How to Keep Your Pinterest Account Growing and Out of Trouble
Host 0:03
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello everybody, welcome back to The Blogger Genius. It is a beautiful day today in Austin, which puts me in such a good mood.
I’m going to be at the Mom 2.0 Conference in a couple of weeks, which is in Austin. If anybody is going and you want to connect, just reach out to me at Jillian@milotree.com or on social media. I would love to meet you.
Okay, for today’s episode, I have my very good friend Alisa Meredith back on the show. Alisa is a Pinterest consultant. She’s a strategist. And if you use Tailwind, you will know her as the content marketing manager there.
Today, we are talking about spamming on Pinterest and how not to get your account flagged as a spam account, because that would not be a good thing. We talk about the things that Pinterest has come out and said. We talk about what to do if your account gets flagged.
We’re also going to talk a little bit about video on Pinterest and even some new ways to advertise on Pinterest. I think you’re going to really like this. If Pinterest is important to your business, this is a really good episode.
So without further ado, here is Alisa Meredith. Alisa, welcome back to the show.
Alisa Meredith 1:37
Hey Jillian, thanks for having me back.
Jillian Leslie 1:38
It is so great. I just love these talks where we can go kind of nerd out about Pinterest.
Alisa Meredith 1:45
Me too. And we already got our hair conversation done.
Jillian Leslie 1:49
Right. I won’t put that in the interview, we did that offline before. But just so you know, Alisa is my hair go-to person for curly hair, and she’s actually solved my problems. So thank you.
Alisa Meredith 2:04
That’s going on LinkedIn after this.
Jillian Leslie 2:07
Yes. Like many, I’m going to… what is it? Like I’m going to–
Alisa Meredith 2:10
Endorse me?
Jillian Leslie 2:11
Endorse you, yes. For hair advice. There you go.
Alisa Meredith 2:15
Awesome.
Jillian Leslie 2:15
Alright. So let’s talk about this idea of spam on Pinterest. And what is spam on Pinterest? And how do you keep yourself safe?
Alisa Meredith 2:30
Yeah. Big topic, right?
Jillian Leslie 2:32
Yes. Everybody’s talking about this.
Alisa Meredith 2:34
Yeah. So I think it’s important to consider why is this an issue, right? So why are people concerned about it?
Jillian Leslie 2:43
Yes, definitely.
Alisa Meredith 2:44
Yeah. So I think part of the problem is that some people have been suspended for spam. And sometimes it’s warranted, sometimes it’s not. It’s a big platform but it’s hard to get it all right all the time.
But yeah, people want to know, what do I need to do to stay out of trouble. So Pinterest has shared on their website, five different behaviors that could be kind of interpreted as spam. So do you want to go through each of them?
Jillian Leslie 3:14
Yeah, let’s go through it. I mean, I know some of them seem obvious like porn. Don’t put porn up. Don’t do stuff like that.
Alisa Meredith 3:23
Yes, that one should be obvious. However, there are other forms of content that are also disallowed. So it’s, you know, porn, violence, self-harm, hate speech, disinformation.
Which by the way, they are pretty sensitive to things like anti-vaccination campaigns or health claims. Like for instance, that chiropractic can cure cancer.
Jillian Leslie 3:52
Even things like essential oils, like I know that essential oils, it can get kind of touchy in terms of claims.
Got it. Yes.
Alisa Meredith 3:52
Yeah. So they know if you’re sharing stuff like that, and that can get you in trouble.
Exactly. That’s the point of it, right? It’s not like you can’t talk about essential oils, you just have to be careful what you’re claiming they can do.
Jillian Leslie 4:13
Okay. So you can’t say like essential oils cure autism.
Alisa Meredith 4:17
Right. That’s right.
Jillian Leslie 4:19
Okay. So no false claims, no porn, no self-harm. Got it. No violence.
Alisa Meredith 4:26
Right. I mean, just be reasonable.
Jillian Leslie 4:28
Right. And I mean, again, those seem like easy. Like, you know, those are not the things that I would be pinning, or I think, you know, my audience would be pinning.
Alisa Meredith 4:37
Yeah. Right.
Jillian Leslie 4:38
But then there are some gray areas.
Alisa Meredith 4:42
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s another one that’s pretty blatant — and that is sharing or stealing pins. So if you take someone’s image off of Pinterest and then you link it to your own content.
Jillian Leslie 4:57
And that’s happened to Catch My Party and we’ve had to flag, we’ve had to let Pinterest know that that was happening.
Alisa Meredith 5:06
Oh, yeah. And yeah, that has happened to most of us, I would say. And they’re really trying to crack down on that.
So something that can happen is that you could accidentally be sharing a stolen pin So it is important to check your links before you share content on Pinterest, because you could just accidentally be contributing to that problem.
Jillian Leslie 5:29
So I see a pin on Pinterest that looks good and I just, you know, pin it to one of my boards. And I don’t click through to see where it’s linking.
Alisa Meredith 5:40
Yeah. I know that’s easy to do and I think we probably have all done it many times,
Jillian Leslie 5:45
Which is, you may not click through or…
Alisa Meredith 5:48
Right. Not clicking through. I’m gonna save this and read it later, and we don’t click through to make sure that this is actually going where we think it’s going.
But yeah, always be checking links. So Tailwind Tribes and, yeah, I’m on the Tailwind team just for full disclosure. But those are a great way to share content to Pinterest from people that you know.
So of course, it depends on the tribe, right? You could be in a tribe with 1000 people and not know everyone. And any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way.
But if you have a tribe of people whose content you know and trust, that can save you some time on checking links. But otherwise, you really do need to check your links.
Jillian Leslie 6:32
Yes. Because I have sometimes clicked through on a pin and ended up on some random, you know, like spammy site that had nothing to do with the pin.
Alisa Meredith 6:44
Oh, I know. It’s very disappointing, right? Especially if you saved it for later and you think, I’m going to come back and buy this later, and you’re ready to do it. And you go, and it’s not what you thought it was.
Something Pinterest has done now to try to filter that out is especially if you’re on mobile, it will pop up “Did you find what you were looking for?” A little button. And you can say yes or no. And that will help them to surface that legitimate content higher.
Jillian Leslie 7:09
Got it. Okay. Anything else that we need to know about?
Alisa Meredith 7:13
Oh, yeah. Yeah, lots of stuff. So something they call ‘unnaturally high volume behaviors’. So I got a little trouble for this just the other week because something funny was happening with my browser. And I was trying to log in, and it kept putting in the wrong username.
And it was something funny like that. But I got locked out for 30 minutes.
Jillian Leslie 7:38
Really?
Alisa Meredith 7:39
Yeah. Because I was trying to log in and it wasn’t going right. And yeah, and I got locked out.
Jillian Leslie 7:43
So it was thinking somebody was like trying to, like, get into your account.
Alisa Meredith 7:48
Or it was a bot. Like they were thinking it was a bot activity, which, you know, they don’t want that. So things like that.
Commenting on pins in two quick successions, following too many pinners in a short period of time. Even like saving a ton of pins from the same website really quickly.
Jillian Leslie 8:10
Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So they’re looking for like unnatural behavior.
Alisa Meredith 8:14
Right. Something a real user wouldn’t do. And again, if those behaviors get you blocked, usually it’s a temporary block. Yeah, not a permanent one. But you still don’t want to do it.
Jillian Leslie 8:28
Got it. Okay. And do they have any other rules in their rulebook?
Alisa Meredith 8:34
Yes. So like we were talking about stealing pins but also saving pins that lead to unrelated content, which is very related to stealing pins, but it could be that you have your own image that’s of a cute little puppy dog, but you link it to your blog post about how to start a podcast.
That’s deceptive and it’s not a good user experience. So Pinterest does not want that.
The last one is overly repetitive pinning. And this is the one that in this blog post has gotten probably the most attention from people wondering, Well, what does this really mean? Okay, so overly repetitive pinning is…
Jillian Leslie 9:14
Wait. I just have to say I wrote this note ‘how repetitive is too repetitive?’
Alisa Meredith 9:20
You know, they’re never going to come out and say exactly if you put five hours or five days or five weeks. They’re not going to do that. Because what will people do? They will find a way to game the system.
Jillian Leslie 9:33
Definitely. So based on your experience and your expertise, what is your take?
Alisa Meredith 9:41
Okay, I think it’s first important to understand what this means. So a lot of people had questions about okay, but what if I have this one new piece of content but I have 15 boards that can fit on? Am I going to get in trouble if I share it to all these boards within like, say, a week’s time?
Well, the only issue that we have insight on and that Pinterest has really shared, is that of sharing the same pin to the same board. Because they do want all your relevant content going to all of your relevant boards, because that’ll help them determine how to distribute your content.
But what we’re talking about here and what creates like a bad experience for your followers, is to be sharing the same pin to the same board too often.
Jillian Leslie 10:30
Got it. Okay, so let’s say something that does really well for Catch My Party is baby shower content, right? So let’s say we do a blog post of like pink baby shower decorations, and we make a pretty pin.
And I want to share it to our baby shower board, and I want to share it to our girl baby shower board, and I want to share it to our pink party idea bored, and I want to share it to party decorations. And all of that stuff. I can do that, right?
Alisa Meredith 11:06
Yes, absolutely.
Jillian Leslie 11:07
And Pinterest is not going to be mad.
Alisa Meredith 11:09
Correct.
Jillian Leslie 11:10
Do I need to be mindful of how quickly I’m sharing it? And by the way, it’s relevant. Like I’m not sharing it to something, you know, too, I don’t know, beers. I don’t have a board on beers, you know, or like beer trading. Okay, so like, it’s not going there. And so, therefore, that is okay.
Alisa Meredith 11:31
That is okay. So what a lot of people do, if they use Tailwind, is use interval pinning. And this is what I’ll do a lot of times, too.
So, I’ll pick every board that it needs to go out to and I’ll just send an interval of, you know, I go back and forth on this. So people say, what’s a good interval for this sort of thing. I mean, I don’t have a magic answer for that.
I go back and forth between like one day, three days, maybe five days. But I think if you think about if someone was looking over your shoulder, like, let’s assume that your followers are using the Following tab, which Pinterest indicates that there is quite a bit of activity in that tab.
So let’s say that they’re looking at this Following feed. Are they going to feel like it’s spammy? Whatever you choose for frequency, and of course, that’s also going to depend on what else you’re pinning.
So if I’m only pinning this one pin to those five boards, that means five pins in a row of mine are going to be the same pin, then that probably is not ideal.
But if it’s five pins over the same five days, but there are 10 other pins in between, that’s a more authentic kind of experience.
Jillian Leslie 12:47
What’s interesting about this, and what you’re sharing is, I mean, aside from like, don’t share porn and self-harm and stuff like that, it’s nuanced.
Alisa Meredith 13:00
Yeah. And really, if you can honestly say if someone was standing over my shoulder watching my pins go out, and it didn’t look spammy to them, then you’re probably okay.
Jillian Leslie 13:10
Okay, that’s really good. I mean, that’s very helpful. And I think also that there is no magic bullet about intervals.
Alisa Meredith 13:19
Right. There isn’t. So I know we like them, but we don’t have one.
Jillian Leslie 13:23
Right. And again, it’s like finding what feels right for you, for your audience. And if you have a ton of content, then you could share, I could share that, you know, pink baby shower party decorations pin more often if I’ve got other pins going out.
Whereas if that’s all I’ve got, I have to be more aware of how that can be received.
Alisa Meredith 13:46
Exactly. So you know how you can have your cover photo on your profile now and you can have it show many different options. But I like to show the one that’s like my activity, so my recent pins.
Jillian Leslie 13:59
Oh, that’s good.
Alisa Meredith 14:01
Right? So if you look at your cover photo of your recent pins and it’s too repetitive, then probably that’s an indicator that you need to change your strategy.
Jillian Leslie 14:12
That’s a good kind of heuristic. Yeah, I like that. I like that.
Alisa Meredith 14:17
Okay, cool.
Jillian Leslie 14:19
That’s very cool. So now, what about the idea of the volume of pins? So we at Catch My Party, we’ve got tons of pins and we pin a lot. And what kind of is the rumor on the street about that?
Alisa Meredith 14:35
Well, there was a study quite a while back that showed diminishing returns after 50 pins.
Yeah. Pins per day. But things change so fast. And I think the most important numbers are your own numbers. So running those tests and figuring it out.
The thing where I think people get into trouble is where they hear “I have to pin 50 times a day.” So they’re pinning any old thing and spending more time on that than they are creating their own content to share.
Jillian Leslie 14:41
Pins per day.
Interesting. So like they’re going, Well, I gotta fill up this queue. So let’s pin, you know, if you don’t have a lot of pins, you’re just going to kind of keep recycling the same pin.
Alisa Meredith 15:17
You might keep recycling, recycling your own pin. You might share a ton of other people’s content, which there’s nothing wrong with sharing other people’s content, but the biggest benefit you’re going to get on Pinterest is from sharing your own content.
Jillian Leslie 15:29
And the thing that seems to be the message that I’m getting from you guys at Tailwind and stuff like that, is the best practice is to be making new pins. So it’s not just taking the same pin, changing up the description or the hashtags.
It is taking, you know, going to PicMonkey and making a new collage. It could be based on the same photos. But something about it is it is a different image.
Alisa Meredith 15:59
Yes, exactly. I know this one caused some discussion as well. But yeah, it was about a year ago when Pinterest in an interview said, you can change up the description and hashtags for an added SCR distribution benefit. But that’s changed now.
And it makes sense because Pinterest is a visual platform, you don’t see much of the description anyway. So from a user perspective, the part that’s new is the image.
Jillian Leslie 16:32
Right, absolutely. It’s seeing that same image over and over again. So my thought is when you’re creating content, take extra photos, and you can put them in the post or not. But have a storehouse of them so that you can recycle.
One thing that I keep learning is to take your old content, your old posts, and updating those posts for SEO, for Google, and for Pinterest. You want to update the information in that post so that Google sees it as fresh content. And one of the best ways to do that is to add some new images.
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Alisa Meredith 20:27
I’ve had a couple of people asked too about well, what is it that Pinterest is looking at? Like if I had 100 different images called IMG451.jpg, does this Pinterest say “Oh, that’s the same image. That’s bad.”
No, it’s not about the file name at all. How they determine it, I mean, I would probably be guessing to say so, but no, it’s not about the file name. It’s actually a different image, different pictures, different text.
Jillian Leslie 20:56
Don’t they have AIs that they can say “this is not the same”?
Alisa Meredith 20:57
Oh yeah. Exactly. They know what the pictures are better than I do probably.
Jillian Leslie 21:04
Right. So they’re really smart.
Alisa Meredith 21:06
Yeah, really smart.
Jillian Leslie 21:07
Okay. So that seems to be the theme, which is you want more content, more images. So when you’re doing that recipe post, take more photos. Take them from different angles. And I have also, by the way, heard that you do not want to stack.
Let’s say you’ve got your chocolate chip cookie recipe, and you’ve got photos. And they are just slightly different but they’re both beautiful. And you want to put them both in the post because you want to just, you know, you’re so proud of your photography, and how delicious these cookies look.
That you don’t want to stuff all of those images in the post. Because for Google, Google’s also thinking about the experience for the user on Google. You know, especially if people are going to your chocolate chip cookie recipe on mobile that they’re going to have to scroll through all of those photos.
So you might want to save those photos so that you can use them as pins later. But you don’t necessarily have to stack your post with 15 different photos that are kind of all the same.
Alisa Meredith 22:18
Right. But you do want to give people the option to save those to Pinterest. So there are plugins that will allow you to kind of hide images in the post. It’s not a sneaky thing to do. It’s really a great option to create more variety,
Jillian Leslie 22:36
Right. But I would say that, yes, you want to give people that option. However, just from personal experience and also stuff that I’ve read, you also don’t necessarily want to overload your visitor or pinner with so many options that they get kind of paralyzed and don’t do anything.
Alisa Meredith 22:57
Yeah, that’s a good point. And another thing to consider is that Pinterest does read the text on your images. So you would prefer to have people pin the one with the text on it.
Jillian Leslie 23:08
Got it. So, therefore, so the one that has the description and hashtags and things like that is more valuable to you and to your account.
Alisa Meredith 23:17
Right. But as you said, save them all to Pinterest. Because if you think about what Pinterest wants, they want to be this visual search and discovery and inspiration engine that people want to come back to you every day.
So if they can provide fresh content for every time you come back or for every search you enter, then that makes a great experience for the users. If you can arrange your content strategy to play into that, then you’ll be rewarded.
Jillian Leslie 23:45
I think that’s so powerful. Put yourself in the position of Pinterest,
Alisa Meredith 23:52
Or even in the position of Pinterest users. Like, you’re a Pinterest user, right? What do you want to see?
Jillian Leslie 24:00
Absolutely. And it’s funny, because as a content creator, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that, what is it, so we’re redoing our bathrooms. And so I have this whole other experience where I am on Pinterest multiple times a day looking at bathrooms, which has nothing to do with parties.
So it’s like, I am a totally different person. And it’s been really insightful to be using Pinterest as a Pinterest user instead of a content creator.
Alisa Meredith 24:28
Yeah. And I tend to use Pinterest mostly when I have a project like that as well, which I have a lot of now having just moved. And you’re right, it absolutely does put you in a different headspace, which I think is very helpful to get out of marketing thing.
Jillian Leslie 24:43
Totally. And also, because it’s so different. I really am coming at it fresh. Yeah. I’m not looking at like, well, what are other people doing with party ideas? You know, let’s do that.
Like, I’m in a totally different realm. And it’s been very eye-opening to go how frustrated I get when I click on a pin and it leads me to some bad content, for example.
And to have that experience and be like, Oh, this sucks, you know, versus I go, I see a beautiful pin, and I go directly to where I can buy that thing. And I’m like, Oh, this is awesome.
Or a beautiful article post that gives me insight into like what is in caustic tile? It’s like, I don’t… you know, somebody’s got to research. And now, I can learn. And so it is very interesting.
Now, what happens if your account is flagged as spam? What do you do? And can you get it back?
Alisa Meredith 25:34
Yeah, you can. So sometimes it is a mistake, right? But you can email them. So go into the help pages and there is an option to, you know, to say “I was suspended and want it to be reviewed.”
Jillian Leslie 25:54
And typically, if you haven’t done anything nefarious, are they typically reasonable and you’ll get your account back and it will be okay?
Alisa Meredith 26:06
Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard of people saying, “Oh, it’s been going on for weeks,” but I don’t really know what were they pinning. So I can’t really speak to that. They have no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts.
I mean, if you’re really pinning well and it was just a mistake, they’re going to reinstate you.
Jillian Leslie 26:30
Got it. Okay. Can we touch on video? Tell me your thoughts on video. I know that Pinterest is really pushing video right now, it seems. What are you seeing?
Alisa Meredith 26:43
So I don’t know about you, but I am seeing video show up on top of other search results right now. So that, you know, kind of supports what you’re saying about what they really want it to take off.
I have tried a couple of videos. I mean, so very little strategy going behind this, mostly just a test. And I found that they got a lot more clicks right away than my static pins, okay. Or not clicks rather, I’m sorry. Views, impression.
But very few clicks and then it dropped off really quickly. So you can see, you know, in information on your pin, you can see last 30 days, last two weeks, last week. And so it was really strong at first and then it trailed off. And that could very well be my fault. Because it wasn’t a great video, right? It was just a test.
But it looks to me like they’re giving them a bit of a boost when they first come out like a brand new one. Not a lot of clicks, but I don’t know. I mean, I feel like awareness is good. And if you create the right kind of video that it teases something, it may well cause people to click through.
Jillian Leslie 27:57
Okay, because that’s what I’ve heard too, which is you’re going to get a lot of views. But it’s not necessarily driving you to traffic, and therefore, how do you create a video that’s more of a teaser that will push the person to say, Oh, I need that recipe, or I need that, I need to know more.
Alisa Meredith 28:18
Well, I mean, I think with recipes, it’s probably pretty easy only because they’re not going to take the video to the kitchen with them and watch it and pause it as they’re making it.
And then the same thing like with Catch My Party, like if you wanted to show someone how to make a certain party favor, they’re not going to bring the video to the craft table. They want that print-out.
Jillian Leslie 28:40
Or take the video to Michaels, yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. So it’ll be interesting to watch how video continues. And, you know, I know that Pinterest has wanted to be doing video for a long time.
Alisa Meredith 28:55
Right. And interestingly, so video ads have been out for a while. There’s a brand new kind of video ad, which I haven’t tried yet. It’s called Performance Video where’s it’s pages for clicks.
Jillian Leslie 29:09
Oh, okay. That’s good.
Alisa Meredith 29:10
Yeah, it is good. So I feel like when things come out in ads, it makes you wonder are they looking at how to do the same sort of thing for organic. I don’t really know, I’m just guessing. I just thought that was interesting.
Jillian Leslie 29:27
And let’s talk about ads since you are the expert. Alisa is always the ad expert. I work with her on our Pinterest ads. And she’s incredibly helpful. So if you’re thinking about Pinterest ads, she is your girl.
But can you talk about what’s going on in the landscape of Pinterest ads? I think there are some new formats that you mentioned. So tell me what’s exciting you about Pinterest ads right now?
Alisa Meredith 29:52
Well, conversion ads are very cool. Have you tried any of those campaigns?
Jillian Leslie 29:56
No.
Alisa Meredith 29:57
No. Okay. So conversion ads only work if you can set up your event tracking.
Yup, which we have.
Yup. So if you’re on like an Etsy or a Teachers Pay Teachers, you probably can’t do it unless you have your own blog and cart. But basically, what it will allow you to do is, say, “Okay, Pinterest, an email signup is worth $3 to me. Go out and get me email signups for $3.”
Jillian Leslie 30:27
Great. Yeah.
Alisa Meredith 30:29
Yeah. So they will go out and get email signups worth $3. And you can set that attribution window and something new that they have just added is you can set the attribution window to, Okay, I only want to count within one day of a click.
I’m not even going to talk to you about impressions or engagements. I just want to know that within one day of clicking on my ad, they became a new email signup.
Jillian Leslie 30:54
And then do you pay per conversion?
Alisa Meredith 30:58
No. You pay per impression.
Jillian Leslie 31:02
Per impression, okay.
Alisa Meredith 31:03
Yeah. So because of that, you have to like kind of go all in on it. Because it can take a while for them to figure it out. So they recommend you go several weeks to let them figure out how to get it for you, which I know is really hard to do.
Also, another recommendation from them is to give at least three conversions’ worth of budget for the day. So if in my example, I say, email signup was worth $3, then my daily budget needs to be at least 9, so that they have room to figure it out.
Jillian Leslie 31:43
But explain that to me. So if you’re paying for impressions, but yet, I’m saying that an email signup is worth $3, how does that work?
Alisa Meredith 31:55
How it works is Pinterest is doing its best to get that to happen. But it may not happen right away.
Jillian Leslie 32:02
Okay. Okay, but they’re there. They’re trying to optimize for $3 per conversion.
Alisa Meredith 32:09
Exactly. That’s very well put. Thank you.
Jillian Leslie 32:13
And they’re seeing the conversion, but you’re paying for impressions.
Alisa Meredith 32:19
Yes, while they figure it out.
Jillian Leslie 32:21
While they figure it out.
Alisa Meredith 32:22
Yeah, yeah. They are good at figuring this stuff out. The other cool thing is that you can get really cheap clicks this way sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.
Jillian Leslie 32:37
Because they want the clicks so they can figure out the conversion.
Alisa Meredith 32:40
I think it’s more like if you have a high clickthrough rate on your ad, you’re just going to get more conversions because you’re getting all those impressions.
Jillian Leslie 32:47
Got it. Wow, yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna have to talk about this offline. That sounds really interesting.
Alisa Meredith 32:53
So it can be a little bit of a workaround if your cost per click is really high on the other ads, and it’s all going to depend on your niche. I’ve also heard from the Pinterest ad rep I work with that it’s better for e-commerce than other products. But anybody can do it for email signups.
Jillian Leslie 33:18
Yes. Yeah. Okay. Again, as you know, we’re experimenting with Pinterest ads for MiloTree and so we want sales. So, therefore, so do you think that that is a good market for trying out these ads, these conversion ads?
Alisa Meredith 33:37
You know, I feel a lot better about them having that option to do the 1100 attribution where we’re kind of telling Pinterest. Okay, you have one day to turn this click into a conversion. I think, yeah. Because the other options are a little harder to attribute if that makes sense.
Jillian Leslie 33:58
Right. Okay. And is there anything else that’s new in ads that we should know about?
Alisa Meredith 34:05
The dashboard?
Jillian Leslie 34:07
Is it better? I haven’t checked it in a couple of weeks.
Alisa Meredith 34:10
Oh, my goodness, every time I go in there, I feel like I’m getting presents. Not everybody has all of them yet. And it looks like I’m looking at mine right now and it’s a little different.
But they’ve made it easier to spot like your keyword tab because you can bid per keyword. And if you’re tracking sign-ups and checkouts, you can see which keywords are contributing to your sales or your email signups.
So you can bid per keyword. So if the word ‘baby shower planning’ gets you great conversions, you’re going to up your bid on just that keyword in that ad group. But it’s hard, a little hard to see in some of the dashboard layout.
So I guess they were playing with one last week. I don’t see it now It was like pretty cool and maybe it will come back, I hope.
But it was all on the left-hand side where you can navigate between campaign ad, group ad, and keyword level so you could get to that data you want. But the other cool thing is that you can create your own dashboard.
Jillian Leslie 35:24
Yes, you set that up for me.
Alisa Meredith 35:28
You have so much time because once you figure out what’s important to you, that’s all you really want to look at most of the time.
Jillian Leslie 35:32
Right. I used to have to go digging for information. And you’re like, here, let’s put this here and this here, and I’m like, okay, and that’s all I check.
Alisa Meredith 35:42
Time saver. I love it so much.
Jillian Leslie 35:44
Oh, that is great. Okay. And if anybody is wanting to dig into Pinterest ads, you and I recorded another episode where we really walked through the different types of ads. So I’m going to link to that episode. So definitely check it out.
Because we just were talking about this before we started recording, there’s a real opportunity. I mean, I kind of want to whisper this, because I don’t want everybody to know, because everybody will jump in and then it will make the ads more expensive.
Alisa Meredith 36:14
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 36:15
Be you shared though like what you see in terms of people who are Facebook marketers moving over to Pinterest. So anybody listening to this, keep it on the down low.
Alisa Meredith 36:26
Exactly. Yeah. So I feel like when I talk to Facebook advertisers, they have these light bulb moments and they get really excited. And I think part of it is, is one of my favorite features of Pinterest advertising options is act like audiences.
Yeah, so if you find, Jillian, that your email list converts really well to customers, but you know, after a while you kind of exhaust that audience, you can try to refresh it with creative new offers.
But if you just want to expand that audience, you can do an act like. And so whereas Facebook will look at, like other pages that people like, demographics of people, which is great. What Pinterest actually does is look at people’s behavior.
So they’re going to find people who act like people on your email list.
Jillian Leslie 37:18
Interesting.
Alisa Meredith 37:19
And target those. So that’s kind of a cool one. The other thing is that even though all the Pinterest ads now are one tap, meaning you don’t get that in-between step where people opt in to click to go to your website or you pay for the click.
I saw a big increase in cost per conversion from people who didn’t know us. So like keyword-targeted ads had a big jump at first. It’s gone down so it’s gotten more affordable again.
I still think that if you compare what you’re paying to target those people on Pinterest with what you’re paying on Facebook, you’re probably going to come out okay. But then as you move down like to retargeting, yeah, it’s probably going to be a lot cheaper.
Jillian Leslie 38:11
On Pinterest.
Alisa Meredith 38:12
Yeah, on Pinterest. Yes, there are lots of people who figured it out, so don’t tell anybody.
Jillian Leslie 38:15
Exactly. Okay, this is all everybody who’s listening to this, keep it a secret. But definitely, if you sell something or if you want to grow your email list, like you have to have a very specific reason to be advertising on Pinterest.
Alisa Meredith 38:29
Oh, that’s great.
Jillian Leslie 38:29
Or to be advertising online. But it is definitely worth checking out the first episode that you and I recorded where you walked through different types of opportunities on Pinterest. And right now for MiloTree, Pinterest is the only platform we’re advertising on.
Yeah. Because it has been cost effective for us. So definitely, you know, check that out. So Lisa, how can people reach out to you and learn more and follow you and read your stuff on Tailwind? All of that.
Alisa Meredith 39:05
So there’s the Tailwind blog, which is blog.tailwindapp.com and I highly recommend checking that out.
Jillian Leslie 39:12
Right. That’s where I learned most of my stuff on for Pinterest.
Alisa Meredith 39:16
Oh, yay!
Jillian Leslie 39:16
It’s awesome.
Alisa Meredith 39:18
Thank you. Then also, AlisaMeredith.com is where I blog about Pinterest advertising.
Jillian Leslie 39:26
Perfect. Yeah. And if you’re in, you know, definitely she is your person. And you were just at Social Media Marketing World, which is, you know, the conference, like if you’re invited, I keep trying to get to speak at it. And so far, it has not worked. That you’ve been speaking at it for years as the Pinterest ads expert.
Alisa Meredith 39:48
And you know, this year, like we were saying before, is there were a lot more people in the audience, and many of them were Facebook advertisers. So I feel kind of excited for Pinterest. But like, get into it now before everybody figures it out.
Jillian Leslie 40:06
Yes. Absolutely. And bids up the price. Well, Alisa, thank you as always, you know.
And by the way, Alisa is my friend IRL and she is just like my go-to person, she’s an awesome person. So definitely follow her and see what she’s up to. So Alisa, thank you so much for being back on the show.
Alisa Meredith 40:26
Thank you. Let’s do it again soon.
Jillian Leslie 40:28
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