If you want to know how to understand the changes at Pinterest to succeed on the platform, definitely check out my interview with Alisa Meredith.
Host 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello friends. Welcome back to the show. Before I start, I want to announce to all of those new and excited bloggers out there, that if you are looking for an easy way to turn your blog into a real business where you can make real money, I want you to sign up for our six-week MiloTree New Blogger Coaching Group. It’s going to start on March 2nd. I couldn’t be more excited.
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You are going to learn all about the tech you need for blogging, the way you need to think about monetizing, how to attract an audience, how to get traffic to your site, what the different social media networks are all about.
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Okay. For today’s podcast, this is very exciting. I have my very good friend, Alisa Meredith on the show. Alisa is a Pinterest expert. She works at Tailwind.
If you haven’t heard Pinterest is making changes to the platform. If Pinterest is important to your business, you must listen to this episode.
Even if you had tuned in to the Pinterest and Tailwind when they did a Facebook Live together to talk about this, one thing that Alisa is really wanting to do is to clarify any misconceptions that came out of that Facebook Live.
So we go deep and we talk all about what Pinterest is thinking, what Tailwind is thinking, and how you should be thinking about all of these changes. They’re not bad.
Like everything on the internet. It’s always changing. So, without further delay, here is my interview with Alisa Meredith.
Alisa, welcome back to the show.
Alisa Meredith 3:17
Jillian, you know I’m always glad to be here.
Jillian Leslie 3:19
We have so much to discuss.
Alisa Meredith 3:22
We do. I’m really glad that we got the curly hair conversation out of the way. We know we have to do it.
Jillian Leslie 3:28
We always do it. So if anybody’s interested in what we are sharing in terms of best practices for curly hair, just reach out to me at Jillian!MiloTree.com.
Alisa Meredith 3:39
That’s right. That’s right.
Jillian Leslie 3:41
And you are my guide when it comes to curly hair.
Alisa Meredith 3:44
Oh, no. We are up this journey together.
Jillian Leslie 3:46
Okay. All right. We’re even talking about making products. So, stay tuned.
Alisa Meredith 3:50
That’s right. Our next career, yes.
Jillian Leslie 3:53
Exactly. As curly hair entrepreneurs.
Okay, so let’s talk about new changes both on Pinterest and Tailwind. Okay. So you guys did a Live Q & A, where you had a representative from Pinterest. They’re talking about what they’re looking for.
And you guys were talking about how as a company, you’re there to support the publisher, the blogger, as Pinterest makes these changes.
Alisa Meredith 4:23
Yes, absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 4:24
And my biggest takeaway from what you said is Pinterest is now focusing on new pins. They want new pins on the platform.
It used to be make your pin, and then your job was kind of to repin it over and over again and make sure it’s kind of getting in front of people. Pinterest is saying, nope. What we want is new fresh stuff showing up on the platform.
Alisa Meredith 4:48
Yeah, and I think it’s important to think about why that might be. It is an algorithm change. You hear all the time like, “Oh, because of the new algorithm change.” And you wonder how do people know that.
But this one, they are actually telling us now, right? They told us in that Live that this is actually a change in the algorithm. So what’s happening is that they noticed that pinners/users were engaging more with this fresh content.
We should define what fresh content is just because there’s a lot of confusion about that as well. So fresh content is an image that Pinterest has never seen before.
Jillian Leslie 5:27
Or video.
Alisa Meredith 5:29
Yes, right.
Jillian Leslie 5:30
Okay. Here’s the question. Is fresh content the same photograph with different words on it? New overlays?
Alisa Meredith 5:42
Yeah, it could be. Right? So we talked a little bit about that. What makes an image fresh? Can you just put a filter on it? Can you just shift the image a few pixels to fool the algorithm so it reads it as new?
Don’t go for the shortcuts because what Pinterest is saying is that we are actually seeing that people engage more with actual fresh content. So think about what makes it fresh from a user’s perspective.
I had somebody send me some examples. They use the same background image and everything for their podcasts. They just change out the podcast number. And no, that is not what you would consider a pin.
Technically, it’s a different image. But what is the average viewer going to think? Are they going to see the difference and find that inspiring and interesting? No, they’re not.
So you have to think about that with your own image. Changing the text overlay could absolutely work. But you probably want to expand on that as well. So, give people like a different focus, a different angle that completely change the focus of the image, if you can.
Jillian Leslie 6:47
Right. And just even in terms of Google, if you are a blogger, you know this. Google does not like duplicate content. Meaning you can’t make a blog post and copy the blog post and make a second blog post. In fact, Google will kind of ding you for that.
Alisa Meredith 7:04
Yeah. Yeah. I think Pinterest is not to that same level, right. I think what a lot of people heard yesterday or thought that they heard is that you can never save the same image ever again after you saved it once because it’s not fresh content.
Well, you know what? Technically, you’re right, it’s not fresh content. However, that was not the message. The message is to shift your focus and your time from pure curation and repetition to adding more fresh content.
Jillian Leslie 7:37
Got it. For example, let’s say I’ve got this great pen and I love it. And I just want to repin it. But because the algorithm is changing, it might just be that Pinterest will notice. “Oh, we’ve seen this before on the platform. We’re not going to give it a lot of priority and a lot of juice.”
Alisa Meredith 7:56
Yeah. That could happen now. We did ask specifically on the Live and in conversations beforehand, you can imagine there are a lot of those two. Does this mean then that I can’t save the same image to more than one board?
And this is something that a lot of people didn’t get the point of so I want to try to communicate it more clearly. No, not at all. So please do continue to share your image with a few relevant boards. And that’s the key, right?
So when you go into Tailwind and you start scheduling to more than one board, you’re going to see recommendations at a certain level. Like, you know, if you’re going to save to more than this many boards, you might want to create a new image.
But absolutely, you can share the same image to more than one board. It gives more context to Pinterest about what that image is about. So yes, absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 8:52
Now, do you think I would get in trouble if I shared it to 20 boards?
Alisa Meredith 8:59
I think it’s less about the number although Pinterest has said 10 or fewer.
Jillian Leslie 9:06
Okay, that’s good to know.
Alisa Meredith 9:07
And the guideline is there because we want relevant boards, right? So, give it more context. If it’s sort of/kind of relevant but not really, well, make a new image.
Change that text on the image to be more relevant to that other few boards you want to save it to, and you’re going to do a lot better with the distribution.
Jillian Leslie 9:30
What about, I had heard that it matters, let’s say the first board I pin it to.
Alisa Meredith 9:39
Yeah. We’re going back to the importance or the priority that may be given to fresh pins. So, when you save that first pin to that first board for the very first time, and this is something that they’ve been talking about for a long time, right, the importance of that first board you save it to.
That is the strongest connection. I used to save all of my blog posts to Alisa’s Blog Board. Right? That’s terrible. You should be saving it to something that has similar keywords to what I’m using in the pin description, in the board description, and the pin title, and the content on my page.
Jillian Leslie 10:20
I like that. Okay. So that is a big takeaway. Be very intentional about the first board you’re pinning that pin to because it’s giving a lot of signals to the Pinterest algorithm.
Alisa Meredith 10:33
Yeah, and to every subsequent board, you save it to as well. Right?
Jillian Leslie 10:37
Should I prioritize them in terms of relevancy?
Alisa Meredith 10:40
Save it to the most relevant board first, as you said, but just be honest with yourself. Does this pin really belong on this board? If it doesn’t, then remake it so that it does if you really want to save it.
Jillian Leslie 10:54
If you’ve got Alisa’s blog posts, would you pin in that last?
Alisa Meredith 11:01
Might not be last but it certainly would not be first. I don’t know that anyone’s keeping track of, “Oh, this was the second so it’s a little late.” I don’t know that it’s that sensitive but yeah, certainly wouldn’t be my first anymore.
Jillian Leslie 11:17
Let’s talk about this idea that like Pinterest is not out to get you.
Alisa Meredith 11:22
No. No.
Jillian Leslie 11:23
And Pinterest is not going to say, “Oh my God, they recommend you pin it to at most 10 boards. I’ve pinned it to 11 boards. My account is going to get flagged.”
Alisa Meredith 11:34
Right. I think Lucy really explained that pretty well when she said there are a lot of factors that go into why someone could be reported for or suspended for spam. Yeah, they’re not out to get you as you said.
Jillian Leslie 11:50
And there aren’t people behind the scenes. I would argue that even the engineers at Pinterest do not fully understand the ramifications of the algorithm, because there are so many different situations.
They’re giving weight to different elements. But who knows how your pins are going to be interpreted by the algorithm. So again, there are no people back there who are like counting how many pins you’re pinning. These are all pieces to a very complicated algorithm.
Alisa Meredith 12:27
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Lucy was really clear about that too. Yes, these changes have started to occur, where relevancy and recency are both being taken into account.
You’re probably going to see relevancy start to become more and more important because that is changing over time as you said. You can’t just flip a switch and have it completely changed.
Jillian Leslie 12:49
Okay. So, of relevancy and recency. Let’s explain or define what those mean.
Alisa Meredith 12:56
Yeah. Okay. Relevancy has a lot of different angles. So, try not to get too complicated. But if you think about relevancy to a search, right, if you’re searching for curly hair products, you’re going to see pins that are relevant to that.
You’re going to see images that are about curly hair. You’re going to see the text on an image about curly hair. You’re going to see it in the title, the description, the board description.
Now, there’s a lot of things that go into a search result, but just talking about relevancy, that’s where it really counts.
Making sure that your content is actually what you present it to be and keeping those signals consistent from your boards to your pins, to the content on your website will help with relevancy.
Kind of another thing to think about with relevancy is relevancy to the platform of Pinterest itself. Whereas on Facebook, you can talk about problems and issues, on Pinterest, you want to be more inspirational and aspirational.
That’s just more what people want, which makes your pin more engaging and more relevant to the platform and the way people use it.
Jillian Leslie 14:10
Okay. And now let’s talk about recency.
Alisa Meredith 14:12
Yeah. So recency, that’s the first pin thing, right?
Jillian Leslie 14:16
Yep.
Alisa Meredith 14:18
Fresh content is going to start to bubble up more in the results which are not to say at all that your older content that’s still relevant and up to date won’t still surface. It will but all things considered.
If you have two pieces where they both have equal relevance, which, as I said, there’s a lot that goes into it. I don’t know all the factors. But if Pinterest says, “Okay. These are equal relevancy, but this pin is fresher than this pin.” The fresher pin is more likely to get more distribution.
Jillian Leslie 14:48
Absolutely. Okay, that makes sense. Now, what about this though? It’s Halloween, and I make some pins. Remember, it used to be that a couple of months before, I’m pinning those pins with my Halloween recipes or Halloween crafts.
Now, I want it recent. So, do I want to wait and not necessarily pin them three months before because it used to be that it took a while for it to percolate, gain some traction?
Alisa Meredith 15:16
Right. Well, I think that that kind of discount the way people use Pinterest. So, part of the reason for pinning that early is that people are actually planning ahead that early.
So it’s not like I got to get it out there so it gets worked into the feed. It’s more like, when do people actually start searching for this topic? That’s when my pin needs to go out.
It’s maybe a shift in the reason why you’re doing it possibly, but not a shift in the time frame. You’re still going to want to do it early. That really brings up another good point about relevancy.
What are people searching for now? If you’re in the US, you have access to trends@Pinterest.com. Look and see when should I be pinning these certain things. That’s going to be more relevant at that time.
Jillian Leslie 16:01
Okay. So it’s not as much about kind of feeding. I would have thought of it back in the day or not back in the day, like, a month ago. It’s almost like you’re seeding the platform with your content.
And you’re saying, “Don’t think about it that way. As much as think about the audience.” People start planning for Halloween a couple of months before, start gathering ideas.
Alisa Meredith 16:26
Yeah. I think they say, typically it’s 30 to 60 days ahead. But the Pinterest possibilities planner, go a little alliteration there. It gives a really good visual of when a search will start trending up.
And some of them are ridiculous. Like, I think Christmas starts in June or something. You do want to know the trends for your content.
Jillian Leslie 16:50
Okay. Now, let’s talk in terms of pin descriptions, pin titles. What if I start changing those up and not necessarily the actual pin? Does that count?
Alisa Meredith 17:08
No.
Jillian Leslie 17:08
It doesn’t. Okay.
Alisa Meredith 17:10
No, it doesn’t. That is key to understand success on Pinterest today and in the future. What is fresh content? Fresh content is a new image.
Jillian Leslie 17:22
Now, here’s my next question now. Kind of the inverse. I make a new pin and I now want to pin it into six relevant boards. Do I need to change the title and the description as it goes into these six boards? Or can I keep the same title and description?
Alisa Meredith 17:44
Okay. So short answer, you could keep it. The longer answer is you’ll probably do better if you change it, and here’s why. Right?
Because what Pinterest is looking at is consistency between the content on your website, all the stuff on your pin which includes title and description, and text on an image, and your Pinterest board.
So even though they might be kind of similar and all relevant to like four or five different boards, is it possible you could make it a better fit with the board by changing the title or description? Yeah, probably.
Jillian Leslie 18:19
And does that also then feed more information to Pinterest to round out what this pin is about?
Alisa Meredith 18:25
Yeah, it seems like it could. I think where we’ve gotten some questions, and I think where the even bigger possibilities are, is when you create a new image for that same URL.
Let’s say when you post a blog post, you always create five different images. So then the question is, do I have to make a new title and description for every single pin?
You don’t have to, but you’re probably going to want to because every pin is going to be unique in some way. And then, it’s going to have a different focus, a different goal or present things in a different way that might benefit from a new title and description.
Jillian Leslie 19:05
Okay. Okay. So again, it is about more personalization. Is that a good way to put that? If for example I make an instapot recipe that’s for Christmas, and I pin it to my Christmas board, in that description I want to talk more about Christmas. If I pin it to my instapot board, I might want to talk more from the angle of an instapot.
Alisa Meredith 19:29
Right. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 19:30
And in the images, if I have some images that focus on more like Christmas, that’s where that one’s going to go more likely, or at least first. And then the instapot from looking at the instapot, in that image we’re going to kind of… it’s like tailoring.
Alisa Meredith 19:46
You got it. That plays in the relevancy as well.
Jillian Leslie 19:49
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Now, let’s go talk about blog posts because this I think is really interesting. I’ve got a blog post that I posted five years ago. Does Pinterest care if I make new images for that blog post? Is that new content?
Alisa Meredith 22:09
It is new content.
Jillian Leslie 22:11
Do you think eventually Pinterest is going to go, “We’re going to look at the date of the blog post.” Then go, “Oh, that’s five years old. It’s not as relevant.”
Alisa Meredith 22:18
I really couldn’t speculate on that. All I do know is that we asked specifically, is there some kind of preference given to brand new URLs with new images? Or is it just new images? And what they said is, the algorithm does not favor brand new URLs, it’s the image.
Jillian Leslie 22:37
Okay. That is a huge takeaway because Pinterest is not saying go make a bunch of new recipes.
Alisa Meredith 22:45
Right. You don’t have to blog four times a day in order to have great content for Pinterest.
Jillian Leslie 22:50
I love that.
Alisa Meredith 22:50
Thank goodness.
Jillian Leslie 22:53
With Google though, you need to be updating that blog post or creating new blog posts for Google to see that as new content. Google gets mad if you just take that blog post and update the date.
Google doesn’t really get mad, but Google doesn’t care as much. It would get mad. But Google is much more about, “Oh, yeah? You want me to think this is a new post? Then you better prove it to me by updating that post.”
Alisa Meredith 23:19
Right. Yeah. I mean we completely understand that this is a big shift for people, right? Whereas in the past, you could just keep resharing and resharing and resharing and do a lot of content curation that didn’t require a lot of creation.
And now, Pinterest is saying “We want you to create more.” I understand that that is difficult to hear. But when taken in context with what you just said, it’s way easier than working with Google.
Jillian Leslie 23:55
Absolutely. And again, you can hire this out. There are people on Fiverr for example, who will make images for you and it’s not that expensive. So think about finding somebody on Fiverr or Upwork. If this is intimidating and making your head explode…
Alisa Meredith 24:16
We don’t want that.
Jillian Leslie 24:17
Yeah, like there are ways to be strategic about this. And if Pinterest is driving you traffic and making you money, it might be worth investing a little bit and having somebody make some pins for you.
Put together some templates and see if you can do it that way. Now, let’s talk though about pin best practices and what you at Tailwind are doing to help me make the best most clickable most eye candy-ish pin.
Alisa Meredith 24:48
Oh, well, we were just talking about this. We have this thing called Pinterest Toolkit.
Jillian Leslie 24:55
I’m going to have a link to it in the show notes.
Alisa Meredith 24:59
Okay, great. And it’s just bitly pin toolkit from Tailwind, all lowercase, no spaces. It’s completely free. When you get in there, what you’re going to see is that we have a pin checklist.
We have a guide to writing great descriptions. But most exciting I think, for me and most people, are the templates.
Jillian Leslie 25:20
Yes. And they’re really pretty, by the way. You guys did a great job.
Alisa Meredith 25:24
Thank you. They’re in Canva. You can add those to your own accounts. And then you can edit them however you want. We just started doing this. We have a collection from December, one from January. I’m working on the February one.
But what’s really cool about it is that we have built them all based on Pinterest best practices, so we really dived into the Pinterest Academy. Especially on the January collection.
When you get it in Canva, there’s like a little notes button and you can actually click on that note and find out why did I choose this design, what kind of trend, or what kind of benefit are we pulling into this pin? And why you might want to use something like this?
So they’re all different industries. We have health and beauty. What else do we have? I’m completely drawing a blank. We have a blogger.
We have a couple of other ones but you could, in theory, use any of them for any industry. Just mix them up. Obviously, you don’t want to use them exactly like they are there or we’ll start having the exact same pin show up on Pinterest which is not ideal.
But we are actually working with the creative team at Pinterest on another set which will be coming out soon that will bake in some really cool things that they are finding are actually working. So those will be baked into the templates that you can use.
Jillian Leslie 26:48
Now, can you share any of these high-level tips? Like for example, are big fonts better than small fonts? Sans Serif font is better than other fonts? Are there any things where you go, “Wow, that’s really weird that people click on that.”
Alisa Meredith 27:07
Well, here’s one that surprised me is the recommendation to add a person.
Jillian Leslie 27:12
Oh, really? Because I would have shied away from that.
Alisa Meredith 27:17
Yeah, exactly. Because we were told for a long time, it didn’t work. Well, apparently, that is not the case anymore. I mean trends change. Of course, it’s going to change. And as far as text goes, the biggest thing is to make sure it’s legible.
Jillian Leslie 27:32
On mobile.
Alisa Meredith 27:33
On mobile, yes, absolutely. So watch for that. And watch the curly fonts. I mean Pinterest can’t really read those for SEO so if you’re going to use them, use them for an accent piece of text, but the bigger thing is, what are people able to see?
Jillian Leslie 27:50
Now, what about things like do you guys know? Fewer words, more words, and colors.
Alisa Meredith 27:57
So fewer words, for sure. I highly recommend you check out the Pinterest Academy because it has so many great things in there. One of the suggestions was to use texture, to use monochrome, which I hardly ever see that and I think that’s part of the point of it. Use a pop of color.
Jillian Leslie 28:21
Okay. Now, what do you mean by texture?
Alisa Meredith 28:26
Okay. I just got into acrylic pouring. I don’t know if you’ve tried that but it’s so so fun. It’s beautiful.
Jillian Leslie 28:32
Wait, what?
Alisa Meredith 28:32
You’re thinking like water down paints. You mix it with a medium and some water. You pour it into a cup then you dump it on a canvas and you move it around and it’s beautiful.
Jillian Leslie 28:42
Really?
Alisa Meredith 28:43
You’ll look like an artist and you’ve dumped paint on a canvas.
Jillian Leslie 28:47
Wow. Okay.
Alisa Meredith 28:48
I took a picture of that. You can take a picture like different areas of that or if you see like a pile of rocks or sand.
Jillian Leslie 28:56
Got it. And using that as a background.
Alisa Meredith 29:00
Yeah. Yup!
Jillian Leslie 29:01
Interesting. Interesting. Okay.
Alisa Meredith 29:03
And patterns too. So patterns draw the eye. So, if you see something cool like a staircase or a fence line or something like that.
The one we have that works really well is like, donuts. I think it’s two lines of three donuts on a pin. That pin does really well. It’s because we like patterns. Like our eyes are drawn to them.
Jillian Leslie 29:27
That is so interesting.
Alisa Meredith 29:29
Yeah. And then there’s like, try to add a little mystery.
Jillian Leslie 29:33
Oh, yes. Yeah, a reason to click.
Alisa Meredith 29:36
A reason to click. But even in the image itself. Like, to a mysterious doorway, right? Yeah. So there’s a lot you can do to improve the quality of your pins. We try to bake those into all the templates.
Jillian Leslie 29:50
And you’ll also explain why or what that element is for?
Alisa Meredith 29:56
Yeah. I don’t think I did it in December collection. But in January I added a lot of notes like, here’s why we did this. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 30:04
Interesting. Oh, those are such great tips. Using people, that goes against everything I know. Even like when you think of book covers, and it’s like the female protagonist, and they never show a face because they want you to be able to put yourself in that role.
Alisa Meredith 30:23
Yeah. And I think that still, to some extent proves true. Like, if I wrote a book, and I wanted to advertise it on Pinterest, I would not put a big picture of my face on a pin because people don’t care about me.
They care about what I’m going to do for them, which is great. I love that about it. But a person using your product or service in a photo is really powerful.
Jillian Leslie 30:49
Yes, because we are kind of heard-ish, you know? Like she was really happy with wearing the bracelet, maybe I would be really happy.
That does make sense. Now, let’s talk just basically, pin size.
Alisa Meredith 31:05
Okay.
Jillian Leslie 31:06
Has that changed?
Alisa Meredith 31:07
Oh, no. No. So the recommended, like a standard pin is 2-3. So, 1000 pixels x 1500 or equivalent. I think the minimum they’re saying is 1000 x 1500 now.
So then, on the higher end, if you don’t want your pin to get cut off in the feed, it’s 1 to 2.1. So that’d be like 1000 x 2100. Some people swear by that link. So, it’s definitely worth trying.
Jillian Leslie 31:34
Interesting, because I’m going to tell you that we’ve gone back to kind of longer pins. I think we’ve had some success with that.
Alisa Meredith 31:43
That’s cool.
Jillian Leslie 31:44
But you know, that’s like between you and me and whoever else happens…
Alisa Meredith 31:50
It is between us. Yeah, just between friends.
Jillian Leslie 31:52
Exactly. So again, what I would say about that is definitely experiment. Like see, test, test, test test. I want to touch on two more things. I want to touch on the number of pins you should be pinning per day, and then talk about like that there really is no such thing as Pinterest jail.
Alisa Meredith 32:16
Pinterest jail. I think there actually is.
Jillian Leslie 32:18
Do you? All right let’s talk about it.
Alisa Meredith 32:20
Of course, there is. So people get suspended all the time or their websites get blocked. So, that’s Pinterest jail. As far as like, if you pin 69 and a half pins you go to jail, that’s just not how it works.
That was something that Lucy was clear about too on Facebook Live that there are a lot of factors that go into it.
Jillian Leslie 32:40
Got it. So okay, so if in fact, the recommendation is like up to 25 pins a day. If you pin 27 pins, that is not going to be on your account. If they recommend up to 10 boards to pin a pin into and you do 12, you’re not going to Pinterest jail?
Alisa Meredith 33:04
Right. So, I remember Lucy was like, “We don’t give numbers.”
Jillian Leslie 33:08
Right. Right.
Alisa Meredith 33:09
There’s a lot that goes into it. And besides, it would be a recipe for cheating. So just something to think about, like, let’s say you’re pinning 40 pins a day. Let’s say it’s the same image that nobody’s engaging with.
Well, that’s too many pins. Not because of a number, but because of the way that you’re doing it. That’s really important.
Another thing I really want to clear up, Intel and Smart Guide, which is what we put in place to help people stay within these new best practices, we stated that our most successful pinners generally pin between 15 and 25 pins per day.
I just want to make it really, really clear that we are not limiting people to 25 pins a day. That seems to be a big point of confusion from the live and I apologize if that was not clear or if it’s not clear in the dashboard, but that is not a limit.
Jillian Leslie 33:58
Got it. Okay. So for us, I was explaining this to you offline. So, our site is Catch My Party. That’s our first business. Pinterest is huge for us.
Now, we have a lot of what’s called user-generated content, people uploading photos of their parties. And we pin a lot of those photos and we make collages and things. We’re lucky in that we have a lot of content to pin.
So we get a lot but we are pinning a lot of new content. Therefore, for us, we’ve been pinning like, I don’t know a hundred pins a day. Right now, we’re going down to like 75 pins a day.
What I’m going to do is watch our analytics, see how Pinterest is responding to what we’re doing, and adjust accordingly. But yes, our situation is different than everybody else.
Nobody else has exactly what we do or does it the way we do it. So, we’re going to try stuff and experiment and see how it works for us.
Alisa Meredith 35:01
Excellent. Yeah. And that’s exactly what you should do. So, I think a lot of people just heard something lot more drastic.
Jillian Leslie 35:11
And heard hard numbers.
Alisa Meredith 35:13
Yeah, exactly. So we do have recommendations in there. We do have things in place to kind of slow down over repinning but you can choose to ignore it if you want to.
Jillian Leslie 35:26
Exactly. So let’s talk about now what Tailwind is doing to help. I kind of think you’re like the best friend who’s sitting next to you who’s saying like, you know, I’m not going to be mad at you. Like, I’m just going to give you some guidelines.
Again, what you just said, which is you can totally ignore it. It doesn’t mean like you guys have some special information that, “Oh, no.” You’re going to go report that person to Pinterest if they violate something. You’re just kind of saying, here are some guidelines, here are some guardrails.
Alisa Meredith 36:02
That’s right, exactly. That’s guardrails was a great word for it. And like the numbers thing, we’re going to kind of shy away from that as well, because we’re meeting with Pinterest on a regular basis, and these things are going to change.
But that’s not something that you need to worry about because it’s going to be on your dashboard. And if we see something where it’s like, oh, you’re kind of edging towards, like putting yourself at unnecessary risk, we’re going to tell you. But again, as you said, you can ignore it if you want to.
Jillian Leslie 36:31
Right. So again, it’s not like you’re some sort of parent or you have all this insight. And you know that my account is going to get flagged. It’s just that you’re saying, “Hey, we know what best practices are.”
“We see enough accounts. We’re in conversation with Pinterest. So if you want to stay safe, just pay attention to what we are noticing about your account.”
Alisa Meredith 36:55
Yeah, exactly. Right. Can I address something about Smart Loop?
Jillian Leslie 36:59
Please.
Alisa Meredith 37:00
Okay, great. So something else that people thought that they heard was that you can never share the same image to the same board ever again. That is not at all true.
And fortunately, Lucy stated that as well. So there are perfectly good reasons why you would share the same pin to the same board again, which is what Smart Loop does, right?
Jillian Leslie 37:24
So, could you give some examples? What is the best use case for Smart Loop?
Alisa Meredith 37:29
Yeah, so you might want to do it seasonally. If you know that a certain pin/image does really well around a certain time of year, make sure it goes out again next year but you don’t have to think about it.
Or if you know, “Okay. Here’s a piece of content that does really well when it goes out. I want to share it maybe twice a year or so so that possibly my new followers will see it.”
Absolutely. Go ahead. It’s like that very much mimics natural behavior on Pinterest. So, if you think about how you might use Pinterest as a user, if you saw that pin in the feed, you might be inclined to save it yourself once a year or twice a year if you happen to see it, and it was engaging to you.
So that’s the key, right? If it’s engaging, if you have found or you think you’re going to find that it’s engaging to people, you can repin it like that. But of course, you do want to watch your Smart Loop analytics and make sure that you are still getting engagement on those pins.
Smart Loop analytics, for me, is like the easiest thing in the world to see. Like, “What’s my average?” And, “Oh, okay. This one is below average. It’s out.”
Jillian Leslie 38:40
Right. So should you be curating your Smart Loops?
Alisa Meredith 38:45
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Especially if you see a piece of content is doing really well, create new images for that piece of content. And again, it might be different for other people but to me, Smart Loop is like the best place to get the analytics on a pin or even a piece of content.
It’s like, “Wow! Every time this goes out, it gets 14 shares. That’s way higher than my usual. I’m going to create more images to see if I can get more juice out of that one piece of content.”
Jillian Leslie 39:14
So you’re saying use it also for research?
Alisa Meredith 39:18
Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re like, “Oh, this pin used to do well but now that I’ve shared it out a few times, it’s not getting the engagement.” Then, take it out, put a new image in.
Jillian Leslie 39:30
Yes. And so else? How are you guys thinking about this going forward?
Alisa Meredith 39:37
Yeah. So for now, what we’re doing is we’re kind of keeping an eye on people’s activity and like you said, giving kind of guardrails and advice about how to get better distribution and success for your Pinterest and to kind of avoid that unnecessary risk.
Over time and you’re probably seeing it already, little tips to help you get more and to create fresh content easier. But you’re going to start to see more of that.
Jillian Leslie 40:04
Okay, so you guys are going to be kind of like coaches.
Alisa Meredith 40:09
Yeah, coaches. And we’re also looking into ways to help people create fresh content faster and easier.
Jillian Leslie 40:16
Got it. So in addition to the templates, like you can expect that you guys are thinking about making pins in an easier way, I guess.
Alisa Meredith 40:30
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 40:30
Now, let’s talk just briefly, let’s touch on video.
Alisa Meredith 40:34
Okay.
Jillian Leslie 40:35
So Enid from Pinterest came to the AdThrive conference and talked all about video. That video is huge and all that stuff. What are you seeing?
Alisa Meredith 40:46
Okay. So, mix. I think part of it is that my video skills are not good. But what I found, and I was talking to our Pinterest ad rep too, is that to teach someone something in a video is where you can get some real success.
So we tried this because we were doing kind of talking heads, snippet kind of videos and those, they just were not working, which makes sense, really. But they were easy to make so we did.
But one that we’re doing right now is like, the recipe for our perfect pin. And I thought, if we play it into that, that part of like recipes being super useful on Pinterest, well, could that translate to video?
So we have like, one part inspiring image, one part beautiful title, two lines… It wasn’t us. I’m describing. This is not what we use.
I can’t remember straight out what exactly we use but it was that idea of walking people through how to build a really great pin, which is informational. It teaches a little something. It’s kind of inspiring, but it still requires that they click to get more information.
Jillian Leslie 42:04
Got it. Okay. Because that’s the piece that I think is the trickiest, which is supposedly people will watch on Pinterest, your video. And especially again, as Enid said, people aren’t listening. You want text overlays. They’re getting engagement but the trick is how to get the click.
Alisa Meredith 42:29
Yeah. There’s something we said just for building like brand awareness. And videos absolutely stand out in the feed and they’re kind of prioritized in certain searches, which is cool.
But like you, I do want the clicks. So, yeah, I want people to watch it on Pinterest, but I do want them to click top obviously. So it’s kind of the same idea of infographics.
Infographics can get a ton of engagement, so many repins, but a lot of times they don’t get clicks. And that’s because you’ve given it all away.
Jillian Leslie 43:05
Yeah. So right. So it’s like you want it and this is always challenging, but you want to add that element of mystery, that element of like, what’s behind door number one?
How do I, you know, go find the rest of the recipe? What does it look like? I need to click through to see how it turned out. Or those kinds of things.
Alisa Meredith 43:28
I mean, you can even show all that. Like for Catch My Party, you could show everything that you’re doing. But in order for someone to recreate that, they need to have a material list. Right?
Jillian Leslie 43:39
Right.
Alisa Meredith 43:40
So, you’re not going to put that in your pin description. That doesn’t make sense. So, you click through to your website, but in the meantime, they’ve consumed this video on Pinterest. They’ve learned a little something but they still need you.
Jillian Leslie 43:51
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so, do you feel like Pinterest is still prioritizing video?
Alisa Meredith 44:00
I mean I don’t have any kind of inside scoop on that, but I can just tell you what I see. And that is, yeah.
Jillian Leslie 44:08
Okay. Yeah.
Alisa Meredith 44:09
Do you see that too?
Jillian Leslie 44:09
Yeah, I do. I do. And Enid said this. But for us too, it’s harder to make especially if it doesn’t lead to clicks. That’s where we’re like, “Ooh”. You know, how do we crack? We haven’t cracked that nut yet.
Alisa Meredith 44:27
Yeah. Well, I think there’s a nut to be cracked though.
Jillian Leslie 44:30
I do. And I’ve heard that people who do have done very very well so we’re going to do it and keep trying.
Alisa Meredith 44:37
Click-through rate on that particular one is good. But I think we had to learn that you can’t just tease. You actually have to teach.
Jillian Leslie 44:47
Yes. And I think that Enid had said like there’s a sweet spot something. Like 30 seconds to a minute. There are some sizes, you know like one to one seems to be a good size.
So there are some fundamental basics if you’re going to think about doing a video to really read up on those requirements or what is performing best.
Well, this is good. This is really good. I’m so glad that you agreed to come on and to dispel some of the fear around changes.
Alisa Meredith 45:25
Well, you know, I’m gonna be completely honest, Jillian, I’ll tell you that when we started hearing about the changes that were coming up, we were a little freaked out too. It’s a big mind shift.
But the more that we learned about it, and what actually was behind it, and like what the recommendations were, the more we were like, “Oh, you know what, this makes sense.”
It’s going to make a better platform and it wasn’t as scary. But I completely understand why it would be scary at first.
I absolutely encourage anybody who has concerns about Smart Loop, about the number of pins per day, or whatever to please reach out to us at help@tailwind.com. We want to help.
Jillian Leslie 46:09
Yeah. And if you think about it, I like what you just said. If the platform gets even better and more people to come to the platform, there is more traffic for everybody.
Alisa Meredith 46:21
Yes.
Jillian Leslie 46:21
The pie grows. And we want to grow it. Even though again, it might be a little more work upfront. If the pie is growing, that’s more eyeballs on your content.
Alisa Meredith 46:33
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 46:34
So I totally get that. Well, Alisa, thank you so much for coming back on the show and for really digging deep into this. I mean I’m excited actually to go to Pinterest and see all these new fresh pins.
Alisa Meredith 46:49
Oh, yeah. Me too.
Jillian Leslie 46:50
Because I love it. I love it. All right. Well, thank you again. I know you will be back again for gosh, like part four, part five, or whatever.
Alisa Meredith 46:59
Thank you so much. Looking forward to it, Jillian.
Jillian Leslie 47:02
I hope this episode gave you more clarity. Clarity on what Pinterest is looking for. Clarity on what Tailwind is doing. For us at Catch My Party, we’re still going to be pinning a lot of pins. We’re just going to make sure that a lot of those pins are new content.
And for you new bloggers, please join us in our new blogger coaching group. It is starting in just a couple of days on March 2nd. So please come! Come along. I promise you will get so much out of this and you will leave with a roadmap on how to turn your blog into a viable money-making business.
So please, head to MiloTree.com/group. You don’t have a lot of time so sign up today. If you’ve got questions, please, I’m here to answer them. I’ll get on a call with you. I’d love to chat with you.
We really feel like our job is to empower entrepreneurs and that’s what we hope to turn you into. And I will see you again here next week.
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