Franziska: Hi, and welcome to Basic Bananas Radio. Today, I am super happy to have the one and only Kate from an amazing business called Simple Pin Media with me today. And Kate is joining us from Portland in the U.S. Where it’s summer and hot. And I’m here in Australia where it’s cold and wintry. So if you’re watching this on video, you will see our different dress code here. So welcome Kate. I’m so happy to have you here.
Kate: Yes. Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to share all things Pinterest.
Franziska: Yes. And you are certainly the Pinterest expert of experts. You’ve been doing this for a long time. You have an agency called Simple Pin Media and you’ve been researching and doing Pinterest for many years for many clients and you’ve really studied this field in and out. So I’m sure you even dream about it.
Kate: Always, you know, as an entrepreneur, our brains are always going. So definitely always thinking about different ways to strategise and process it out for people.
Franziska: Yes. So I’m really happy to have you here today. So this is on our radio, Basic Bananas. And then we also, which I’ll share more at the end of this episode, we also have Kate doing an exclusive masterclass just for our community in August, which I’m really excited about because it’s going to be such a special session. And also, I feel like Pinterest is so underutilised by businesses, especially in Australia. US might be different, but I’d love to hear from you. Maybe we start at the beginning. So why Pinterest and why should people care about Pinterest?
Kate: Yes. So we put Pinterest in the same bucket as we do YouTube and Google. It’s very much people have search intent, but because it feels a little bit mysterious to people and it’s easy for them to choose Instagram or TikTok it’s overlooked. It feels like, well, I don’t know how to do it. So I’m just going to bypass it. But what we fail to realize is that it is gaining popularity globally. They grew 7% over last year. ?And I think Australia, I think it’s US, UK and then Maybe Brazil is in there too. And then Australia too, like it is gaining steam. But again, I think it’s just simply because marketers don’t understand it. And so they can’t frame up in their minds how to use it to get more people to their website.
Franziska: Yeah, I agree. I feel like a lot of businesses just don’t know the power of it. So what, let’s maybe look at what kind of businesses must definitely look into Pinterest? And then also what sort of the benefits are of Pinterest compared to other channels. So TikTok came in and just, you know, took the world by storm for businesses, ?I still think, you know, it’s not the perfect channel for every business. So where does Pinterest fit in compared to these other channels and who really should be using it with what kind of businesses?
Kate: Great. TikTok did take the world by storm, right? And we see people spending hours and hours on it, kind of being entertained or consuming these short tidbits of information. Pinterest has a lot of similarities actually to TikTok, but the person doesn’t really go there to be entertained. They go there to search something, to search an idea, to dream, to plan, to buy. So the businesses that should be on there are definitely e-commerce business, direct to consumer or even people who are doing digital products and even those who are doing content creation, because pinners do two things.They gather a lot of information before they make a decision, which means let’s say if you’re in home design and somebody is looking for a new kitchen, they’re going to gather everything that includes getting a new kitchen, which can be faucet, paint, design, tile, whatever it is. And they’re going to save it to their boards. And this is going to happen six to nine months before they even start their renovation. So it’s really important to know that the Pinterest user is a planner. So when you think about how people interact with your products, your services, or even your content, where are they at in that journey? And the pinner is usually way back in there and kind of what we call fact finder mode. Whereas when you’re in TikTok or Instagram, you’re just a consume mode. You’re like numbing out, the another reason we kind of separate these out too, is that TikTok and Instagram have dopamine hits. So they keep people coming back. Pinterest doesn’t have that. There’s no conversation. There is some commenting, but for the most part, The person approaches the platform and says, ‘What’s in it for me’ instead of ‘what can I take from this?’ So that’s a really big, like a huge aha for business owners to think about. Oh, are my people already over there searching for the types of products or content that I create? And the number one thing I tell people is open up the Pinterest app. Search your name, search the type of product ?and just see what’s already happening over there because sometimes you might be surprised that your content or your products might already be over there because the audience finds that so valuable that Pinterest is the only place to save so you can’t, I mean, besides bookmarks on your computer, but it’s really great for the average pinner to be able to save ideas. And things for later in what they call boards. And so if the person who consumes your product is already doing that for you, that’s a win win over there. So that would be step one. If you’re trying to frame up early, is it the right place for me to be?
Franziska: I love those distinctions. And it’s, you know, it’s such a different ballgame to TikTok. As you say, TikTok is all about the quick hits and consuming and you’re not really, I mean, I personally, I’m not on TikTok. We have some businesses on there, but people are there just to consume and be entertained. Whereas Pinterest really in that sense, it’s so much more powerful because people go to plan things and often also saving things to their boards that they will need to purchase. And the other cool thing about Pinterest, I believe, is that your pins. So if, if let’s say I have a flooring company and I get all these people to save my beautiful floors, because I’m also really good at publishing beautiful imagery. Those pins can link directly to my shop, which is unique. It’s a unique sense.
Kate: It lives forever. So that’s the great thing too, is that let’s say that those beautiful flooring pins get saved to someone’s board, somebody who might follow them sees that. And then also the search algorithm for how it works. Pinterest knows what that pin is about, so it shows it to more people. So there’s kind of the snowball effect that starts to happen over the years that even if you pin something three years ago, it can still bring traffic to your website today.
Franziska: Yeah. I love it. I think it’s a fantastic platform. What about, so I can definitely see a lot of uses for product based businesses. e-commerce, even food businesses, any design, food, etcetera, because you just save recipes and food inspiration. What about service based businesses? Do you also work with the likes of, let’s say, even accountants, lawyers, consultants, any kind of service based business? How would they use your business?
Kate: Yeah. So that’s such a great question. Cause we tell people a lot of those like lawyers, accountant service based that are especially ?sometimes in person and they don’t translate globally we tell people that Pinterest is really not the place for them. And that’s simply because. They oftentimes need to have a physical location. If you have, let’s say a hairdresser and that person also sells a lot of their products online, that could be a good way to translate to Pinterest. But for the most part, somebody who goes and gets their haircut locally, it is really just looking at something like Google reviews or Yelp or something like that. So service based. Is if you can do it online, let’s say it’s health coaching or business coaching, or if you have taken your legal business, and maybe now you do digital templates for people, digital contracts that people can buy,or you do consulting online with people all over the world, that is an excellent place.But if you are a standalone physical location business, it’s really not a good for you fit for you just because it does translate globally.
Franziska: I love that you’re just so, you know, clear about this too, because then a lot of marketers, they go, oh no, you need to do TikTok, you need to do Pinterest, you need to do YouTube. And it gets overwhelming for a local business, let’s say an account. And they’re like, oh my God, this whole marketing game is so annoying. So we need more people like you that say, ‘hey, Pinterest is not for you. So don’t worry about it. There are many other channels you can use Pinterest is not one.’ So I love that. I’m really grateful that you shared exactly this little knowledge bomb. I’d love to ask you about, you don’t have to share any names of businesses, but what is a business that comes to mind that you have worked with? That didn’t use Pinterest or maybe not that well, and then you have them and what was the impact? Have you got a bit of a case study you could share?
Kate: Yeah. One of ours is one of our food creators. They were really great at creating recipes and they were really consumed in Facebook because at the time Facebook was doing those Tasty Style videos, kind of, a little bit we see on TikTok or reels now ?and that was taking up all their time. And then when Instagram came in. That was also taking up all their time because they had to be on video. They had to do all these things, but they noticed in their analytics that they were already getting traffic from Pinterest because people were saving their recipes. So once we took over for them, built their profile, really started to get their content on Pinterest in the right way, they started to see this really great lift in traffic over time and what developed out of that was actually their ability to start to source ingredients for what they were cooking. So she was sourcing olive oil. She was sourcing spices and then it went on to a cookbook. And so this background traffic of people coming to her website, which actually she was in the Mediterranean cooking kind of that diet. And she realized that people on Pinterest, they were going there to search. I meant, what do I eat in the Mediterranean diet? Maybe their doctor had just prescribed them that. And so she was coming up in searches for this and realized it and was able to really help people love this type of cooking. But had she ignored Pinterest, she still would have gotten a little bit of traffic from the people just sharing. But once we put her stuff on there, she was able to get this secondary lift and then attach her shop too, as well. So she has our products integrated with her olive oil and her spices. She was able to get another lift of really just having Pinterest work for you in the background.She can still focus on Instagram, but now she’s getting this passive traffic.
Franziska: That’s really cool. That’s a really cool story. And that leads me to the next question. Do you believe that a lot of businesses like hers possibly can leverage the content that they already are creating for Instagram and Facebook and use that on Pinterest?
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Because a couple of years ago, Pinterest, when TikTok rose, they realized as I think all of their platforms did, we want to capture this short form video content because it keeps people on the platform longer. And Pinterest knew that the regular pinner goes to Pinterest, they look for a pin, they click on it, and then they leave. So a way to keep people on the platform longer – short form video. So they encourage you to repurpose. I mean, they don’t encourage you to repurpose. Actually. They would never use that language. They would say we want original content, just like every platform does. But if you’re going to repurpose a great thing that we do, even for our business, is when we record the raw video and then before we add anything on Instagram or on YouTube shorts, we download it raw and then we’ll upload it natively to Pinterest. Use some of their native integrations like stickers, music, all those kinds of things. So it looks like it’s built on Pinterest. So that’s a really great way to repurpose. One tip that I tell people though,is if your Instagram, TikTok content is really heavily about you maybe it’s about your day, or maybe it’s about your experience. Most people on Pinterest won’t engage with that because they’re not interested in consuming your story. They’re interested in a tip or a trick or a hack so if you have something that is a quick win for them or a tip or putting together a tutorial, those are absolutely things you can repurpose on Pinterest, but just make sure it has those clear lines like it can’t really be about you. It has to be about them.
Franziska: I love that. And that’s another reason why I think Pinterest is so powerful. It’s not really a soapbox kind of tool where people share. You know what they ate for breakfast or struggles, etc. It’s about how can I add value to people that are interested in the topic that I know about. So it’s not about talking about yourself all day long, which, you know, a lot of these other tools like TikTok are encouraging narcissistic behavior.
Kate: Yes. That’s a great word for it.
Franziska: So, Pinterest doesn’t do that. So another reason to love Pinterest for, for some of us here. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really cool. I love that. And I love your tip also about, so when you, when you create content for, let’s say Instagram and if it’s not just about you. Taking the raw format and uploading it into Pinterest using their tools rather than the edited finished version. That’s really cool.
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Go that route. I love that.
Franziska: What about advertising on Pinterest? You guys also do a lot of advertising for your clients. How powerful is that platform, the advertising platform?
Kate: Yeah, it’s very similar to any type of ads platform. Once you can crack the code, you can scale the advertising budget, but it’s different in the sense that an ad on Instagram or Facebook takes, it’s very quickly optimized within the hour, two hours, you kind of know if it’s working. Whereas on Pinterest, it takes about two weeks to really understand if it’s being distributed where you want it to be distributed. So once you get over that and you really gather your data, you can begin to see where it’s being put. And there’s many different types of ad campaigns you can run, but we tend, it’s a little bit more expensive. I’ll be honest about that, but we find after that hurdle. You can really leverage it to sell digital products or physical products or work on email conversion. We never recommend Pinterest ads for simply traffic. You can do retargeting, but we want you to have a really strong conversion that you can say, we’re trying to get to this.And so we’re going to spend x here. So we always tell people just prepare. Probably about four weeks of just really learning it, trying to figure out how you’re going to integrate and what we’ve heard from a lot of people is that once they go from Facebook, Instagram to Pinterest, it feels easier for them. The dashboard feels less confusing. So there’s a lot of advantages. And it’s targeting a different audience too. That’s another thing we tell people. Don’t take your strategy with Facebook or Instagram ads and just overlay it onto Pinterest and hope it works because it really won’t. You have to think differently about keywords, about searches, and about intent.
Franziska: So maybe either the options, good options for businesses are either start using Pinterest, get really familiar with it and look at what people connect with before you do advertising or hire an agency like yours that already knows what’s working. I think those are probably ways to go about it, not just launching into it. What about for ads? So I can see how you also mentioned it works really well for products and also physical and also digital products. What about using Pinterest as a lead magnet?
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. We love, and I do that for my business too. Something that they can convert to, whether it’s a checklist or an opt in or a PDF, that’s a really great way to build your email list and then nurture them kind of this top of funnel. We find that Pinterest works well at top of funnel and bottom of funnel. It’s middle funnels, a little bit tougher, but if you can really target them at that awareness, that question, you know, the basic question they’re asking,and do you have the answer? It definitely helps along the way for sure.
Franziska: Yeah, that’s good to know. So our listeners here could trial Pinterest even just as a lead funnel at the top of the funnel that could be interesting to use. Yeah, excellent. So we, we will have a masterclass where you will also be sharing the screen and you know, people can follow along because sometimes when you talk about a tool like this, you kind of have to see it visually, especially for anyone who is a bit newer to Pinterest, just some last questions quickly, is so I will share the details for anyone who wants to learn more about some last questions for anyone who hasn’t used Pinterest, a lot yet for their business or not at all. How should they get started? You mentioned is search your name, you know, start searching for your name.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then two is get a profile. So just get a business profile, grab the username and begin to set up your account. The settings are very intuitive. They walk through all of that. You have to have a business account. Whereas I know on Instagram, you can get like personal, creator or business. Pinterest is just personal or business. And they say, if you’re going to do any type of business, you must have a business account. It’s against their terms of service if you don’t. So go straight for that and then fill out the top of the profile, which is your profile picture, your cover image, and then your profile description and there will be the section that says claimed accounts that’s to be able to connect your website to your Pinterest page. So Pinterest knows that you’re a legitimate website owner and business owner. They’ll walk you through that process too, as well. It’s like a little snippet of code that you add to your website. You want this done, especially if you’re going to run ads in the future. And then once you go through all the settings, you can begin to search on Pinterest, play around, see what’s there. And I recommend actually people go through the home feed. The home feed is the main feed that you see on Pinterest. When you open up your app or on desktop, go through there and see what catches your eye and save it to what they call a secret board. You can just, nobody sees what you’re saving. Nobody sees what you’re pinning. You can create it just stuff I like, and as you go through, what I find is as a marketer, if I can connect with what it is that stands out to me, I can begin to create great images, which is what we’re going to talk about in that masterclass when it comes to getting leads from Pinterest. So do that for like 10 or 15 minutes. Save them and then go back and look at what stood out to you, were their words were their images, were their phrases, why did you want to save or find it valuable? And then also search for things that you’re interested in, whether you’re doing a project or maybe you’re looking for a recipe. And what I find this does is you encounter frustrations.You encounter the things that you’re like, so annoyed with that, you’re more aware of it as a marketer that you won’t do it to the people that you’re trying to market to. So that’ll take about probably an hour to do all of those things. If people come to the masterclass with those things set up, it would be excellent because then you can have a framework of what we’re working with and an awareness of that.
Franziska: I love it. And one other thing that I love about Pinterest, which you mentioned is that you don’t even need the personal profile if you don’t want to. You guys have a business profile. How I’ve got to set up is I have my personal profile and have a few secret boards. I don’t really use it for my profile building. I just got some secret boards that I collect adventures or design ideas, etc. And then we have the one for the different companies like Basic Bananas, for example. So the good news for our listeners and viewers here, maybe haven’t been on Pinterest yet, you don’t even need your own personal one. Whereas on Facebook. Just so, and then, so for the name, of course, you would just suggest just use your business name. That’s it.
Kate: Yep, exactly. My username is just Simple Pin Media, and the URL is pinterest.com/simplepinmedia. I believe it’s 16 characters that you can’t go past, so you’ll have to play around with it a little bit to see if your name is too long. But other than that, once you get everything connected, you won’t have to worry. Like username plays a very small role. It’s really what’s in your profile.
Franziska: That’s perfect. Awesome. Any last tips that you would love to share? I know we will go through a lot more on the masterclass coming up, but is there anything else that you’d love to share before we share the details?
Kate: Yeah, I really just think for people trying to decide if Pinterest is right for them, it’s not even about like, whether or not your people are over there or not, but I tell people, are you ready to commit for the long haul? Because Pinterest takes six to nine months of investment to really see movement, just like your people don’t get dopamine hits.You won’t get them either. And it’s so tempting to start for four weeks and say, Pinterest isn’t working. It’s dead. And then don’t touch it again. And we want to help people really resist that by saying, commit for the long haul. Six to nine months. That’s what you’re going to put into it to really see if it’s working or not working. And I find that people who have that mindset and then they go into the steps that I had before, they are ready to really see how this is going to have power on their business.
Franziska: I love that. And, and I just love your honesty because again, a lot of people are, you know, make millions in your underpants overnight. It’s never like that on any, I love your just straight upness. It’s so refreshing in this market. Quickly on that note, so six to nine months, at least, you know, be in it for the long haul, don’t give up. How often would you recommend someone to then share content to start gaining a little bit of momentum?
Kate: Yeah, it all depends on if they have blog posts that they’ve created. We definitely recommend that someone has a content creation side. It doesn’t have to be a lot, but we find that the pinner they’re in fact finder. So they want to read, they want to warm up to you. So as you create that, as well as images, you can probably end up doing one, two per day of pinning that to the platform, or if you can’t do a lot at first, one to two times per week is fine.
It’s kind of like you’re adding this drip to the platform as you go along. And as long as it’s like, you’re not going today and then. Five months from now, that’s what we want to avoid. We want to have some consistency, but it’s definitely not this like intense pace of 15 pins a day or 20 pins a day or anything like that. It’s just a slow drip.
Franziska: Yeah. And the good news is that you don’t. have to publish all, as you say, all day long and, and be on the phone all day. Oh, look what I’m doing now. And look what I’m doing now. I am right now. It’s more about all the content that you probably already have, whether that’s on even YouTube and your blog and your podcast episodes, all that can be slowly shared. So for a lot of businesses that already have a lot of this stuff. They can probably just take that. I assume.
Kate: Yeah, they all. Absolutely. A lot of your back content will be so helpful, especially if it’s never been shared to Pinterest. So that is absolutely a great option.
Franziska: Yeah, love that. Amazing. So now that was so insightful and I’m sure a lot of our audience will absolutely appreciate your honesty and how down to earth you are about marketing too, and just real, which is refreshing in this industry. And we have a Pinterest session coming up, a masterclass with Kate, and I’ll share all the details below the podcast episode in the video too. Just quickly, the date is, LA time is on the 14th of August at 5:00 – 6:30pm, it’s a 90 minute session.In Sydney, if you’re in Australia, it is 10:00am the next day. So we’ll add all these details and best to head over to basicbananas.com and then at the top there you see masterclasses and you’ll see this masterclass advertised right there, so you can join that. And I’m really, really excited. To have you back Kate and for you to share behind the scenes. And also you’ll be sharing the screen and it will be super helpful. So thank you so much, Kate.
Kate: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.
Franziska: You’re welcome. Also quickly. One last thing I wanted to mention also is Kate has also got a podcast, which is called Simple Pin Podcast. They can be found on most channels. I assume whether you’re on Spotify or Apple podcast. If you want to also check out Kate’s podcast, go to Simple Pin podcast or just Google Simple Pin Media and you’ll find her agency too. So really happy again for this conversation and I can’t wait to have you back in a few weeks.
