Lessons

Lesson Info

Optimizing Your Site & Creating Your Pins

We've been talking about your pinterest marking strategy, so we've really been laying the groundwork in our first two segments on the first segment we established your pinterest profile that was kind of getting all of your ducks in the row, right? And then step two, we talked about growing your pinterest presence and that's really about getting in there being a power pinner and curating this experience for your audience, and I can't emphasize enough how important that step to wass and you, I know everyone wants to jump right to step three, which isn't where and that's creating your own content, pinning your own products, pinning your own images to pinterest and I know everyone wants to get there and that's absolutely where we are, but I don't want you to gloss over that step, too, because growing you're following pinning all the other content is really important because it amplifies the ways that you're content gets found so your pinterest marketing strategy should mix curated content ...

by that. I mean, the things that you're re pending from the site with your own content and your own content is going to be product images or pinterest specific content, and I know we've got a lot of service providers falling on online, which is awesome, and so for those of you who I'm talking about your own content. You probably don't have product images so it's very much that pinterest specific content that you're creating to drive traffic back to your site so what I mean when I say content right there's a lot of talk about content, marketing and it's a word that people use a lot and has a lot of different meanings and I use it here is a shorthand because it's the easiest way to describe any image you can pin to pinterest straight any image that shows up on pinterest I define its content, so that might be a product image it might be a product image, you know, on a model or in a situation, so you know that middle image there that's still something I would put on a product page, but it gives the little contact for a product it might be around up something where you're putting your product in context, it might be more content that you're actually kind of creating specifically for pinterest images where you're kind of doing an image of image and text to really optimizing and people to click through. And I think for a lot of our service providers, you guys were gonna be doing a lot of this kind of content, you know? You create maybe a designer or a photograph and you're actually gonna put some text on there so people know there's a service there's something behind that and even kind of these compilation posts, I did this for ways to wear this particular scarf, so all of these things would count as pinterest content and actually text to does play a pretty big role on pinterest quotes are huge, and so these are things that I was would count as pinterest content teo, you know, simple, bold pull quotes, or maybe a little bit lengthier text, and if we're being totally technical about it, any image is technically pinterest content write any of these things, whether it's a shot of my studio are a shot from when I went to europe, any of those could technically become content for pinterest, and they can be pinned to pinterest just as they are. Now. We're going to talk about optimizing some of this content because these last couple are not really ideal, but just so we're all on the same page that I'm talking about content, I'm really meaning any image that gets pinned to pinterest, so where should you host your pinterest content? So here's the thing? Pinterest content should always link back to a specific page, and this is not just a like a firm belief that I have this is actually something that's very important to pinterest as well. When you hear ben silverman, the cofounder, speak, he talks about this idea that when someone clicks on an image, they should find the thing that they're looking for because they clicked on that specific image so we don't want to send people back to your home page, right? We don't want to just upload content willy nilly to pinterest that's completely unrelated to what we find on your home page and send people back there that's really bad practice? So pinterest content should always link back to a specific page because of that that means that whatever image you're uploading to pinterest it should live somewhere on your site, right? It shouldn't just be an image that you put to pinterest that comes back to nothing, it should be an image that lives somewhere. So for most of you guys, that probably means by their product page and for those of you who are service providers, think of product pages your sales page, right? So, you know, for our makers for a product, people, we're gonna have an online shop that might have ten or twenty or fifty or hundred products, so you've got lots of product pages, all with images our service providers, you're probably sending people back to a very targeted sales page, right? So when I say product page seven sales page there so the enemy in a product page or it's going to be on a block post, those are the two key places where we're gonna put our content for pinterest and it's because when we bring people than back from pinterest, they're going somewhere specific. They have something to dio, right? Come to a product page because they might want to buy the product if I goto a block post it's, because I'm going to read the block post, right? We do want to bring them back to a home page and make them decide maybe where they're gonna have sort of find the content that they thought they were going to find when they clicked through, right? So that's, the first thing is that we always want to put our content somewhere. So a question that comes up a lot is this do I need a blogger, right? No, most of us probably have product pages, and this could be your etsy shop. You mean so I'm talking about product pages and you don't have your own chop. This could be your etsy shop. You're going tohave as we get in a segment for it and you will talk about conversion, you're going tohave better luck if this is your own shop and not an etsy shop because you have more ways to optimize, but if that's what you have that's okay, that's, what I'm talking about with product page, but, you know the thing is you probably are also going to want to blawg I know it's really hard to think about blogging nowadays right? People are kind of over it so when I talk about you know you're probably gonna bring people back to a blogged even when you go to my site and it says blawg and that's what you go to I don't actually think of this is my block anymore this's my container for my pinterest content I don't have a blogging strategy I have a pinterest content creation strategy and it just so happens that where I put that content is a blogger so that's a pretty big shift and I realize that it's all semantics right? But I'm not blogging anymore I'm creating strategic content for pinterest so do you technically need do you need a block? No not technically but you do need a place to put your content so let's talk about pinning your own content to pinterest because I know that this is what everybody's asking about right when can I pick my own own content? How often should I pick my own content? So the first thing that you could d'oh start with what you've already got for our product people that's product images now for some of our service providers you guys might have to actually generate a little bit more content and we're gonna talk about that when bridget comes on but for our products people you've already got content you've already got images of your products so we want to make sure that our own content fits kind of the pinterest friendly requirements that we've been looking at for all content we want to use pinterest friendly images that means vertical is best if your images aren't vertical tiffany and I were having this conversation at the break you don't have to re photograph everything is that nice to know right? You don't have to re photograph everything you can get creative you can crop or you can compile to make your image is more pinterest friendly so before I really started focusing on pinterest I like many people I think shot pretty much all of my images horizontally you don't have to throw out those old images first of all you could just crop them right so I don't actually know wait it actually looks better it looks better than the original version so that's the first thing is you know this is an old image I probably took this photo you know, five years ago so I wasn't thinking about pinterest optimization then but I'm still selling this necklace in my line it's actually still one of my best sellers why re photograph it? We're not in two seconds on my computer I can crop it to be optimized right? And if you can't crop it to be optimized then for pinterest you could always pull multiple images together right so this part over here these air how the image is looking my product page this is also an old products I was shooting all these horizontal format and what I did was I just put two images together and I send that to pinterest now I didn't upload these two images on this product page joined together like that I just posted it to pinterest and put the girl on so you're not gonna find this exact image when you click over to the product page but you're going to find both of these images and this product when you click over so you can't crop you might be able to combine two or three images especially if your product has multiple uses or multiple viewpoints you can do that and still create that vertical image so that's the first thing is vertical images then you want to write descriptions that encourage re pending so you don't wanna be like this is my necklace right no one it's not their necklace it's your necklace so write your descriptions as if it was the customer or as if it was someone else pinning so I'm not going to say like hey check out my great echo lous I'm gonna say this ezio the long black steel and silver chain like necklace I'll probably put the name into all you know I'm writing something fairly descriptive but that someone else could just use and repent right when appropriate you could also put a call to action in the description, so if I want someone to click through to read more or to get more information in the description I right, click through click through for outfit details click through to see two more ways to wear this scarf I don't do it on my product pins I don't say click through to buy that starts to feel right like we're not quite in the spirit of things you could do it occasionally if you wanted so that's the kind of one appropriate, but sometimes if you really want someone to click through, just say click through click through for more information, always linking back to a specific page. And then you could also use a scheduling tool to put your product pins on autopilot, so I use the service called viral tag it's not free I pay fifteen bucks a month, they keep changing the way their plans work. Uh, I love it. I sit down once a week and I schedule out a bunch of product ins to go up, usually one to three a day, right? And then I'll have to think about those product pins for the rest of the week, and I know they're going out across multiple boards at times that are optimized for my audience, so how often should you pin your own content to pinterest you want to aim for a ten to one mix of other people's content to your own? So if you're using that kind of power pinning strategy that's probably going out to about three to four pins a day of your own content again this isn't perfect this isn't like ah hard and fast rule but if you're really serious about using this is a strategy I would make sure you're pinning at least one to two things of yours on pinterest everyday because you're always in the varying those boards and not everyone follows every board right? So if you're only pinning you pin one item once and the pain and again for another six months or you don't pin anything again for another six months no one's seen you right? Stephanie this does your program have a scheduler like a pen scheduler so you could see on a calendar yes that's the idea that you go in and you schedule it and then you see like what what's scheduled for what? What you were born so you literally can decide so what? And so what this lets you dio is actually that way and applied for that that's actually what it looks like in viral tag okay, so I've gone in here and I've and actually you can see it right here and I go into more detail in this in the bonus video but in my I have a little bookmark right there for a viral tag so I'm on a website like on my own website hit that viral tag button elect me still active the images I wanna pin and I upload them to the scheduler and now they're set up to go out at certain times good so what that also means is that I want my own content to kind of come up around the times issue that I'm that I'm power of hitting I wanted to look like I'm doing it organically right? But I don't wanna stop in the middle of my power pinning session go over to my website and pin something so I tend to schedule these for around the times of day when I might be on pinterest in the morning little in the afternoon and then you in the evening or later at night I'm not always on henderson and if I'm not it's ok it still pops up it's not the end of the world but I kind of wanted to look like it's part of my organic usage of pinterest even though it's not because if I had to go in and do that it would disrupt my flow so that's the first thing that you could do is you can take all of the content all of the images that already exist and you could start pinning those and particularly for you product people that's absolutely what youwant todo but for everybody and I think definitely for our service people but even our product people you want to create specific content perp interest because that's really what's going teo maximize your strategy and I can tell you this from experience I can tell you the creating pinder specific content gets even better results than just putting my own products out there, so your goal is to create pinterest content that drives traffic back to your website that's the biggest school we yes re pens or nice yes likes or nice, but I can't do anything with someone who's repent I mean, I guess I could go and follow them but doesn't guarantee that they're going to follow me back. I want them on my website that's, where I have control over the space and that's where you can convert them in a lot of different ways. So the first thing that you have to understand is what makes someone more likely to click through on something pinterest is a lot of eye candy, so people are more likely to click through if they know there's something there beyond an image. So this is an image of my studio and it's nice it's fine it's pretty people are going to probably look at it now I didn't actually create this before and after compilation it was actually on design sponge, so she put this together but it still works the same way. So now we know that there's a story there, right? Looking ugly pit in the ground and now it's a pretty studio before after she'd have to add a lot of information, but now we know that there's something happened there's a story that makes people click through right this is a way more likely to be clicked through than just this pretty image this might this might actually get more repentance it's pretty right it's nice, but this is going to get more click throughs and that's way more important for conversion. So I just read a really interesting stat, which I can tell you from my experience. It is completely true. Fifty nine percent of active pinterest users usually click through pins to blog's photos or articles rather than twenty seven percent that click through to brand or shopping sites. People are twice as likely to click through something that's on a blood post than a product page, and I can tell you from my experience that this is pretty well spot on that's exactly what I see with my pinterest traffic as well. So, yes, you can pin your products and yes, you should pin your products and yes, traffic will come back to your shop but you're going to get way more traffic if you create strategic content on a block everyone with me you guys are giving me a look like used so the answer is yes you do in fact have to have not a log a container for your pinterest content that looks like a blogger so what kinds of content are people looking for on pinterest because this is also going to help us right if I just say like create content that's pretty overwhelming right around you guys are looking at me like you're scared right now I'm like you just create content now we want to know what people are looking for in pinterest and in addition just what people are looking for you want to think about what your particular audience is looking for so people are on pinterest to look for inspirational content right that's like what would your audience like to do more of what would they like to change how would they like to be better? I think this is very true for your sarah for your audience sarah they are looking for inspirational content and this is a perfect example of using pinterest search just figure out exactly what that means I literally typed in inspiration huh? I love the forty five life latin lessons written by ninety year old woman that is like the best graphic there's a reason that that comes up first in that search right so people want to be inspired they also might want to be inspired around a specific category so they may want fashion inspiration or home inspiration and a lot of times this is you know they're not looking for like the d I y or how to they just wanna look at the pretty things right and be inspired to me we someday do it right so some ideas for inspirational content things like quotes you know maybe a compilation are around up so we had this like fifty five plus fall outfit ideas right like you want inspiration I'm gonna give you all the inspiration right on and even just like styled images if you could make something looks like a pretty scene in the house I think for you kathy that's perfect right people want to be inspired to make their spaces look better so if you can create content that shows no beautiful spaces where people might want to exist in and you actually pinned a lot of that on your mood board you know that's content that people are looking for interest is also all about aspirational content and that's what is your audience dreaming of what's on their bucket list what is there some day look like so I decided I was just gonna search for boards that people labeled someday ah lot come up right because people are using pinterest to plan for the future so a lot of that aspirational content is weddings we've got weddings travel holmes probably bigger homes than they have now um more weddings dog on dh there's nothing on here about babies I feel like those are the big kind of aspirational categories right? So if those makes sense for your brand, you can really tap into that aspirational quality you know, is your customer looking for you know, think about planning a trip or planning their wedding or planning their home? What is that kind of someday content and truthfully, your product photography is certainly can fall into aspirational content you know, I want this someday somebody buy this for me for a present, right there's a lot of boards like that please buy this for me, so that can certainly work, but you can also just think about really great styled images and lifestyle shot this is really the eye candy content that comes in under aspirational and then really, I think the big e on pinterest right? The thing that people are really looking for is that instructional content and we know this is a big category because now there's also things like pinterest fails, right? Like I tried to follow the instructions on pinterest and it didn't work so now there's the whole pinterest fail so we know people are looking for that instructional content what could you teach your audience? What would they like to learn? How can you help them use your products better? So instructional content is huge on pinterest but this is where you have to be really careful you cannot teach people how to do what you d'oh if you're trying to attract your customers right so you're instructional content should not be how to make your product or how to provide your service it should be about how to use your product or service in their lives it might also be finally unrelated and that's okay too it just can't be showing them how to make you're so how to tie a scarf people really need help with this a lot of dicey a pin constantly because people are like oh yeah I don't have a scarf right? Or maybe you know for for our ceramics people how to set a table and then when I searched for how to set a table for how to set a table for kids for dinner for party for thanksgiving for chief for christmas for breakfast for brunch and you get a lot of blood posts out of that right right there and just just told you twenty ideas you know, for someone like kathy it could be like how to create an alter in your home how to create a sacred space, how to bring more peace into your work space, right? All of those things that your customers might be searching for they could all become how to post and your products could become a part of that but it's not the central theme they don't have to buy your product to create a sacred space around their desk but once they've seen how you've styled your product in that sacred space they're probably gonna want it right so that's the idea with this kind of instructional content how do our boyfriend jeans look it's my post I know this stuff works right so that's actually this pin refers more traffic to my sight than any thing else anywhere ever so people are looking for this kind of instructional content and really if you just type how to into pinterest into the search, you'll find a lot of things that people are looking for so if you can create content around that that uses your product but doesn't overtly use your product that's a really big draw so we've got no ideas for and your instructional contact might be things like the compilations or the round ups and then how twos and tutorials and those styling posts those air all really key kinds of content go ahead, cathy I have I mean I agree because that's the reason why I can't get rid of my other blogged right for because they did the how to pack yeah the hospital so does bring a lot of yeah well and you know what's great is in a few minutes when we bring bridget on we're going to talk about some of that old content as well, so samples of around what's around up so run up was like that fifty five like paul style ideas or eight ways to our boyfriend jeans. So it's not just like one way to do something it's multiple ways is what I would consider it round up, and really I'm just sort of making up terms for lots of different types of content there's no like this is the official it's around up or it's a compilation, just different ideas, so you also want to use the content you're already pinning as a starting point for your content creation. So part of the reason that we did all that work and segment two of pinning lots and lots of content is we want to see what our audience responds to, and we want to see what boards are getting the most traction so we can create content specifically for those boards. So what are your most popular boards? What kind of content would work well for them? So if I know that my street style board is one of my most followed boards, it makes sense to take my products out and do a street style photo shoot, right? That makes sense because I know that or if I know that my professional style board gets a lot of traction, I'm going to go ahead and do a lot of professionally styled, you know, either outfits or photography with my jewelry and then what kind of content gets the most repents from your audience? What are you seeing people repent a lot and actually in interest analytics you could also see of all depends that you're pitting you can see what people are clicking through as well, so you can even see what gets the most click throughs from your audience as well. So I'm not your contact but just all of the pens that you're pinning what gets repent? What gets click through and you can really use your existing content as inspiration. So when I plan a photo shoot with a model for my jewelry, I actually take screen grabs of my pinterest boards I print out images I circle things I make notes I take these shopping with me like a total nerd I pulled them out, I find outfit and then I used them as a starting point to style my photo shoots and not just a style you know everything from what they're wearing to the way they're posing to how has cropped it? I'm using the content that I've previously pinned to give me more information and hands like this and these are actually just, you know, pins that I've put on a product page, so I'm just creating them not is even blawg content but just product content, but I can tell you that these have gotten pretty good traction they've gotten good repent when I put them on pinterest because and I knew they were going. Tio. I looked at my old content and I looked at what was working. So use what you're doing on pinterest as a strategy to help you create new content.