68 | BIG NEWS over at Pinterest in Leadership! What does it mean? DON’T PANIC 😱

Podcast

Today I’m sharing BIG NEWS over at Pinterest in Leadership! What does it mean? DON’T PANIC 😱

You can read it here: https://newsroom.pinterest.com/en/post/CEO

Jen Vazquez is known by many as the Pinterest Queen. She helps service-based female entrepreneurs go from overwhelmed to an easy streamlined marketing strategy with her signature Pinterest + Repurposing Method to grow their business when they have very little time.

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Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site!

Marketing

Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site!

Hacks used to bring  70% of traffic to my site!

If you want to watch a video rather than read, scroll to the bottom

Pinterest is a powerful traffic tool that can help to drive traffic to your website. With over 400 million monthly active users, Pinterest is the third largest search engine, making it a great platform for driving traffic to your content. Pinterest is also an evergreen traffic source, which means that your content will continue to be relevant and drive traffic long after it is first published.

As a creative entrepreneur, Pinterest should be a key part of your marketing strategy, and I hope that this blog (and live video below) gives you a glimpse into how you can use Pinterest to drive traffic to your content. 

Pinterest is a powerful tool that can help you showcase your content and reach your ideal client. Pinterest’s superpower is that it can showcase your content for months (not 24-72 hours like Instagram), driving your ideal client directly to you. Pinterest marketing is a great way to reach your target audience and promote your business. 

By following these tips, you can start using Pinterest to reach more people and promote your business.

Alright, enough with that… Here’s those tips! 

Pinterest is a great platform for content creators looking to showcase their work and get it in front of a large audience. 

Whether you are a wedding pro, a coach, or other creative with a service-based business, Pinterest can be a powerful tool to help promote your content and grow your following.

By creating fresh pins on a regular basis, you can ensure that your Pinterest marketing is effective and that your pins stand out from the competition. The key is to be consistent – choose whatever number of pins you can realistically commit to posting on a regular basis, and stick to it. With a little effort, Pinterest can be a great way to reach new readers and viewers.

Create Idea Pins

These really resonate with people and Pinterest has been pushing them hard (and has been for a bit).  Idea pins get you more eyeballs in a short period of time.  Think reels.  Do 1 Idea pin a week (consider what your blog is about each week and create an idea pin). 

You can create them by filming as you talk straight to camera or create graphic slides and upload those.  Be sure to not use logos or website addresses on the graphic, but you can share it in the notes section of the idea pin.  

And… don’t take too much time to create.  Think of creating a reel – it used to take me about an hour to create one.  Now I create them in 15 minutes (that includes filming and adding text).  The same is true to Idea Pins.

The more you create them, the easier they get. And if you know me, you know that I LOVE repurposing so use that Idea pin as a reel.  Film on your cell and then upload to Pinterest save as a video and create a video pin with a link to that content.  Then upload to Instagram and TikTok if you want.

Boards

Repurpose or add new boards. Make sure that the boards are all in and around your business and what you sell.  One thing I’ve been doing lately that is working is to have three boards for each area you share in. 

As an example, my Pinterest Management clients sell letterpress cards (they are gorgeous BTW Pretty Peptalks).  I created three boards for her advice on writing notes or cards.  One is Letterpress stationery tips, stationery writing tips, and stationery advice. 

My research showed that those KEYWORDS were searched for and it gives me multiple boards to pin her advice on.  It also allows people to use those search terms to find the board as well as her pins. 

Bottom Line: Repurpose old boards that aren’t getting good analytics or create multiple boards for your keywords.  Do this process every 3 months or so.

There’s a lot of advice, and strategy hacks out there

My concern is that people take them and run with them and it can hurt their analytics over time and then they’ll think, “What the heck is up with analytics”.  Just a simple reminder that you want to focus on what Pinterest tells us they want (Pinterest Best Practices) and combine that with your business goals. 

If you are launching something, create fresh pins for it and pin those at the VERY beginning of your launch.  Then give Pinterest a few weeks to spread that information.  Just be sure that you use the same link on whatever you are launching and make that landing page (link) a WAIT LIST for the next round. 

Also, look at what pins are getting the clicks and outbound clicks and create more similar to them.  The analytics tell you what’s working and what isn’t but remember to give it time.  Pinterest is a long game like blogging.

Mistakes that people make are to give up too soon.  Each month look at your analytics and adjust your strategy to what’s working and what’s not.

LAST TIP

Find an expert to help YOU create a strategy specifically for YOUR business and it’s goals so that you can hit the  ground running without wasting time with outdated or misinformation!  

And if you are looking for JUST THAT, an expert to help YOU with your Pinterest marketing strategy – then friend, let’s chat !  I have three services available from a done-for-you service, done-with-you service, and a DIY service.  I’d love to help!!

Wanna Chat?
 
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Don’t Forget to Pin It!

Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site!
Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site by Jen Vazquez Pinterest Marketing Strategist
Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site by Jen Vazquez Pinterest Marketing Expert
Hacks used to bring 70% of traffic to my site by Jen Vazquez Pinterest Marketing Expert

You might like these tips also!

10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information

Pinterest

10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information. There is a lot of advice out there about Pinterest than can a few years old, but people keep repeating it – not knowing any better.  Today I’m gonna share the 10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice:

 

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Repining OPP

What is OPP? Not the song from Naughty by Nature, but what I call Other People’s Pins. In 2018, it was something that you heard about.  They called it the 80/20 rule.  Pin 80% OPP and 20% your own.  You’d get a lot of engagement that way with spending a little amount of time. 

Engagement isn’t what you should be focusing on with Pinterest Marketing.  You should be getting the clicks!  And with 2 billion searches on Pinterest every month (2021 hoot suite.), It’s important that you spend your time putting out YOUR content. 

My advice is to pin your content and if there is a blog or information from Tailwind Communities or that you come across while doing research that would be good for your ideal clients, pin it.  The focus though is on YOU and your content! 

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Using your website text or logo on Story Pins

Pinterest wants to keep people on the platform, which is why they created Story Pins.  Story pins don’t have links to keep you on the platform.  Seeing things pinned that have a logo or your website address (or the TikTok logo on videos) defeats the purpose and thus they may be limiting the amount of reach on story pins. 

You may or may not see an issue, but more of my clients are starting to.  So, I’m now advising clients to keep true to the spirit of what Pinterest wants which is to keep people on Pinterest and stop using logos and website information.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Ignoring Cell phones

85% of pinners use the mobile app (2021 sprout social)  If that is true for your followers (Look under Analytics / Audience Insights to see which devices are accessing your Pinterest), then you should absolutely ensure that what you are creating looks good on cell phones. 

This means to NOT use small text or script fonts because they can be hard to read on smaller devices not fun at all.  

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Not Pinning Consistently

Pinning like crazy and then ghosting is the worst thing you can do for your account when it comes to using it for marketing purposes.  Pinterest wants you to pin consistently and Tailwind is the easiest way to be consistent. 

Pinterest also has the ability to “publish at a later date”.  In the help section of interest, it says “You can schedule Pins up to two weeks in advance in your current time zone. Though you can only schedule one Pin at a time, you can have up to 100 Pins scheduled for the future.

Note: Once your Pins are scheduled, you’re still able to make updates, like choosing to publish the Pin immediately or deleting it.”  Keep in mind things change often on Pinterest, so refer to that section if you have any issues.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Using hashtags over keywords 

Up until around 2020, hashtags + keywords were used by the Pinterest Algorithm to understand and rank your pins in the search engine.  In 2021 they won’t work as they did.  

Here’s what my research shows from working on my client’s Pinterest accounts.  Hashtags get a big boost at first and then the analytics tend to go down considerably.  When not using hashtags, the pin tends to take longer to get analytics, but over time the analytics go up considerably.  

My advice is if you are a new account, maybe add 1-2 hashtags to one pin out of 4 or 5 that you use for one URL, and then don’t use hashtags on the rest.  See for yourself which works better.  

The FOCUS should be on keywords EVERYWHERE rather than hashtags in any case.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Creating boards that aren’t around your content

It’s a fact that boards have an effect on your results in the Pinterest algorithm.  It looks at your boards as a whole and having boards that aren’t specific to your business (in and around your business), then you could be hurting your results on Pinterest.  

Here’s an example: If you are a wedding photographer and you have a board called quick recipes, that doesn’t help you and could hurt you.  You could change the board title to healthy recipes to make while wedding planning.  Why? Because it’s around your business.  

If you have boards that are not around or directly pertaining to your business, then you should secret or archive them.  Secret means you can still pin to them and archiving them means you can’t pin to them.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Using unreadable fonts or low-quality images

Fonts:  Font that is hard to read like handwriting or script fonts are so pretty and I love them, but they may be hurting your analytics.  Pinterest reads the text on your pins, so aim for an easy-to-read font. 

If you have your heart set on pretty fonts, I recommend to my clients to use those fonts on unimportant words like and, the, then, so, etc.  Keywords should absolutely NOT be scripty if you want to effectively use Pinterest to market your business.

Quality of Images: Most phones have retina display and won’t forgive pixelated or blurry images.  Pinterest wants the best user experience, so ensure that you are clear images that show what you will be sharing on that blog post.  

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Giving most of your attention to group boards

It’s not the secret weapon it used to be.  They used to work to get more eyeballs on your content, but group boards don’t work like they used to.  Pinterest intended them to be for collaborative projects so they used to go out to all the friends and followers of everyone on the group board. 

And now, Pinterest has appeared to limit the reach of group boards now.  If you have one that still works for you, go ahead and pin but keep an eye on the analytics to ensure it’s worth your time.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Mixing your personal and business account

As mentioned earlier, the Pinterest algorithm wants to see that your profile, boards, and pins all match the content you’re sharing.  If you have boards that are personal, it can hurt your analytics.  So, I always recommend to my clients to have separate boards – one for personal and one for work. 

At a minimum, secret or archive your personal boards to ensure that your business account doesn’t have personal content.

10 mistakes that pinners are making in 2021 from old advice by Jen Vazquez marketing and pinterest strategist

Not Pinning Pinterest sized pins 1000×1500

Pinterest recommends this size “We recommend using a 2:3 aspect ratio, or 1000 x 1500 pixels”.  This size gives you the most space to get your point across and encourages people to click.  Using square or landscape images takes up less space and thus gets ignored or seen less. 

Pinterest changes these specs from time to time, check the most up-to-date info on help at Pinterest.

I hope that you found this information valuable!

Want more help with Pinterest?

If you’d like more tips, check out how to work with me here.

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I’m so excited to teach you all about Pinterest now that there have been some changes. 

You may have heard about “Fresh Pins” and a different percentage of other people’s content vs. your content.  I’ll share all of that and much more!

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10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information
10 Pinterest mistakes you may be making in 2021 because of outdated information

What to pin when

Pinterest

What to Pin When?

My students in my membership (Pinterest Strategy Academy) were confused about what to pin when.  Pinterest has trends of when things are really popular via search. 

I put those things together into one document to be able to help you at a glance know what to work on when.  I decided to provide it as a FREE download for everyone.  Enjoy!

 

[convertkit form=2157968]

Want more tips and ideas? Look below:

what to pin when by jen vazquez marketing strategist
what to pin when by jen vazquez marketing strategist
what to pin when by jen vazquez marketing strategist
what to pin when by jen vazquez marketing strategist
what to pin when by jen vazquez marketing strategist

Pinterest Best Practices 2020

Pinterest

PINTEREST BEST PRACTICES 

 

You should learn everything you can to make sure you are optimizing your time on Pinterest traffic possible.

PIN SIZE

Using a 2:3 ratio, pins are organized into columns, so Pinterest wants you to create vertical pins. If your pins aren’t this ratio, it’s probable that the Pinterest algorithm will show the pins less often than pins with the right ratio. 

THE SECRET TO MAKE PINTEREST MARKETING EASY:  Simplify and Streamline your process with the new Tailwind Create tool

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PIN IMAGE

Pick an image that is related to your topic. Pinterest uses the image of your pin as data to show it to more people when it is most relevant. Pinterest actually looks at the photo on your pin and decides what your pin is about. So, if your image is of a wedding but you are a marketing coach – it will be confused.  You want the image to match the title of or what your blog is about.

Whenever possible, try not to use free stock photos. If you use a free stock photo that has been used too many times and for different topics, you run the risk that your pin will be shown for the wrong topic.

The best thing you can do is to take your own images or pay for images as they will be used much less often.  You can belong to a stock photo group like me or use the “pro” images on Canva.  You can do this by paying for them or paying for the Pro version. 

Using images of people You want to avoid using images of people as people go to Pinterest to be inspired and thus they want to picture themselves using the product or doing what the image is showing.  You can use images of people’s hands, desks, laptops, phones, products, flat lays, and other lifestyle photos.

To get the most out of every blog post, you should utilize multiple pins.  This gives you the best chance of getting more traffic and optimizing your blog post for Pinterest

 

Need Help with Pinterest

Want to optimize your Pinterest to drive traffic to your website?  Take my free course to learn Pinterest the right way!  ENROLL NOW!

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TEXT OVERLAY

Make your text overlay count! Using keywords and less than 5 words is helpful. Use great headlines. Use fonts that are easy to read.  If you are using a cursive type font, use it only for those words that are of, the, a, and, etc.  Those aren’t important keywords.  Pinterest reads the text, so if it’s cursive, it won’t be able to read it.  Use a font size that could be read from mobile. Use hierarchy: play with different fonts, use bold or italics, use different colors.

PUT YOUR BLOG NAME/LOGO/WEBSITE ON YOUR PIN

Always make sure that your pins can be tied back to your website.  Sometimes, a pin can lose it’s link because someone includes their website or by accident, so having a blog name, logo or website helps someone who finds it to be able to put your website on there.  

Plus, it can be useful for branding recognition.

 

THE SECRET TO MAKE PINTEREST MARKETING EASY_ Simplify and Streamline your process with the new Tailwind Create tool

CREATE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PINS

When I first starting creating pins, I only used my brand colors.  What I found is not everyone will click or be urged to click on the same pin.  So, use different styles and colors to appeal to different people.   Also, having pins with all the same design could get people confused and reduce your click-through and re-pinning rates.

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply custom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

If you need help with Pinterest, shoot me an email HERE.