[SGC-20] Finally, An Easy Pinterest Strategy For Coaches and Content Creators-with Mackenzie Armstrong

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:00:00

There's more than 400 million people around the world on Pinterest that come to Pinterest for inspiration. And you can be one of those people that inspire somebody. The amount of time that you have to spend on Pinterest is nowhere near the amount of time that you have to utilize in Instagram and Facebook, and that's something that I feel is a big thing for people. People think of it as social media, but because it's not, you don't have to be on there and engage for half an hour every day. I go on for an hour a week and I post and it's my whole week's content going out and I don't have to constantly be in Pinterest to make it grow and thrive for my business or my client's business.

Melissa Brown: 00:00:44

Hello there, Content Creators. You're listening to the She's Got Content podcast where it's all about creating content for your coaching business. I'm your host, Dr. Melissa Brown, and I'm here every week to help you get your content out of your head, out of your heart, and out there into the world where that information and your services can impact the most people. Get ready to take notes today and then take action, Content Creators. Let's dive in with today's episode because you've got content to get out there. Welcome back Content Creators. I've got a real treat for you today. Mackenzie Armstrong is a former educator turned Pinterest strategist. In the words of Johnny from Dirty Dancing. Nobody puts baby in a corner. Instead of being the best kept secret with hidden content in the corners of your website and your social, Mackenzie teaches coaches and entrepreneurs with blogs and podcasts to fill their audience with ideal clients using Pinterest. You can feel relieved and confident using content you've already got and everything you create in the future to reach the right people without continuous posting. Pinterest is an underutilized strategy for most businesses. Let me introduce our trailblazing guide to show us all how we can get our content out of those hidden corners by using Pinterest. Welcome, Mackenzie.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:02:11

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Melissa Brown: 00:02:13

I am so excited to talk to you today. I have a ton of questions and some of them are mine and some of them are from my audience, cuz I was telling everybody that you were coming on today. But first, let's hear a little bit about who is Mackenzie Armstrong. How did you get involved with this? Tell us all about you.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:02:33

Sure. So I was previously a teacher and once I had my oldest daughter, I decided that I really didn't wanna go back to the classroom because I was all about, I wanna give 110% in the classroom and 110% at home, and that just wasn't gonna happen. So, you know, you can only be stretched so thin. I decided to stay home and I started teaching. How I got into the online space was I started teaching for v i p kids. So I was teaching English to Chinese students online.

Melissa Brown: 00:03:08

Oh, interesting.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:03:09

And then, yes. So the only thing with that was the timing was crazy. They're 12 hours off of my schedule. So I was teaching from four in the morning till 7 pm and then I was teaching from eight at night till midnight. So it just wasn't,

Melissa Brown: 00:03:24

Well, that's crazy!

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:03:25

Yes, with a one-year-old, it was a little intense. So that brought me to becoming a virtual assistant online cuz I really wanted to stay home. And, that led me to Pinterest. I really, as a VA decided I didn't like social media platforms and found that because Pinterest is actually a search engine. I really, really liked that as well, especially with the visual aspect of Pinterest with it being such a high visual content platform.

Melissa Brown: 00:03:54

That's interesting. You said something that really caused my ears to perk up. You said you didn't like social platforms, and I think a lot of people think about Pinterest as being just another social platform, but you say it's a search engine. So tell us about that.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:04:08

Sure. Pinterest is basically, I think of it as if Google and Instagram were to be combined. You're searching on Pinterest using keywords and the person that's putting the content out is catching their user's attention with pictures and graphics to really draw them in to be like, Hey, here's a flashing sign. This is what I have to offer you and what type of information I have to offer you. And because it is a search engine, you're able to add longevity to your content. So like what you were saying in the intro, you're putting out a podcast every week. Well, you put out a podcast eight weeks ago, so there's seven podcasts on top of that podcast that maybe that person in your audience needs to hear, but because you've put it on Pinterest, you've made it to be searchable, and you're able to grab the attention of your audience using that visual. And the awesome thing about it is that you're able to create different visuals, different graphics for that one piece of content, that one blog post that might resonate with different people. So you might have one that's, picture or has a stock photo on there, and then you might have one that's just text overlay. So you're really able to gravitate towards a wider audience by how they learn and the aesthetic that they're attracted to.

Melissa Brown: 00:05:26

Okay. So there's a whole lot to unpack here. All right. So you said that you're grabbing the attention of your audience using those keywords of course, but, so tell us about pins. I'm such a novice about Pinterest, and I periodically get excited about it, and then I play around and then,I get distracted and don't go back. But I know that there had been a time, and tell me if this is still true, that you could use video in pins.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:05:54

Sure. So for the past two years, Pinterest has been saying that they're going to phase out video pins.

Melissa Brown: 00:06:02

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:06:02

So there's three types of pins. There's a standard pin, which is just a static image. There's video pins, and then there's idea pins. A static image is just an image that links back to your piece of content. A video is a video that has to do with your content, usually a quick little snippet, they say between 10 seconds to 60 seconds because, people's attention spans are short. If you can grab your audience in that minute, then hopefully they'll go over and click to your website. And then there's the idea pin, which is a video, but also has different slides to it as well. But now they're phasing out video pins and wanting you to use your idea pins as essentially a video pin. So you're gonna wanna utilize the idea pins with your video. At the moment, idea pins are not linked or you're not able to link to your website or to any U r l. But because they're phasing out the video pins, they're gonna implement utilizing the link back to a website or url.

Melissa Brown: 00:07:09

Okay, so that's coming. But currently, idea pins just stay on Pinterest.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:07:14

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So think of an idea pin as like an Instagram story, how it can be a video or it can be like a slideshow of sorts, and it's the same size actually as well. So if you have Instagram stories, you can repurpose that into a Pinterest idea pin.

Melissa Brown: 00:07:31

Okay, that's a really good tip. Okay? Mm-hmm. I love being able to do something once and using it more than one place. Okay, so those are the three types of pins, but I've heard of something called a rich pin. What is a rich pin?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:07:44

Okay, so a rich pin basically means that Pinterest has vetted the content that is on your website is what you're talking about. When you first set up your account, you'll go to the rich pin validator. You'll put a U R L into one of your blog content, your podcast content, like just u r L. And basically what it does is it connects your website to that and it pulls metadata from your website to be hidden underneath the pin, so that way Pinterest is able to A), know that yes, you're talking about what you say you're talking about.

Melissa Brown: 00:08:16

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:08:17

And also, it helps with the AI behind Pinterest to help categorize your pins and who to show it to.

Melissa Brown: 00:08:24

So, it's a sort of a verification from Pinterest. And is this different from verifying your URL? Is this the same thing?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:08:34

It's kind of like the next step after verifying. So you wanna verify your website, meaning you're telling Pinterest that yes, you own or you control your website. Because if you, and you have to, or in order to get analytics, you have to do that.

Melissa Brown: 00:08:51

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:08:52

If you're wanting to link your content to Pinterest and pull in an audience and get data for that, you want to claim your website. And so that's what that is. It's claiming your website saying Hey, yes, Pinterest. I own this. I went and put the Pinterest tag on my website so that way they can talk to each other. And first, before that, you wanna have a business account. So you can't do that on a personal account. You wanna have it on a business account. And then you'll connect your website and then you'll start to get that juicy information, the data that will help you learn from your audience and help you validate which content is speaking to your audience versus what's not. So that helps you in turn in the future, kind of help you hone in where you want your future content to go. So like if you're doing a podcast, you might talk about topic A and topic B. Well, topic A, you might get a lot of hits on. Topic B, not so much. So you might wanna put more content out about that topic A and yes, even though that second topic is important. You might not lean so heavily into it, but still just kind of weave it into your other content so that way you're still touching on it and informing your audience and teaching your audience.

Melissa Brown: 00:10:06

Got it. Okay, so let me make sure I understand. We want a business account. We're gonna do that if we're content creators, we're coaches, we're entrepreneurs. We want a business account. We wanna then claim our website and we wanna make sure that we get attached to Pinterest for the rich pins.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:10:25

Yep. So you'll just type into Google Rich Pin validator and it'll come up and you'll just put in one of your URLs to any of your blogs, podcasts, homepage, whatever you have, and then it'll help link your website to that. Now, I will say that if you have a personal account and you've been putting content out on that, and you decide you wanna change it into a business, don't recreate the wheel. If you already have content going out on Pinterest and you already have some followers and things like that, it's okay to convert your personal account to a business account.

Melissa Brown: 00:11:02

Good point.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:11:02

Just when you do that and you're wanting to connect it to your website and start using it for your business, just to go in the backend and secret or basically hide your personal boards that doesn't pertain to your business. If it pertains to your business, and that's fantastic. Keep it shown on your account. You'll still be able to use your Pinterest account for your own personal. Like mine has Pinterest things on it. But then in the backend I have recipes. I have kids stuff.

Melissa Brown: 00:11:31

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:11:31

Like all of that kind of things that I can still utilize Pinterest for personally, but it just doesn't show on my actual account when other people are viewing it.

Melissa Brown: 00:11:41

That makes sense. Right. In the past there was something called group boards, groups. Is that still a strategy or has that been phased out or what? Tell us about those.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:11:54

You can do group boards. Basically what it is, it's a bunch of collaborators. Usually, they have a set of rules like you share our content to your boards and we'll share your content to our boards.

Melissa Brown: 00:12:07

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:12:07

People really don't generally utilize that as much anymore. I would say maybe teachers are a little bit different. They're on a different journey in Pinterest, if you will. Just because they're constantly with worksheets and things like that. Before you could put out the same pin graphic and the same u r l constantly over and over and over again, wanting you to grab other people's content, wanting you to constantly pump out your content of the same, to the same place on your website. That is changing now. So Pinterest really wants fresh URLs. They want that new content that's going out. I used to focus on managing my client's accounts heavily on grabbing other useful things from people to put on my Pinterest boards that would pertain to my business, but not conflict or compete with my business.

Melissa Brown: 00:12:58

Okay. Complimentary

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:12:59

Something complimentary like so because I'm Pinterest and I only do Pinterest, I might put on other types of social media content on my boards that may help my ideal audience with other things that they're utilizing in their business that's not competing with me because it's not about Pinterest, if you will.

Melissa Brown: 00:13:18

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:13:18

But now Pinterest is really wanting you to put out those fresh URLs. That's what they're wanting you to focus on, is putting out your content. So before it was 20% your content, 80% other people's content sharing. Now, I do a 90 -10 strategy where 90% of the content goes out of my clients' and then I'll bring in 10% of other peoples' that might compliment their content.

Melissa Brown: 00:13:46

Okay. So when you say Pinterest is looking for new URLs, does this mean that we should not create like 20 pins that go back to one specific blog post? Or tell us about that.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:14:00

So when you're putting on a new, fresh piece of content, you only wanna share that URL once a day.

Melissa Brown: 00:14:06

Okay. Once a day.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:14:07

But for my clients, I create upwards of five to 10 pins per blog post. And I'll put one out every day for the next five to 10 days, and then I'll wait another 15, 25 days and then I'll re- pin those older pins that I've already created, those graphics and put them back out as repurposed. So I think of it as it's a three-tiered system. So there's gold pins, silver pins, and bronze pins. Gold pin is a fresh URL never used on Pinterest and relatively new on your website and a new graphic. So everything's fresh. A silver pin is an already published URL to Pinterest with a fresh graphic. And then bronze is an already used URL and an already used graphic. So I'll put out bronze content 15 to 20 days later and just re-put it out one a day. The first pin I put out that gold pin, essentially your gold pin is your first pin that you put out. And then everything else is silver because it's an already used URL. So I'll do that first pin. I'll go out on the first and then I'll republish it again on the 20th or the 21st, three weeks later. And then that second pin will be posted on the second, and then I'll put it out on the 22nd again. And to a different board.

Melissa Brown: 00:15:38

That makes sense because, pinterest is looking for fresh content, and they don't want you flooding the Pinterest system with 20 different pins about the same thing, on the same day, even if it's different pictures.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:15:52

Yep. Yep.

Melissa Brown: 00:15:53

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:15:53

You'll always wanna stick with that url, one a day. You don't wanna repeat a URL more than once a day, so you don't wanna put it out twice or three times a day, just once. But you can put it out for a week if you want.

Melissa Brown: 00:16:05

Okay. So how many times a day are you recommending for content creators, for coaches, for entrepreneurs, how many times a day should we be posting a pin?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:16:17

So that's the great thing about Pinterest is, you can work out. So I suggest that when you're working using Pinterest, you use the native scheduler for your fresh content. So when you're putting out that first pin, that fresh graphic, you wanna utilize Pinterest. And as of right now, you can pin out for two weeks. So I can go in for an hour and pin out my whole two weeks of content for my client. And then it'll do it. It'll automate itself.

Melissa Brown: 00:16:43

How many times a day does it allow you to post?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:16:46

Oh, you can post as many times as you want on Pinterest. What I do for my clients, because we're really focusing on that fresh content, I'll put one fresh pin a day. And then I'll use a third party scheduler like Tailwind, even though I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Tailwind at the moment. It's a bit glitchy right now cuz they're doing a whole bunch of updates. But still at this point, Tailwind is the most robust scheduler. So when I talk about those bronze pins, I will use Tailwind to pin those. So I'll upload everything to Pinterest and then I'll upload it again to Tailwind and send it out 21 days later. And then 40 days later, I'll pin it to about three boards. So I'll pin it to one board using Pinterest, and then I'll pin it to two separate boards with Tailwind.

Melissa Brown: 00:17:39

Okay. Silver pins should be done on the native scheduler too, or that's okay to put in third party scheduler.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:17:46

You can put it in the third party scheduler. But I do use Pinterest because I've seen better results with Pinterest because of course they're gonna wanna, they want you to use their platform. They want you to use their tools. So basically, so say my client has one blog post a week that they put out, or one podcast a week. So I'll create seven pins. So on that first week, I'll create seven pins for that week's podcast. And then the second week I'll create seven pins for that second podcast and I'll schedule them out. And then Pinterest will just send them out for me for whatever time, I pick for them to go out. And then I'll be using Tailwind to put out bronze content of stuff that I had posted previously a month or two ago.

Melissa Brown: 00:18:33

Okay, so let me just make sure I understand. So you've got seven gold pins.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:18:39

One gold pin, six silver pins, because we've already used the url. The first pin, you're only gonna have one gold pin per content.

Melissa Brown: 00:18:47

Got it. Got it.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:18:48

Per content, because it's already a used URL.

Melissa Brown: 00:18:50

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. You had mentioned pinning to different boards. Tell us about boards. How many should we have? What's the rule?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:19:01

So personally when creating an account, I try to at least set up 10 boards. Now, the boards for using it for your business, you want it to reflect topics and things that you're gonna talk about within your business, within your podcast. So I'll have nine boards of different topics that my clients discuss in their podcast. And then I'll have one board that is, say it's Melissa's podcast. Okay. So that way every piece of content that I'm putting out, the last board of that bronze content will go to that board. That's specifically just your content. No other content is pinned there. It's just basically a library of your content. So then, but when you're pinning and say you're talking about copywriting, you're doing a podcast about copywriting, okay? You wanna pin whatever board that content that you're discussing in your podcast is most relevant to, that's the board you wanna pin it to first. You wanna pin it to the board that has the most in common with what you're talking about in that episode of your podcast or blog if you're writing a blog. And then when you repin it again on that bronze content, 21 to 30 days, 15 to 30 days later, then you'll put it in the second most relevant board, and then if there's another board, then you can pin it out again to that board another 30 days later. And then you wanna lastly pin it to your board that's solely your content that you wouldn't pin anybody else's content to.

Melissa Brown: 00:20:39

That's just got your content on that other board, that last board. Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:20:43

But that's your last concern when pinning. That's where your pin ends last. And then, for when you're putting it out, when you're scheduling it out. Now if you have evergreen content, then like, you know, seasonal things or anything like that, you can go in next year and repin it again to the same boards. Using Tailwind as a bronze pin or create new pins and create a silver. Make 'em silver.

Melissa Brown: 00:21:08

Okay. So much to think about here, but okay. So we as entrepreneurs, as content creators, as coaches, so we've created this strategy of doing the pinning. How do we get the traffic to pay attention to? Well, I'm assuming that at some point we're pinning a lot of pins, whether they're gold or silver or bronze or all of those about our lead magnet. But tell me about how we get people, traffic to see our pins, to actually notice them in the first place.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:21:42

Okay, perfect. There's a few things. A, you want to make a compelling graphic, so something that's gonna catch the attention of your audience. And this is where I suggest doing AB testing. Find out what your audience is liking, and it might take a bit for you to get into the groove of finding what your audience really is attracted to. Then you want to use keywords. Now, Pinterest is not a place where you're, not talking about idea pins, but static pins where your standard pin, you're not giving them information. You're, you're not essentially helping them on Pinterest. You're getting their attention to say, Hey, I have this information for you. Click here and I'll send you to my website that gives you the full rundown of what I can do to help you, or whatever you're learning about, DIY, anything like that.

Melissa Brown: 00:22:31

So it's piqueing the interest.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:22:33

It's being like, Hey, I have information for you and you should come to my website and check it out. Because Pinterest is like the only platform that wants you to leave Pinterest. They want you to leave their ecosystem and go to where you're gonna find the information that you need. Whereas Facebook and Instagram wants you to stay on Facebook and Instagram. Pinterest wants you to, go find the information that you're looking for. So essentially you wanna use keywords. Now, your title and your text overlay on your pins are the most important. Your text overlay is what's going to grab the attention of your reader, of your audience. The title also can do that as well. But ultimately, your title is How Is Gonna Help Your Audience Find Your Content. Because you wanna use those key words in your title. And I'm saying keywords as in the words that your audience uses, not necessarily how you would describe something or how the verbiage that you use within your content. You wanna know how your audience speaks, because that's like that whole ideal client avatar. You wanna speak to your audience, and then once you get them, then you can use your own verbiage. But say, You are talking about something specific-- example, let me think. like say you're talking about, mindset. Your audience might not use the term mindset. So you need to think about what terminology your audience is using, and use that within your keywords.

Melissa Brown: 00:24:07

So, let's say for example, somebody who is talking to someone who has a side hustle and that side hustler, or the person who wants to start a side hustle says, Their job, their day job is a soul sucking environment. You could use those words mm-hmm. to grab their attention because then they're gonna say, oh my gosh, this person totally gets me. I've gotta go see what they have on their website. So that's what you're saying, right?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:24:38

Yep. You wanna use words that they're gonna search themselves. Some people might not use side hustle. They might use a different terminology than side hustle. They might say, my secondary job or my part-time job, or, you know what I mean? Something outside of a nine to five. So you wanna know what your audience is using and that's the same type of methodology you would use when writing your sales page. You wanna speak to your audience. So just knowing how your audience speaks, cuz I know, like especially with myself and my clients, you get so consumed in the content that you're teaching or talking about that you start using your own language to describe it. Cuz that's what sets you apart from your neighbor. You know what I mean?

Melissa Brown: 00:25:19

Yes. Uhhuh

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:25:20

So, but still, not everybody is gonna resonate with that. So you wanna find the terminology, the keywords that will resonate with your audience to draw them in, and then you can start using your own verbiage and your content.

Melissa Brown: 00:25:34

Okay, oh so tell us again, kind of lay it out. Where do we put those keywords then? It's in the title, it's in the overlay. Text overlay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:25:42

And then it's gonna be in the description. And when you're writing your description, it's only 500 characters. It's not long. You wanna have a call to action in there. You wanna have a hook to grab the attention, but ultimately nobody reads the description. Because you have to click the pin, and then you read the description. It's not like it's displayed as like the title is. So essentially the description helps Pinterest categorize your pin and know who and when to show it to your audience. But also you wanna write it to where if somebody does read it, it's not just a slew of keywords. You want it to be sentences, You want it to be something that's readable. Because that also will get you dinged on Pinterest because they don't want just keyword stuffing, if you will. Right? They want to have it like this post will show you X, Y, and Z. Click here to read the full blog or click here to listen to my conversation with so-and-so about X, Y, and Z.

Melissa Brown: 00:26:42

Okay, because there's images, is there some way to optimize alt text with Pinterest pins?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:26:51

Meaning if it's like for visually impaired?

Melissa Brown: 00:26:54

Right.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:26:55

Yes. When you're creating your pin, there is a place for you to put alt text in there so you can describe it however you need to describe it for if there's any visually impaired things like that. So they, they do give you the option to reach that audience as well.

Melissa Brown: 00:27:11

Okay. And that will specifically be for those readers, meaning the automatic readers for the visually impaired. It has nothing to do with keywords in there. It doesn't really make any difference with how it's presented to the viewers

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:27:27

No, yeah. Cause Pinterest wants- their main focus is that the title, the description, and then the actual graphic itself.

Melissa Brown: 00:27:35

Okay. Is there a strategy for optimizing our profile with keywords as well?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:27:41

Yes. So anywhere you can type on Pinterest is where you wanna utilize keywords, because when you go in and say you go to search in Pinterest, and you type in, Money Mindset Coach, well, it's gonna give you everything that people, all the keywords that go with Money Mindset Coach, but also it's gonna bring up the profiles that have Money Mindset Coach within the profile itself and also the boards. So you wanna utilize keywords in your titles and your descriptions of your pins. You wanna utilize keywords in your profile description under your picture, on your main page, and you want to utilize keywords in all of your board descriptions. So when you go click on a board, you have 500 characters. I believe they might have given you more. You used to only have a hundred characters for your profile, but now I believe they've expanded it to 500. You wanna utilize all of that real estate with keywords that your audience are going to search. Because you might have a podcast about money mindset. You'll be able to be found that way. If your profile has money mindset in it, that's gonna come up. If your board, if multiple boards have money mindset, it's gonna come up as well. And thinking about when you're titling your boards, you wanna utilize those keywords as well. So you wanna utilize the keywords in your board descriptions and your board titles.

Melissa Brown: 00:29:07

Got it. Okay. Does Pinterest use hashtags? Is that big on that platform?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:29:13

People go back and forth about hashtags. When they first came out on Pinterest, they were clickable. Then they took that option away. But I believe, for idea pins, and I believe for some pins you will be able to utilize hashtags, but when utilizing hashtags, you wanna use broad hashtags. Nothing super niche, and you only have 500 characters, so don't waste your prime real estate and your descriptions with hashtags. I only use hashtags, I'll use one to three depending on how much text I have left after creating my description.

Melissa Brown: 00:29:50

Okay.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:29:51

If that makes sense.

Melissa Brown: 00:29:51

Yeah. 500 characters is not a whole lot

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:29:55

Yeah, it's like three sentences. Yeah. So like you wanna utilize your keywords before you utilize hashtags. If you have some space, throw in a hashtag, that's fine. They keep going back and forth. They keep saying they're going to start categorizing them, and then they say they're, they're not. So it's like kind of like better to be safe than sorry, but also don't waste your keyword space, if you will.

Melissa Brown: 00:30:18

Right, right. Okay. All right. I've got one more question for you.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:30:23

Sure.

Melissa Brown: 00:30:24

And that is, what do you see as the big trend in 2023, in this year for Pinterest? What's coming down the road? What do you see as the new and improved or new and big things that are coming?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:30:40

For Pinterest, they are still wanting you to utilize idea pins. That's like their main focus. When they first rolled out idea pins, it was all about idea Pins, like static pins kind of fell super flat because they were pushing and pushing and pushing idea pins. Now they're kind of evening out, but now they're really wanting you to utilize video in your idea pins and to create it as one. Instead of it being multiple slides in your idea pin, they want that video. They ba essentially wanted to replace the video pins with idea pins using video. So I would just recommend using video, using sound on your idea pins as well. And that's really gonna help you get traction because they're going to want to index those pins faster because they're gonna be more eye-catching. They're gonna be more compelling for your audience.

Melissa Brown: 00:31:31

So you're saying you can use audio, audio by itself on a pin?

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:31:37

Yep. On an idea pin, you can have audio, you can have music, you can have all of that. Sometimes I'll create a pin, an idea pin that will be a snippet of a podcast, maybe one main point that you wanna make. But remember, you don't want it to exceed that one minute because it's going to really people will lose interest, but you do have the option to, I believe they're expanding the amount of video and audio that you can use in lengthwise. That's also a great way to kind of get the attention of your listener on Pinterest, is to put a little gold nugget information on your Idea pin

Melissa Brown: 00:32:16

in audio.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:32:18

Mm-hmm.

Melissa Brown: 00:32:18

Okay, cool. Yes. Cool. All right, so I lied. I actually have one more question for you. I have heard about consistency in posting and how the algorithm, or the ai, or whatever you call it, these days, starts to learn your consistency pattern. So talk to us a little bit about that and then I promise that's my last question for you.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:32:41

I can talk about Pinterest all day, so we're all good.

Melissa Brown: 00:32:44

I can listen to you talk about this all day.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:32:45

Consistency really is key on Pinterest and the one thing to really know about Pinterest is, Pinterest is not comparing you to your neighbor. It's not comparing you to other people in the same content area that you're in. It's comparing you to yourself. Pinterest takes about a month to learn what you're doing. So if you're posting a fresh pin every day, an idea pin a week, and you do that consistently for a month, but then you drop off and do every other day, your analytics are gonna drop because Pinterest is trying to be like, oh gosh, I need to refigure out what this account is doing. So, and consistency is relative to what you are doing, what your consistency is. If you're posting every other day, that's great. That's awesome. If you're posting every day, that's awesome. If you're doing one blog post a month, that's great. If you're doing one blog or a podcast once a week. That's fantastic. Ideally, that's what I like to see my clients do, just because it gets you a lot of content out there. Mm-hmm. but that's not for everybody and that's okay. Just stick within what feels good for you in your business and what your consistency is, and just know that if you you always wanna add, that's great. If you always wanna ramp it up, that's awesome. Just know that if you drop it, you're gonna see that in your analytics. You're gonna see that drop in your analytics just because it's trying to figure out what you're doing. Give it that 30 days to kind of really learn what you're doing, and then your analytics should adjust to your new consistency. Now also, speaking of that, because Pinterest is a search engine, you're not gonna see a transformation overnight. It's a slow burn, so you're not gonna see that traction. If you see it before this, that's awesome. That's fantastic. People are loving your content, but because it's a search engine, they take time to index your content. So you might not see any traction between, I like to say, 6 to 12 months that you're gonna see that traction. But even though it takes longer for you to see that traction, your content lives on Pinterest for four plus months.

Melissa Brown: 00:35:00

Say that again.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:35:00

So Your content lives for four plus months. So I believe Facebook, your content lives for like 48 hours. Instagram, your content lives for 24 hours. Pinterest, you have four plus months, and that's with it not getting a lot of traction. This is everybody's homework who's listening. Go to Pinterest and type in your favorite recipe. Hey, you wanna bake chocolate chip cookies? Type in chocolate chip cookies and see the first pin that pops up. I guarantee you it's from like 2017.

Melissa Brown: 00:35:31

Wow.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:35:32

Just know that just because you have older content that might be on Pinterest, it's still bringing in leads, which is fantastic. And that also speaks to evergreen content. If you have a blog post or a podcast that is old, older, mm-hmm. and that content is still relevant, just create fresh pins for it and put it back out there because people are always searching for your content that is relative to them. So put a fresh face on it, send it back out there and see if you can kind of amp up those use agains.. But like I know people that are say like they haven't utilized Pinterest in a year or two, and they're still bringing in leads. They're still getting emails or new opt-ins or new people on their email list that are coming from Pinterest because it just adds so much longevity to your content and it doesn't get buried.

Melissa Brown: 00:36:22

Awesome. I think I see in my future a lot of pins leading back to my lead magnet and older blog content and previous podcast content. So yes, I love this for repurposing.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:36:34

Yes. And just remember that there's more than 400 million people around the world on Pinterest that come to Pinterest for inspiration. And you can be one of those people that inspire somebody. So don't count yourself out. The amount of time that you have to spend on Pinterest is nowhere near the amount of time that you have to utilize in Instagram and Facebook, and that's something that I feel is a big thing for people. People, like you said, they think of it as social media, but because it's not, you don't have to be on there and engage for half an hour every day. Like I said, I go on for an hour a week and I post and it's my whole week's content going out and I don't have to constantly be in Pinterest to make it grow and thrive for my business or my client's business.

Melissa Brown: 00:37:19

It's a set it and forget it type f or the week anyway.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:37:22

Yes.

Melissa Brown: 00:37:22

You wanna be in there consistently for the ai, for the algorithm to understand what you're doing. But it's like you don't have to be, you're right Instagram, you gotta be in there daily. And then you get sucked into that black hole. I guess we could do that with the Pinterest recipes, but we just have to get in, get out, do what we wanna do. Yes. Well, this has been so great, Mackenzie. Tell us how listeners can get in touch with you, and I think you've got a free gift or something for our audience as well. Tell us about that.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:37:52

Yep. So I have a Pinterest audit checklist for you to get started on Pinterest, whether you're converting a personal account or creating a new business account. And it gives you the four to five main things that you need to do in order to get your account up and running so it's ready for you when you start to put out your pins for your podcasts and your blogs.

Melissa Brown: 00:38:14

Okay, so we'll make sure that, that URL, that link is gonna be in the show notes. And tell us the name of your website Sure.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:38:23

It's armstrong virtual solutions.com. And then, that's also my email if you wanna get in touch with me via email. If you have any questions or you wanna chat about all things Pinterest, just let me know and I will gladly help you get on your way to grow your Pinterest account.

Melissa Brown: 00:38:40

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Mackenzie. Thank you so much for being here and sharing so much information. Really appreciate it.

Mackenzie Armstrong: 00:38:48

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Melissa Brown: 00:38:49

And until next time, content creators know that people are looking for the answers that you've got. When you've got a strategy and you're consistent with publishing your expert content, whether that's your blog, your podcast, your video content, or social, you're creating a roadmap for people to find you. Keep creating your content. Bye for now. I'll see you next week. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the She's Got Content podcast. I hope you got at least one nugget to take action on this week. If you got value from today's episode, I would be so grateful when you leave a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts. It only takes a second and it really helps me get my message out to impact even more people so they can in turn, keep the ripple going. If you're listening on Apple Podcast and leave a review of the show, it would really make my day, and you just might receive a shout out on the show as my Content Creator of the week when I read out your review. And last but never least, if you want an endless supply of just right ideas for content you can write about for your blog post, your emails, your videos, podcast episodes, all the content things, then you wanna head over to my website at shesgotcontent.com/content and pick up your free workbook, Never Run Out of Content Ideas. Look for that link in the show notes today along with the other links mentioned in today's episode. Until next time, Content Creators, you've got an audience waiting to hear from you and you've got content to share with them. Stop being the best kept secret and make a bigger impact when you've got content out there in the world.