Pinterest Tips for Your Business : Gabrielle Pinkerton
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Guest: Gabrielle Pinkerton
Release Date: 9/11/2023
Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.
Steve Washuta: What exactly is Pinterest? And how could it potentially help your business? Can you use Pinterest if you sell a service rather than a product? Should you be on every social platform or simply focused on one? We discussed all this and much more on the upcoming podcast.
Steve Washuta: Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of the book Fitness Business 101.
Steve Washuta
On today’s episode I have on Gabby Pinkerton, she is a Pinterest strategist. She works primarily in the wedding industry, but her Pinterest related strategy really works in any genre of business. Whether you sell a product, whether you sell a service, understanding how the SEO is connected to Pinterest, understanding why it’s probably the best platform of all, in my opinion, social media is to potentially sell things because it is a search engine, if you will, she’s going to talk about that.
Steve Washuta
As opposed to some of the other platforms which are just showing you things and people aren’t typing in what and why and where and thinking about the future when they’re on these other platforms and Pinterest they are. So it was really great information that Gabby gave us. I enjoyed the conversation. If you’re looking to work with Gabrielle Union.
Steve Washuta
Again, you can go to Gabby Pinkerton on Instagram, and find her link tree and all the links there. With no further ado, here is Gabby Pinkerton, right discussing Pinterest and how it could potentially help your business. Give me a little bio on you and what you do in the business and social media industry day to day.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Hey, guys, thanks for having me. My name is Gabby Pinkerton. I am both a wedding planner and a Pinterest strategist. So my day to day stuff looks like a lot of wedding planning, but also using Pinterest as a business tool.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And since it really helped me grow my own business, I started teaching people back in 2020, when, you know, weddings were not so much happening during that time. So now I kind of help people through a variety of ways kind of reach their ideal client on Pinterest.
Steve Washuta
Before we get into all the Pinterest stuff, and we’re gonna talk about how that relates to small businesses and small businesses that are involved in fitness. We got to talk a little bit about wedding planning stuff since that is your other expertise. And I think it’s interesting I during my wedding, I had the unfortunate circumstances of number one, a random giant storm moved through the day of and only torrential downpours for 24 hours during the day of my wedding, it was nice 10 days before a nice 10 days after my cater had another wedding that she had to go to didn’t tell me to last second.
Steve Washuta
So I wasn’t dealing with my normal caterer. And my wedding planner, who was pregnant at the time was having some complications and couldn’t make the wedding. So something always seems to go wrong with weddings, give me some advice for people who are planning weddings, so that they understand that this is a really difficult process.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Oh, my gods do that. That’s pretty unbelievable, actually, you have a trifecta of bad things. Um, gosh, I think I was gonna say hire a wedding planner. And not because that’s what I do. But I just understand the value of all the fires we put out behind the scenes that you will never know about.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And that’s what makes a really good wedding planner is you should never know that your caterer was not going to be the right one or whatever that is your planner should kind of handle that. But unfortunately, she sounds like she was in her own kind of predictive predicament. So we have a team. And we never go solo to a wedding for that exact reason. So if something were to happen to me on my way there or anything like that, I have a team backing me up always.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, I guess, at the very least a month of coordinator. If you love doing your own planning, that’s kind of my best advice to at least pass off all the details to somebody for the month before your wedding. And my other big thing would be I know a lot of family members want to help a lot of friends want to help. But at the end of the day, try to make sure they can be guests just as much as you get to enjoy your wedding day.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So that means let them do stuff maybe up until the month before the wedding, but don’t have them come in and set tables and chairs or anything like that because they’re hustling that morning and they’re really kind of working hard before trying to get to change or get ready or anything like that. So I always recommend hire professional vendors to do all of your day up stuff.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, that’s great advice. And you know, looking back on the experience, my wife and I didn’t actually really enjoy our wedding day everyone we talked to they loved our wedding. They had a great time, but because we knew everything that was going on every step if there was anything slightly off, we noticed that right so it’s like we had planned for this event. It has all these like moving pieces.
Steve Washuta
And inevitably some things are gonna go wrong and if you know if you know what the plan supposed to be, and there’s slight deviations, then you’re rattled. So I think it’s such good information that you gave the say like hey, if you if somebody doesn’t want to be stressed at all, you don’t want to know everything that’s going on like let let your wedding planner deal with it. You you sit back and enjoy your day.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
That’s That’s actually very true. And while we have some type a clients that like to be in the know, we will go over the details with them leading up to the day just an overall kind of bird’s eye view of what’s happening on the day. And some clients like to know, hey, coming up in the next 15 minutes is your first dance or, you know, they don’t want to be surprised.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
They want to kind of know what’s happening, obviously. But yeah, we’re not going to say, can you believe your florist didn’t show up until blah, you know, no, we’re going to just handle it. And maybe later on, we’ll go out for drinks with them, you know, a few months from now and share all the horror stories because some people like to know that later on.
Steve Washuta
Quick, shameless plug here, I do co own a registry that you can use if you’re building your wedding registry called skip wish. And we can add gifts from all over the internet, unlike target or Amazon where you’re adding gifts only from one specific site with skip which you can add gifts from anywhere all over the internet.
Steve Washuta
So somebody is having a wedding coming up in engagement a baby, you skip, wash, please. So just a quick shameless plug here. But we are here to talk about Pinterest, how Pinterest can help you in your business. But I first want to just give like a an overall overhead view of what Pinterest is. There’s a lot of people who are purely in the fitness space, and they don’t have time to work on all social media apps.
Steve Washuta
And I feel like Instagram is kind of synonymous with people who are in the fitness space. Maybe if they’re older, they have Facebook, but Pinterest isn’t always synonymous with that. So explain sort of high level what exactly Pinterest is an sort of a lingo evolve with it pins and boards and how it’s used day to day. Yeah,
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So basically, how I see it is everybody has a profile. And on that profile, you have your basic information, your name, kind of who you are, what you do a photo of you or your brand.
On that main page, you have all of these squares, which are called boards, can like think of it as a file folder, right, so all of these different file folders. And within each board, there are pins, there could be dozens of pins, there could be hundreds of pins, or could be 1000s of pins.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And those are basically all of those little files within your file folder based on a certain topic. So in my case, in the wedding planning industry, I have a board that’s called Utah weddings, because we do a lot of destinations.
Within the Utah weddings, I’m going to have a variety of images, which are pins that have all of these Utah wedding related photos. Maybe it’s places like venues to get married in Utah, maybe it’s a design that’s very Utah themed or something like that.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So in the fitness space, same thing, right, you have all of these boards, one is maybe nutrition. One is maybe lower body workout, upper body workout. And so within each board, you find yourself having all of these different images, some of them can be videos, and we can go deeper into that later. But videos and images, pins that are all within that one topic.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And each pin is going to have a title, a description, and the most important part is it has a link. So those pins are clickable now where you want them to click again, we can go into strategy down the road. But ideally, you’re sending people to a place like your website, or perhaps your Instagram, something that is going to further give them value based off of that one pin they saw.
Steve Washuta
Okay, so before we go into the strategy, let’s maybe take a step backwards, I sign up for Pinterest, I have maybe a business that sells a product or a service, you can go through both a product or a service is what is my first step. So in my brain, my first step would be check out other competitors from similar businesses and see what kind of boards they have and maybe build boards similar to theirs. Would that make sense?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah, so a few things, you have to do a little bit of market research. So part of that is your competitors, right? So take a look at their boards, see what they specialize in. But specifically for Pinterest, you got to pay attention to two things.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
One is keywords. Keywords are super important, because how people are finding your images is basically they’re going into the Pinterest search bar, they’re typing in a word that is very basic, most likely. So we avoid using super, super specific terms unless your audience is very advanced in that term. But you kind of have to dumb it down a little bit. Like if someone’s just getting started in fitness and looking for a basic glute workout. You’re putting that in the search bar.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
The other thing is, yeah, your competitors, what are they using in terms of imagery, so keywords is super important, but also imagery if all you are if the only images that you currently had are stock images of like a hand or a foot or like something not relevant, less likely to get clicked on right?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So your competitors might actually be still showing some really awesome full body photos of themselves working out or they might be this like overhead shot of an amazing salad for their nutrition board right so pay attention to The quality of the images and the way that they are styled, as well as the keywords that are being used.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, I love how you said that. Because I was told once by somebody that, you know, Instagram is where you go to show people what you did. But Pinterest is where you go, where you want to know what people are going to plan to do sort of day to day, right.
Steve Washuta
So let’s say you’re searching, so maybe they’re building, maybe they’re building a gym, and they want some inspiration to say like, what, what can my gym look like? And they type in something like cool gyms, or, you know, like, futuristic gyms and they want to see the coloration and the equipment and the aesthetic setup inside.
Steve Washuta
So I think people need to focus on that sort of, you know, before they build out what they want to build out, like, what would you type in? You know, if you were looking for this, what exactly would you type into that search bar? And maybe sort of work backwards and build your pens that way?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, oh, I love that. And actually Pinterest, themselves say it not verbatim, but they basically say Pinterest is where you go to plan your future self, your future wedding, YOUR FUTURE body, your future mindset, your future home like that is where you go to collect all of these ideas and put them in a board that file folder.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And that’s where you come back to that board to start actually doing the things that you’ve saved over time on Pinterest. So yeah, you’re exactly right, Steve, that’s basically Pinterest is kind of where you’re going to plan.
Steve Washuta
So let’s talk a little bit about strategy. Now. If I, let’s say I’m my first week on Pinterest, I am a personal trainer. And I have my own individual business, I do virtual training, maybe I do some, you know, in home training something to that extent I work at a gym, and I start building these boards.
Steve Washuta
But when people are clicking on my pins, is it best that I send them, let’s say directly to my Instagram? Can I do that? Is it best that I send them to my to my website? A little bit of both? Are you sending people always to the same location? Or does each individual pin send to different locations?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Okay, I love this question, because there’s a few strategies that you could do here. So first question would be what’s your main goal? Right? Is it to to grow your Instagram? Then? In that case, I would say yes, send them to your Instagram. However, there’s a caveat here.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Don’t send them just to your URL of your profile, you’ve got to send them to something that is relevant to what they just clicked on. So if you had a pin that was saying, you know, five ab work outs to get your clients a six pack? I don’t know, I’m just making this up. Make sure that that when they click on that, you’re giving them the answers.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And perhaps you did do an Instagram post with that exact answer where you list out five ab workouts and there’s a carousel and there’s images that 10 out of 10 that is super relevant for them. They’re getting the answer that they needed. However, it’s a I guess they’re not necessarily converting right away. And that’s okay.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
They’re kind of build your building the like know and trust factor about you and your brand. Because they’re coming in a little bit cold on Pinterest, they don’t know who you are yet. They just found your pin because of what they typed into the search bar. And they’re like, Yeah, five ab workout. That sounds amazing. So now you’ve got them on Instagram, and you’ve got to then do something on Instagram to convert them right.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Maybe they become a follower. Maybe they become a subscriber to your email list, whatever that is. There’s got to be a call to action then on your Instagram. The second part of your question, kind of the second possibility here is, yeah, I love love, love personally, sending my wedding clients to my website, but specifically my blog. And a lot of people are like, no blogging is dead. There’s no no benefit. And it’s true.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Nobody’s going to actually sit there and necessarily read word for word, your 500 word blog. However, one it’s really good for SEO, Google loves blogs. And too, it’s another way to get your client to convert. So they’re leaving Pinterest, they’re going on to a blog post where perhaps you are sharing the five ab workouts and maybe you have something clickable in there. Maybe it’s Hey, download this AB program for free.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And now you’ve got them on your email list or perhaps it’s schedule a free consultation with me. Blah, blah, blah, you got them. You got a free phone call. You got them there. So there is a lot more that you can do on a blog post than you can do an Instagram in that quick actionable way. So those would be my two main strategies on where to send your people from Pinterest.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, that’s really good advice sending them to your blog number one because it helps with SEO overall. I know people say blogs are dead, but they just don’t understand search engine optimization and how it works and keywords and we can go into that a little bit further that we already touched on it but also having like some sort of prompt box You know, call to action pull up on your webpage, maybe whatever, five seconds and you can control that depending upon what you use Wix or Squarespace or maybe you use something a little bit more intricate, where pops up and says, Hey, book a free phone call, I can get you, you know, whatever your six pack and 40 days meet with me for free kind of deal.
Steve Washuta
So you have you have a chance to actually acquire and gain that customer and not just gain brand recognition seems to also be something that is not only relevant, but that’s that’s a lot of people’s goals, right? They don’t they don’t necessarily want to gain brand recognition. They’re doing this because they they need money, right? They’re doing this as a job. And they want to they want to acquire the client.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Exactly. Yeah. And I would say just to kind of counterbalance that, one thing I wouldn’t necessarily do is I would avoid unless this is all you have to work with right now, like you the example you gave was you’re brand new to Pinterest, where are you sending people, I would avoid as much as possible sending them just to the homepage of your website, or in return your contact form.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
If you send them directly there, they’re a little bit lost, right? They just clicked on five great ab workout ideas. And you’re on the homepage. Now they’re on the homepage of your website, they have no idea where to find this actual workout, right. So you’re doing them a disservice. They’re kind of turned off by it, they feel sold to or they feel like oh, that was dumb, I don’t know where I’m supposed to go, they click out they leave.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Same goes for your contact form, as much as I love a good call to action and say, you know, I want you to reach out to me, and I will give you your five ab workout program for free. It’s too many steps. So they want to get some information pretty quickly. So they don’t want to go quite to your contact form yet they’re not ready, they’re too cold still.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And they certainly don’t want to just go to the homepage of your website. If the your homepage of your website is the only thing you have right now, then I would send them there if it makes sense. As long as it’s not promising them something like a workout or something. If you’re just sharing about your business about your program, you can send them there for more education and informational stuff. But it’s not going to be the best strategy.
Steve Washuta
Interesting. So what about if a trainer has like a YouTube page and on their YouTube page, they have videos of them doing set exercises, and it’s contextually relevant. So for example, the pin says something like the 20 best foods to eat, if you’re trying to lose weight, and then they have a YouTube video explaining how to make recipes using this foods, directing them to the YouTube video would be fine. And people do this.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes, 100%. So yes, that’s like exactly perfect, you can do that. You can also send them to the blog posts and embed your YouTube video in there. And you can do both. That’s the other thing I want to say you should use your images in multiple ways. So you can create multiple pins with just the same image.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And you brought up a really interesting point, Steve is there’s going to be text on top of a lot of these images, right. So to give people an idea of why they would click on your PIN, you’ve got to put a little bit of text if they just see, you know, a guy with a six pack. They’re like, Oh, yeah, I want to look like this guy, but I have no idea what I’m clicking on. So you’ve got to put, you know, five best ways to get a six pack or whatnot.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And then they click on it, and it can send them to one location. But you could also use a different angle of that same guy with a slightly different copy or text on top and then send them to the blog post version of that. So that’s also when once you’ve been on Pinterest for a long time you start to analyze your data.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And you see you say wow, the ABS stuff is really what my audience wants to see. Then you can continue to repurpose that same blog post and that same YouTube video, but switch up the pins, add new images, create new text on top, maybe slightly change up the design, but it could still send to your popular URL if your YouTube video is crushing it and people are loving it continue to send your traffic to that that’s what people really want to see.
Steve Washuta
Is there any reason as a business maybe I can think of certain businesses you can correct me if I’m wrong, that you shouldn’t have a Pinterest page it seems like I get it from a personal standpoint if you’re somebody who’s not really interested in the images and you just don’t want to waste time on social media but from a business standpoint, it seems like every business should have their foot at least dipped in that their toes in the water into a Pinterest page.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Good question. I will be honest and say I think I don’t think everybody should be on Pinterest. The main reason being I think some people are going to spread themselves too thin trying to do all the things right and so for some businesses if if you’re already crushing it on Instagram, and very much like people that don’t want to join Tik Tok, I would say the same goes for Pinterest if you just feel like Oh my god, it’s gonna put too much on my plate, and you’re doing really well on one channel, I say as much as possible stick to that channel.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Now, if you do have the capacity to grow, and you maybe have a bigger team and you’re like, let’s add Pinterest, then by all means, if you have the time, however, I do think some businesses that are not quite as visually appealing or don’t have a visual behind it, it’s a little bit harder for them to show up. So an example for that, in the wedding industry is DJs. I have a lot of DJ clients that are like, I want to be on Pinterest so bad, but I have no idea what to post, right, because they’re audio the people that is a little bit harder for them to show up. And it’s not impossible.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
The examples that I give them are create pins that share something about songs. So like five best father daughter, dance songs of 2023. People love that kind of stuff, because they’re going on Pinterest to plan their wedding anyway, you might as well have some of that content. That being said, if they’re a DJ located in Minnesota, somebody from California can find that pin.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And it’s completely irrelevant to their location, right? I mean, sure, they could fly that person out for their wedding. But I do think like those, that’s one of the vendors in the wedding industry, that’s a little bit harder. So I would imagine, yeah, even in the fitness industry, it can still be challenging. There’s maybe some very niche businesses where it’s a little bit harder for them to show up visually, although health and wellness is like skyrocketing on Pinterest, so I feel like you should all give it a try.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, and that’s a great point. I can certainly think of businesses if I owned a business that sold toilet paper or paper towels, it doesn’t make sense for me to be on Pinterest, right? What am I going to do put on different images of all the different toilet paper rolls that I sell it? It doesn’t doesn’t seem to add value. People aren’t seeking that out.
Steve Washuta
But like you said, in health and fitness, there always seems to be an angle. It’s very visual. And it’s easy. It’s just an easy connection. I also kind of struggle with this question myself. And I’ve talked to both sides of my mouth sometimes, when talking about should you have a foothold, at least a little bit in every single social media realm? Or should you just focus on one? Typically, the answer is something that you just gave by most people to say, hey, if you’re really good at one, you need to spend majority of your time doing one maybe sort of the 8020 rule, right.
Steve Washuta
And then you have a little bit elsewhere. But I do think it’s a mistake for a lot of businesses to not at least try out some of these platforms, or at least make you know, make a handle start to develop the page. Because what happens is eventually is your content. Once you get into rhythm, if you let’s say you hire a virtual assistant can be spread across all these platforms very easily, right? So for example, you do a podcast.
Steve Washuta
And in this podcast, I can turn I can transcribe into a blog. And I can take that blog and I can put the blog, something relevant to that blog on Pinterest, and then I can link to it via there, and so on and so forth. Do you see where I’m going with this? So I just feel like at some point, it is good to try out every platform and then decide which ones are good or not good for you.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. Try it, I think is exactly what the point is. Give it a shot. See, because you might like it even more like if you’ve been scared of trying Pinterest because you don’t know how it works. But then you get to know the platform you understand. And you’re like, oh my gosh, I actually love creating on Pinterest more than I like creating on Tik Tok.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Then, yeah, maybe it’s your new platform. And like you said, I did that too, with a few other. What’s this new threads and lemon eight or something like that. It’s like a Pinterest new Pinterest version. I haven’t dive really into that. But I registered my domain or my handle just to have it but I really haven’t been creating on it. But like you said, maybe there is something that’s going to show up on your team. And they are like, the ultimate dream person that comes in loves doing like Twitter and threads and all that kind of stuff.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
You know, so yeah, I think you’re right. But at the same time, if you’re a solo entrepreneur, and you’re killing it on one like YouTube, or Instagram or something like that, don’t drop your efforts on there to spread out on everything. Because I think that’s where people, and I’m guilty of that where I tried to do all the things on all the platforms, and I kind of just half do them on all of them. You know? Yeah, that didn’t turn out good.
Steve Washuta
I think that’s a lot of people, especially entrepreneurs. It’s like we pretend we have more bandwidth than we actually do. And we’re excited we have the dream, we have the idea in mind. So we start all these projects and then you just can’t finish them all but on social media that could be bad in a sense, because then, you know, someone stumbles upon your like, half effort project and they don’t take you seriously so there is some sort of negative sometimes about not actually having a fully developed social media page on certain platforms.
Steve Washuta
Maybe in some points. It’s better to have, you know, no face than to have a bad face on some of these platforms. It’s it’s an issue I struggle with, like you said to Do we always want to start these projects? They don’t always get finished. So we put them on the backburner. And it’s like, Well, does that look bad? But what can you do?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Right? Yeah, I’m with you, I’m, I call it idea forea, where you get really excited about all these ideas. Like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are like, full of ideas, we want to do all the things, but I have trouble with consistency, and following through, and like completing the ideas. So I have a whole book of ideas. Listen, I could probably be a bazillionaire at this point, but I just haven’t done any of them.
Steve Washuta
You, you and me both, maybe we need to, oh, I was gonna say maybe we need to collaborate. But that would be bad, because then we would have 1000s of ideas that no one can get finished. So we need to find you, we need to find closers who help us is the is the key. Going back to SEO here, let’s just I’m going to talk about it a little bit.
Steve Washuta
And then you can add your two cents here. For people who don’t understand it seemed like kind of new fitness, business entrepreneurs, they they don’t really understand why keywords are important. SEO and going back to what we said before is that it’s you know, every website has like a domain authority or domain score. It’s really Google’s way of analyzing if you’re reputable or not, right. And the only way that you’re going to get reputable is to be interconnected with other websites, right, have some backlinking with other websites, or have people constantly click on you.
Steve Washuta
And just like Abby said, they click on you for contextually relevant things, and they stay on your site because you answer their question. So if your board says six exercises, to get your your abs firm, and they click, and it’s just your homepage, well, they’re likely going to click off. And Google’s gonna say, Well, this, we’ve had five people click on and click off in one second.
Steve Washuta
And that’s sort of a hit, so to speak, for lack of a better term on your overall authority and your search engine optimization. So it’s important to keep things contextually relevant and to provide value for for people in the in the SEO game. And blogs help do that. Now, Pinterest also helps do that, because it connects to your blog and to your website. Is that correct?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes. And it shows up high. The website pinterest.com itself shows up high on Google search results. So if you ever go search for something, you will like usually something that is more of like a image related or a list of something like the ab workout, you will get YouTube, obviously that it will pop up early on.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And a lot of the times, you’ll get Pinterest because you will get some images that are tagged properly, that are keyword properly. And Pinterest itself has a high domain authority on Google. So it’s going to show you some of its content. Our number one driver of traffic to our website is Pinterest. And it has been Pinterest for I don’t know how many years since maybe 2016, since I got serious on the platform.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So no matter what, and I’m putting very little effort into it, but because of past work that I’ve put into the platform, and because the platform Pinterest is evergreen, my content does not disappear after 24 hours does not become irrelevant, necessarily after any amount of time.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So I’m not putting dates on there. It’s popping back up for people every time they search the Pinterest platform. So if it’s getting popular on Pinterest, it’s also getting popular on Google if someone is searching for that same term on Google because they’re like, Ooh, you want this? Let me show you what that looks like, on Pinterest.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And therefore the chain continues and continues years and years and years. Go on. So yeah, sorry, that was like kind of a long, long walk around there. But yeah, it is important. It does have domain authority. And it will continue to connect to your website and show and I always just say it makes Google happy.
Steve Washuta
And I’m sure you can check, you can tell me if I’m wrong or how I don’t know if Pinterest gives you reports or something. But you can check what’s trending on Pinterest, which will allow you to then, you know, kind of copy the trends. Follow that and then use that on your other social media platform. So maybe there’s something trending on Pinterest that’s not trending on Instagram or not yet, but you’re able to kind of just like copy that and then use it for your Instagram or other platforms.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes, 100%. And my tip for that would be your my secret advice here that I actually really only share with my clients. So you guys are getting some insight information. Trends on Pinterest, you need to let’s see if I can explain this right? You need to blog or share about them 45 days before they actually hit their peak trend. So for example, let’s say you’re looking on the trends. It’s basically Pinterest gives you kind of a diagram of the year and when a certain keyword reaches a peak and when it comes down.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So let’s say ab workout is popular January 1, right? So you need to count back 45 days ish, it could be two months before that’s totally fine and start posting your content that is relevant to ab workouts a month and a half or two months before so that this picks up steam, and by the time January reaches its peak trendiness, then your content is getting all the hits.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So that’s something that I’ve found kind of in planning my content, if you are doing that, start looking at your trends for the year, pick out your keywords that you want to hit.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And it doesn’t have to be one every month, like you could pick for for the year, right? And then back up a month and a half or two months, and make sure you’re posting your blogs, your YouTube video, perhaps even your Instagram posts that period of time before and see if that helps you kind of reach peak optimization on the trends.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, that’s great information, because I’m sure most people assume that they should do it. Day of Week of not 45 days in advance. And then they’re they’re falling behind. They’re losing to everybody else. So if you’re writing a coolest valentine’s day workout, you want to start doing that the first few days in January, not not wait until, you know, February 12. To release that that that does make that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Now you’re saying you’re doing that for both blogs and for your pins, correct? Yes, because
Gabrielle Pinkerton
my pins have to connect to a URL that’s relevant, right. So I will usually blog and you can blog well in advance to like, right now. It’s August 22. But I’m seeing a lot of Halloween content on Pinterest. And that’s about right where, you know, a month two months before.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So yeah, you want to blog about it. And if nobody sees your blog post in August, who cares? Not a big deal. That’s not you know, you’re not posting it out there for all your loyal readers. But then you start slowly trickling your content out on Pinterest that then will connect back to your blog, your, your relevant blog post.
Steve Washuta
So what are the metrics that you’re concerned with? When you’re analyzing Pinterest post or Pinterest board success? What are some metrics that people do look at that you think are bad? And what are some metrics that we should be looking at that people aren’t looking at?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Okay, the biggest vanity metric that people are looking at is everybody on their profile, it’ll say how many monthly viewers they’re getting. And people can grow fast, the monthly viewership can grow really fast, it can also drop really fast. And it’s something that I do look at just to see where I’m at. But I’m not overly concerned about it.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Because basically, all it means is that your pin has shown shown up in somebody’s search result. But it doesn’t mean that they took any action on it. And they’ve just showed up and they continue to slide through and work to concern. So instead, I tell people look at your pin clicks, I mean, that one’s the most important for me. So there are two kinds of pin clicks, there’s one that’s somebody clicks on the photo to blow it up.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And that might be something that’s a little more detail oriented, they like to see like for us in the wedding industry, they want to see the details of the flowers, or they don’t want to see the details of the plates or something like that. The other one is, they actually click out. It’s called an outbound click, and they click out to the link.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Now that is like chef’s kiss. Top notch, we want that we love that we want you to do that all the time on Pinterest. That means they’re so interested in what they saw on the photo, the pin, and the copy that you put on there is so they’re like, yes, I want to know more. So they’ve left the Pinterest platform, and they have decided to go to whatever they trust you. They’re like, you’re going to take me to the right place.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And that’s what we really, really want to see. And that’s hard to get. It’s especially when you’re starting out because you’re still testing out to see what does your audience want in terms of keywords? What is What are they clicking on when with keywords? And what type of imagery are they wanting? Right? So are they wanting close ups? are they wanting full body shots or salads or ingredients? You know, like, what is it that they want? So you’ve got to do a lot of AV testing at the beginning.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And I tell people do not be discouraged. If you’ve got zeros across the board on your pins, I still get a lot of zeros. I’m like, Okay, you didn’t like that keyword or you didn’t like that image. Let me try something else. So that’s the beauty of Pinterest, you’re not necessarily getting penalized if some image or a pin doesn’t work out, you’re only getting rewarded if they are clicking through.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, I love that learning process to to then analyze that pin that was successful and say, Okay, what did I do right here? Was it just the image? Possibly the picture? Was it the copy that I have just just the right phrase, just the right amount of words and so on so forth.
Steve Washuta
And then obviously, you continue to try to repeat the process it doesn’t always work because it could have just been the picture and you can’t repeat the picture necessarily, right? Maybe it wasn’t the copy or vice versa. Maybe it was just the perfect copy at the perfect time and and who the heck knows. But I do find that fun both from a blog post objective. And from like an Instagram perspective, let’s say with reels, I don’t really have Pinterest.
Steve Washuta
But with reels, it seems to be that way to where you can trend easily for certain things. But also, is that what you want to do, because you don’t always want to the goal shouldn’t be let’s, at least for me, when I say like, when you’re on Instagram, the goal shouldn’t be just to get as many views on your reels as possible.
Steve Washuta
The reels need to be associated with what you’re trying to say, or what you’re trying to sell or who you are and what you’re trying to represent in your brand. It shouldn’t just be a number necessarily.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, right. I think it’s a good. I mean, if you’re getting zero, you know, then you got to think. But, but absolutely, I think it’s just a it’s a vanity metric. And you you want to make sure they’re taking action. Now, if you’re getting a really high viewership like monthly views, but you’re getting no action, then you’re like, Okay, I’m showing up in some results.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
But nobody is interested in clicking why. Usually, I would say, your eye would most likely think it’s the copy. The text on the image is not what they want to click on, or the description on the pin is not quite what they’re looking to see something. So I would start to analyze the copy first,
Steve Washuta
is a tough question. Because a lot of people don’t think about this. So what happens if you become hyper successful quickly on Pinterest, you’re not expecting it, you just start up and you have these pins, and you’re getting like 10s of 1000s of views, and people are clicking on it.
Steve Washuta
How do you translate that to success? Because I’ve seen that happened before where people like get unlucky, somehow, if you want to use that term, where they’re successful so quickly, they don’t know how to use it, and they never capture it, or they almost lose the steam.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Okay, that’s a great question. Because I think it’s happened to a lot of people where they’re like, I don’t know, I just put this so fruitful. And it’s just an image with no link. And, yeah, so we’ve all had, you know, it’s funny to see the worst, our worst image, like my worst image from 1000 years ago is my most popular one.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And I’m like, can I just get rid of this damn thing. So a few things. One is, I would make sure to go and edit it and update the copy, not on the photo itself, because the photo is already popular, don’t, you can’t delete, don’t delete the photo. But you could go and change the description on the side and perhaps the title if you want. But more importantly, make sure the URL is going somewhere irrelevant.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So if it’s just an image, and it doesn’t have any text on top top, promising them anything in particular, perhaps you want to take them to your Instagram page so they can get to know you, or perhaps you do take them to the homepage of your website and show your services or something like that. I mean, you can’t really go wrong.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
The best way to probably capture them, though, is to get them on an email list. So you could send them to a landing page that says, hey, wow, so glad you loved this photo, fun story behind this photo, you know, this is what I do. This is why I took it if you want to learn more about this, you know, download my freebie or get on my email list. So something that’s maybe relevant, that brings back to why they clicked on that photo and why you took it or especially if there is no context.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
But getting them on your email list is a great way to start to build that, especially if you’re like, I don’t know what to do with these people yet. But I definitely know I don’t want to miss out on this, this going viral. So get them collect their email, save that for a rainy day when you’re ready to kind of reach back out to them. But I’d say that’s the best way to probably get get their information.
Steve Washuta
I don’t think we went over the shed. So from a user experience standpoint, can I see the people who are clicking and liking my pins and my boards, I can click on them their individual profiles, and then follow them like, like, how does that work? Like, you know, like in Facebook, it’s really easy to see who clicked on your posts, and then you click on their profile and see them? Is that how it works on Pinterest or not necessarily?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes, I’m trying to think yes, in your on your profile page, you get like a notification tab. If you go on the notifications, it will say when somebody saved it to their board so that’s the liking of the photo is it has to be saved to somebody’s board. There is also on Pinterest a what’s called a reaction. So some of some specific pins like videos and stuff like that.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
You can do a reaction. So it could be like oh, oh, that was a good idea. I’m giving you a light bulb emoji or that was a heart or that you know, so you can do a reaction on some of them so you can see that but when they save to a board that’s when it’s Most interesting because yeah, you could follow them back.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Some people have private private profiles, you can’t see what they’re pinning. You can’t see they’re in for like, their email or anything like that some people have fake, you know, just handles so no real names. You can DM people, there are ways to message people. So yeah, you could get really creative on that side of things and start contacting them that way.
Steve Washuta
I’m gonna say this as a statement, but then correct me from where I’m, I’m Miss stating anything. If I’m selling jump ropes, I don’t necessarily want to build a pin or a board that just says jump ropes, because there’s millions of jump ropes. And the fact that I’m brand new to the game means I’m gonna fall way behind what I want to do is maybe say, hot pink jump rope, or beginner jump rope, right? Add some sort of adjective that describes my jump rope. Is that correct?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes, Steve, you’re hired, you’re on? You’re on our team. Yes, exactly. You want to add, and I call it a longtail keyword. So it’s basically exactly what you’re saying something that is going a little bit more in depth on describing the jump rope.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
I would even challenge you, if you’re selling jump ropes is indirectly target them by saying easy beginner cardio workout. That’s a board, Within that board, you’ve got pins, all about jump rope workouts. And so they’re kind of feel like, Oh, I didn’t know I needed a jump rope.
But I love these easy. Beginner cardio workouts are beginner cardio workouts. And they’re seeing all these jump ropes, and you can tag a product. And it gets a little bit complicated here. But you can create a pin that tags a product for sale.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
And so yeah, you could link them back to your shop. Base based on that workout. Now, again, if you’re offering them a workout, you want to make sure they’re clicking through to something that’s giving them a workout not selling them the jump rope. So you have to be a little bit, you know, careful there, perhaps once they click out to the blog post, then you also list all of the jump ropes that you have for sale.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
But yeah, to go back to your point, absolutely. Do not just put workout food, like what are people searching in the search bar to get to your pins, right and use it as a user first to see what would you search to do, you know, easy cardio workout, see what pops up? Oh, there are other jump ropes, then that’s a good sign too. Because people are using that keyword to get to their content.
Steve Washuta
Or their standard post or PIN or board practices meanings on Instagram. They might say, Hey, should do it two times a day once at 7am. Once at 7pm. Does that also exist in Pinterest? If not, why not? If so why?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yes and no i A while back they said like two to five pins per day. But I would challenge that and say Be consistent is more being consistent is more important than the number of pins you’re creating. So if you can commit to one a day, for a week, whatever that day, same day, same time. Do that that is well more preferred than trying to do a quantity.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
But kind of rule of thumb right now people are saying two to five pins a day. Hashtags are back on Pinterest. They left they came back, they left they came back. There’s a love hate relationship with hashtags and Pinterest. So now you can use them again. And they are clickable for a long time. They weren’t clickable anymore. So we stopped using them. But now they are clickable yet again.
Steve Washuta
Alright, so walk me through that real quick. If I click on hashtag, wedding 2023. And you have whatever a third of your photos that are tagged in that. It’s going to bring up all the different boards and people now is it obviously someone’s wedding photos are getting brought above that, then there’s an order there’s a rank order, how would they rank ordering them? Is it random?
Steve Washuta
Do we not know their algorithm? Or is it by how sort of like your own Pinterest search optimization page? You’re well known on Pinterest, you’re going to be higher than I’m going to be out there?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Ooh, that’s a good question. And I don’t know because this only just came back recently. So I haven’t played I literally my pins don’t have hashtags right now. I would say a few things Pinterest has prioritized in the past was fresh pins. So they did not want to reuse content, like you said earlier. Don’t like not using the same image.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
You’ve got to produce new images on Pinterest, even if it’s the same URL, that’s fine. So they’re probably going to prioritize fresher, more recent content and stuff that’s gotten a lot of action in the past. So if there’s a pin that like was saved to 1000 boards, they’re going to show that to the user saying hey 1000 People save this you’re probably going to like this so they’re going to pop it up at the top as well.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
That’s my I guess I have no proof about this, because I haven’t really looked back into the hashtags in a long time. But yeah, I mean, it’s not chronological. It is definitely based on what the user wants to see, too. So I bet that I bet I would see something different that you see if we both looked at the same hashtag. That’s my guess.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, that makes sense. Knowing the social media platforms and how they operate, you don’t always know exactly what their algorithm is, of course, it has to do somewhat with how much they trust you how much how much your post has been looked at what they want trending, but there’s always some things in the background, you’re never going to get there withholding some of the information on how it goes.
Steve Washuta
And maybe it’s because the algorithm is ever changing. So you think you have it on Thursday. But next, but but by Friday, it’s already changed. So you can’t exactly pinpoint it. I know there’s advertising on Pinterest. Is that something that you recommend to your clients, you do yourself? How does that work?
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So I tried it, I tried it last last year or two years ago. Basically, it came down to they want it, they suggest $20 a day for 30 per month. So $20 a day, for 30 days at $600 a month. And I could see it working for a product based company. It wasn’t quite, it wasn’t great for me as a service based company.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
They do assign you a advertising manager from Pinterest. But the weird thing was every two weeks, and they told me this ahead of time, and every two weeks, they give you a new person. And I said This is so dumb, because I’m over here re explaining my strategy every time I get every two weeks, and I’m like nobody’s really helping me grow. Because there’s just starting at the bait at the base every time.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So I was like, you know, just for marketing kind of research purposes, because my clients were asking a lot about paid ads. I did it and I spent I did it for a few months probably. And I can’t say that I got a lot out of it. I got a lot of hits to certain pins. I therefore carried over to website clicks.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
But I don’t know that I got my money back really? That I then then I could have gone organically. I’ve already bringing a ton of people to my website organically. I don’t need to pay in that sense. But I would be curious about more product based businesses.
Steve Washuta
Yeah, I’m skeptical of all of the advertising on currently a Facebook used to be pretty good. It’s not anymore. I’ve never advertised on Instagram. But I’m skeptical because even when you do it, so I’ve done Instagram, like individual post advertising.
Steve Washuta
So you set it for a duration, let’s say for six days. And if the amount per day, let’s say you do $20 per day, it’s $120. If you look at the people who are liking the posts, most of them seem like bots, they have two posts, they have six followers, and you can’t click into any of their profiles, right. So I just I don’t know how much of this is directed towards again them, then assuming that you the person paying for the advertising gets really excited, because your posts got extra X amount of likes and views.
Steve Washuta
But they weren’t. They weren’t really your target market. And maybe they weren’t even real and legitimate. So you’re never really getting much out of it except the excitement and the highs from the the likes and clicks. I think your money is well better suited doing the organic stuff. Like we talked about focusing on your search engine optimization and really honing in on who your your target market is.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, agreed. I yeah, I haven’t played with Instagram. But I would imagine, similar things are happening across all platforms.
Steve Washuta
This has been fantastic information. Let my listeners know where they can find more about you, Gabby, personally, if they want to reach out to you to ask you about Pinterest more about your services.
Steve Washuta
Because I can tell you even though you specialize in wedding stuff, fitness and health, people can still gain enough information from you to repurpose sort of what you do because it’s a service and that’s what we do we provide a service to do what we do. So let us know where they can find you on Instagram on Pinterest and everywhere else.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Yeah, thanks Steve. I’m at Gabby Pinkerton is my Instagram. That’s where I share all things Pinterest that I think would be helpful to your audience to the best service that I think no matter who, no matter what type of business they have, that I can offer is my one on one Pinterest audit. So I go in and I record a 15 minute video of me auditing your profile, I recommend keywords.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
talk about your pins, I make suggestions and then we have a 30 minute zoom call together to go over all that and see the changes that you’ve made and how to kind of analyze your data a little bit more. So that’s been really popular for people across I mean, I’ve done a lot of non wedding related stuff in food and fitness and stuff like that.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
So that is all on my website at Gabby pinkerton.com I also have a YouTube channel that’s Gabby Pinkerton and I do share some wedding content but I also share some Pinterest Tips and tricks that you can go back into the archives and see what I’m blabbing about over there.
Steve Washuta
I will put all the links in the description. My guest today has been Gabby Pinkerton Gabby, thank you for joining the truly fun podcast.
Gabrielle Pinkerton
Thank you so much.
Steven Washuta
Thanks for joining us on The truly fit podcast. Please subscribe rate and review on your listening platform and feel free to email us we’d love to hear from social a truly fit data. Thanks again
