Up Level Your Pinterest Strategy [INTERVIEW] Tammie Jones, Pinterest Expert

Are you using Pinterest yet as part of your long-term marketing strategy? Listen to this interview with Tammie Jones, Pinterest Expert and Coach, to hear updates to the Pinterest platform!

We talk about:

Optimizing your Pinterest Profile

How to Use Pinterest to Bring More Clients to Your Business

The Differences between the Different Types of Pinterest Posts

What to include in your Pinterest posts

And More!

Be sure to like, subscribe, and share this episode with your audience! Tag @lindsaydollinger when you do so I can give you some love!

Connect with Tammie Jones at [email protected]

Join the Magical Membership for Women Entrepreneurs and grab Lindsay's freebies here: https://www.lindsaydollinger.com/links

This is an AI-produced transcript of the episode

Hey girl, welcome to the Purpose and Pixie Dust podcast. The podcast where we dive deep into our passions, our purpose and really unlock our potential with the pixie dust thrown in. What is pixie dust? You might ask. It's the fun and joy that gets unlocked when you're creating and owning your magic. I'm Lindsay, Dollinger dog, mama, Disney lover and high school Spanish teacher who has used my magic to grow businesses while also working full time. I'm on a mission to help other women create and own your magic by building not only the business of your dreams, but also the life of your dreams while still juggling life, your full time job and all the things. So if you want more than this provincial life, let's use our glass slippers to break those glass ceilings and Sprinkle lots of pixie dust into our lives and businesses. Let's do this.

Hello everyone, welcome back to a Purpose and Pixie Dust podcast live interview with a special guest. We have Tammie Jones on today who is a Pinterest expert um and she's just gonna share all the things with us. So, Tammie first of all, thank you so much for being on the show and tell us a little bit about you how you got to where you are now with the pen guild. Gotcha! Well, thank you for inviting me to come on. I absolutely love you know, visiting with you and and sharing knowledge for other people to learn how to use Pinterest. Um what got me to where I am um is kind of the same story that everyone else has is, you know, we want to be in control of our time and our money and and all the things. Uh so I went out on my own in 2017, which sounds crazy now to think about. Um It's been a little while, there's been a few different iterations of my offerings and services, but it's always been around Pinterest. Um and just my love for Pinterest and how it is so different from, you know, traditional social media, so you know, being able to get the longer term results um and not having to be on there. Absolutely every single day. Yeah, that's totally, that's like the dream.

So how did how did you find Pinterest? And how did you decide? Like, okay, I can actually make a business out of this.

Actually. I had been on Pinterest personally since you had to have an invite. Um so you couldn't get on there without someone telling you, you know, hey about this new thing and then sending you an email and getting an invite to it. I forgot about that completely by the way. So you just like, oh my gosh, I remember that begging people for an invite yeah, in like 2010, you know, so it's been a little while. Um They've grown a lot since then, But yeah, so um I got really into it personally. Um if you could see behind the scenes of my pictures to count, I have, I don't even know, but well over 200 boards of my own now, all of that is not visible and I'll tell you why all of that is not visible, but um hundreds of thousands of pins that I've saved and just created and different things, so um wanting to go out on my own and start a business and seeing a lot of marketing being done on the platform that I hadn't really seen before, you know, you always knew that it was for you know bloggers and beauty and those kind of things, but then started seeing different things actually when you clicked them would actually go to sign up for life services.  So I started digging into that and seeing you know if there was anyone out there who taught how to do it and I found a few different people and took a couple of different courses and just kind of ventured out on my own and built from there. I love that, I love that. And how has it evolved, Did you work with one on one clients at first? Like what has that looked like with your business? Yeah, initially was definitely one on one clients um because that was really where it started out at that time, there was no paid ads, no anything like that, so it was all organic. Uh so finding people who knew that they could use Pinterest and helping them do it or taking over accounts where the people had just grown too big to be able to actually just manage it on their own. Um So that is definitely where it started from there. It has evolved into like group settings.  One off trainings, V. I. P. Days, uh graphics creation, you know one of strategy. So just all kinds of different things that I have offered over the years depending on what is really needed at the time and what everyone is asking for because as we know in our businesses, if we don't evolve to what the clientele is needing, we're probably gonna go out of business. So you know just making sure that you're able to offer that and staying up to date on the trainings and what's changing and you know and just conveying all of that to everyone. So stay current. Right. Right. That makes so much sense. And I feel like Pinterest is one of those ones that has changed a lot since the last time we talked, which I was trying to remember, I think it's been almost two years ago, if not two years ago, like a year and a half.

Yeah but yeah before we talk about updates and what Pinterest looks like now you mentioned advertising is Pinterest still very much one where you can get nice organic traffic or is it like Facebook with their business pages where it's like if you're not paying to play, you're not really getting seen um you still can absolutely get traction with organic, um it does still take time?

So if you have the ability to run even small ads, it's obviously going to boost your account because you're paying, but you don't have to um the same as before. You had to absolutely be doing organic and paid ads for the paid ads to get traction. Now they really streamline that process more and now you can even do, I have a few people that are doing just ads and they're not doing the organic side. The drawback to that is the minute you stop doing the ads, everything starts to fall off because you haven't been consistent with your organic strategy as well. But that makes sense. The ad strategy is a different strategy than an organic one. The ad strategy is different in the fact that you are paying them to show what you're telling them to show your organic, you're having to make sure that you're staying on trend as far as what's popular at the time, what people are searching for. So if you haven't had your account up and running for very long, you're going to be harder to rank for those particular things over someone who has been on the platform longer. Whereas with the ads, you're paying so you're gonna get ranked, you're gonna get shown under the places where you've told them and where your audiences have shown them that they are interested in what you have to offer for them. Okay, that makes sense. So if someone is listening to this and they're like, okay, ads are out of my budget for right now, which I know we have a lot of beginning entrepreneurs um who listen to this podcast.

What are some tips you have for like currently and this is guys, we're recording this in november 2022. I had to, I had to look at the calendar on my, my computer to remember what mother was because they're just over. Um so as of november 2022 current time, what are some of your strategies to get seen organically on Pinterest? The first and most important really is making sure that you have your account set up properly and having that base down. So I love houses and design and things like that. So generally I go to like a house reference, so think of the account and your boards and your description of your account as being your foundation. So if you don't have that foundation set properly, it's gonna be really hard for Pinterest to know how to rank you and who to show you too. So that's the first thing. Um, the next thing is gonna be always give a platform what it's asking for and what it's favoring at the time right now and it has been for consistently for the last year and a half is idea pins, that's what they're wanting. The next most important thing is going to be um you know doing some video and testing it out and seeing what works for you and what, you know, not all accounts perform the same and then just being consistent and whatever your strategy is gonna be, so being consistently doing the same number of idea pins per week. If that's only one, do one but consistently do that. If you can only do one static today then do that every single day, ideally you would want to do a little more and over time. You can build that up but to get started, you know just making sure that you have those base things and are being consistent and making sure that you are using things that people are searching for. So depending on what your niche is making sure that those keywords because Pinterest is S. C. O. Driven. So think of it like visual google when you go and search for something, what are they searching for? So take um like your podcast for instance we can easily just create the title and say that it's you and I talking and what we're going to talk about but also think about to make more pins. What are some of the things that we talk about? What are some things that someone is going to be on Pinterest searching for that we can make a pin out of, that's gonna then lead to that. So then that's gonna stretch your one piece of content that much further, Same principle with an idea pin? If there are different key points that we're touching on each one of those slides on that idea pin could be one of those different points to create that. The next thing would be cutting little snippets a video. So you can actually take one piece of content and really spread it out to get a whole lot out of it to help you be consistent on the platform. And at the same time we're giving it everything is asking for an idea pins were giving it video and we're giving it a bunch of static pins that are maybe lead to the same U. R. L. But are different. 

Okay so when you're talking video pins are those static pins, idea pins or both? The video pins can be um like just little clips of us talking or another way could be just they're considered video pens but they're animated. So like you have a little animated arrow or a little flashing sign or something like that, those are still also considered video. Um Those I was gonna say those won't perform as well as you know you talking or being an actual video of something so like something with movement in the background. So if you're doing a quote maybe having like water in the background moving or something like that. Yeah I always kind of wondered what those are for, what those are for to give that living element in your graphics. Yeah that makes sense. Okay, so for the complete novice, what is the difference between the idea pin and the static pin? The idea pen think of as a carousel like on Instagram or on Facebook, so it's multiple slides basically that someone can slide through and see different things on at the end of an idea pen, it always comes up and shows your profile and allows them to follow you and they're not linkable in the way that a static pin has a URL attached to it. Now if you have your your website claimed, which you should have highly recommend that if you have that claimed and you have like products or different things, you can actually tag those products in an idea pin so that the person can tap on that and then go to that. So while it's not technically A. U. R. L. You still can do that but you do have to have that one piece done. Whereas the static pin or the regular pin, when you're filling out the description for it and you're putting the title and all that. You actually put that U. R. L. So that someone, when they tap on it, it will actually click over to your website or to your Youtube channel er or wherever you're leading them to your products. Sorry, my dog is barking because my sister just wanted, I'm like trying to keep my microphone muted for as long as possible. Um So just a morning, mine are being good right now, but we have the same machine. I'm like, man, I don't know because I'm in the kitchen where the lighting is a lot brighter and better than the jury outside. So I picked those up so they weren't clanging them around the floor, same same thing here right before we got started all the joys of being a dogma. Um Now do idea pins last or do they disappear? Like stories do on our other platforms? They're on there forever. Just like everything else. So people can save them to their boards and they can go back to them later so they do not disappear. That's awesome. I love that because that's like the one downfall of stories, you're like oh my gosh, I just made these really great stories and then there unless you put them in like a highlight. Yeah, I was gonna say unless you put them in highlight, but you know, they they stay forever. So when you go to someone's account you'll be able to see them.

Perfect. So let's go back to when you were talking about having your profile set up to be like optimized and you mentioned that you had a lot of boards but a lot of people couldn't see them. What is the purpose of that? How do you pick and choose which ones you make visible?

The way that you do that is you make the board secret um so that you can still use the account in the native way that you did before. So if it was your personal account and now you're gonna start using it as business, just go into that board and then turn it to where it's a secret board. So that anyone who lands on your profile can't see those. But you can't, the way that you decide what you're gonna leave on and what you're not is if it has to do with your business, you absolutely want it visible. If it has nothing to do with your business, you want to make those secrets because it's going to uh if someone lands there and you talk a lot about, you know how to start a podcast and yet they see a ton of, you know, recipes and you know, different things like that. That really have nothing to do with starting a podcast. Uh they're most likely not gonna follow you and stick with following the account because they didn't see what they went there to see. So think of it as your like your storefront.

You know, when I go into Lowes, I don't expect to see groceries, you know, so total sense. I'm like, okay, so I need to make my hair board private, another option is have a personal account and have a business account, but at the same time, how many of us really want to deal with multiple accounts? You typically don't want to. So that's just a solution.

Yeah. Make them secret. Super easy. Now is there anything that we should do around setting up our boards? Like does the name matter description any of that? Absolutely every bit of it matters. Um So you want it to be, you want to do some keyword research so you want to get on interest itself, you don't want to go to anywhere else. You want to do it in interest itself and kind of search for some different things that you offer um and see what keywords are coming up just like google when you type in the search bar. If you've been on Pinterest lately, you're gonna see suggested things that other people are searching for. You're gonna want to make a note of that. So start a google sheet, start a document something and keep track of votes. Um and then create your boards around those keywords that people are searching for. And then in your description you want to go in a little deeper and let people know exactly what that board is going to tell them now this I say people but really you're feeding the algorithm more than anything, you're telling the algorithm what your board is gonna be about. So if there are multiple things you're gonna share. Um let's just go back to the podcast. You know how to get started with a podcast, What type of equipment you're gonna need, you know, anything like that, that you're going to talk about within that board and share pins to. That's what your description should say. And then you can always have a call to action as well. Um, not only in your board descriptions but also on your things. You want to always want to have some type of call to action, right? I thought about that. Yeah, because if maybe there's another board that is going to give them more relevant information on something you want them to check out that board, you say, hey, check out this board for more on X. Y. Z. And then that's gonna keep them on your profile and keep them consuming your content longer. If it's about like products and things like that, they could buy to get started. You know, maybe you have a shop on your website, you know, so you're going to say, hey to see these or other items like it go to and then you could tell them where to go to find that information. Yeah, that makes so much sense. Um, now as we've been talking, I've definitely realized my podcast interest strategy is not on point.

So I'm just gonna use myself as an example sticking with the podcast I on my business Pinterest have just one board for my podcast and I put every episode and a video clip and everything about all my episodes and that one board. I'm assuming I should probably also be making pins and putting them in my other business related boards when they that topic. Right? But on topic you want to make sure that wherever you're sharing it first has the most relevant to the topic that you're. But that pin has interest is going to take a look at the picture on the pin, first, the title of the pin, the description of the pin and also the website or the link that it goes to to make sure that that is a good pin. Okay. Pay attention to all of that. Okay, now, if we use like a template because, you know, there's all the templates that are on camera, um is it better to reuse the same one? So everything looks uniform or should we be mixing up what our picture looks like when we're making our pains. Um, templates are great in the fact that they help you do something very fast, but you absolutely want to be changing them up at times depending on what it is. So if you have multiple different templates for your podcast episodes, you could use each one of those and change the title of it and then maybe change the coloring of it, you know, just little variations just to make it new so that it doesn't that people can tell it's your brand, but not that it's all exactly the same and then the same thing with other types, you know, and switching up your templates every once in a while, you know, giving it just a refresh, so maybe starting with a whole new set once a quarter or something, um just a little variation, moving pictures around a lot of times even can give you multiple pins, so you could maybe use one particular picture, but maybe you zoom in in one or maybe you put it in a little box in one, so you know, just kind of those little variations, but it's too hard to create a lot of hymns if you're not using templates. Um it's just too hard to do that unless you're someone who takes a whole lot of photos all the time um or doesn't mind spending hours creating that stuff. So um templates are a huge thing for sure, I will tell you and this kind of, that's myself also for my own templates and you know, making money off of them, but tailwind has a create future, which is really awesome and you can go into that create feature and you can fill in like just the pertinent information of like what you want to text overlay to be and where you want it to land and all of that stuff and it creates like 1000 pins all at once, what my mind is blown. That must be.

Well Disclaimer, I haven't used tailwind in a few years, but that was not around when I was there before, so um tell us what tailwind is and who would want to use it? Yeah well other than just for the graphic side of it um it is a schedule er that is approved for Pinterest now there are others, this is just the main one that I typically use and recommend people to use. Um It's by no means the only one and you can absolutely pin directly on interest. Uh And I will tell you one of the drawbacks to that that I find. Um But it allows you to schedule out for months at a time, like literally months at a time. You could go in there and upload everything and just schedule it all out. Uh The other thing that you can do within tailwind that you cannot do on Pinterest is you can actually schedule something to go to more than one board, however you want to be careful with that because Pinterest wants new stuff, they don't want the same stuff we shared. So while sometimes it is very relevant to do that, make sure that you put at minimum seven days in between sharing something. And typically I like to say even longer, like three weeks to four weeks in between sharing it to another board. Um But that will help you fill up your schedule or faster. So if I'm re sharing is it re sharing like the exact same pin you wait that long or like with my podcast episodes I link them all back to my website so it's like the same U. R. L. So is that bad if I'm sharing the same U. R. L. But different everything else every week or should that be okay? That's okay. Okay. Now with those I don't schedule everything for the exact same day. I will spend like a day in between or something. Yeah throw a bunch on there all at one time and then all is good. But you can even do that within interest. Okay. Okay. Um It's still free for a certain number and then it's paid after. It's actually free for a certain number per month now. Okay so not for a specific time but I think it's only like 20. Okay.

Okay. For someone getting started. That's right. Yeah. You know you cannot schedule idea, not even on Pinterest. Do have to be done live. What you can do for idea pins is batch create them and upload them. So they're sitting in the drafts folder so that the days and times that you want to post those. You can just go in and just walk through the process and then hit live. Yeah. That's really good. So someone just getting started. Never been on Pinterest before. We know we have to set up our profile. What's the best way then for us to get traction and actually starting to see a little bit of R. T. I like do we need a lot of followers? Like what are the things that are important for us to do? The biggest things that are important are um consistently pinning one of the things you can do to increase your followers is the idea pins. So definitely making sure that you are creating the idea pins and then following similar accounts to where you know, other people who are following them are then gonna be able to start seeing your content as well. Um so that's another really good thing in the beginning to do something else that you can do. Um it does cost money, but there's a plug in called Milo Tree and it pops up on your website and says, hey, did you know we're on here, Follow us here, other things that are free. Tell everyone on every other channel that you have a Pinterest account, we forget about that, you know, put it in your email footers, put it on your website, you know, tell people in your podcast, hey, we just started tell people on instagram that you have an account, you know, make sure that you're telling everyone that way organically so they can come over and start following because the more they start following you, the more interesting is that your account is interesting and people find it interesting, the more you're gonna start getting more followers. So it's kind of like a snowball effect, Something you can do that is new to Pinterest is applied to be on Pinterest tv, what what is Pinterest tv. It's kind of like live but very produced. So it's not like you do for instagram or facebook where you just hit a button legal life, you have to apply for it, you have to tell them the topics you're gonna do. It is a good idea to have an established account before you do this.  But then they set everything up. You get 30 minutes to an hour and you go on and you talk about what you do or whatever the topic is.

So for product sellers, a lot of times you can go on and maybe you do makeup, you can do a makeup tutorial and the whole time you're you're plugging the products that you're using and people can go and purchase those. Well I can tell you from what I've seen with other people who are doing this, you're following grows very, very, very fast because people are watching those lives and Pinterest pushes the lies out so every other platform they push it out. So yes, so that is a really, really good way to grow pretty quickly. Um But you would need to make sure that you have your account established, make sure that you have everything in place because they're not going to pick someone who hasn't taken the time to do that and to make sure that they're doing the things that they need to to grow their account on their own. They want to make sure that it's someone who's been verified and their websites verified in those types of things. But that is a really good way. When did they come out with this? My mind is so blown like I feel like I have not seen this yet and granted I have been just using my schedule er and a while um which was something else I was going to ask you about about, but about a year ago, what I just did my dog when I do that, she's literally definitely, what are you talking about? Yeah, it's been about a year ago. I'll show you on my screen if I can get it close enough. Um but you see the little backwards, a little tv up there. Yeah, if you click that little tv, it's going to come up and show you my gosh, day of the dead makeup tutorial. I am all about that things. Um you can see past ones. So I mean, yeah, it's pretty okay. I'm applying for that when we get off here heading over to see how I can make that happen. So it's another really good way to grow your account very, very, very quickly. Yeah. Make some sales while you're at it. Right, right. Yeah, I love that example of the makeup tutorial for a woman who who sell makeup and the old same thing, beauty products, any type of skin care type stuff. Yeah, any type of that stuff is really, really good for that. You just have to figure out a way to do it. Something someone searching for and then your products type into that maybe a nightly skin routine or a morning skin routine or you know, different looks for your nails for the fall or the winter or christmas or whatever you recommend first is going to Pinterest tv and researching and looking for what's on there and what's been performing and those types of things, watch some of them because when you go to apply, they're gonna ask you what your favorites are. Okay, So, well, heads up, thank you. Thank you for that. Um and it ties in so much with what we teach as business coaches with like building a brand and providing that value and service for people and then your products naturally tight end. Like I really love that they're doing that and I feel like an opportunity for everyone to use that. How many people are willing to get on? Something like that. So if you're willing to do it. Yeah. And they produce all of it. I mean you have a call with them in advance. I mean it's not a small thing. It's to do, It's a big to do. Yeah, interesting. Okay, well you just blew my mind tammy and it's a really long time since anyone on this planet I've been like, what are you talking about? Okay, so let's talk just briefly and then we will, we'll wrap it up because I don't like to make our podcast too long. But when you are looking at your boards and everything, does everything that you share need to be content that you created. Does Pinterest like you sharing other people's content, How does that work? Pinterest does not require you to share anyone else's content any longer. They are fine with you only sharing your own content. If you have enough to fill boards or if you don't mind it taking longer by not sharing other content, um you're perfectly safe doing that. You're not gonna get hit, you're not gonna get dinged, you're not gonna get pushed down the algorithm, anything like that for not sharing where is used to. That was the case. However, in the beginning it may be a good idea to share other content just to get more views and to get more impressions and to be able to get in front of other audiences. Um but make sure it's things that are complementary to you or maybe even of the same brand. So if you're like an MLM, it's kind of muddy waters here. Um you don't necessarily want to share something from someone else who's in that same brand as you, but you might share the main company's content if they have a Pinterest account Because that main the main one is not going to be letting the people buy from there, they're gonna be saying, find the person who is in your area or something like that and 90% of the time I would say if they found that from your boards off of your profile, they're going to go back to your profile to then contact you to then purchase whatever that might be. Yeah, I love that. And there's so many other things too, like I was just thinking with the nail strips um because I know I have a lot of color street style is to listen to this um which I know the company now makes their own nail polish remover but before it could be like how to remove things and like there's something always complimentary, I feel like you can find, especially if you get creative Yeah, okay. Any last minute, anything else Pinterest related that we should know that we haven't covered because I mean you're already blowing my mind so I feel like I want to blow your mind, creator rewards, what are these? You have to have 1000 followers to apply okay? But Pinterest will pay you to create idea pins in certain niches and each month they come out with a list of what they're looking for and then you can go in and actually create those ideas around that. I would say you want to be very cautious about taking ones that are very far outside of your field of your business, just because it could then possibly confuse the algorithm as far as all of your other content, but absolutely apply for that program and get paid too to do that. You can also partner with other brands a couple different ways now that you can actually use interest to even get paid directly from them, wow. So with the creator rewards, is it like the instagram reels bonus where it's like how many people you get paid? Okay. However many people interacted with it say that you know there are some things that they measure to determine. But yeah, but you do for that one have to have at least 1000 followers. Okay, so thousands of to be a sweet spot. Yeah, so once you hit that point then you're golden awesome. Alright, tammy will tell us where we can connect with you, where people can work with you further. I'll link all this in the show notes guys. And I also also put our Pinterest handles our user names. So you guys can follow us on Pinterest but where where can we connect with you? Um You can connect with me on facebook. Just send me a message by a messenger under tammy. L jones on facebook and have the instagram handle and all of that. But facebook is probably the easiest to connect with me on um and then we can just kind of see you know where you're at and what you have questions about and go from there. Um and then you know, I have free resources all the way up to you know whatever. So uh don't worry about you know, well I don't have money right now, I'm just getting started. Um There's I have some free resources that can help you make sure that you get started the right way. Even awesome. Well thank you so much tammy. And guys, she really does mean that like I feel like I'm pretty good about vetting all of my guests on the show where everyone really wants to serve. But I will definitely say hands down tammy has been one of the most giving of her resources and her.