Girl Means Business
Welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the ultimate destination for creative female entrepreneurs looking to elevate their small businesses to new heights! Join your host Kendra Swalls, a former teacher turned photographer and marketing expert, as she, and her guests, share invaluable insights and actionable strategies every week.
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Girl Means Business
259: Unlocking Pinterest’s Potential for Business Growth with Cassie Ivey
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Learn the secrets to unlocking Pinterest's full potential for your business with expert insights from Cassie Ivey, the founder of House of Ivey Pinterest Services. From running a coffee shop to mastering Pinterest, Cassie's journey is nothing short of inspiring. Learn how this versatile platform can help you reach a broader audience and maintain long-term engagement without the exhausting social media grind.. If you're ready to enhance your business presence on Pinterest, this episode is packed with valuable tips from an industry expert.
Learn more about Cassie and the House Of Ivey Pinterest Management: http://houseofiveypinterest.com
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Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the show where we're all about helping you feel confident, both as a mom and a business owner. I'm your host, kendra Swalls, mom of two, former teacher and full-time photographer and business coach. Each week, we'll discuss the challenges, success and secrets that make you say I can do this, because you absolutely can. So pop in those earbuds, grab your favorite snack and let's dive in, because this girl means business. Hello there, and welcome back to the Girl Means Business podcast. Okay, a little confession. This episode is kind of self-serving. Sometimes I create episodes solely for you as the listener, and then there are times, like this episode, where there's just something I want to learn about as well, and so I seek out a really awesome guest. I will bring them in and we will share some incredible insights into that topic. That is exactly what this week's interview episode is about. So I have deemed this summer as my summer of Pinterest. It is the time when I'm going to be diving in wholeheartedly into learning about Pinterest, utilizing Pinterest in my business. I feel like it is something that I have talked about doing for a really long time. I've always. It is something that I have talked about doing for a really long time. I've always said I can see the value in Pinterest. I have just not stopped long enough to actually learn how to make the most of this platform, and so I decided for multiple reasons, one being that I am very annoyed with social media. Currently I think I've mentioned this in past episodes I'm on a little bit of a social media break and I'm looking for other areas where I can kind of beef up my marketing, and so Pinterest, again, was one of those things that's always been in the back of my mind, as this is something I know I should be utilizing more in my business and I'm just not. And so how can I set aside time to really dive into this and to really give it the time it needs to kind of see what it can do for my business? So, with all of that being said, this episode obviously is all about Pinterest. So I found Cassie Ivy she's a fellow Texan. Love that she started her entrepreneurial journey as a coffee shop owner, which is also super cool and then, with you know, moves and all these other changes in her life which we'll tell you a little bit about on her intro. She got into Pinterest and Pinterest management and now she helps other small business owners manage their Pinterest accounts with a done with you and done for you options within her offerings.
Speaker 1:I am so excited about this interview. I learned a ton and I am really excited because Cassie and I are going to be working together, going forward to do some of the done with you aspects of my Pinterest. So I think you're going to learn a lot. If you are someone who is ready to get off the social media hamster wheel or even just supplement what you're already doing on social media and you want to have something that's going to have a little more longevity, maybe reach a different audience or a broader audience, then this is going to be the episode for you.
Speaker 1:Now, really quickly, before we jump into my interview with Cassie, I want to remind you that I am going to be doing more Q&A or listener question episodes coming up. So if you have a question that you would like to submit for me to answer here on the podcast, either it will be a question that will be a entire episode in itself, or I've had several questions that kind of require shorter answers. I'm looking to put together maybe just a quick like Q and a episode with multiple questions answered in one episode. I still have spots in both of those for multiple questions or more questions, so head down to the show notes, click the ask me anything link. It should send you to a Google form where you can submit your question. You can also just hop over to Instagram at girl means business and send me your questions in the DMS as well.
Speaker 1:All right, now let's go ahead and get into this incredible conversation about Pinterest with my friend, cassie Ivey. All right, cassie, welcome to the Girl Means Business Podcast. I am super excited to chat with you today because we're talking about Pinterest and I am in my self-proclaimed summer of Pinterest currently, and so I'm really excited to dive into this topic today. But before we get into that, introduce yourself to my audience. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and how you got into the world of Pinterest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Cassie Ivey. I am the founder of House of Ivey Pinterest Services. That's new. We finally launched our rebrand last week, so that's been a really fun experience. But I got into Pinterest initially.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of a perpetual entrepreneur. I went to school for entrepreneurship, I got my master's in global business and my first business was actually brick and mortar coffee shop. So I was running that for three years in Texas. It was the most fun. I loved it. But there's something about running a business that requires you to be in there absolutely every day and I found myself really drawn to the digital marketing aspect of it. I really loved running the Instagram. I really loved connecting with people online and watching people share their stories about their experience in the coffee house online, and so that was just kind of a little I guess a little pebble in my shoe there.
Speaker 2:So I left the coffee house behind when my husband and I moved to Philadelphia so he could go to grad school, and then all of a sudden, it was okay, school is his job and I need to figure out a way to support us. So, moving to a new city, I had no connections and I didn't. I was having a hard time finding a job that I just loved. So initially I worked at the school that my husband's at. I was administrative, I was an administrator, I was working with the faculty and I learned a lot of what I would consider like desk job tasks, became really good at emailing, really good at working with spreadsheets and I found I really liked some of those, the things that I had always shied away from as a creative, like those mundane, like organization and calendaring and all of that stuff. So learning those skills was great. But I knew, you know, eventually we're going to move from here and my job is going to expire, and so what else should I do?
Speaker 2:Well, I found a Pinterest course online and it kind of appealed to me because of all of the different aspects, the different skills that I picked up along the way, the different passions, and I just became obsessed with it. It involved creative writing and involved keyword research. It involved graphic design. There was a keyword research. It involved graphic design. There was a little bit of coding involved. There was all of this stuff that I felt like kind of as a generalist and also as somebody who's passionate about digital marketing. It just put all of these things into one nice little package.
Speaker 2:In addition, it was a really, really sought after industry. Like people, pinterest is one of those things that people just stop in their tracks when they know they need to be on it. But then they try and then it's like I just don't get it and I said I think if I just devote my energy to becoming an expert in this platform, I can do it and I can take it off people's plates, and I just loved that additional aspect of helping and of being a service to somebody. So I did that two years ago. It's been the most fun.
Speaker 2:I've gotten to serve so many amazing clients and at first I niched down and I decided I didn't want to. Pinterest is niche enough and I loved being able to work with different people. So I've worked with influencers. I've worked with menswear brands. I've worked with therapists. I've worked with interior designers. I've worked with menswear brands. I've worked with therapists. I've worked with interior designers. I've worked with food bloggers name it. I've probably worked with them and it's been so much fun. So that's how I got into it. That's where I am now, and scaling to the agency is a recent thing. So now I have a team of there's four of us and we're serving people all over the country, from Texas and the East coast.
Speaker 1:I love that. That's so awesome. I so, okay, I'm going to give you a little bit of my backstory with Pinterest, because I want to let you know where I'm at when we go to this conversation, yes yes, absolutely. I'm going to use this a little bit as my own, like self-serving podcast episode right. Right, that's why I do this, isn't it?
Speaker 1:So, I mean kind of kidding.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Pinterest is something that I have always really enjoyed as a consumer. Like I remember being when I was a teacher. I had a friend that was a teacher with me and I remember her like I can vividly remember her introducing me to Pinterest. It was over text message, it was over summer break and we were chatting back and forth about getting together and she was like something about like yeah, I just stayed up too late last night on Pinterest. I was like what is Pinterest? And so she sent me like a screenshot of her phone and it was. She was like it's like this place where you can go and find like all these things you like and you can pin them to your boards. And so we went to lunch the next day and she like spent the entire lunch like showing me her Pinterest boards and I was like like this kid in a candy store. I was like this is incredible.
Speaker 1:And as a teacher, I started like pinning ideas for my classrooms and like how I wanted to set up my room and organizational stuff. And then it was okay, we were moving into new house, so I was like pinning stuff for my house and vacation ideas and birthday parties for my kids, like all the things. So, as a consumer, I have always loved Pinterest. When it comes to using it for my business, that's where I felt like I had a little bit of a disconnect of like. Well, my business is visual, it was photography and, yeah, that makes sense to put that on to pinterest. But at the same time, I was like I'm not a interior designer, I don't have like, I'm not selling a product someone can go online and buy, or I'm not writing these huge, long, informative blog posts or recipe blogs or things like that. So I had a hard time figuring out like where my place was on Pinterest. And then I started finding success in other areas, so I kind of let it fall to the wayside.
Speaker 1:Well, now that I moved into the education space with the podcast and with coaching and memberships and different products I offer online, I have always, in the back of my mind, been like I know Pinterest is something I need to be getting into, but it was the idea of like, where do I start? Do I need to like? And I'm one of those people that when I get into it like, I want to get all into it, like, I want to be able to not just say like I'm just going to dabble in it, like I want to go all in, and taking the time to go all in has been part of the problem. So I have decided because I am at the point where I am just kind of over the traditional social media of like Instagram, facebook, tiktok.
Speaker 1:I'm like I need to take a little bit of a break from that, of spending so much energy on that and it's exhausting and it's frustrating, and so I'm declaring this my summer of Pinterest and I am going all in. I want to learn everything I can about it. I want to dive into learning how to utilize it for my business, how to like, really enjoy it from the marketing perspective and not just the consumer perspective. So that is why, whenever I came across like you and Faith, who we talked with earlier before we recorded like, I have been like really seeking out people that I can connect with and be like okay, help me like teach me all the things.
Speaker 1:So that's why I was like I'm so excited to chat with you today because I feel like you have so much expertise to give us. Um. So that's kind of where I met just personally. So let's start with the question of I get this a lot when I talk to people about like email marketing stuff is is Pinterest still relevant? I mean, is it something that people are still able to use and find success with when it comes to their business?
Speaker 2:Yes, so Pinterest has actually grown by about 80 million users in the last year. Also, off the top of my head, I think it was in 2020, when you looked at the stock market of okay, which platforms were gaining, which were losing, pinterest and YouTube were the only social platforms that didn't lose money, that saw positive returns in the stock market. So this is recent data we're talking about. Men are growing on the platform year over year. Gen Z is growing faster on Pinterest. It's still relevant and, honestly, for most of my clients, it's the main driver of traffic to their websites, like upwards of 30,000 clicks a month. And so, yes, it's still relevant. And I hear this a lot where people try to project their own experience with Pinterest onto. Well, maybe I don't use it that way, so I can't see people really discovering me and finding me. The data shows people purchase things from Pinterest. They make purchasing decisions. Also, 98% of Pinterest searches are unbranded, which makes it genuinely the only truly democratized social platform out there.
Speaker 2:On Instagram, your following matters, but on Pinterest it doesn't. If you have really excellent content, your content can perform better than a big box business, than a big content creator or a big service provider, because really truly on Pinterest, the best idea wins, and so the real challenge is making sure that you understand the best practices, that you understand the algorithm and that you're optimizing your content for the way that the algorithm is. But the best part about it is when I'm giving analytic reports for my clients and I'm saying, okay, these are the pins that were the most popular in the last 30 days. Majority of the time, they're two, three, five years old, because pins are practically immortal. They just last forever. Because, again, the idea is what wins out, not the recency. On Instagram, your content is going to expire eventually. Its reach will just kind of be next to nothing. But if you take the content that you formatted for Instagram, reformat it for Pinterest, then that post that you made two years ago for your Instagram that you felt really proud of and you loved it, other people are probably going to love it too, and it's still going to be getting you traffic on Pinterest. So it's one of those ways of if you feel like social media is this constant hamster wheel.
Speaker 2:Pinterest is one of those ways. It's like buying insurance for your content. It's preserving it and giving it a longer life, letting it it's. It's compounding your efforts and I love to see people take a really good, evergreen strategy. That's you know. Here I am putting my stuff on Pinterest and I'm kind of introducing myself to people, because on Instagram people know who you are, they have contacts. You're speaking to them a little bit differently, but on Pinterest it's's I like to treat every pin like it's an elevator pitch. Somebody is interacting with me for the very, very first time, so I want to make sure that that pin is really excellent and it kind of encapsulates, okay, what is the value that I'm bringing to the internet, whether as a whole or with this one aspect. And then you have that direct URL that's leading back to your website. That's like the best way to leverage Pinterest and to make it last so long for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love and that's one of the things I think I've always been drawn to Pinterest for is the evergreen aspect of it, because I think that's where my my burnout with social media has become is that it does feel like like fast fashion. You know where it's like I'm going to buy this thing, I'm going to wear it once or twice and I'm going to get rid of it, and that's how it feels like social media content is these days, and I'm using social media to mean like Instagram and Tik TOK and Facebook and things like that, because I feel like Pinterest is its own little it's.
Speaker 2:I don't really call it social media, but, um, the two terms I like to use is visual search engine and clickable magazine, so those are kind of more of how they operate. But social media is people go on there to interact with people, with their friends On Pinterest. It's the focus isn't outwards, it's inwards. They're looking for ideas, they're wanting to improve themselves, which makes them if we're talking in terms of buyers or people that want to purchase services talking in terms of buyers or people that want to purchase services a much warmer audience. Because if you're interacting with an audience of not you know, my business instagram has a different vibe than my personal instagram and when I'm on my personal, I'm looking at my friends, I'm looking at what they're doing and then if a business that I follow or a content creator that I follow pops up, I'm like it feels like advertising and, and it's like it's disrupting the purpose, the reason that I showed up on the platform, but on Pinterest, that's exactly my purpose.
Speaker 2:Okay, how can I style this? How can I? You know, I need these ideas and I'm gathering them and and I'm much more receptive to the content that's being put out. So it's just one of those places where not only is it are you able to extend the life of your content, but you're also getting in front of a bit more of a thoughtful audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I like that because I do think that there is a um, this idea that when you're going on like Instagram and when I go on Instagram in the evenings, when I'm just kind of like scrolling for the sake of scrolling yeah, I don't want to stop and spend a whole lot of time and energy on something like.
Speaker 1:My brain power is at the like, a level zero I'm just like I just want to like, zone out, and so people get frustrated again. I put myself in this category of like I'm trying to sell a service, I'm trying to sell a product and no one's engaging with it. Because they don't. That's not what they're going to that platform for, whereas, like you said, with pinterest or even, like I mentioned this a lot with email marketing, they're going into that. They are solely kind of focused. They have some blinders on. They're not going to be distracted by the notification or the next reel that pops up or whatever, or they're not going to feel annoyed that they're being sold to because that's what they're kind of. They're looking for in some sense or another, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they absolutely have a different mindset, but from Pinterest corporate they I think a lot of people don't know this They've partnered with therapists, mental health professionals.
Speaker 2:They have put a lot of effort into removing content that is negative and most people I think the last stat I saw was nine out of 10 people saw Pinterest as an online Oasis.
Speaker 2:It's this. People have very positive associations with the platform. They have very good feelings about it because, rather than if you're following an influencer on Instagram, it's like comparing myself to her, I'm looking at her and I'm going, ah, but on Pinterest there's kind of an invitational element and especially with my influencer clients, I'm going, ah, but on Pinterest there's kind of an invitational element, and especially with my influencer clients, I'm reformatting the way that they're posting that outfit photo. I'm saying, if you want an outfit you know, if you want a summer wedding guest dress, or if you want a cute, casual, quick outfit, like tap to shop this with me, like you can, you can wear this too, and I'm inviting you to do it. And there's there's something about that that I, I find converts a lot better when you're meeting people in that positive mind space and you're inviting them in to participate in what you're doing rather than comparing themselves to you yeah, it's less of the dog and pony show and more of the like let's just come do this together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Okay, so you mentioned earlier that you've worked with, you know, a wide variety of different clientele in the space and I think that's another kind of block some people have, is they think, well, it's not for me because what I do is x, y or z, you know, I think, a lot of like. So, again, coming from the photography world, I know photography is very visual and pinterest is a visual, like you said, search engine, which great. But there's a lot of photographers I talked to who are like, well, I don't really see the benefit in using Pinterest because it's not, you know, targeted to my local audience, or like, what is it really going to do for me?
Speaker 1:Or I like my aunt, even she does, um, she's an artist, so she does like these kind of cool abstract paintings and I've mentioned to her, to her, like you should put these on pinterest, they're awesome. And she's like, well, I just don't know that. I see, like it doesn't seem like it's a fit for me. So, when it comes to who should be on pinterest, I mean, is there really? I mean, I'm sure there are industries and niches that really like excel maybe, or that are more geared towards that. But is it? Can anybody use it for their business? Will anybody find success on it? Or is it kind of more geared towards a certain type of industry, so I wouldn't count anybody out.
Speaker 2:One of the taglines for my new branding is this is the cherry on top of your marketing. So there are definitely some people I would say Pinterest is not the first thing you should do. Pinterest is probably the thing that you should do. Once you've got your Instagram figured out, once you have your email funnel, you have a brilliant website. Then bring Pinterest into the mix. It is to have it fully managed for you not super cheap, because you have people that are specialists that are keeping up with the algorithm.
Speaker 2:I have bi-weekly calls with Pinterest corporate that kind of give me insider information and help me fine tune my strategies. But so I just started working with here's a great example of a local client, so a men's tailor in New York City. We're fine tuning our strategy, but it's everything that they make is custom. You cannot just purchase anything online. So my strategy with them is I want to get your gorgeous images to go viral. I want people to look to you as an authority. I want you to be an aspirational tailor for people Like maybe one day I can travel to the city and experience this and buy a suit, but what I'm doing is I'm constantly putting New York City know-how like you can come like, learn about men's tailoring. I'm putting this information. I'm also putting up graphics where I'm I'm educating the user on. You know, here are different men's coat styles, here's the history of the bomber jacket. You know things like that because they do have a really nice blog. But one of the reasons that I just want to get really good traction on their Pinterest, with the name of their location woven into absolutely everything that I post, is because getting good traction on their Pinterest leads to a higher Google search ranking.
Speaker 2:Now what happens and I'm sure everybody's experienced this you Google a recipe like best buffalo chicken dip. The first thing that comes up in Google usually isn't a blog, it's usually a pin and that's because that pin got good traffic and so Google is going to register that in the algorithm and go this piece of content answers this question. Like, lots of people click on this content, so they are going to bring you up to the very top, especially if you have a lot of visual. So if you are a visual, like for a photographer, for example, what I do is you know, I weave the name of the location and I, you know, I put the gorgeous images and I'm linking back to the website. All of that, absolutely. But then I also I go into the alternative text, which is what reads the image to the blind and I I just get very, very descriptive. I describe exactly what's going on in the photo Beautiful sunset engagement photo idea. Girl is wearing a boho white dress, guy is wearing, you know, burlap trousers. You know whatever, I'm going to be very descriptive about it because that is going to help your Google image search. So now, if somebody Googles you know sunset engagement photo idea and then they go over to Google image search, your pins will show up and seriously try it like Google anything, and then go to the Google image search.
Speaker 2:Notice how many of the URLs are Pinterest. This is one of those things that people don't realize is so beneficial. First of all, you'll be building authority. People will look to you and they'll go oh, this is like people love their stuff, like this is so great. But then you're also getting that added benefit of that free Google ranking which normally people have to pay for, and I think that's one of the most underrated elements of Pinterest management is is that that additional piece? It's like a cherry on top.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love the idea of like the cherry and I do think that's true. Like, you need to have other things in place first and I will say, like I the seo piece, like I have seen that work in action in my photography business by pure accident, because I mean, this is probably eight, nine years ago now I did a photo shoot for a couple where she had reached I had shot their wedding. She'd reached out to me and she was like, hey, we're expecting're expecting, but he doesn't know. I want to tell him during the photo shoot. And so they came up with this really fun, cute idea where they were going to like write notes to each other on a poster board and then like turn and share them and her said you're going to be a dad. And I captured the reaction. It was so cute, and so I blogged about it.
Speaker 1:And then I threw up some pictures on my blog and I, just from my blog, I pinned them to Pinterest because I didn't, you know, I didn't know what I was doing. So I was like pin these to Pinterest, and that pin still has driven traffic to my photography site for years without me doing anything else, like the evergreen aspect, and it is part of what was able to get my my website ranking at the top on the first page of Google for my location, and so that one session, that one group of pins, that one blog post, made a huge difference in my SEO traffic and my organic Google traffic because it lived on for so long. I mean, if I go back now and I look through my photography Pinterest page analytics, it still gets pins on a regular basis. Now they've obviously declined since they started, but it's crazy to me how it has, like this snowball effect.
Speaker 1:You think like, oh, I'm just putting this pin on Pinterest and it might get a couple of pins. It might be a couple of clicks that might get this or that, but that click and that go, that view on your website is now adding to the snowball of where do you rank on Google, and then that helps with, like all these other things. And so I think it's it's easy to compartmentalize all the things, to be like oh, I'm just putting things on Pinterest, but you're, there's really such a bigger picture to it than that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we haven't even gotten into like paid pins on Pinterest. If you want to promote anything, what I do is I, if I'm going to start ads with somebody, I'll do organic for them. For a while I'll see what's the content that's resonating. So if I were to take on yours and recommend a paid ad, I would probably take that pin because of how popular it is. But then I can geo, fence your area, I can put in a list of zip codes and say these are the people that I want to target.
Speaker 2:We're going to come up with a really great message Like if you're looking for a wedding photographer, if you're looking for an engagement photo shoot, whatever, because 85% of brides say that Pinterest is the first place they go when they're planning and you know it's the second. She has that ring on, maybe even before, and so she's going to Pinterest. And can you imagine if she's already picked out her photographer because she got fed an ad or she was looking up you know Dallas wedding ideas and then you showed up because you're one of the photographers who's taking advantage of Pinterest. And I think, knowing that people are saying you know, I don't know about Pinterest Like that means you have a huge opportunity to saturate your industry because we know it's working for people and if you jump on that train, you will basically eat up the majority of the traffic, like. For some people, like it's very saturated, like I'm going to, I'm going to pull out all my tricks to make sure that you get seen. But for others like this is why I love those non-obvious industries to get on Pinterest because it's you. You can take up so much of the market share because, at the end of the day, it's it's about ideas and not personalities and it's somebody is going to be looking for what you offer and that's huge.
Speaker 2:Instagram just doesn't have the algorithm for that. Reels are the closest thing. Where it's, it kind of understands oh, this is the type of thing that you're interested in and it feeds you that. But Pinterest, if I even linger on a pin for a little bit longer, it's like oh, she likes this, I'm going to feed her more related content. It's a very sophisticated algorithm. I'm noticing I just got on threads. Threads is kind of Like I get lots of threads about Pinterest and I think it's because threads is catching on. That's like my thing, um and it's, but it's similar. It's interest-based and not personality-based, not not into, not like it's, not based on your name or your account.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's what people are craving these days. Like, I think we are all, not all. I think there's a lot of people who are kind of like, okay, the pendulum swung this way with with reels and with being like showing your face and getting in front of the camera and this being this personality. There's a lot of people who don't want to do that. There's a lot of people who are like, I just want to focus on what I love doing and I don't want to be a personality I don't want to be, you know this like character online. I just want to share what I love and what I know and what I'm good at, and I think this is a great way to do that. And I love what you said, too, about the saturation piece.
Speaker 1:I hear people all the time complain about like, well it's, I'm too late to the instagram game, or I'm too late to tick tock, or I'm too late to TikTok, or I'm too late to this because there's already so many people doing what I do. And, of course, like, there's always somebody that's gonna be looking for what you have to offer, cause you bring something unique and whatever that is that you bring. But you're right, like with Pinterest, if there's a lot of people who are saying like, oh, I don't know if that's for me, for my business, then if you're one of the first ones on there, or one of the few that are doing what you do on there, you are going to stand out. You are going to get more traction and more notice. If you're looking for someplace to feel like you're not being one more in this giant pond of fish like, this could be the place for you to go.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I mean in terms of of SEO and visibility. Having a website is really great, but then starting to market your website on Pinterest is like going from the ocean to a little pond.
Speaker 2:And let me tell you, like, if there's lots of noise out there, pinterest like think again, the online oasis, like it's. So the algorithm is so beautiful. Like we just bought a house in Texas. It's a craftsman house, and so I'm like looking at all sorts of craftsman stuff and that's like the majority of my feed right now. I'm just like absolutely loving it. I'm like, oh, this is pretty. Oh, I should do this.
Speaker 2:Oh, you know, it's just like Pinterest just kind of is is like moving along with me and it's and it's supporting me and the things that I want to do, just by the pure algorithm alone, just by the pure algorithm alone. And so to meet people in that kind of mindset where I'm already feeling so excited when I visit the platform, I'm planning something like people show up with a purpose, they've got something to do, they have somewhere to be, they have projects, and so if you have content that can meet any of those needs, whether you're a service provider or you have a product that I just I want to see more businesses on there. This is why I'm I'm generous with information about Pinterest, cause I want to me it benefits the user, which benefits me in the work that I do If Pinterest continues to be a place where where they trust that they're going to find the answers and the products?
Speaker 2:that they need yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that. Okay, so I feel like you've given us a lot of sort of just knowledge around, like why we need to be on Pinterest, how this can benefit us. You talked a little bit about the ads, which I didn't know the geo-pending that's. That's so cool. I love that idea. What is and I want to keep this a little bit brief because I want to get into maybe some of the mistakes people are making but let's talk really quickly about what are kind of some of your top maybe top two or three tips that you give to someone who is just starting off in pictures, maybe has, like, had a personal account but is now thinking about using it for their business, like what are some things they need to know before they kind of get into the business of pinterest?
Speaker 2:need to know before they kind of get into the business of pinterest. So it's very easy to convert your personal account to a business account. It it's just simply the click of a button and once you do that, then you unlock the analytics side. So on your personal account, pinterest isn't going to show you like this is how many times, like you're not creating content, right so. But as a business account it'll say this is how many impressions you got, this, how many clicks you got, how many saves you got. It's really I love that whole page on Pinterest.
Speaker 2:So convert your personal to a business account and then from there, the very first thing that I do when I'm starting with somebody is I create boards that are covering the expanse of topics that they cover. So the first thing I might do is I might look at the different tabs on their website. What are the different categories that they've already put their content into? Can I break it down into a little bit more granular? And then I will create those boards. Then I write a description for each board and what I'm going to do is I'm going to incorporate as smoothly as I can some really good, relevant keywords.
Speaker 2:So this is the URL that you need to know it's trendspinterestcom. That is where you're going to find. There's several categories. You have yearly trends, monthly trends, growing trends and seasonal trends. If you are logged into your Pinterest, when you visit this URL, it will personalize just the general homepage for you, but then you can break it down into interests and then you can add additional keywords. So let's say that you are a wedding photographer. Break it down to the wedding interest and then type in the keyword photographer and it will show you whether you're toggled on growing, seasonal, yearly, monthly. It will show you the different keywords and key phrases that are being searched and what is the volume of that search.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:Grab a few of those, throw them into a spreadsheet, use them for later and try to incorporate those, as appropriate, into the descriptions of your boards. What you don't want to do is just put a bunch of keywords in your boards, because Pinterest kind of registers that as spammy behavior. So I really believe in honest pin copywriting. I like to write a nice friendly paragraph. I like to ask a question in the beginning and then give a statement and then have a call to action. So I'll say, hey, do you need a wedding photographer in the Dallas, texas area? Then blah, blah, blah, I have engagement photo ideas and elopement. You know all this. I'll throw in all those keywords and be very descriptive. And then I put a call to action follow this board for more. So that is the first thing that you want to do. If you do that and then every other piece of content that you put out doesn't even have a description on it, which I wouldn't recommend, but we're talking about lazy girl Pinterest hacks then any pin that is put into that board will benefit from those keywords and the more pins that go into that board Pinterest is indexing. Okay, this pin is similar to this pin and it's similar to this pin and it's being saved to this person's personal board, which has these other pins in it. So it begins to understand what that piece of content is about and then it can recommend that content. It will put that content on someone's feed or it will make it show up in someone's pinterest search. That is the number one thing that you can do is create good boards and then optimize them with keywords. After that, I would recommend if all you can handle is posting one pin a day, do it. But take all of your old Instagram content. Start putting them out as pins. Make sure that it's a two to three ratio. If you schedule it in Pinterest directly, then you can resize it on Pinterest. You don't even need to throw it in Canva or anything. Here's another tip they have a new pin creation tool, so it's pinterestcom forward.
Speaker 2:Slash pin dash creation dash tool. I erase creation tool and I go to pin dash builder. This is very technical. I apologize, but it is a much easier to use Pinterest scheduler in my opinion, and so that is what I use to schedule all of my clients' content. You just drag your image onto the page. You can schedule it for the future. You can write your description, choose the board, write the pin title. If it's a video, you can add tags to it. This is why videos perform faster on Pinterest, because you can interest tag it from the very get-go.
Speaker 2:So just do one pin a week. Take your old stuff, take your Instagram caption, paste it in there. You have a 500 character limit. Try to reword it so that it makes sense. If somebody's meeting you for the first time, throw in. If you're a location, throw in your location. If you have a website and that's the URL that it's attached to say, tap to visit my website. Tell them what they'll find when they visit your website.
Speaker 2:If you want to go into Canva and make a Pinterest graphic, if the image itself doesn't speak for itself, make a graphic. There's tons of gorgeous templates under the Pinterest category on Canva and it's already sized perfectly. So if you have a product and you want to just have, make sure you put the name of your website, your logo, put a nice catchy title on the graphic and then import that. One pin a week, just whatever you do, whether it's one pin or five pins, five pins a day. Do whatever is consistent for you, whatever you can keep up with and maybe set aside an afternoon on a Saturday and say this is my Pinterest day and schedule out everything for the upcoming month and then do it again the next month. Just whatever you can maintain is what you should pursue, because Pinterest loves consistency.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I have two questions I thought of real quick One. Let's start with the scheduling piece. I know that, like you mentioned scheduling them in Pinterest, can you use third party? I know there's Tailwind, I know, like I use Metricool for my other platforms and they have a Pinterest option. Does it matter if you use the scheduling tool versus actually planning or scheduling it in Pinterest?
Speaker 2:So there's different trains of thoughts on this. I personally think that things perform better when you schedule them directly in Pinterest. Those are technically verified third-party platforms but, for example, if you're scheduling a video through those, it takes a full 24 hours for that to actually get posted. There's some additional barriers, like if you're posting a video, you can't interest target it and I just tend to think I've watched, I've used Tailwind and I've used the Pinterest native scheduler. First of all, it's free to use the Pinterest scheduler, so if you don't want to pay $25 a month for Tailwind, that's a great option. I personally and I can share the link with you I've created a client portal and a content creating calendar in Notion that I use for all of my clients, and that's actually something that I sell as a you know, an a la carte. You can buy that and I have got I've got like video instructions on how to use it and how I use it for my clients.
Speaker 2:The one blind spot with using just Pinterest is not being able to see like the 30,000 foot view, like you can't see on a calendar grid, and so that's why I created this thing in Notion. So I'll share the link with you if anybody wants to pursue this and purchase it. I think that, for me, has been really helpful. It has all the categories that you need in the Notion calendar where it's the pin title, the time you're scheduling it and then from there, especially if you're somebody that is, you know you're trying to keep this low cost and you're trying to keep it low effort. If you don't have, I have some clients that have maybe like 50 image assets and so I'm recycling them and that's okay to do in Pinterest. On Instagram it's like, why is she posting the same picture all the time? But on Pinterest, again, people are just kind of seeing one pin of yours. They're not going to your account. So it's okay to reuse your best images and use new keywords and retarget it and almost AB test.
Speaker 2:So that's an okay thing to do and with the Notion calendar that I created, you can see, okay, when was the last time that I pinned this, because in Pinterest you cannot see a date for when a pin was posted. That's because it's evergreen, but it's hard to know. Okay, what, like how long ago did I actually post this? I want to make sure so you have that record. If you use the Notion calendar, you have a record of this is all the content that I've posted and you can duplicate it, bring it forward, retarget some keywords and then publish it again. I find it easy for especially people that are struggling with assets or maybe they have one really key piece of content that they want to make sure they're putting out very consistently like for a lot of my clients. It's please like promote my newsletter. So I will duplicate the newsletter, pin, throw in a new image, retarget some keywords and then I'll pin it again and I just save myself a good five minutes. Yeah, that's huge. When you're trying to save time, you're trying to be efficient.
Speaker 1:So you know cause.
Speaker 2:I'm managing. You know, I've got like 20 clients like that. I've got to do that Right. I've got to find ways to still do a really good job but also be efficient.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, that's super smart. Yeah, I will definitely send me that link and I'll put it down in the show notes for people to grab that. So my other quick question was on the boards. Let's use the example you said like, okay, you're Dallas wedding photographer, so you create a board that's maybe like wedding ideas in DFW and then your description, which is interesting, because I don't know that I've ever even paid attention to the description so I can see how that's really important.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm in my head going. I need to go back and look at my board description. I don't know that I have any, so you've put those keywords in there. Do you need to have, or, I guess is it better to have one board that's more general? Like let's say, you have like, okay, wedding ideas DFW and you can put in there like engagement locations, engagement ideas, elopement ideas, wedding venues, or should you have a different board for, like, these smaller categories? So have one that's like um, elopement ideas in dallas, texas, or um, I don't know, outdoor wedding venues dallas, texas, like should you have more specific or more broad general boards?
Speaker 2:so I don't believe in front loading our work.
Speaker 2:I would say, when you were first starting your pinterest, keep it broad and then, as you go along, as you are creating your content, see what you have, and then it's like, ah, this feels really specific, I think I want a board for it. So then create a new board, keep it secret, put some stuff into it and then once you have a good, you know, 20 pins or so in that board, unsecret it, make it public. And then so I I will start a bit more general and then, as I kind of experienced the needs of my clients and this is the type of content that I'm working with I will get more specific. Specific is better, but I also it doesn't look great to have empty boards on your account. So I would wait until you have the content for that board again, make it secret and then, once you filled that because you've noticed this is kind of a pretty big category for my content then I would create that board and then make it public. Once you have a good amount in there, okay, perfect.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Okay, so let's move on to Pinterest mistakes. What are some things you see people doing? I know we kind of talked about briefly before we hit record a pretty big one you want to mention, but we'll. Is there anything else before we get to that one that you want to say is like these are mistakes I see people making when it comes to getting their Pinterest up and running.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people. They feel that the images speak for themselves, and Pinterest does have a really sophisticated AI component to it where it will scan your image for content. They partnered with an AI shopping platform called the yes, this is really great for the user. It will identify pieces in the image that are shoppable and will link shoppable things below. Now it's pulling content from other creators on pinterest. It's saying you know this person's carrying this and it wants you to be able to shop your inspiration.
Speaker 2:A big mistake that people make is if they have products their own products in the image, they don't turn off this feature and then that people are able to shop somebody else's stuff from your image. That's a huge mistake I think people are making. You can only turn off this feature on the mobile app. You have to open, you have to be logged in to Pinterest on the mobile app and then do it from there, so that's a huge mistake. Also, a lot of people. They think the image speaks for themselves, so they just don't bother with the description. To a certain extent, if the image speaks for itself, then I'm not going to put in a Pinterest graphic on it. I'm not going to add text over it. I may add a little watermark with their logo just to make sure that they get claimed. But that's as far as I'm going to go in terms of letting the image speak for itself. I need to now speak for the image and describe it and throw in keywords and give a good call to action.
Speaker 2:People tend to not read them, which is why, you know, it feels like why am I doing this? It's so, it's for the SEO. It's so Pinterest can know who this content is for and who they can recommend it to. It's a vital, vital piece of it. And also, again, people don't add descriptions to their boards or they just ignore their boards altogether. It's something that you need to keep fresh, you need to maintain and you need to make sure that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Also, a lot of people this is an older strategy. They think. They think, oh, I need to post 20 pins a day, not even kidding. Some people do that. Um, that was really cool in like 2015. Don't do it anymore. Um, that was when pinterest kind of needed that much and it was rewarding people that was putting out that much content because they were trying to saturate the platform. They wanted lots of content on the platform. Now that there is lots of content on the platform, it's saying and I've again had this verified by Pinterest corporate quality over quantity. Make sure I would put more effort into each individual pin and post two pins a day rather than doing you know, and and making sure that that this content makes sense, like put, make your descriptions thoughtful, make your calls to action thoughtful, make sure it's linking back to the right place. Um, put, put the effort into better places and let's go for quality over quantity I love that, okay.
Speaker 1:So then, the big one we were talking about earlier was this idea that you can link your Instagram to your Pinterest, and so people are having their Instagram content automatically show up as pens on Pinterest. So tell us your thoughts on that this is a brand new feature.
Speaker 2:Um, first of all, I want to say you absolutely should claim your Instagram on your Pinterest. What this is doing is, from your Pinterest profile, people can click the Instagram button and it links straight to your Instagram on your Pinterest. What this is doing is, from your Pinterest profile, people can click the Instagram button and it links straight to your Instagram and you can get more traffic that way. That's a great thing. But, that said, this auto post feature, I recommend that people turn it off, because what it's doing is it will just take anything that you post on the grid and auto post it. It will put it in an Instagram only board. So now you're losing out on the board optimization that you've taken time to do. Now it's just lumping together with all the other Instagram content. It's also going to repurpose the caption that you used on Instagram. Like I said, your Instagram audience knows who you are, but your Pinterest audience they're strangers to you, so it's kind of an out of context moment. They're catching you basically in the middle of a conversation. They're like wait, who is this person? Also, the URL is the Instagram URL. It's linking back to that post, so not only if there's no Pinterest keywords. It's not being put into a board. So if this gets seen by anyone, if they click through, they will just see the same thing that they just saw and they probably will feel frustrated and not feel like they want to click through and explore the rest of your Instagram. So that's just not. Although it's completely low effort, it doesn't require anything additional from you. Although it's completely low effort, it doesn't require anything additional from you, it's not going to be a good Pinterest strategy for you.
Speaker 2:I would recommend, if you feel very strongly about being on Pinterest, do the things that I mentioned take the time to create your boards and then take one day a month to schedule all of your content for the upcoming month and and make sure that you're introducing yourself, that you're linking back to the domains that you own because, let's say, your instagram gets taken down one day, like all of the content that you've migrated over to pinterest, is now completely irrelevant and no one knows where to find you. That's horrifying. Like the people that have made their living on tick to, I feel awful for them and I'm saying you need to diversify.
Speaker 2:These algorithms are. They're not in your favor. They aren't helping you out, but also. We just don't. We don't know what could happen, so it's very important to be linking back to domains that you own, link back to your website. Get people into your email list, like we want to capture people into your funnel so that they can continue to interact with you in the future. And auto posting from Instagram is all. It's slightly better than doing nothing, but it's almost doing nothing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and one thing I was thinking when you were talking to about like the, the fact that it links back to your Instagram and if your Instagram goes away, one of the things that, as a user of Pinterest, that is one of my biggest pet peeves, that I'll just kind of throw this out there is when you are and I realized that you know the evergreen aspect of this makes it a little bit harder because, yeah, if you posted something eight years ago and it's now, you know you've updated your website or you've changed whatever it could be irrelevant, but when I click on a pen, just perfect example.
Speaker 1:Just the other day I was on Pinterest and I was looking for um, like clean eating, rest dinner recipes, cause I'm trying to like take out a lot of processed foods in my diet, and I came across this recipe like a pen, beautiful, look like a great, you know um recipe I wanted to try, had all the things.
Speaker 1:I clicked on the link and it took me to like their homepage of their website and I'm like well, I'm not going to spend an hour digging through your website, your blog content, to find the one recipe I'm looking for. Like's not. Well, that's not why I came here, so I didn't even save it, I just moved on. So I want you to also think about like as a user of this platform. What are the things that are going to make the user experience better and making sure that your the urls you're pointing them to actually send them somewhere that's going to benefit them? And like with the instagram thing like, yeah, I don't want to go to somebody's Instagram account, I want to go to whatever it is that piece of content was talking about.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and that's that's where Pinterest has an advantage over Instagram. People are saying link and bio or you know. They're talking about things, especially content creators that like, really they make their living off of affiliate links. The whole comment shop to get it in your inbox is like an improvement on that. But on pinterest, just click and then you're here. Um, linking back to your home page actually is very spammy behavior. Um, pinterest does not like it. Um it it. It just doesn't benefit you and again, it was a very frustrating experience for you. So never link back to your homepage. Even linking back to your contact page is a better option algorithmically and if you're a service provider, like a photographer, that's actually a really great place to be sending people, but your homepage is practically useless. I mean, people do feel frustrated when they visit your homepage from your bin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, cassie. This has been so informative. I feel like I could just keep talking about this forever, but I don't want to. Like I know we've kind of already got a lot of information this one episode. So thank you so much for your time, for all of your expertise. I know it's been incredibly beneficial to everyone listening. It's been really beneficial to me as well, so I appreciate it. Let everybody know where they can get in touch with you, how they can find you, follow you or work with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, uh, you can find us on Instagram house of Ivy Pinterest um, or our website is house of Ivy Pinterestcom. Um, do follow us on Instagram because, as I've noticed this whole auto linking to Pinterest thing, um, I'm I have an idea to have a, maybe a free guide, the Lazy Girls Guide to Pinterest. That's a little bit more effort than auto-linking, but also still the bare minimum that would actually get you results. So that's something that I'm hoping to release in the next few weeks because I just think there's a need for it. So do follow us there if that's something that you're interested in. But if you do want to work with us, we have full organic management. We do Pinterest ads and we also have a done with you service, where we basically we publish two weeks of content for you. We give you a library, video library on here.
Speaker 2:The basics of Pinterest. Here are the things you need to understand, here's where to find keywords, and then we give you a written strategy for a whole year's worth of ideas of things that you can do that are tailored for your business, your industry. We give you branded pin templates. We give you a recommendation on how often to post, based on how much content you have. It's this full service thing that we do. We deliver in a single day and then we give email support afterwards to help you. And this is great if you're an individual that wants to get on Pinterest, or it's really great if you have a team and you want. You want to have this kind of active library of like. Here's a custom strategy on how to run the Pinterest and you can have a member of your team own that task.
Speaker 1:I love that Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for being here. I will have all of those things linked down in the show notes. So anybody that wants to go and grab those links, follow you on Instagram, check out the you know the notion board that you mentioned earlier or get in touch with you to learn more about how to work with you. They can find that there in the show notes. So thank you again and good luck on your move back to Texas.
Speaker 2:Thank you, yeah, hopefully I'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for tuning in this week. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot, share it to social media and don't forget to tag. Girl means business and, as always, we greatly appreciate any reviews you leave for this podcast. Thank you.
