New Strategies to Unlock Pinterest Success in 2025

In my latest episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I welcome back Kate Ahl, founder of Simple Pin Media, for her fifth appearance on the show. Together, we delve into the current challenges faced by content creators and online entrepreneurs and opportunities, particularly in the realm of Pinterest marketing.

This episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice to help you navigate the ever-changing digital landscape and find success on Pinterest.

Show Notes:

• MiloTree
• Simple Pin Media
• The 3 AI Prompts You Need to Create a Freebie Cheatsheet
• Join The Blogger Genius Newsletter
• Personality Quiz: What Digital Product Should I Create?
• Become a Blogger Genius Facebook Group

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Understanding the Current Digital Marketing Landscape

The Shift from Traffic to Problem-Solving

Kate and I kick off the conversation by addressing the uncertainty that has characterized the past year for many in the digital space. Kate emphasizes the importance of shifting one’s mindset from merely focusing on traffic to solving problems for the audience. This approach can lead to significant success, especially in a time when many creators are feeling the impact of changes in ad revenue and traffic patterns.

The Role of Pinterest as a Visual Search Engine

Despite the challenges, Pinterest remains a powerful visual search engine that can drive traffic, sales, and email signups. Kate confirms that while organic traffic is still viable, creators should not shy away from utilizing paid ads. Pinterest is enhancing its ad integrations, which can help in selling products and generating leads.

Key Strategies for Pinterest Success

1. Clarify Your Purpose

• Reassess why you are using Pinterest and what you hope to achieve—whether it’s driving traffic, generating sales, or building an email list.
• Define clear goals and align your Pinterest strategy accordingly.

2. Optimize Your Profile

• Ensure that your Pinterest profile accurately reflects your brand and offerings.
• Use relevant keywords in board names, descriptions, and pin titles to enhance visibility.
• Regularly update your profile to keep it fresh and relevant.

3. Conduct Keyword Research

• Use the Pinterest trends tool to identify popular topics and incorporate those keywords into your content.
• Refresh your keywords periodically to stay aligned with current trends.
• Analyze what is currently trending on Pinterest and adapt your content strategy accordingly.

4. Analyze Your Pins

• Regularly review your pins to determine which images and keywords are performing well.
• Use this analysis to inform future content creation and optimization strategies.
• Experiment with different pin formats and styles to see what resonates with your audience.

Adapting to Seasonal Trends

Kate emphasizes the importance of tailoring Pinterest content to seasonal trends. For instance, the approach to promoting gold earrings may differ based on the time of year—focusing on styling tips during summer events like weddings, while shifting to gift-giving ideas around holidays like Mother’s Day or graduations. This adaptability is crucial for maximizing engagement and performance on Pinterest.

The Impact of Emerging Technologies

Embracing AI in Marketing

We touch on the role of AI in content creation and marketing. Kate discusses the potential of AI-generated images, particularly in the context of Pinterest. While acknowledging the benefits, she cautions against using AI images that may misrepresent products, especially in the food industry. Authenticity and integrity remain paramount in maintaining trust with audiences.

Looking Ahead to 2025

As the episode wraps up, we reflect on the future of business in 2025. We discuss the importance of being open to learning new skills and adapting to changes in the market. we both feel optimism about the opportunities that lie ahead, particularly in leveraging AI and fostering genuine connections.

Building a Community and Authentic Connections

Networking and Authentic Connections

Both Kate and I stress the importance of networking and building authentic relationships in the business landscape. We encourage listeners to engage in person, attend events, and connect with others to foster collaboration and growth. This human connection is seen as vital in navigating the complexities of online business.

The Importance of Personal Connection

Kate emphasizes that Pinterest users often start their searches with specific pain points rather than brand names. This insight highlights the need for content creators to position themselves as solutions to these problems, making it essential to connect with users on a personal level.

Conclusion

Kate and I recommend content creators embrace change, prioritize authenticity, and leverage the evolving tools at your disposal to thrive in the digital marketplace. By focusing on foundational strategies, staying informed about trends, and engaging with their audience, creators can navigate the evolving digital marketing landscape and build sustainable businesses.

Try MiloTree for 30 Days Free

Try out MiloTree, the software we’ve created to help users grow and monetize their audience. The first 30 days are completely free, making it an easy option for those looking to experiment with new freebies and digital products. Learn more here!

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

• The Essential Mindset Shift Every Blogger Needs for 2025
• Level Up Your Blog with These Game-Changing AI Tools
• Embracing Imperfection: The Power of B-Minus Work

MiloTree, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products and Grow Your Audience

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTree, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like AI-generated sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support.

With MiloTree, setting up your products takes less than five minutes, and you can start generating income without any hassle. Plus, MiloTree offers unlimited freebies and lead magnets to grow your email list, and social media pop-ups to increase your followers, all in one place. Sign up today and get your first 30 days free to see how easy it is to start selling your own digital products and growing your audience with MiloTree!

Transcript #359: New Strategies to Unlock Pinterest Success in 2025

Jillian Leslie 00:00:00 Hello and welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. I am your host, Gillian Leslie, founder of Milo Tree, the software platform that helps you grow and monetize your audience with ease. So first, a big shout out to all our new Black Friday military customers. I’m so excited to see you setting up your products, services, and freebies on the platform. And if you haven’t signed up yet, now is the perfect time as we are getting very close to 2025 to try out Milo today. So if you want to start selling your expertise, grow your audience. You can get your first 30 days free with no risk. So go sign up now! I am thrilled to welcome back my dear friend Kate all to the podcast. Kate is a Pinterest marketing agency owner, an incredible Pinterest educator, and someone I’ve had the privilege of having on the show four times before. So yes, this is her fifth appearance. This past year has been an uncertain one for content creators and online entrepreneurs, but in this episode, Kate and I talk about how to navigate that uncertainty with strategy and focus.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:21 Kate shares how shifting your mindset to solving problems for your audience, rather than focusing solely on traffic, can lead to tremendous success. Plus, she brings us the latest updates on how to use Pinterest to drive traffic, sales, and email signups. So this is jam packed. I promise there are a ton of valuable insights. So without further delay, here is my interview with Kate Hall. Kate, welcome back to the Blogger Genius this podcast.

Kate Ahl 00:01:58 Thank you so much for having me back.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:59 We have been friends for a long time and it’s always fun to reconnect, to catch up, both personally and also in this crazy online space. So 100% I want to pick your brain on Pinterest, digital marketing, blogging, and online entrepreneurship. Before we launch into this, will you just briefly share who you are? I know most people will know you, but just what you do and kind of what what part of this digital space are you an expert in?

Kate Ahl 00:02:36 Yes. So I run a company called Simple Pin Media.

Kate Ahl 00:02:39 We are an agency first and foremost, but we also have a podcast. We have an education arm, so we have several digital products all surrounding Pinterest. So we only delve into the world of Pinterest. We’ve been doing it now for 11 years. And our goal is to really like, take what’s happening on Pinterest and figure out a way to formulate a really good strategy for people who have decided to use it. So some of our education revolves around this whole idea of, do you even want to use it? And most of our clients that come to us, they’ve already made the decision. They’re like ready to outsource. But people that we interact either on YouTube or Instagram or even within our podcasting space will come to us and say, I don’t even know why I need Pinterest. And a lot of it revolves around like not knowing how to frame it up in their marketing and how it fits.

Jillian Leslie 00:03:29 So my question for you, and every time I feel like I ask this is Pinterest still a visual search engine?

Kate Ahl 00:03:38 Yes, 100%.

Jillian Leslie 00:03:40 Okay. Is Pinterest still a good way to drive traffic?

Kate Ahl 00:03:46 Yes, it’s still one of the top traffic drivers out there amongst all the quote unquote, social media platforms.

Jillian Leslie 00:03:53 Is it still a good way to drive organic traffic, or is it a pay to play platform.

Kate Ahl 00:04:02 Still good for organic traffic? But don’t let that scare you away from paid ads. I think they’re really leaning into some great integrations with paid ads that you can definitely leverage to sell more of your products or get email leads.

Jillian Leslie 00:04:14 Interesting. So let’s talk about if we can take a step back. This year. We were talking about this has been kind of a wild ride for bloggers and online entrepreneurs. From where you’re sitting, what have you seen over this year?

Kate Ahl 00:04:30 Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of changes when it comes to ad revenue. Number one, I was I had interviewed someone on my podcast just recently, and in September of 23, she was really hit by both the Google update, which then affect her ad revenue. So she was making somewhere between 10 and $15,000 a month, and slowly that decreased to January of 24 February 24th, being right around $800 a month.

Kate Ahl 00:04:56 It was just crushing, right? So you had these impacts of all these people who are creators, who are making so much money off of ad campaign, ad income, which was easy, easy money. Like, I’m not gonna lie. Like when there is an easy button, I’m gonna push it. And this was an easy one that had given people ad income for years. So with that change really came this kind of examination of what is the current business model for creators? Pinterest is a part of that too. And Pinterest traffic has decreased as well. Not for everybody, but I would say overall what we’ve seen in the last, I guess, 18 months to two years, it’s kind of like somebody put a blanket traffic that’s going to all websites, that’s coming from Google, that’s coming from anywhere. And we’re kind of asking like, what’s this blanket we’re under? And how do we get out from underneath it? Or how do we function under the blanket now? Because maybe that blanket is never going to be removed.

Jillian Leslie 00:05:55 That’s an interesting way. I see I’ve seen the same thing. I talked to tons of creators and bloggers. I think it has been a year of shock for a lot of people now. One thing I was talking to, Megan Porta, who was talking about food bloggers, but she said there are bloggers out there that have not necessarily been hit so hard, but who don’t necessarily want to talk about the fact that they’re doing okay. So it’s not everybody has been squashed. You. So Catch My Party, which is our first site. first blog, you said, how are we doing in reality? We get a lot of traffic from Pinterest. And I said, we haven’t been hit that hard. And I chalk it up to the fact that we’ve been on Pinterest for a very long time. We have close to 2 million Pinterest followers. We are trusted, so Pinterest has not tightened the spigot as much for us. But I think if I had to grow that today, it would be a lot harder.

Kate Ahl 00:07:07 Yeah, and I would agree with you is that when we kind of survey the landscape of creators, the ones who have been established on Pinterest, you’re right. They were not hit as hard. In fact, somebody said to me, I haven’t grown, I’ve remained flat, and I’m okay with that. I consider that a win. Absolutely. And I think that is definitely out there. And she was kind of in the same boat as you. She had 4 million followers. She’d been on Pinterest since the beginning, and that really was able to carry her. Whereas people who started in 2018, 19, even 2020, they had a different experience of getting this huge boost in 2020 when everybody was staying home and Pinterest user like doubled.

Jillian Leslie 00:07:49 I remember that.

Kate Ahl 00:07:51 Yeah. To where? 2020. A lot of those users stopped using the platform as much as they were before because the world opened up again. So I think that’s important to take into consideration. And then from there, we go into the series of ChatGPT and Gemini on Google.

Kate Ahl 00:08:07 And, you know, there’s just all these things that tend to cascade and add on kind of insult to injury for those who are decreasing. So I think it’s important to just kind of, like I said, survey the whole scene and know it’s not everybody, but kind of ask yourself, okay, it might not be me if it was me. What are the things that I would do differently to maintain a steady foundation for the growth that I have?

Jillian Leslie 00:08:32 I think you’re right. Like we all got drunk on traffic and ads and the part. And even though we knew like there’s going to be a tomorrow and you’re going to probably wake up with a really bad headache. The party was so good that we didn’t want to leave, and we didn’t want to prepare for the day after, because even though we knew, we didn’t really know and we thought, maybe this is just the way that, you know, even though you and I have been at this for a long time, and I think the longer you’ve been in the game, the more you’ve seen these ups and downs and ups and downs.

Jillian Leslie 00:09:09 But this was a really good up. So a lot of people came in and were really psyched about this, and in truth, they didn’t have to think about their blogs as businesses like they were by default businesses. But it was much more like, here’s what I do. I kind of figure out how to kind of game Google and I do. I get really good at keyword research and I structure blog posts like this, and I create my pins like this. And the money is going to start, and I’m going to be patient, and I’m going to keep at it for maybe two years. And then all of a sudden I’m going to hit pay dirt. And I don’t have to think about how else to monetize. How to think about my business as something that solves problems for people, or that has a real purpose, or that I am now the face of my business. And I think that we all kind of got like, we’re waking up the next day going, what was that?

Kate Ahl 00:10:05 Yes.

Kate Ahl 00:10:05 The hangover. Right. And and I think in that too, as you were talking through all these things and all these changes that have happened, I think what’s important to realize is that there is a splinter effect to where, okay, if this person’s not making money, then they can’t afford to use this tech tool, or they can’t afford to hire this person, or they can’t afford to use this virtual assistant, and then they cut that, and then those people cut things. And so you see this economic downline that really hits the online community really hard to where I’ve seen more people in the last like six months just say I’m out. I’m out like I can’t do it anymore. And I completely understand. I’ve had many moments in the last two years where I’m like, is this it for me? Am I done? And I think when you get to that point, you have to ask yourself, okay, I look at like I drive through the neighborhood and I look at all these all small businesses, and I think there’s somebody who is a nail salon, there’s somebody who is a small food business.

Kate Ahl 00:11:06 Right? Like you live in Austin. I live in Portland. I kind of wonder every day, how do these small food businesses stay afloat with all this competition? Right. But everybody’s asking themselves the question, do I feel strongly enough about the product that I have and who I’m serving in order to put the effort into getting in front of more people to stay in the game? And I think that’s the question you have to be faced with at the end of the day is, am I going to stay in the game even when it’s hard?

Jillian Leslie 00:11:33 Yes. And in fact, it’s funny. I’ve been doing podcast episodes with experts like you. And some people will say, you know, in a weird way, we’re we’re kind of resetting and like this, like so. Okay. Using Catch My Party as an example, we did well. We do well on Pinterest because we were one of those early movers. And now it’s like that becomes less of a superpower. And everybody now is kind of starting over.

Jillian Leslie 00:12:08 And the playbooks, you mentioned this before we pressed record those playbooks that everybody followed, whether they worked or not. But it was that sense of like, I know I’ve cracked the code right now. If somebody says they’ve cracked the code, please don’t believe them. And now it’s all about experimenting, testing, putting out good content, being helpful, thinking about your business in a very specific way so that you can build a community of people, like minded people, and then potentially sell products and services to them, maybe work with brands, but it’s like a different point of view, that there is this potential. And I think the people who can see this like it’s a hard time. We have to be real about that. But there’s an opportunity there.

Kate Ahl 00:13:03 And I would say to you said something that really jogged this idea for me. So I joined a business organization, Entrepreneurs Organization, in April of 21. It was a huge leap for me. I had no idea what it was. It’s a local.

Kate Ahl 00:13:18 It’s actually a global. People can look it up. It’s just called EO. But they have these chapters here in Portland. And then you join this small forum. And one of the things the tenants is you can’t give advice, you can only give experience shares, which means you hear what has gone on with your experience, but you are not allowed to say you should do this. Have you thought about this? Have you considered like these are phrases you are not allowed to say? And going into it, I thought it’s like a lot of gatekeeping and really strict. I found it to be one of the most freeing things, because I realized that one of the most powerful places that you can learn is through experience shares, which gets to the point of, I don’t want someone to come to me and say they have a proven method to navigate the downturn of 2024. What I want to hear from somebody is what’s working for you. What is it that you are trying right now? And I think when it comes to something like Pinterest, there’s definitely these foundational elements.

Kate Ahl 00:14:16 There’s 3 to 4 of them, and then there’s experience shares of what’s working and not working. And what I find is we tend to want to go straight for the experience shares before we’ve mastered something that’s foundational. It would be the same as if I was saying, I want to go straight to somebody telling me how to market my Shopify store, but I haven’t really built a really good shop listing. I haven’t really built good like taglines for my marketing. I’ve done all of that. But I go to somebody and say, well, how do you market your Shopify store? I’m putting the cart before the horse. But all that to say, those are the things that we should be doing right now is going to other people and saying, if and I will say the caveat is if you have established your foundations, if you’re like, okay, I know what I’m doing, but I want to know from you, like what’s working and what’s not working. Just tell me your story. And then as you tell me your story, all of a sudden these things are going to pop alive in me.

Kate Ahl 00:15:11 And I go, yes, I could try that. Okay, okay. Yes. Like keep talking. This is giving me ideas. So I’m. That’s definitely not an advocate to join like every mastermind you can but find your trusted group of people or when you go to conferences, talk to people in the margins, like really seek out that information for where people can share their experience and don’t take it as gospel. Just take it as like it’s their experience and what’s worked for them. There is a nugget in there that will work for you.

Jillian Leslie 00:15:40 So tell me, what are these foundational things? And then let’s talk about where you’re seeing people have success. Not necessarily that that’s the answer, but where how should people start to be thinking about their business.

Kate Ahl 00:15:56 Yeah. So in relation to Pinterest, right. Like or just Pinterest. So I would say number one is going to be knowing why you’re using the platform. Even if you’ve been using the platform for a long time, it’s always good right now to go back and say, okay, are we still going to use it? Why are we going to use it? And what are we hoping to get in return from it?

Jillian Leslie 00:16:16 So this is things like traffic sales, email signups.

Kate Ahl 00:16:21 Exactly. Those are the top three. So going in there and saying okay why am I using it. And if you’re really struggling with this, it’s also a good exercise to jot down on a piece of paper why you’re using everything. If you’ve never stopped and taken stock to say, okay, I’m using Instagram for this reason, I’m using this over here. It’s like I just recently made the decision to really only use stories on Instagram because it wasn’t doing anything for me, and we evaluated all the time that we were spending, and we looked at our data and we said, YouTube, Pinterest, Google, those are our top three driving traffic. And we want traffic. Those are really, really important metrics to us. Not like Instagram can’t do that. And I get that. It can build awareness, it can do all those things. But our people just aren’t always there. They are a little bit more on Facebook because there’s a lot of like business groups on Facebook, right? Like they’re already operating there.

Kate Ahl 00:17:14 But you have to figure it out, okay. Why am I using this? Right. That’s kind of reset. Number one, take you 20 minutes. Maybe then number two is going to be okay. Does your profile reflect who you are and what you do? Have you cleaned it up? Have you looked through and just kind of giving it a refresh. We all know that keywords are the number one thing that makes the algorithm work. It’s how they serve the end user, following their interests, their searches, the things that they want to go deep on. And so they have keywords in all the places that you need them board names, board descriptions, pin title, pin descriptions. Then the algorithm gets to serve up the exact content. And a lot of people, me included. Sometimes I can brush past this. I’m like, oh well, I think people are using Pinterest marketing, I think blah blah blah blah blah. A couple months ago we looked through and we were like, man, our views are really tanking.

Kate Ahl 00:18:04 Like, why is some of these keywords not keywords that people are searching? So we kind of did a deep dive. But remember, I’m business to business. So my target is way harder than somebody like you catch my party which is business to consumer. Right.

Jillian Leslie 00:18:18 Like there’s so.

Kate Ahl 00:18:19 Many totally there are so many more options. But it’s good to get a refresh on like am I using keywords that I think are working? Or am I using keywords that people on Pinterest are actually using, which you can definitely use the trends tool. And that’s what I’m going to talk about. Like how did you what’s working? Okay.

Jillian Leslie 00:18:37 So how did you when you said, oh, maybe these aren’t the right keywords. How did you find better keywords?

Kate Ahl 00:18:42 So we started with doing searches of the keywords that we were using, and we thought we were ranking for them, but we started looking at who was ranking for them and what were the keywords that they were using. Just by picking up the phone and looking at the search bar on Pinterest, when you search something, those search results, who’s at the top? That doesn’t change based on like you or I could do the same search and see the same results, right? So I wanted to see like who was ranking up high, what words were they using? And what we found was that there was a few different phrases that we had not incorporated.

Kate Ahl 00:19:16 I can’t remember what they were at this time, but like we kind of noticed these were popping up in the description and we noticed that they were also on the pin copy on the pin. So it was like, this is really interesting. Like maybe we need to change up the names of our boards. Maybe they’re like a little bit old. So we did like a keyword refresh on our boards. And then we started using some new keywords just to kind of see if we could get jog some of that loose. The other thing I would say, which this is a lot easier business to consumer is the trends tool. So just recently one of our clients and this is kind of an experience of what’s working right now went into the trends tool and looked at the trending topics that were coming up on Pinterest. And she picked one. She created a blog post out of it and she pinned it in August. Since then, it’s had 23,000 saves and it’s climbed to her number three pin because she’s very targeted as to what’s trending on Pinterest right now.

Kate Ahl 00:20:15 And so when we see these like trends reports or sometimes in my weekly email, I will list Pinterest trending topics. Pinterest releases these every so often. If you grab those and you see like, oh, like a Minnie Mouse party for four year olds is increasing by 1,000%, why wouldn’t you create something that’s going to get you in the searches? Right? And so that’s what she did, was she saw that these things were trending and they were increasing. And if Pinterest is saying this is a priority, we know that the algorithm is somehow putting priority on these particular keywords. So check here’s a here’s the thing that I would say check that once a month, especially when you’re trying to do some of your content calendar stuff. This is whether you’re in the product space or whether in the content creation space. Look at what Pinterest is telling you that people are already searching. Use those terms. Especially if back at step one you said this is a really important platform for me to be on for XYZ. Okay, now you can put that into action by using these particular keywords that are right there is the images.

Kate Ahl 00:21:25 So this is also where you can put pin copy. I just talked about that. You can do a few other. You can use that keyword, put it on the pin image and then you can do a few different images. But man I think people overlook this. I know not everybody does this, but it’s something we’ve kind of seen come up lately where you do all this groundwork, creating a blog post, and you get to this Pinterest image and you’re like, this image looks good, this looks good, let’s go. But I think there’s a lot of data that you can get from looking at images and how they have converted, like what’s working, what’s not working. Are there ones that have ingredients or no ingredients? Is it a standalone picture of your product or is it more a lifestyle? So I think there’s just a lot of research that you can do that doesn’t take a lot of time. And by the.

Jillian Leslie 00:22:12 Way, this is your research of your own pins. Not like what pins are showing up.

Jillian Leslie 00:22:18 First, let’s say, I don’t know, I make earrings. Yes, I create earrings. Should I be looking at other people’s earrings? And what? Showing up first? Should I be looking at my pins? Oh, I’ve got them on people. Oh, they’re just they’re in a flat lay. Like, where would you prioritize?

Kate Ahl 00:22:38 Both actually. So I definitely look at your data because your data is going to tell the story of what people are clicking on. But then I would actually go look to see, okay, what is actually populating in the search feed like I did for keywords. You can do that for images as well. Some people ask the question, and I don’t really have a hard and fast answer just yet. But people ask the question, should I make my Pin look similar to the ones that are in the feed, or should I make them look different? And I think the number one thing that you need to look for is how to stand out a little bit, but look similar, right? Like if they all have pin copy of Pinterest marketing for bloggers, then I put it.

Kate Ahl 00:23:17 I should put pink Pinterest marketing for bloggers, but if some are pink and mine’s red, my brand colors and brand awareness is red. I’m not going to choose pink to forsake that. So I think it’s important to stick to your branding because that is another way to build brand awareness on Pinterest is through your images.

Jillian Leslie 00:23:37 Okay, so back to the three. Go look at your account, freshen up your account. Go look at what is working in your space like looking at your competitors and using trends. If that were. If you’re not B2B, but be to see and think, look at your data. Not just this looks good.

Kate Ahl 00:24:07 Yes, exactly. Which it’s so easy for us to do. It’s so easy for me to do, especially as we get so busy we’re like, yeah, that looks good. Let’s go with that.

Jillian Leslie 00:24:18 Absolutely. It is. It is shocking just because some of our most successful pens I cringe at and go, oh, where is the ones that I think are going to knock it out of the park, don’t necessarily knock it out of the park.

Jillian Leslie 00:24:34 And by the way, when I am talking about digital products, I have this exact same conversation with people. You have a hunch of what your people want to purchase from you, and you would know better than I would about your audience and their needs. However, you only know if it’s going to be a success if you put it in front of people. And so this is where there’s like I go. The reason one of our tenants with Milo Tree is we make it so easy to set up digital products so you can get going and test them and figure it out. One of the big things that I see on my end is people taking so long to create a product, to make it perfect. People say this to me all the time, oh, I tried selling a digital. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for me. And I go, okay. Like I promise you are not special in that. Like it kind of like that thing of like Pinterest hates me. It loves everybody else.

Jillian Leslie 00:25:38 Right. Digital products hate me. No they don’t. It’s just so you haven’t experimented enough. You need like at bats. It’s like dating. You know, if you just like, go. I went on one date. This is like my future husband or my future wife. Probably not. You got to figure it out. And you got to test a lot of things. And so my if I were to have my thing of like where I’m seeing people have success, it’s the ones who are putting out stuff and seeing where they can get traction.

Kate Ahl 00:26:11 Yeah. And I think it’s really easy to to hide behind that a little bit. And actually as you’re talking, I was thinking we were joking about this kind of marketing error in the past. And I think a small business owners, the amount of risk in creating a digital product is really just our time, right. And it’s a little bit of our pride, like if nobody buys. So we were joking about these, you know, big companies.

Kate Ahl 00:26:38 In fact, I’m sure you remember this. But remember when Pepsi tried to launch Pepsi Clear? Yes. And it was this huge disaster. And like they launched it at the Super Bowl and it was like the guy who was talking about how he he was reflecting back on his marketing mistake. And he said at the time, we just thought it was going to be this most amazing thing, and we launched it and it was the hugest flop ever. If you are worried about your digital product flopping, you are okay. There is a very small audience of people who are going to see that compared to the Super Bowl. And so keep trying new things nobody’s going to know. And, you.

Jillian Leslie 00:27:16 Know, so funny, I was talking to somebody and she was asking me like how to treat her email list. Like, should you treat it with kid gloves, for example? Like, do you need to like pretest your product? Like send it to just a couple people and see if they purchase because God forbid, you flood it to your list and then, you know, you embarrass yourself.

Jillian Leslie 00:27:38 And I said, nobody’s going to remember, like, how many emails do you get from a brand or a person? And if they’re offering something that doesn’t connect with you, like, I will think about this for less than two seconds. You’ve not blown your brand to me. And if in fact, let’s say you sell me a product and it doesn’t solve my problem, okay, like maybe it’s really bad and I won’t buy from you again, but maybe what you do is reach out. If you’re selling stuff and go, what did you like? What didn’t you like? What can I improve on? And if somebody is, you know, amenable like. And by the way, this is what I always say. Now buy them a Starbucks to talk to you. Just go do stuff to get that feedback rather than oh my God, I’m so embarrassed. Oh my God, nobody purchased or somebody purchased and returned it. Whatever it is, I promise you, nobody’s really thinking that much about you.

Jillian Leslie 00:28:37 You don’t need to. pre-Test.

Kate Ahl 00:28:40 Yeah, it’s true, and I don’t know if this will encourage any of the listeners, but I have created a Pinterest course and I have shut it down. I have done a membership, I have shut it down, I’ve done an Ads membership, I’ve shut it down, I’ve done multiple small products that I’ve turned off and I turned on and then turned off. And there’s been many times where I’ve thought, are people going to distrust my teaching or what I release? And I had to let that go because ultimately when I close something, it’s because I feel like I can’t give enough. It’s because I’m not able to have the bandwidth to continue to refine it and make it better and better and better, and I would rather lean into that in a smaller product or something different than something like a membership, which has been really great. But, you know, when the season is done or I’ve known when the course season is done. And sure, somebody out there could be like, I’m really frustrated that she closed this membership XYZ.

Kate Ahl 00:29:39 I can’t do anything about that. But I can do is continue to be a better teacher and continue to be a better support of the people who are going to buy future products. So you take and you learn from this and you say, okay, well, that didn’t go so well, so I’m going to lean into this future one and I’m going to make sure this is there because people’s learning styles are also different. I could never release the course that I did in 2016 16 now because we have TikTok. I was just gonna say this.

Jillian Leslie 00:30:08 I was just going to say, I think, you know, it’s so funny because at that time, everybody needed a course. Everybody was working on a course. So with Milo, in the beginning, when we first launched it, people would email me and be like, when is your course platform going to be ready? I will tell you, in the last year I’ve gotten virtually none of those emails, so our course platform has been pushed down our list.

Jillian Leslie 00:30:30 And I’m gonna argue whether this is right or wrong, that because of TikTok, I think I can watch four TikToks and completely understand and master email marketing. Therefore I don’t you know, I’m not saying that’s true, but right in our heads now, because our attention spans are so short, because we think we’re good at absorbing knowledge. I just go to TikTok and boom, somehow now I’m an email marketing expert where though I have seen an explosion of growth is I’d say I’m an email marketing expert. Now I create a group of people who might be interested in email marketing, and we’re going to show up together live, which again, as the membership host, that might be something I like. I might be too much work. I might not want to do that. By the way, it’s not just then about me. It’s about this community of people learning together, sharing best practices. But the idea of I’m going to create ten videos, put them together as a course one. I think people make you go, oh, those videos better be great, and I need to hire an editor and perfect it before I launch it.

Jillian Leslie 00:31:48 And also who? It’s lonely going through a course by yourself.

Kate Ahl 00:31:53 And most people don’t complete it. And that’s actually I’m glad you brought this up because that’s what we ended up going to. Was this group called the Inner Circle, which is a 6 to 7 weeks of moving people in real time through the whole process of setting up their own Pinterest strategy to where at the end, you can either hand it off to a team member or you know how to ebb and flow with it and adjust it. But there is no pre-recorded content. There is. You’re going to show up with my team, who has been experts for years. We’re going to walk you succinctly through this process 1 to 9, the same thing we do with our clients. But we are holding you accountable to finish it. And the thing that I’ve learned, which I find so fascinating about these groups, there’s usually 2 to 3 people that sign up and we get to week five and they’re panicking. They’re like, I didn’t complete it.

Kate Ahl 00:32:45 And I think that comes from the Old Course model of you can buy, let it sit in your inbox, and you don’t have to do it because there’s no accountability to do it. Whereas I want to change that. I want to say, if you really want to learn how to do Pinterest marketing. If you’re willing to get in there 2 to 4 hours a week, I’m going to help you do that, and I’m going to do it in six weeks. I’m not going to stretch this out, and we’re going to make sure that you have all the information that you need to never have to buy any full, comprehensive course again because you got it all. And then we support them through an alumni group. But we’re on our third cohort is just ending. And I will tell you, the transformation and learning has been so much greater than membership or course combined. Like, you know, it’s capped 15 to 20 people, but it’s very structured in the way that like, okay, you can answer questions, we’re going to walk you through every step, but we want you to do it because we don’t want you to be stuck.

Kate Ahl 00:33:42 Absolutely.

Jillian Leslie 00:33:42 So by the way this is the model. This is what you just talked about is the model I’m seeing people have tremendous success with. Because also, by the way, you might get a cohort of people and they all might be, I don’t know, personal trainers. And all of a sudden, what you taught in your last cohort might not be as relevant because the personal trainers all have a specific thing they need. They need clients. Whereas previously it might have been food bloggers. So therefore you could go, hey you personal trainer, I see you. And how about this. And there’s something very powerful and, and in this world of AI, I believe that being a person and showing up becomes so valuable. Whereas I can get all the information I want. Now through ChatGPT, I was sharing a story with you where I was doing a simple search and like my little AI in Google, didn’t give me the answer right away and wanted me to click on somebody link. And I was like, what? Just tell me the answer.

Jillian Leslie 00:34:54 And then I thought, that’s bad for all these businesses and all these websites that want my traffic and I don’t want to give it to them anymore. Therefore, that kind of information, it was something basic, like how many Tylenol to take something like that? that now isn’t what people that I’m fine with are giving me that answer.

Kate Ahl 00:35:16 Yes.

Jillian Leslie 00:35:17 What I want though, like, for example, you’ve made my day today. Okay. Just hanging out with you. Talk in business. Seeing your smile like this is valuable to me.

Kate Ahl 00:35:29 Yeah, human to human.

Jillian Leslie 00:35:31 So I feel like lean and. And that you are showing up live. Maybe your kitchen’s messy. Maybe, like, whatever it is, like, I’m going to go, wow, that’s so human. Rather than it’s a perfect video in a perfect course, and I’m never going to get past lesson three. I want to take a short break to ask you one question. Do you want to turn your knowledge into extra income instead of just giving it away? If so, imagine creating a simple e-book to sell to your audience quickly and easily, even if you don’t have an idea yet, no problem.

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Kate Ahl 00:36:47 We learned back to the EO piece was I learned that human aspect of it was that, and that’s what I feel like I’ve taken into future things that we create is how can we share really, truly where we’re at, where what we’ve learned. You know, I did a recent thing with our newsletter. I’ve been doing our newsletter for years. And I asked the question, like, what do you want this to be? Because I could approach it as like, I’m knee deep in Pinterest all day, every day, right? Like, I don’t always know the pain points.

Kate Ahl 00:37:17 And so my quest has been, what are your pain points? And we do that through asking people or town halls or things like that. And somebody came back and they said, I want to know what’s working for your clients. And it was that exact. It was an experience share. It was, please tell me what you’re seeing. Not because I want this like magic answer from you, but because I just want to hear about it. And so we did. We added that section to our newsletter what’s working for our clients? And not every week do we have something earth shattering, but we can at least come back and say, well, our team is working through this or our team is trying this, whether it’s ads or organic. And that is what I think will win going forward. And before we recorded, you said this to you as well. Like people are liking these smaller, more intimate kind of communities of people because and that creates like your ultimate fan. You know, I think Seth Godin has that theory.

Kate Ahl 00:38:15 But I think that’s when you get closest to people and you could really hear the words that they’re using and the things that they’re struggling with. And that’s what for me surfaced. I think it was through a town hall. I realized people were asking the wrong question about Pinterest. I would get these questions over and over about like, what’s a fresh pin? How many times can I pin a URL? How many times can I pin per day? Can I repin it to the same board? And I went, those are questions that are really great to ask after you’ve mastered the foundations, and if you haven’t mastered the foundations and you’re asking the wrong question, your question should go back to do I know the keywords that I’m targeting per quarter per year to get in front of my person? Have I spent 15 to 20 minutes in Canva really updating my Pinterest image, really being intentional about it. If you haven’t done these things for you to jump to, how many times do I pin per day is putting it in the wrong order? And I would have never realized that had I done a few town halls over and over again and went, hey, wait a minute, like I will answer this for you, but it actually won’t be helpful to you because you haven’t done these other things first.

Jillian Leslie 00:39:30 That’s so interesting. Okay, but can I do a lightning round with you? Yes. These specific tactics that you are seeing succeed, for example. Yes. One thing that I always hear tell me if this is true consistency. Is that still a thing.

Kate Ahl 00:39:44 100% a thing? What does.

Jillian Leslie 00:39:45 That mean?

Kate Ahl 00:39:46 It means that you need to be actively pinning to the platform daily. Now this doesn’t daily. Yeah. So it doesn’t mean that you have to pin ten pins a day. If you’re a new business owner and you can sustain 1 or 2 pins per day, or you can touch base with the platform each day solely, do it if you have to share other people or reason. I don’t use repin. I almost use that to save other people’s pins to your board. That’s fine too. That’s not a strategy I recommend if you have a lot of content, but I like this consistency kind of touching base. And also use your phone, go in and see what the platform’s looking like. And I think that element of consistency is like this background thing where you get to see what you like and what you don’t like.

Jillian Leslie 00:40:27 Good, okay. Should I what on Pinterest then is working like for us it’s static pins.

Kate Ahl 00:40:36 Yep. I would say I would agree with you on that right now. so Pinterest has moved to just three formats. We have, video pin, we have a product pin and we have a standard pin. I will say, for those people who have the we were talking about yesterday as a team, you will still see idea pins as an option in your phone or in your desktop. I don’t know why they haven’t gotten rid of that. It’s really frustrating. I haven’t had it for over two years, pretty much like a year, 18 months or so. I’ve only had create a pin, create a collage, create a board. So when you go to create a pin, you can only do really the two formats of video and standard image. I will agree it’s standard images are killing it. But can I tell you this? Speaking of Megan Porter, we were at her conference in Denver and it was amazing and it was so great to be in this room with 50 food creators.

Kate Ahl 00:41:33 And somebody said, videos are doing so well for me. And somebody at this table over here said, videos are tanking for me. and it was like they were both food. Right? And so that being said, you’re going to have to go into your data. But I would say for most of our clients right now, we would not be video forward. We would be video in the background, standard image forward.

Jillian Leslie 00:41:57 Okay. Does Pinterest work as well for content creators as it does for people selling products?

Kate Ahl 00:42:06 Yeah, both. I would say content creators, I would say have the leg up, right, because people on Pinterest are searching for, you know, let’s even take your search on Google. People on Pinterest are still searching for articles that help them get a solution, and they are willing to click on an image to go to a website. And if that website does not have what they want, they bounce away really fast and they can qualify it really quickly. Whether it’s travel to fashion, to food content is king on Pinterest, and what we find is that even for product sellers, you have to have content to warn people up to your product.

Kate Ahl 00:42:42 To share your testimonials. To share your before and afters. To really talk about the features of your digital or physical product. So I would say content is king on Pinterest. Like you absolutely have to have it.

Jillian Leslie 00:42:54 Okay, I’ve got content and I’ve got a URL. How many pins am I going to create for that URL? And does each pin have to be a different use case for that you URL? And what I mean by that is I’ve got the earrings, let’s say, but I’ve got like a blog post about earrings. Is it. Hey, these would be a great baby. like bridal shower gift or I don’t know if you give earrings for, but these would be a great 30th birthday gift. These would be, you know, these look great in your fall with your fall outfits. These, you know, these are less expensive than the more you know that, like, you wouldn’t believe the price of this or these have been seen on this celebrity. Like what? Tell me about that strategy for one URL.

Jillian Leslie 00:43:46 What should I do?

Kate Ahl 00:43:48 Yeah, for an image strategy I’m going to say if you are fairly new to Pinterest one image, go for it. You’re going to do that for like 3 to 6 months just to learn what’s happening. Then you can add a second image in. And if you’re doing something like earrings, you can be like how to style gold earrings with a black outfit, what type of gold earrings to wear to a wedding, or something along those lines? You can definitely get creative. In fact, a common thing that we will tell our food creators is, let’s say your sourdough bread recipe hit big in 2020 and it did really well. How do you want to maximize that in the future for an existing piece of content? Right. Well, you can say bake the sourdough bread for Thanksgiving, the best sourdough bread for a Thanksgiving side dish, bringing bread to a family who’s just had a baby. There’s a lot of different ways that you can do it, but start with this one.

Kate Ahl 00:44:37 And then if you are more advanced. So let’s say you’re you’re not dealing with an evergreen. This is like brand new. You can play up with different pin copy. I like that the most to say like okay, how are we going to target for how to style gold earrings with an outfit versus gift giving. And that could be variable upon the time of year. So gift giving of earrings right now or gift giving say before like Mother’s Day or graduation is going to be different. Whereas in the summer it might be styling because people are going to different parties or they’re going to weddings. So it’s really up to you in the bandwidth that you have to do investigative work to figure out how these images are performing. If you don’t have that, nor do you have the desire to do it. One image is plenty.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:22 How about old URLs versus new URLs? Meaning I posted this into this recipe in 2020 or I post this recipe right now in October of 2024.

Kate Ahl 00:45:40 And the question would be which one was going to do better the older the new.

Kate Ahl 00:45:43 Right?

Jillian Leslie 00:45:44 Like let’s say though, I’m going to make a new pit for my old post, a new pin for my new post.

Kate Ahl 00:45:51 Like same topic.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:52 Let’s say no different. Let’s say there are two different recipes.

Kate Ahl 00:45:55 Okay.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:57 Does that make sense?

Kate Ahl 00:45:57 Yeah, yeah, two different recipes. Is it kind of like which one’s going to do better. Like is the old one, is the new one going to outpace the old one kind of thing. Well like.

Jillian Leslie 00:46:05 For example like does the does the date in which I posted this piece of content affect how a pin is going to do if, like, I’m making a new pin for an old post or a new pin for a new post.

Kate Ahl 00:46:18 Okay, does that matter that it doesn’t? There’s a tough to pull data on that. So here’s what we know is that people have been on Pinterest for a long time. As you would say, based on your analytics, there are some things that will just reign supreme in your analytics. they’re never going to die.

Kate Ahl 00:46:34 Right? And so if you create a new image, even for an old pin, that new image still does really well. It’s like anything that attaches to that piece of content always performs well when it comes to your new piece of content and your new URL, what you’re trying to do is optimize for the current algorithm instead of just knowing, like it’s a surefire. Whenever I do anything about how to clean up Pinterest boards, I can do a new image, I can do a new video. It’s going to do great every single time because it is my number one pin, whereas something new, what I’m trying to see is, am I optimizing for the searches and the trends at the time when people are searching? So it’s kind of a totally different ball game that we’re playing right now. Okay.

Jillian Leslie 00:47:14 So a good like if I know this pin has has done well for me with this blog post. Keep making pins for that blog post.

Kate Ahl 00:47:24 Yeah, I would do a refresh probably once a year, like go in and do a new like I do a new image.

Kate Ahl 00:47:31 I update that blog post, especially if it’s one that’s getting you email leads right? Or if it’s getting traffic, update it. Or people will say like, my brand has changed. So I’m trying to get new URLs to take off because I’m no longer talking about this anymore. Try to cater that old post that does get a lot of Pinterest traffic towards the new. Okay, and that should help a little bit. Or call to action your current readers of your email list or your current social media followers to save that pin to Pinterest. Saves in the number one metric on Pinterest, so you can definitely have them do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Speaker 4 00:48:08 Ooh, this.

Jillian Leslie 00:48:09 Has been terrific. Okay, Kate. What do you see coming? This is hard coming down the pike, both in terms of Pinterest. Let’s talk specifically. And then just in online business in general. That’s a big.

Kate Ahl 00:48:24 Question.

Jillian Leslie 00:48:25 Big question.

Kate Ahl 00:48:26 Okay. So after I’m done answering I’m going to turn the what do you see back on for you? Okay, so I’ll say this about Pinterest.

Kate Ahl 00:48:34 we had Pinterest presents. I did a whole recap podcast on it. I’ll give it to you to link to your free people. Please, please. I loved it. I was very inspired as to where Pinterest was going. It gave off this vibe of let me reintroduce you to Pinterest, and this is catered towards marketers. And what they were essentially saying is, we want to do our best to have you bring your dollars here. Now, it’s very ads focused, right? But there’s a lot of things we can learn about where they’re going to lean into in the future. So product sellers are definitely something that they are focused on because they know that Pinterest is the place where people get ideas, where they have moments around products, and they want to make that purchase time shorter than it’s been before. They want to make it like, oh, you found the idea. Maybe you’re going to purchase within the next couple of weeks. And so there was a lot of conversation around this. I love their new suite’s C suite team.

Kate Ahl 00:49:27 They’re all from Google, Venmo, PayPal. They have a lot of that history there with e-commerce, and they wrapped it up with their chief marketing officer saying, I know that you need results for your campaigns. And I know in the past that you have not gotten results from Pinterest. Our goal is to lean into getting results for you in the future. We want you to come here because we know without saying it, Facebook and Instagram are not giving you results, so come here. So I appreciated that level of humility from them to say, yeah, we haven’t been what you’ve needed small businesses in the last two years, but we’re committed to being what you need us to be in the next two years. So I loved that it actually got me pretty excited about ads. They have this new feature, Performance Plus ads, that I think is super great for the novice who’s just wants to try. I think if you’re going to do it, you definitely need to hire someone like us for a consult to consult with, setting up your campaign, your image, all those kinds of things.

Kate Ahl 00:50:28 But I would say. E-commerce is going to get even better and better over the next year. On Pinterest. I think that they are committed to working with creators to. I’ve been very, very pleased with the people that I have met with. I feel like for the first time ever, I have a very direct line to Pinterest that feels very open, collaborative. It’s just I have been over the moon with the team of people there compared to the last ten years where they have moved so slow, or even they’ve tried to chase TikTok traffic. And I love that they got rid of idea pins. I love that they said this isn’t working, they are moving at a faster clip. So I really love the direction we’re going in 2025. I can’t speak to. I mean, my traffic is down, my views are down. My hope is that that goes up. But I also I’m trying to challenge myself to think differently, to think outside the box, to even challenge myself to do more ads that I know does convert to our email list, because for us, that’s really important.

Kate Ahl 00:51:30 So that’s what I want to challenge myself to do in 25. So business wise, man, that’s a big one. You know, you and I are recording this a week out from the election, which of course it feels like the world has been put on hold the last couple of weeks. My hope is that I guess my hope is that small businesses would be seen more and that we would. I don’t even necessarily know 100% what I mean by that, but I guess I would hope that for most of us, we would challenge ourselves to own that identity of small business owner and own the hard work of what it takes to get in front of the right people. And I say that for me, as my community has changed, as my business models have changed, and I look at 2025 even for myself, of kind of asking that question like, do I want to stay in this game, you know, past 2025? Is there a need for me to for simple Pin media to be in the game past 2025? And I think those are just big questions that I see a lot of people asking themselves, who maybe rode the easy button for a while and now they’re having to really reconcile with, do I want to be here anymore? And I don’t think it’s bad to say you don’t.

Kate Ahl 00:52:56 I just think there I hope that what comes to light is people. I can either hit that fork in the road to say, yes, I want to be here. And yes, I’m going to be intentional about simplifying my business, doing less, or I’m going to choose a different path. So that’s more, I would say from a personal reflection than it is from a corporate reflection, but it’s a little bit of what I see and what I hear from friends who are saying who have been in the game as long as you and I have, and who are saying, I don’t know how much longer I want to do it, and full transparency. I mean, you and I are Gen Xers, so I mean, that’s a different level of life. And I started this when I had little kids at home. And, you know, I now have a daughter who’s 19 and in Europe, and I have a senior who’s going to graduate again and a freshman. I have a nine year old, two in my home again.

Kate Ahl 00:53:52 But all that to say, I think for a lot of women, especially who started small businesses, life kind of changes for us. So obviously I can’t speak to men who are listening because there there’s this a little bit different, but I’ll turn that back on you. Like, what do you think business is going to do in 2025?

Jillian Leslie 00:54:10 I think it is what you were talking about in that it is this Human. The coming from a human, authentic place is where we are going to find our businesses for, and it is about being open to learning new skills so people are freaked out. I it’s going to take all of our jobs and I’m going to say maybe, but maybe it’s going to invent a ton of new jobs. So therefore I think it’s about being open, being vulnerable, but not in a way where you can get really hurt, but where you’re like, I putting on the hat of I don’t know. Yeah, putting on the like place of like, I’m just learning and I’m going to hold on for the ride, but I’m going to be led by my audience.

Jillian Leslie 00:55:03 So where would I be leaning in right now? Email. I would be leaning in to talking to people. I would be. So here’s the thing. Since Covid, we’ve all gotten terrified to do the things that we used to do naturally, like go to a party. So I say, if you’re the person who can push yourself to go to the party, to go to the meetup, to go to the conference, to say yes to coffee. It changes your whole perspective on the world. And I think that as the, you know, the world feels so strange right now, but I’m going to say, well, I don’t have to buy in to the fact, like I’m, I’m fine in that. Like I’m safe and I love my life in Austin. And to remind myself of what you were saying, getting simple. What’s important to me. So I’m this lifelong learner, like, totally lights up my brain. Therefore, okay, what can I learn? What new skill like? I go learn AI so you can then teach it so that you can then offer services, like be that person.

Jillian Leslie 00:56:14 I don’t know about you, but like, I talked to, like, my normie mom’s friends they know nothing about. I like they’re not in this world at all. They’re like, what? I’ve heard of it. Or I tried it once and I didn’t really get it. So I see there’s like this huge gap of what can I use? How can I then maybe bring AI to the normie moms? I don’t mean teach them, I like, but I mean, like, maybe I can create, I don’t know, a way to get them to have meal plans using I, I don’t, I don’t know, but I’m seeing it as more opportunity. But I think you have to train your eyes to be open to seeing it. And I used this example. I recorded a different podcast and I use this example, which is we needed iPhones to get Uber. Uber could never have existed without the iPhone, but when the iPhone came, nobody could have predicted Uber. And now you’d go, I can’t live without Uber.

Jillian Leslie 00:57:13 How would I get to the airport?

Kate Ahl 00:57:15 Totally.

Jillian Leslie 00:57:16 So it’s like I want to put more of that positive spin on the world and say, look for the opportunities. When everybody is Zigging you zag, you go to that party because you don’t know who you’re going to meet, what ideas you’re going to come up with. So that that would be what. And I think it is going to be more person to person, weirdly, in the internet with AI.

Kate Ahl 00:57:46 Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree with you and actually joined a community of women who were networking together to uplift each other. And I had that idea kind of to your point. And when you said it made me think about it, networking is the way of 2025. Networking, not in this slimy way that we think, but like connecting and building authentic relationships and really getting in front of other people’s audiences and then getting in front of. You know, my audience and like continuing to build this up. And speaking of I tool, I had this really.

Kate Ahl 00:58:22 moment a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about taking the podcast and converting it into a blog post, and that’s been primarily hand done because you can’t really take a transcription and make it sound human very easily. And so I was like, well, isn’t script, you know, we were talking about that before, have this thing, you just click a button and it just doesn’t. Isn’t I that good? And what I learned is it’s not. And it really drilled down to this thing of like the prompts that you give it, the way that you train it. And somebody said this, it’s like training an employee in your company. And that is a whole level of stuff that we don’t really talk about right now. Whereas if you are going to train a new employee, you don’t just give them the handbook and say, hey, see you on Monday and let them kind of like figure it out. You give them a week of training. You walk them through and if it that is how we envision these new programs being used in our business, we have to begin to think differently and training that.

Kate Ahl 00:59:19 And I think that comes from that came from a conversation that I was having with someone and that moment of, you’re right, we have this mythical idea of AI and it’s just going to like click and will be done and then it will just go, you know, like solve all our problems. And this is kind of a little bit of a like jump from that with AI is I’ve been asked a lot about AI and Pinterest images and if people will Pinterest will shut down AI images. And it was like, well, if you think about what Pinterest is leaning into, especially with their ads platform, their performance plus is that they want AI to be able to help somebody have a background for a standalone product. And I see that and I go, that’s genius, because these people who are product sellers might not have the ability to pay somebody to create these amazing lifestyle photographs, and so they need I to help facilitate them to grow their business. Why would Pinterest be opposed to that if they’re allowing this to be infused into their ads platform? And obviously I images can be, you know, people can take images and be distorted and all these things, there’s copyright stuff, but I just think there are good tools that we can use ethically and responsibly.

Kate Ahl 01:00:34 But embracing them as like new employees in our business.

Jillian Leslie 01:00:38 Yeah. So I, I have to say, and maybe this is just like I do in that I am always looking for the positive. But I do see it. I see it around me, and I almost feel like if you can see it or train your eye to look for where people are struggling like that is gold.

Kate Ahl 01:01:00 Yeah, 100%. And the Pinterest searchers start with a pain point. They don’t start by searching for a brand. They start by searching with how to where can I? What about like these are the things that they’re looking for. And so getting in front of them on Pinterest at that point, instead of assuming they know about you, is that is where you saw that?

Jillian Leslie 01:01:25 Yes. Okay. So wait, so we just have to we’re I promise we’ll we’re wrapping up. But I do though because you did bring this up. Do you think I images work on Pinterest right now. Should people be like digging into Midjourney.

Jillian Leslie 01:01:41 Like what is can I for my recipe. Hey do a recipe like an ingredient shot with say Midjourney. Could I do a finished product shot with Midjourney. What is your thought about this?

Kate Ahl 01:01:55 I think industry wise food is a little unique, right. Because people are going to be making the recipe and they want to have an actual of what it looks like. So that is a little bit on the line. I think when it comes to home design, there’s a little bit there too, that you have to fall within. I know somebody was talking about creating AI images in Canva, but I think they were really talking about creating it for more long form content posts. So I guess I would say when it comes to food, I see having been in that food, that space for a long time, there’s people who are really good recipe developers and there’s people who are really good photographers. I also think there’s people who have really good recipe developers that can hire good photographers. So food, I would have a hard time with it just because as an end user, does it look like what I want it to look like? And that’s what I think you have to ask yourself, is if you create an AI image and you can put that image next to your plate on the counter and you could be like, it’s pretty close, then let’s do it.

Kate Ahl 01:02:57 But if you create your dish and it looks nothing like the AI eye image. I think at that point you have a decision to make that that might be a little deceptive, because somebody looks at the images when they are creating a recipe in order to benchmark. Am I making this correctly? So that’s that’s how I feel personally, but I don’t think Pinterest has made any stance just yet. I know they’re okay with AI images simply because they’ve integrated it into their ads platform.

Jillian Leslie 01:03:26 And I’m just speaking to that. I think you’re so right. Which is if in fact what I do is create amazing recipes. I’m I’m being dishonest if I think what we have is our reputation and our expertise. But I’m I’m selling you cupcakes. And when the cupcakes turn out, they look nothing like this image. I don’t think you are doing yourself, your blog, or your audience a service. So I think there is that disconnect. If it’s, say, my earrings and I’ve taken a photo of my earrings. But now I can switch out the backgrounds or put them on somebody, let’s say, and it looks pretty good.

Jillian Leslie 01:04:08 I get why that might work. So I do think you’re probably it’s like about your own integrity.

Kate Ahl 01:04:14 Yeah, yeah, 100%. You have to feel good that someone on the other end sees it. Now, I think sometimes that person is probably rare. And what most people are railing against is people who are off shore sometimes who are just lighting them up like crazy. It’s the same thing that we see with affiliate marketing is people on YouTube are saying, you can make all this money with affiliate marketing on Pinterest, all you need to do is pick a topic from Google, compare it with Pinterest trends, pull all your affiliate links. Have I right? It have I create an image and then slap it up. There’s no personal connection in there that is even remotely in there. And I think that is probably what can happen with blog posts, is you just get these things whipped up. I would say most people are pretty ethical about their images. The ones that are not they’re not really listening to you and I in this podcast to remain ethical.

Kate Ahl 01:05:09 They really don’t care.

Jillian Leslie 01:05:11 Yes. Well, I think that is great. Okay. So Kate, I just love I feel like I could talk to you for another hour. and so let’s do this again, like in another couple of months just to go. Okay, where are we now? Because I think things are changing quicker and quicker. If people want to reach out to you, learn more about you, find out about your podcast, your agency, where should they go?

Kate Ahl 01:05:38 Simple pen media.com. And if you’re watching on YouTube, you can just search out Simple Pin Media. If you’re listening on podcast search Simple Pin podcast and just start listening.

Jillian Leslie 01:05:48 Oh, I just have to say, I am so glad I met you many years ago and I love that we just continue this conversation.

Kate Ahl 01:05:56 Yes. Me too. Thanks for having me.

Jillian Leslie 01:05:59 I hope you guys like this episode. For me, my biggest takeaway is that AI is changing everything. But as Kate and I discuss, we both don’t believe it’s going to replace us.

Jillian Leslie 01:06:11 Instead, think about how your authenticity and humanity can be your superpower. So use AI as a tool, like a way to throw lighter fluid on your business, but keep looking for the opportunities to connect with real people. So before I wrap up, I want to remind you to give Milo Tree a try. It’s the easiest and least expensive way to experiment with new freebies and digital products. Don’t forget your first 30 days are completely free! Head to Milo Tree. Com to get started, if you like this episode and think a friend could benefit from it, please share it and I will see you here again next week.