- Alisa Meredith
- Pinterest Product Specialist At Tailwind
Sponsors:
- Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!
- Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software
Notes:
- 2×3 ratio for photo
- The title does the hard work
- Text on the image is important
- #3 search engine
- Board – Relevant title & description
- Match Product Categories from the shopping cart
- Find other ways to appeal to people
- Not about the followers, more about engagement
- Use Audience Insights
- Secret Boards – Be Consistent
- 97% of searches are unbranded
- https://trends.pintrest.com – What’s trending
- Story Pin
- Consumed on Pinterest
- No link to the website
- In beta, must Apply
- http://pintrest.com/source
Links:
- https://tailwindapp.com
- https://www.instagram.com/tailwindapp/
- https://www.instagram.com/alisammeredith
- https://www.twitter.com/alisammeredith
Transcript:
Charles (00:00):
In this episode of the business of eCommerce. I talk with Alisa Meredith about using Pinterest to increase e-commerce sales. This is the business e-commerce episode 150. [inaudible] Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show. It helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I’m your host, Charles [inaudible] and I’m here today with Alisa Meredith. Elisa is the Pinterest product specialist and marketing manager at tailwind. She’s a speaker and teacher of topics, Pinterest marketing and Pinterest ads. On this interview, we go really deep into using Pinterest to generate more traffic and orders for our e-commerce business. She has a ton of insights that I didn’t know about Pinterest, who are super interesting. You’ll see me during the interview, taking a lot of notes. A lot of these topics are things that were very new to me. She gets into a lot of new things as well on how to find new topics.
Charles (01:03):
So you can create new boards, almost like Pinterest SEL, which I didn’t know, something you could do. Also some new features like story pins, she talks about and re and really some Pinterest for different retailers that were very surprising on who can actually use Pinterest. She reframes it in a very different way that I think a lot of people would find helpful. So let’s go into the show and if you like it, we have a like subscribe and hopefully this helps you. Thanks. So, Hey Alyssa, how are you doing today? I’m doing great. How about yourself? Doing good? I love it. I love the topic. We haven’t talked about this actually ever. I mean right now, like, you know, you hear Instagram all the time, Facebook, but you don’t hear Pinterest coming up as much. And I think it lends itself though, to certain types of products I think are really like the per, like the Pinterest products. So first when you say kind of Pinterest, is it Pinterest marketing, would you call it a Pinterest? Like how would you even describe using Pinterest?
Alisa (02:07):
Totally Pinterest marketing. So just like Instagram marketing, Facebook marketing, any other kinds of marketing, it’s, it’s a different beast. But has some of the similar benefits and this year has been as you know, unusual
Charles (02:23):
To say the least. Yeah, exactly.
Alisa (02:26):
But it has been really reflected in Pinterest and the way that people are using it. So for example they’re up to 442 million monthly active users, which is up 20% in just six months, which is enormous for them. Yeah. And the number of people buying. So the conversions on Pinterest are, are up three X since the start of the year. So there’s a tremendous potential for sales growth from Pinterest. And so I’m excited to talk about it.
Charles (02:58):
So you’ll saying the number of people buying, when you say buying, are they people buying them on Pinterest or is it, are you tracking people that came from Pinterest and bought directly on like the shopping cart side? Right. It’s
Alisa (03:11):
From Pinterest to your site? Yep. Okay.
Charles (03:14):
So a attribution. So it’s up the attribution from Pinterest is all of a sudden way up
Alisa (03:20):
Three X from the start of the year alone. Yeah. And we haven’t even hit peak holiday season yet.
Charles (03:26):
Yeah. We’re, we’re recording here. I just come a little later, but we’re recording both what a week before Thanksgiving. So we’ll see how, when we talk in the future, we’ll see how that goes. If this comes out, but why do you think that is attribution’s three X for the year?
Alisa (03:41):
I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s yeah. It’s reflected in a couple of things. So it’s reflected in the usership. So as 442 million monthly active users last time I looked, which was the other day, it was 416. So just more people on it, but also people spending a lot more time on it. So the idea with Pinterest is it’s really not as much of a social network as it is a visual discovery engine. So people go on there to figure out like how to solve, how to solve for a problem or how to make their life better. It’s really like kind of the introverts network. It’s not all about displaying who I am. It’s about building a better me. So if you think about the situation we’re in right now, where a lot of us, if we’re fortunate are working from home, helping kids do school online, just trying to stay safe and sane, which is a tremendous challenge right now. So we’re looking at ways to make our homes cozier to do more cooking at home, right. And to have projects, to keep ourselves and our kids busy and reduce our stress. And all of that is really where Pinterest shines. But kind of on top of that, Pinterest is making shopping easier on Pinterest and kind of creating new, new ways for people to shop and to share their products on Pinterest
Charles (05:03):
Today’s episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It’s a world’s first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you’re running an e-commerce store, you need to have drip to try. And here’s why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There’s robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation world visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It’s powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe. That’s drip.com/b O E. Now onto the show.
Charles (05:55):
Yeah, I think something about 2020 as well. People aren’t going out, they’re not going to restaurants and buyers. So it’s almost like shopping has become like the new pastime. I found myself just scrolling on like on like Amazon and just like, Oh, top sellers, maybe I’ll just buy some, you know, like a, just like a funny ice cube tray or something. It was like bizarre stuff. And I’m like, why am I even buying this? Right. This doesn’t make any sense. So I think that’s something people are just stuck at home and this is just what in Pinterest is great. Right? Because on Amazon, you can only search so long for just like random products, but Pinterest, you can just like go forever. And like, yeah,
Alisa (06:31):
You can, if you don’t even know what you’re searching for, you can just start in the home feed and then you are down the rabbit hole and you may never come out.
Charles (06:39):
Yeah. I did that one day and I sat the whole feed and I went down and I was, and I went somewhere all the way down to, I was going to put the back of my bed, like old wood and make it look like the same artists. And I was like, ah, God, in a really weird, I don’t know how I got there, but you can do that with Pinterest. So
Alisa (06:56):
Sure can. So
Charles (06:58):
Then how you actually linking that up with an e-commerce platform? Like what is like, how do you go from just like, Hey, I’m looking at like, you know, a new thing to put behind my headboard to, or cooking recipe of recipes to, how do you link that with here’s our product and we want to sell this.
Alisa (07:14):
Yeah. So there are a couple of different ways you can do it. One way that’s really popular is to have a blog and to, so to create a pinnable image for your blog posts, which, you know, a lot of people want that they want the inspiration, but they also want the information. So it’s not just like, don’t just show me this cool thing, teach me how to do it. Right. So if you can share it in that way and then link, of course you’d link that image to the specific page so people can find what they want. That’s, that’s really important. Another thing you can do is to hook up your catalog with your Pinterest account and Pinterest will actually scrape your site every 24 hours and pull in all the updated product information. And when you do that and fulfill a couple of other little other requirements for, for your business, such as things you already probably have like your shipping or return policy and privacy policy and all that you can apply to for verified merchant status. When you do that, you get a little check Mark on your profile, which kind of is a signal to people that, Hey, this is a trusted merchant. You can feel good ordering from them, but also helps get your products which come in from your product feed into some really desirable spots on Pinterest, where people tend to buy more. So that that’s a way that you can like, just set it up once. And it keeps current because of your inventory and your product feed.
Charles (08:37):
And that just scraped your site. You don’t need to actually like, it doesn’t matter if you use big commerce or Magento, wherever you can just put it the, and it does its thing.
Alisa (08:45):
Yeah. And it’s, if you use Shopify, it’s easiest because there’s an app, that’s an integration. Otherwise you should be able to use if you have a Google shopping set up that should work, no guarantees. But yeah, that should work for you.
Charles (09:02):
Okay. So, and then that, so in Pinterest, there is a description on the image, but it’s very very short, right? It’s very terrace. And then, but then you can link, you would just basically have a short description and read more, learn how to do this sort of thing. Like, you know, his his, some home ideas learn how to action Mondays and that links to a blog post of the top 10 ways to do, you know, build this new shelf in your home. That sort of thing.
Alisa (09:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So you can do that. There’s so the parts of a pen would be the image itself. Right. Which you want to go for about a one to two or a two to three ratio? Sorry. So that’s like a thousand pixels tall wide by 15 pics, 1500 pixels tall. Sorry. and then, so the, the other parts would be your title. So that’s what you mentioned that would be your short kind of headline that you would add to it. And that’s what is visible in the feed. Then there’s also your description, which can be up to 500 characters. And that can be one to two sentences, a little bit more about your product and people are finding that, that that’s not even always visible on your pins. So it’s really more about the SEO. So really count on your title, doing the hard work for you. And so just tell people what they’re going to get, kind of entice them to, to visit that link without actually saying, visit my link because that’s just not helpful at all.
Alisa (10:29):
Another thing that’s really important on your pin is to add some branding. So some subtle branding, whether it’s a logo or your website, URL and text on image is important for a lot of a lot of people, not everybody. So for instance, if you have a living room like a lifestyle photo of a living room, and you have all your products in it, you may not need to have a title on that, like a text on your image because it’s obvious what it is. And then you can even tag that. So you can, when you’re creating the pin, you can tag items in that pin and then create links for those individual items too. But in other cases, like if you’re linking to a blog post that teaches you maybe how to use a product that you’re selling, you will want to use some very clear, concise copy, excuse me, to tell people like, why, why should I click on this?
Alisa (11:21):
And what am I going to learn from it? So it might be like five ways to use your grandma’s old tablecloth. It’s a terrible example, but you get the idea that they’re what they’re going to see is the image, the text on the image and your title. So give them like, don’t repeat everything in all three places, but give them like a concise idea of why they should click and keywords are super important. So Pinterest is a number three search engines. So in terms of size and searches are an awful lot of searches going on there. So being really careful with your keywords and also where you save your pins. So people will sometimes ask like, what kind of board should I have? So the board is where you’re going to collect all your pins and if you’re using it for personal use, you know what I mean?
Alisa (12:11):
But for, for the business world, you have to think about SEO. So the title of your, of your board, the description of your board, everything that you save into that board all needs to be cohesive. So it all needs to be relevant. And to build a story for Pinterest, which is, this is exactly the topic of this board. So rather than having like one, one giant board for everything you want to really break it out by maybe shirts and tops or, and dresses, handbags shoes, pants, outerwear, and then even by style. So like hipster style or casual or cocktail outfits, you know, be very, very specific. And then think about when you’re putting pins into those boards, what keywords are you using on the text, on image, on the title and in the description that will kind of support that board itself and tell Pinterest, all right, we’re being consistent here with the way we speak about this content. So we can feel confident in how we serve up this discontent to your followers and to people who search.
Charles (13:20):
Yeah. So that’s actually interesting when I kind of said followers and people who search, because I guess even when I stopped thinking of Pinterest, I hate bold search engine, but I have follower at the same time. So I’m trying to figure out, is it more of like Google, where I have to do a good job optimizing my page and my look and get people to actually come there? Or is it more of like a Twitter where I have to get people to actually engage with, you know, our account and you know, if you have 10 followers that no one’s watching, like no one on Twitter, right? Like if you’re using a hashtag, so it’s searching for anything, they’re not really right. But if you have, you know, a million followers, people see your message, right. Opposite, right? Yeah. What are the fall?
Alisa (14:03):
It’s a little bit in between. So so the way, the way it works is you can have 10, 10 followers on Pinterest and still get a ton of traffic to your website from Pinterest, because those who will see your pins or go way beyond just your followers, the reason why your followers are important is because Pinterest serves up your content to your followers first with the assumption that these should be the people most engaged with your content, right? So if your followers are then engaging with your content, Pinterest sees that as a signal. Okay. This is really good content, everybody more. So it was really not, not about like, if I have a million followers, I’ll get, you know, better traffic. It’s more about if I have followers, my content will likely go further.
Charles (14:56):
Hmm. But are you trying to, is the play to get a lot of like a large set of these pages up and then just build like a library of them rice? Or is it get a larger following? And then when you post a new one, it gets a quick hit, like a quick pop right. Because then like a Facebook or Twitter, or you’re trying to get that pop while you post it. And all of a sudden you get 10,000 hits day one, but it just fades off versus, you know, SEO, Google, you might get, am I ranked the next five years? Which, what does that fall?
Alisa (15:27):
It’s much closer to the group, Google end of things. So content which is relevant and remains relevant can still surface in search here years later, I still have hosts that do. But it’s not. And it really still is not about your followers as far as how many you have, just making sure that what you’re pinning is consistently engaging to those people who follow you. One of the cool ways to know if you’re doing that is to go into your Pinterest audience insights. So it’s in analytics, audience insights, and anybody can do this. You can look at all Pinterest users and then you can come, you can look at your audience and compare them. So if I do that for tailwind, I’ll see that my audience is quite a bit more likely to be interested in education than the typical Pinterest audience.
Alisa (16:25):
So you can get these little hints as to, okay, what kinds of things does my, does my followership engage with? And I can see, let’s see my, the age range of typical Pinterest, a follower is a little bit older than typical. So like using these insights to tell you who, who am I talking to on Pinterest? What do they want to know about? Can be really powerful for building that engaged audience. And of course, another question we get is, do I need to have a separate personal and business Pinterest account because nobody really likes switching between accounts. It’s easier to do now, but it’s still, still, nobody really wants to do it. So what I’ve done cause I’ve been on Pinterest since the beginning. So I’ve tried everything and therefore messed up my account because what I did cause I started personal then business and then kind of a mix and then business.
Alisa (17:22):
And what happened in that process is okay, my, my initial followers followed me because I was pinning about hairstyles or about home decor or about workouts. And then when I went out to business and I was writing about Pinterest ads, nobody who followed me cared at all right, because they had followed me because they liked what I was sharing before about hair and food and whatever. So just making sure that if you have a personal account, you want to, you know, make it into a business account, use it for business. If you already have quite a few followers, I wouldn’t, I would just open a new account and start from there. But you can, what you can do is you can have secret boards for yourself. So that’s what I do now. I still have all those boards that I had before. I just changed them to secret so that I can use them, but nobody else can see them and they can’t see what I pinned to them.
Charles (18:18):
Why would you want to have a secret board? Like what does that help, does that help with the business account? I kind of just like, laughs like idea posts. Maybe with that.
Alisa (18:28):
I do it just for personal things that I’m interested in. So if I want to find a new painting technique, I’ll just save it to a purse, like a secret port of mine. And that way I’m not accidentally attracting followers who don’t care at all about my marketing content, because what I want to do is be real consistent in the content that I’m sharing so that I’m getting people who really want that content.
Charles (18:52):
So beacon, basically, you always want to make sure if you’re, if you’re using your business account actually kind of do your scrolling as well. Don’t do your pinning from that business account. Right. Because that will show up in the feed,
Alisa (19:06):
Just do it to a secret board and then it won’t show up. That’s what I do, right?
Charles (19:10):
Yeah. No, I like that. That’s a yeah. Cause you probably, I’m guessing from the app can switch back and forth very easily. I know that the clearer you can,
Alisa (19:17):
Maybe you can now, but I don’t even bother. Cause it’s just, I just like it altogether.
Charles (19:24):
Were you saying what the boys early? I kind of put a note in there also to have those very specific categories, it almost sounds like you could map out the same similar categories to what’s on your actual site. What’s on your shopping cart and basically right. Cause the same. So if you’re selling men’s ties, right? Like whatever the breakdown of that would be, you’re going to have a pretty similar breakdown on the boards. I’m guessing. Is that kind of,
Alisa (19:46):
Yeah, I think that’s a great place to start, but I do think you’re going to want to branch out from there and think about, okay, what other ways can I present these products that, that will appeal to people? Maybe the same people, maybe different people, but definitely a different search term. So if you’re doing like silk ties, that’s one thing, but you might also want to have a board for like great gifts for men and then you’d put in that board, everything that was applicable to that topic.
Charles (20:15):
Oh, so you put them in bold. So kind of the same way you categorizing shopping cart you’d have two boards, but could have the same products or shuts similar products, right? Yep, absolutely. Okay.
Alisa (20:27):
So an interesting thing about Pinterest and I think especially applicable to e-commerce sellers is that 87% of the searches on Pinterest are on brand or sorry, 97% of searches on Pinterest are unbranded. And what that means is people are going there looking for running shoes, but they’re not looking for Nike or even higher level than that. And more common would be they’re looking for running tips. So if you can grab the attention of somebody at your level of just looking for that inspiration and that help to get where they want to go, then they’re more likely to find you and your products. And they’re also likely to be a rather cold audience, right? So it’s really great to use Pinterest to kind of build your retargeting audience to advertise elsewhere or to get them on your email list. Because if they come to you not having any idea who you are, it’s a little bit harder to get the sale, right from the initial click. But with the traffic you can bring in from Pinterest. So you can absolutely use it to build your list and he will get some sales as well, but also build your retargeting audience.
Charles (21:36):
Yeah. It sounds like a very top of the funnel play, right. Where build it tight and then just, yeah. Push them to the blog post. You probably wouldn’t know. Maybe you would know attribution and you could say everyone that came from, you know, redirect from Pinterest, let’s send them this retargeting sequence and just follow them around on Google and Facebook for the next year and do your thing. Yeah,
Alisa (22:01):
I mean, there definitely are sales that come directly from Pinterest, but it may not be today. Right. It might be in a month because people on Pinterest plan way ahead. So this year searches for holiday topics started taking off in April, which is I mean it’s usually July. So it’s happened a lot really, but July is still pretty early. So it basically follows the trend. You would see, like if you went to Michael’s craft store and on the, on the end caps, you saw a certain holiday, you’d be like, okay, that’s what I should be spending on Pinterest right now. Cause that’s what people are, are planning and saving for.
Charles (22:41):
So they’re really way earlier on in the buyer journey. Right. Where I know as a buyer me, like if I need a coffee cup, I’m basically buying it when I like, like to place my coffee when I buy this coffee, like I’m doing it very short term, but I definitely know those people that kind of think Christmas decorations and it’s like the middle of the summer. And they like just, they come up with ideas like very early on, what am I make for Thanksgiving? And they’re worrying about in July, just like they come up with these ideas. It’s not me, but I know a lot of people. And that sounds more like that Pinterest audience where they’re really planning and thinking.
Alisa (23:14):
Yeah. And another, another great tool that is kinda my favorite Pinterest tool is, is Pinterest trends. That’s available in the U S for the UK and for Canada and w what you can do with that. It’s just trends.pinterest.com. And if you just enter your search term, it’s going to tell you when those things are trending on Pinterest, it’s also going to give you this week’s top trends. So right now we’ve got Thanksgiving recipes, Christmas tree, Christmas, DIY, Christmas decorations, Harry styles, Vogue Gogo, Satoru a lot of Christmas stuff. Yeah. And then for different niches. So if you’re in the fashion industry, there are other selections for you for food and drink beauty home travel. But you can also do your own search. So if you’re selling it, like give me an example of something, somebody selling.
Charles (24:09):
So I’m selling that monitor over there, but that’s probably not a Pinterest guessing right now. Probably not. Yeah. So I that’s a, that is another question. What sort of things you should actually be looking for? I’m picturing Pinterest, like home decor, right? Like new sheets for the bed. That sort of thing is that yeah.
Alisa (24:25):
Home decor is a huge topic on Pinterest, but so is travel. Yep. Right. And even entertainment is very popular on Pinterest recipes of course, fashion. What are some things yeah.
Charles (24:40):
Popular that I wouldn’t, wouldn’t think of? Like, what are some of the things where you, you kind of follow on Pinterest and you’re like, wow, I didn’t see that coming.
Alisa (24:46):
If you look at some of the success stories that Pinterest publishes I’ve been a little surprised by the finance companies that do really well. And I shouldn’t be, because if I look in, if I look again at audience insights, I can see that. Yeah. Personal finance or business finance. Yeah. So if I look at finance, yeah. The financial planning is really big, even banking and credit cards and investment. And the reason for that, it just follows along with all of pinches, being a place to make your life better. So any way you can find to present your products, or even your ideas as a way to improve someone’s future, that’s going to do well on Pinterest.
Charles (25:35):
What would you use for an image for those? I can’t even picture from surf. Like just like piles of money. Like what would you, yeah. Yeah. It’s like an image search place. Yeah.
Alisa (25:48):
It is. So like a piggy bank or piles of money are very done. Right. But what you can do instead is to paint that picture of what, what you’re going to share with them is going to result in, so maybe it’s a family on vacation or a happy, retired couple, or, you know, it’s, it’s showing that result that allows people to see, okay, if I get this thing or I, or I take on this idea or this service, then this can be my life.
Charles (26:16):
Okay. That’s not, I would not have seen that coming. Yeah. So it doesn’t need to be visual. So it needs, so like my thought going into this was like visual assets were a requirement, but it sounds like they just, like, they’re just a piece of it. But not even not even required.
Alisa (26:32):
Right. Right. I mean, ultimately, if you can take your own photos, especially with when thinking about e-commerce, you want to think about lifestyle photos, they tend to convert much better than just a picture of an item on a white background. You know, you can still do those, but more likely in original photo that you’ve taken up a life and appealing lifestyle also be professional quality, but it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. That’s going to do a lot better than like grabbing a stock image or, or an image from your manufacturer and just slapping, slapping it up there. But one thing might, people might want to consider too, is video. Pinterest is really invested in video and they don’t have to be long and they don’t have to be perfect. So there’s one I use in a, in a webinar that I do. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a nice cover photo and that’s important, right? Because there, you want people to see kind of that text on image as they’re scrolling through the feed, but it’s just, okay. A cover photo of a, of a homemade level lamp. And the video is just a little boy at a kitchen table making this homemade level lamp, and that’s all it is. And any of us could do that. So even when it comes to your products, like show it in use, you can do that. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Charles (27:53):
Yeah. I was picturing when you’re saying that like Yeti, right? Like the coffee mugs, you know, you’re not to show in a cough Mark on my background, I’m showing some guy out fishing and like the woods, like at a campfire, like it’s very engaging and it kind of, it shows you where the proxy we use and not just a white background sort of thing. That’s right. Yeah.
Alisa (28:12):
And you’ll see a lot of a lot of Tik TOK videos repurposed on, on Pinterest. Yeah. Worlds colliding. I know. Right. So I think that’s really, they can be effective because on Tik TOK, you’re telling a story and on, on Pinterest, it’s the same kind of thing. So I guess if I were then I, I have tried it for some paintings. I think it would have done better if I had taken the time to add a cover photo, right. To give a little more context for what this is, because in my case, anyway, I would think looking at it, you would think, Oh, here’s a tutorial on how to do this certain method of painting. When, what I might be wanting to do as an online retailer is sell the painting. Right. So, so you want to give that context and the way you can do that is in your title or in text, on image on a cover photo for your video.
Charles (29:07):
Yeah. When you were saying earlier, so trends.pinterest.com, what’s trending, but are you also using that to see when you start and you’re in the idea phase to see what’s popular, what you should even be like, the idea phase of what should I use my titles, which are my descriptions. Can you search for both? Or where do you come up with that piece?
Alisa (29:26):
Yeah. So that piece would be like, let’s do, let’s do Turkey. I’m going to see what what’s coming up. So, all right. We’ve got Turkey recipes, oven. Okay. So I’m seeing all right. Obviously that oil, that peaked last year, 1st of December week ending December. So it was, it was Thanksgiving week. But if I wanted to compare, all right, which search term do I want to use? I want to use Turkey recipes oven, or is there something better? So then it gives me the li related terms. So I’ve got Turkey recipes, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, recipes, Thanksgiving, Turkey recipes, and I can select a number of them and compare and see like, which has the best, the most traffic or the most searches. So,
Charles (30:19):
So the official can last you’re looking year over year, 12 months ago, right? Yeah.
Alisa (30:22):
Yep. So the last year, so obviously things were different with COVID, but for things like this, it should be pretty consistent. So Thanksgiving recipes started starting really trending September mid September. Thanksgiving recipes is the highest volume for search, but if you wanted to get more specific like Turkey recipes, Thanksgiving would also be a better choice than Turkey recipes, oven, or Thanksgiving Turkey recipes. So it gives you some ideas. And then there’s an easy way to like, look at the other pins that come up in that search. So if we’re going to look at Turkey recipes, which one was that Turkey recipes, Thanksgiving, I can look and see, wow, there’s a lot of Turkey colored pins. So we have like the orangy Brown color. And I’m looking to see, does anything catch my eye? Yeah. I know that what I don’t want is a pin that is primarily orangy Brown in color because it looks like everything else on the page. So you want to look different. Yeah. The one there’s one that caught my eye, it was very green everything, and it was green.
Charles (31:40):
Let’s say you go in for that popular search term, right? Like Turkey RSPs is the play to try to, is there a way to try to rank higher, right. Like who shows up first? Like how do you even know who shows up first or as the play to say, you know what, like, I’m kind of like Google, right? Like if personal finance, like I’m not going to show up number one, let’s just give up on that. Let’s go to for some super long tail personal finance for, you know, like left-handed carpenter. So something just like so odd that like, like I get this, I got it. Even though it’s only 10 searches a month, you’re like, I got this. What are people doing there? And how do you move up the rankings?
Alisa (32:14):
Yeah. I think you probably want to do a mix. So when we talked about how you can save one pin to a couple of different boards you can also create a couple of different images to appeal to different searchers. So I would go for both. Right. So go for the big one. Why not like make it a beautiful image, make sure that you’re standing out in your design and you’ll be able to tell, just look at the search and think what would be the opposite of what everyone is doing. And then just be really consistent with your keywords consistent from the page you’re linking to. Right. So they do look at your content on your website. So they look at the title, the description and the body copy. So
Charles (32:52):
It matches the pit. You want to kind of mask the pin. Right. Okay.
Alisa (32:56):
You’ve got to match the text on your image because they actually do read the text on your image. They
Charles (33:03):
Inside like a, sorry, it sounds like a JPEG. They’re gonna search if there’s texts. Okay. Wow.
Alisa (33:08):
Yes. Yeah. So another thing there is obviously you want people to be able to read it. So having very clear, easy to read texts, not too scripty. But Pinterest also can’t read super scripty fonts. So if you use the scripty font, use it for something. That’s not a key word, unless you’re just like, I don’t care, design my thing, then go ahead. But you know, it is, it is one factor. There are just, there are a lot of factors, but just keep everything consistent. As much as you can from, from pin to page and back again. So that, that will help you, that will give you something of an advantage. I’m trying to think what else. So it’d be engagement level of your followers is going to influence how, how much your content is shown. And then everybody sees something a little bit different. So they, they learn about you. They learn about me, they learn about what kind of content we like and what we’re most likely to engage with. And that’s what they’ll serve up to us.
Charles (34:02):
Okay. So then page one, isn’t like, it’s not the same way. Cool. Like personal finance. If I search for it, if you search for, we’re both gonna see similar results, they’re radically, this is more Turkey recipes. Like we’re going to meet and you’re going to see completely different recipes when we start to on Pinterest.
Alisa (34:19):
Yeah. I mean, probably not completely, but, but different. Yeah. So if, if I tend to engage more with story pins or with videos, I’m going to see a lot more of that in my feed. Anytime I click on a story pen, it seems like that’s all I see from then on. And then, yeah, you’re probably more likely to see content from people you follow. So that’s an impact. It has an impact as well. Yeah.
Charles (34:43):
So this is really a blend of a search. It really elements of both a search engine and a social network. It sounds like, right. Because like search engines, we all kind of see similar as things, but social networks, like my Facebook for you and yours is just different, right? Like this sounds like an odd blend of both pretty much in almost every aspect.
Alisa (35:01):
Yeah. It kind of is. Which is why I think it’s so interesting. And we haven’t even talked about story pins. So Pinterest recently. Oh, okay. So a story pen is meant to be consumed right on Pinterest. And it consists of usually a combination of images and videos in one pin. And it’s like a sequence that you follow. And there is no link from a story pin to your website. So the idea is strictly engagement. And it was very puzzling onto creators came out because it’s like, well, Pinterest is about traffic. That’s why we use it. That’s why we like it. What are they like, what are they doing? Pinterest had a creators festival a couple of weeks ago. And I think it was a, co-founder talked about how they’re making a change. So they, they want to see a change on Pinterest where where people are getting to know content creators.
Alisa (36:01):
So they even said things like you deserve more than a double tab, which was like a direct comment on Instagram stories. Right? So our stories never disappear. They’re always here. And it’s, it’s an interesting move. And I think time will tell, you know, how, how people feel about that if that’s what they want the platform to be. But that’s definitely what Pinterest wants. They want. They want, pinners like regular people, you and me searching on Pinterest to start to connect on the platform with content creators. So that’s what story pins are meant for. They’re also meant as a way for people who don’t have a website, don’t have a blog to tell a story directly on Pinterest. And I think that could be the more interesting angle for an e-commerce seller. Like if they don’t want to have a blog, they can build a story pen and tell the story of their product and what that product can do for you in this multi frame option that Pinterest is really invested in right now. So they tend to show up a lot.
Charles (37:04):
Yeah, yeah. Usually any of these social networks, when they want to push a feature that just automatically rates higher, like if they want and like, that’s how they get more engagement with the new feature. They just say, Hey, you know, we’re big into surf fans right now. Yeah. That’s going to, if you put up a story, then it’s going to rank abnormally high. So just knowing what they’re trying to push, I think it’s always kind of like secret on his ranking today. Yeah. Just whatever they’re focusing on, I should focus on. Cause if they’re gonna, you know, everything else is going to push down the boards of down, the stories are up. And that seems to be like the play.
Alisa (37:35):
Yup. And it has been in beta for quite a while and it is not available to everyone. I don’t have them yet. A lot of people don’t have them. Some people had them when they went away, which is kind of normal with beta. But if you, if you are an online seller, especially if you set up your store and your verified merchant status, I mean, absolutely go and apply for them. You can just Google ply for Pinterest story pins. And I would give them a try for sure. Okay.
Charles (37:59):
Okay. Interesting. So apply for it. So you still have to, so as of right now about Thanksgiving ish, you still have to apply, but do they give any guidance on when it’s actually coming out?
Alisa (38:09):
No. Although I have seen that by the end of the year, people are outside of the U S will also be able to apply so, well, I don’t know what that means for who the rest of us who don’t have it in the U S we’ll see. Okay.
Charles (38:25):
Right. That is super helpful. I think yeah, I think you’ve given me an education on Pinterest. I did not a lot of these things. Especially the personal finance, that one, I was just surprised. I love those ones were just like you wouldn’t think of and just reframe it right. Where that it’s not photos, it’s like improving yourself. And I mean, that’s a good way of people when they’re thinking like, Hey, I have this product and you know, maybe it’s, they’ve kind of passed by Pinterest in the past, but now they want to reevaluate and say, maybe I could just reframe my product in a way that makes it. So it’s not just showing images, but it’s, you know, self-improvement, and that’s a whole different way of looking at it as a platform.
Alisa (39:04):
And if you’re wondering, like, is my product on there, you can absolutely just go search your keywords and see, cause you’ll, you’ll see, like bank of America is advertising on there. You’ll see car companies advertising on there. And when you see that money behind it, you know, there’s probably a good reason for it. Yep. Yeah. And another thing you can do too, is people might be like, you might have traffic from Pinterest and like, not know why, so
Charles (39:34):
Before you, yeah. You look at analytics and you’re like, where’s this coming from? Who? Yeah,
Alisa (39:38):
No, I’m not kidding on Pinterest, but that’s how a lot of people get into it. They’re like, I’m not putting any effort into it, but I’m getting all this traffic, what would happen if I actually put some effort into it. So if you do a search pinterest.com forward slash search, I mean source, and then you do www dot your URL. You’ll see what people are pending from your site.
Charles (40:01):
Oh, okay. So that’s yeah, I think, yeah. I think everyone with a route with any sort of traffic looks and somehow they, they see like, no matter who you have some traffic from Pinterest and you never knew how you actually find that. So pinterest.com/source, and then you put your URL and it tracks it down.
Alisa (40:19):
Yep. It’s in a Sprite. Right. This second is not working for me. So complete we’ll come back. It was the other day. So yeah.
Charles (40:28):
All right. I will link to that and hopefully it comes back alive. So yeah. Cool. Well, I think that’s a good place to end it. That was super helpful. If people want kind of see, so a little bit about tilling real quick, I did want to see what you’re working on there.
Alisa (40:43):
Absolutely. Yeah. So, so what I’m working on now is half a new product that we have or a new tool that, that is in our suite, it’s called tailwind create. And it is the fastest, easiest way to create gorgeous images for Pinterest. So it’s specifically made with best practices in mind. And what you do is you grab the URL of your product or your blog post, you pop it in there and we will, we’ll scan the page for you, pull up all your images in that page and we’ll pull out the title for you, which you can obviously change. And then you hit, or you can upload photos or you can choose stock photos hit this little magic button and it’s going to generate thousands of pan ideas for you. And then you can select a couple that you like tweak them a little bit and then immediately send them to your schedule. So they’ll go out to Pinterest.
Charles (41:34):
That’s a good one. Yeah. I feel like that’s one of the toughest things where you’re sitting there and Photoshop and you’re like, ah, try to type a random couple of the font and just like, yeah. So you guys basically pointed at URL and it just comes up with how many images,
Alisa (41:47):
Thousands, thousands of images. So it’s, it’s really fun, really great. And then if thousands is too many for you, which you know, can be a lot, you can filter it by different ideas. So the type of content you have, the industry that you’re in, or the type of pin design that you want we’re coming out with some seasonal designs right now. It’s just really fun. And, and people are loving it. So I encourage you to try it out. So if you go to tailwind app.com and get a free trial, you’ll be able to use that, that tail end create as well. So just create them, schedule them go.
Charles (42:21):
Yeah, that’s a good one. I feel like more even scheduling, like blog posts, just like that time of looking for images and like you write the blog posts and you’re like, okay, do you want me to takes? Yeah. There’s like this extra time at the end of, yeah. That’s very cool. All right. Yeah. Let’s we’ll definitely drop a link to that in the show notes and yeah. Appreciate you coming on today. Thanks. It was super helpful. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.
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