What's Working for Pinterest in 2021 with Melanie Fountain
Episode 545: Show Notes
Today on the podcast we have Melanie Fountain. She is a Pinterest coach and strategist. She started her business in January 2019 as a virtual assistant and quickly found a passion and talent in growing her clients’ businesses through Pinterest marketing. We are going to help you learn how to do that today! If you are creating content in any shape or form then you need to know what is working for Pinterest in 2021.
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We are doing an update for all the best Pinterest strategies that you can manage in your content, so you can create new routines while you are creating that amazing content. We talk about all the new stuff including video pins and story pins, how to grow your followers on Pinterest, and why that might start to matter now when it hasn't over the last couple of years. Our conversation also covers everything else you can do to make sure that you are taking advantage of the amazing platform that is Pinterest!
Three New Strategies for Killing It On Pinterest
Here at Boss Project, we started our journey of building our audience on Pinterest but we are aware the platform keeps changing so it was great to have Melanie on the show to give us an update about what is working in 2021. We start with a quick rundown of Melanie’s transition from her 9-5 into finding her passion of helping businesses grow through Pinterest. Then Melanie dives right in and tells us what is working and what is not at the present moment. The first thing is that people go onto Pinterest to feel inspired so it is important to think about how you can invoke creativity, inspiration, and self-growth in the posts you make on the platform. Pinterest is a happy place so put a positive spin on your content! The next thing to remember is that people want to see new content on the platform so it is important to try and switch up the copy and imagery you use on the posts you make. You can even use different subheadings from your blog post as the titles for different iterations of a Pinterest post. This is an opportunity to use Pinterest to do branding experiments while mixing up your content strategy. Thirdly, Melanie speaks about how there has been a shift from a quantity to a quality strategy on Pinterest. It is better to make a few high-quality posts than using the older strategy of just posting as much as possible.
The Rise of Video Pins
One of the features that have been growing slowly on Pinterest is video content and right now this form of media is as hot as could be. Video pins are where it is at right now. Before you used to be able to post anything on Pinterest but now the video pins are the ones that are grabbing peoples' attention, and because Pinterest is trying to keep users on the platform, the reach that they are giving to video pins is far greater. Using video pins is a great way to grow your following because it fits into the broader funnel strategy of redirecting people from the video pin to your blog post and other forms of online presence. Abagail shares an easy strategy for posting video pins involving simply taking a video of something rather than a photo, and then creating a pin out of that video on Canva. The Creative Template Shop can also be very helpful for this strategy. Another iteration of the video pin is the story or idea pin and these are taking off like wildfire too. Melanie gets into exactly how to use these types of pins to create teaser content with call-to-actions for viewers to click in order to learn more.
Top Tips for the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Pinterest User
We ask Melanie what types of strategies users should adopt if they want to succeed on Pinterest and she asserts that it depends on what level you are at. If you are just starting out, don’t get bogged down by all the new features. Just focus on static pins and see where that takes you. As you start to grow, maybe you want to introduce some video content, and it is a good idea to set a reachable goal because getting used to the platform takes a while. Once you start to get substantial traffic, a good idea would be to make one idea pin for each post and remember that you can repurpose the content you are making on your other platforms. On the subject of boards, the main point Melanie makes is that you should try to keep the content you post relevant to your boards. Just like pins, boards have SEO weight, so you want to make sure that Pinterest can clearly differentiate between your different boards. When it comes to followers, we speak about how it can get confusing that there is now this new way of getting ranked on Pinterest, but a better way of looking at this feature is as just another way of getting discovered. Followers haven’t replaced keywords or SEO. They are just another benefit of the new functionality on the platform.
Reframing The Way We See Pinterest and Embracing Its New Features
The main function of Pinterest used to be to redirect people from the platform onto whatever relevant content the pin they were looking at linked to, so it can seem overwhelming to think that there is now a whole retention game going on. With the rise of the mass public interest in quick video content across the social media platforms, Pinterest is now beginning to experiment with how they as a platform can benefit if they keep users on for slightly longer than before. So rather than be daunted by this, see it as an opportunity to reframe the way to look at the platform. These social platforms benefit users who play the game so look at the new features of Pinterest as new opportunities to grow an audience using different methods. The way the internet works has also changed. There is so much going on online these days that you can count yourself lucky if people bat an eyelid at your content! So your traffic might have dropped, but luckily it still exists and it can grow again if you pay attention to what is working and milk those strategies!
Quote This
Think about how you can invoke creativity, inspiration, and self-growth in the posts you make on the platform.
Highlights
Three New Strategies for Killing It On Pinterest. [0:03:30.1]
The Rise of Video Pins and the Reach This Feature Offers. [0:14:23.1]
Top Tips for the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Pinterest User. [0:25:31.1]
Reframing The Way We See Pinterest and Embracing Its New Features. [0:34:12.1]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:38:16.6]
Pull keywords from your content to use in Pinterest
Create more pins for the content you make that is more popular
Be consistent and set goals
Upload content into Tailwind and schedule it from there
Limit your boards to around ten and beef them up as far as SEO
Keep track of what works by keeping an eye on the analytics
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Melanie Fountain
Melanie is a Pinterest Coach and Strategist. She has a passion and talent in growing her client’s businesses through Pinterest marketing, and has helped thousands of passionate content creators grow their business through Pinterest marketing strategy. Melanie is a single mama of a beautiful little, living in the California Sierra foothills. She loves iced coffee, spontaneous adventures, travel, and country music.
KEY TOPICS
Pinterest, Social Media Marketing, Digital Marketing, Video Pins
