree. They were traffic campaign ads which is what you recommend. One led to a blog post, and one led to our sign up page in our homepage. Jillian: [00:44:03] Our pin that led to a blog post, it was something like 10 Ways to Grow your Instagram Followers. It performed so much better than our pin and I think it was the same pin. Would that make sense? Alisa: [00:44:25] No. Jillian: [00:44:25] I know, then it was different pins. That's where, again, I have too many variables. The one that was like grow your social media followers, an email list or something that was more general that led directly to our home page did not perform anywhere near as well as our 10 Tips to Grow Instagram. Alisa: [00:44:42] Well, that didn't surprised me but let me ask you another question first. Jillian: [00:44:45] Go. Alisa: [00:44:46] When you say it didn't perform as well, what do you mean? Jillian: [00:44:49] Clicks. Alisa: [00:44:50] Okay, so what you really want to look at is conversions because if you think about it, people are going to click because they want to learn about 10 ways to make their Instagram better. But, does that mean that they're necessarily going to sign up your email list or sign up for your products? Not necessarily. Alisa: [00:45:06] You have two steps when you're doing that. They have to click on the pin. They have to go to the blog post, and they have to convert whereas if you're promoting a landing page with a sale sign up, definitely put a pin, they have to sign up. Alisa: [00:45:18] You have removed a step in between. I would guess that even if you got far fewer clicks to the landing page, you're probably still overall converted better than the blog post. Jillian: [00:45:29] Interesting because I think you're right. This is back, I don't know, maybe a year ago where I wasn't sophisticated to know this, and I was just looking at clicks. I have to check to make sure we have our conversion pixel on. I think we do. Alisa: [00:45:46] Okay, but remember, you can have your conversion pixel in there. It's tracking clicks. It's tracking traffic but you need to set up your event tracking in order to figure out what's really converting. Alisa: [00:46:00] It's going to depend so maybe your blog post converts amazingly well, the sign ups and then, that would be great. You should promote that. Alisa: [00:46:10] Maybe you could have a slide in for converting to sales. If your landing page converts ten times better than your blog post, then send them there. Jillian: [00:46:20] That's where I want to send them. I was just actually talking about Facebook funnels. What is your thought about setting up Pinterest funnels versus, I'm just going to advertise my bracelet? Are there Pinterest funnels like is that a thing? Sales funnels on Pinterest Alisa: [00:46:39] Yes, absolutely. So if you had a huge amount of traffic, you got a huge amount of engagement, you had just massive numbers going on, you could create a funnel exclusively in Pinterest. Alisa: [00:46:52] You could target a person who went to this blog post and then, target them with an ad that goes to the next blog post which is bringing them further down in the funnel. Alisa: [00:47:04] And then you could target the people who clicked on that pin with another ad that brings them to a landing page. So you could do that kind of all on Pinterest funnel if you had a huge audience. Alisa: [00:47:18] But, for most of us, what we're going to do for a funnel instead is to get them from Pinterest to our website to our e-mail list and then, we can work from there. Jillian: [00:47:28] So it's a way to drive email sign ups. Alisa: [00:47:32] Yeah. Jillian: [00:47:33] I'm just taking notes because this is so good. Jillian: [00:47:37] Okay. And then therefore sell them. The relationship that I can build once they've signed up for my list. Alisa: [00:47:43] That's right. Yes. Jillian: [00:47:44] So the final conversion probably then wouldn't happen on Pinterest. It would happen via the connection that we built. Alisa: [00:47:51] That's right. But if you had your event tracking set up on Pinterest and the conversion happened within a set period of time, you would be able to see that in your dashboard. Jillian: [00:48:00] Can you explain? So that means that Pinterest is watching, listening or tracking is a better word so that if in fact you've clicked on my pin, you've gone to my site and then ultimately, let's say, I put it for 30 days. 30 days later, you make a sale. Jillian: [00:48:17] I make a sale. You buy my product. Now, it might be that you're getting emails in the short term because I'm reaching out to you and telling you about my product. You make a purchase. Pinterest will say "Aha, that sale came from that pin." Alisa: [00:48:35] Yeah, that's right. I love the way that the Pinterest does that. It's not always that last touch attribute so it doesn't have to be that the last time before they bought was that they were on Pinterest. Alisa: [00:48:46] It's them kind of helping you see how it fits into your larger sales cycle. Jillian: [00:48:53] I love that. Alisa: [00:48:54] Yeah, me too. There are limitations though. Certain browsers will remove that tracking information, and certain ad blockers will remove it. Alisa: [00:49:01] You have to figure it's under reporting a little bit only because there's no way to get that information. Jillian: [00:49:08] And this is again where you get that sixth sense, and you start to like go ,"Well, I am getting sales even though it's not exactly showing me the direct path but there's something working there." Alisa: [00:49:25] That's right. Jillian: [00:49:26] Oh, gosh. We are going to have to do a part two to this because what I'm going to do is I'm going to use this information, and I am going to run some more ads, some more promoted pins and then I would love to check back in with you. Go over how that worked. Alisa: [00:49:46] It's a date. Jillian: [00:49:47] Is that a date? Alisa: [00:49:48] Yeah. Jillian: [00:49:48] And anybody else who wants to try, start with the first, the basic stuff that Alisa has talked about. Jillian: [00:49:56] Add a very simple campaign where you are doing a traffic campaign, you're targeting very few audiences, you're going to do five dollars a day and you're going to start collecting information. Jillian: [00:50:14] Start at your site, start at what is already selling and start promoting that. And in terms of imagery, do you then try different images and see which one of those is the best? Alisa: [00:50:31] Yes, you do. There are some suggestions for promoted pins like you should use a little bit of subtle branding so either your logo or your website. Then, you want to put it at the top, the bottom, in the middle so it doesn't get covered up by all the buttons. Text on image if it's not clear what it is. Alisa: [00:50:52] If you want to test images, you can put more than one image inside an ad group just like you do on Facebook. Alisa: [00:50:58] However, it does not test for you. On Facebook, if you have two ads in an ad group, it will figure out which one works best and show that one more. Pinterest, unfortunately, that does not work at this time so you could find that your pin that isn't doing very well is getting all the impressions and not converting; and the other one that maybe could do really well isn't. You have to break it out. You have to do two different ad groups. Jillian: [00:51:27] Got it. There is a lot of branching. I'm willing to dig in. Alisa: [00:51:35] Yeah, which is probably why you start with one or two products. Otherwise, it becomes unwieldy. Where are Promoted Pins on Pinterest heading? Jillian: [00:51:42] Totally. Where do you see promoted pins going? Alisa: [00:51:45] I love where they're going. They just released a brand new reporting dashboard which I adore. Alisa: [00:51:52] Because, the way that I run pins, I might have, like I said, 14 different ad groups. If I want to see what's working with this one piece of content, now, I can just search for that one piece of content. It will pull everything out of all the groups. Alisa: [00:52:05] It shows me everything I need. Love it. So their reporting is top notch, and they've put a lot into that. I appreciate that. Alisa: [00:52:14] The other thing that I can see coming is more targeting. We have some really great targeting options now but I think they're going to give us more because they learn so much about us. Alisa: [00:52:28] They learn so much about us that they could do more. Alisa: [00:52:31] They've been talking about doing like column personas so targeting like new parents, people getting ready to move or people in certain life stages. I'm anxious for that. They've been talking about that for a while. Jillian: [00:52:45] And are they look alike audiences? Act alike audiences on Pinterest Alisa: [00:52:47] Yeah, they call them "act alike." So, if you start running an audience ad like to your email list, and it's doing really well but you're just not getting enough impressions, definitely try an "act alike" on whatever audience works. Jillian: [00:53:00] And again, the beauty of that is that Pinterest understands your email list and then can create an audience that looks like your email list but isn't your email list and usually, that audience is bigger. Alisa: [00:53:14] Yes, it's always bigger even if you choose the one percent similarity. Jillian: [00:53:18] It's so true. Alisa: [00:53:19] 720,000 people or something big. Jillian: [00:53:23] Exactly, and like for me, I have found that's the power. That was the power of Facebook for us. It's the look alike audience . I haven't tried that yet on Pinterest. Alisa: [00:53:31] Yeah. I think that the challenge there, that what I have seen, is if you have a really tiny source audience. Alisa: [00:53:37] Let's say, your email list converts or works really well as an ad but it's only 3,000 people. So then if you're asking Pinterest to match your 3,000 with 720 million on their platform, that's a lot to ask. It may not be completely relevant. Alisa: [00:53:59] What I would do if that was the case, if I had a small audience source audience, I would add on top of that a couple of keywords. I try to make it a little bit more relevant for people. Jillian: [00:54:10] So you're kind of telling Pinterest here's my email list, and Pinterest is inferring stuff from these people. Jillian: [00:54:19] Let's say they're all married. Pinterest now knows that they're all married but if you say crafts or jewelry, then you go "Pinterest now has two pieces of data." Jillian: [00:54:32] They know that audience is all married, and they like jewelry so when they're building their audience for you, they can at least have more information. Alisa: [00:54:42] Yes, I like to give them help because that's a lot to ask. Jillian: [00:54:45] It is a lot to ask. That's terrific. And then explain how people can reach out to you like via Tailwind. Jillian: [00:54:52] Remember, Tailwind, again, we'd be lost without it. It's our scheduling service. We use it for Pinterest. We use it every single day. It's terrific. Definitely check it out. Jillian: [00:55:06] So how can people reach out to you via Tailwind or via Alisa Meredith Marketing? Alisa: [00:55:12] Yes, you can reach me on Twitter. It's a great place to find me. It's just @AlisaMMeredith. That's the same on Pinterest, Instagram. Tailwind, you can reach me at alisa@tailwindapp.com. Jillian: [00:55:29] Awesome. Well, Alisa, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm taking notes. I've got like two pages of notes just talking to you. Alisa: [00:55:38] I'm so excited to see what you do. Jillian: [00:55:41] Yes, I will be reporting back to you. Alisa: [00:55:42] Thank you. Jillian: [00:55:43] Alright. Thank you again. Alisa: [00:55:45] Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you. How to get free followers on Instagram fast Jillian: [00:54:55] Well, if you've got two minutes, I've got a product for you. It's MiloTree. Jillian: [00:54:59] MiloTree is a smart popup slider that you install on your site, and it pops up and asks visitors to follow you on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest or subscribe to your list. Jillian: [00:55:14] It takes two minutes to install. We offer a WordPress plugin or a simple line of code, and it's Google friendly on mobile and desktop. Jillian: [00:55:27] We show a Google friendly popup on desktop and a smaller Google friendly popup on mobile. Check it out. Sign up today and get your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

Pinterest expert Alisa Meredith shares exactly why Pinterest is the ultimate marketing tool for online businesses. She also shares some really specific how-to strategies including: What are rich pins, why you want to use them, and how they benefit you (she shares a couple of great examples too)  What kind of paid promotion is best and how to set it up How to target and reach people who pin/repin your posts – it's powerful Should I use promoted posts on Pinterest for event or time limited things like Summer Camp?  Myth-busting the delete your pins strategy What's a Tailwind tribe and why you should join one  Find out how much un-tapped potential there is for Pinterest marketing – this strategy is overlooked by many which means tons of potential for you

Alisa Meredith and I answer the most burning Pinterest questions and address any rumors that have been started in recent months.

Alisa Meredith and I tackle how to spring clean Pinterest boards and all the latest updates in March 2018.

Alisa Meredith of Tailwind Visual Marketing Suite

Alisa Meredith of Tailwind Visual Marketing Suite The post Chris Voss Podcast 148 Alisa Meredith of Tailwind Visual Marketing Suite @Tailwindapp appeared first on Chris Voss Official Website.

Alisa Meredith and I talk about the businesses make on Pinterest and how they can fix it.

Are you struggling to find a daily, weekly or monthly workflow for your Pinterest marketing? Alisa Meredith and I go over her detailed plan for creating a Pinterest marketing plan that works for your business.

Alisa Meredith and I walk through all the changes we saw on Pinterest in 2016. The good, bad and the awesome.

Alisa Meredith and I tackle the top 7 myths we commonly hear when it comes to Pinterest. Listen in to find out if you've been following fact or fiction.

In the week before the 100th episode of the Web.Search.Social Podcast, my friend Alisa Meredith suggested that I should write an article about what I've learned. So here are the 10 things I learned about business and productivity from 100 episodes of podcasting. The post 10 Things I Learned About Business And Productivity From 100 Episodes Of Podcasting appeared first on Web.Search.Social.