Have you heard Pinterest is a great place for businesses but have wondered how to get started? Then today’s show is for you!
My guest was Cara Chace. She is a Pinterest Marketing Strategist for Online Entrepreneurs. She started in social media marketing in 2011 by managing 13 million fans across 17 social media accounts for a worldwide band. Since then, she’s gone on to create hashtag campaigns for cities and their tourism boards, websites for entertainers and small businesses, and online courses. She loves creating Pinterest strategies that fit into the digital marketing puzzle for your business. You can find out more about Cara by clicking here.
With the changes last year on Pinterest and the new changes that are expected to happen this year, this was a timely conversation with Cara. She’s one of the only guests I’ve invited back for a part II even before the show was over! I know you’re going to get some great insights on Pinterest for your business with this episode.
Jeff Sieh: Hello folks, welcome to the Manly Pinterest Tips show, I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not. And I’m here with a very special guest that I’ve been wanting to have on for a long time. She’s got an interesting story I think you guys are … But she is a, I’ve been secretly stalking her for a long time. We were on a podcast together last year and that’s where I was introduced to her, and I started stalking her a little bit and very interesting, very smart. All about Pinterest, and so you guys are going to get a ton of information from her, so if you have questions while we’re talking, leave them in the comments, I’ll try to pull them up stuff on screen, we’ll try to answer them. But I’m very happy to have Cara Chace here with us today. I said that right, didn’t I? Okay.
Cara Chace: You did, congratulations. Thank you.
Jeff Sieh: Well, I try, you know I do a lot of research. And so I’m so excited to have her on the show with us today. And if you don’t know, she is a Pinterest marketing strategist for online entrepreneurs. She started in Social Media Marketing in 2011 by managing 30,000,000 fans across 17 social media accounts, talking about a trial by fire for a worldwide ban that we’ll talk about a little bit. Since then she’s gone on to create hashtag campaigns for cities and their tourism boards, websites for entertainers and small businesses and online courses to help online entrepreneurs like you. She loves creating Pinterest strategies, like I said, she’s super, super smart, and she does it all to fit in the digital marketing puzzle for your business. Welcome Cara for being here today, this is going to be fun.
Cara Chace: Thank you so much for having me, I am so glad, we got reconnect.
Jeff Sieh: Yeah, so why don’t we jump right into the show, and as people started coming in and watching the live, if you have questions once again, ask them, it will be on there. But you have a very interesting story because talk about something that would have nothing to do, I would think of Pinterest. You were a special agent for the CIA?
Cara Chace: Yes.
Jeff Sieh: Can you even say that? Will Facebook go dark real quick? Okay.
Cara Chace: Right, not for the CIA. I was a special agent for a different three latter agency for 10 years right out of college. So that was my first career as a real adult. And I learned a lot of skills, I have a very particular set of skills as Liam Neeson likes to say, right?
Jeff Sieh: Right, there you go.
Cara Chace: So yeah, it was really interesting, I learned a lot about myself, learned a lot of skills. It was kind of my grown up job, we all have that initial career where you learn to grow up and how to deal with things and coworkers and obviously the job I had was very intense. But yeah, that was my first career and then I decided, no thanks, I don’t want to do this for 25 years, I’m out. And so I moved on, moved up to Portland from San Diego. I’m just kinda going the short version if that’s cool with-
Jeff Sieh: Yes, we know you’re good. I’m listening. Just fascinating, yeah.
Cara Chace: So I left, I know this is one of those like leap and the net shall appear, I had no idea what I was going to do. And thinking about what you do as a special agent, criminal investigations, all of that, I was like, well, how are these skills going to translate to the private sector and everybody else. And I had no job, moved up to Portland with my husband and got pregnant shortly thereafter, started our family. And so obviously I wasn’t going to go get another job or at least I didn’t want to do that. And I was volunteering with a band, some of you might know depending on your genre, but it was the band Megadeath, the 90s thrash metal band. And I started volunteering, moderating their Facebook page, because I had nothing else to do. I was pregnant that home on the couch with my laptop, not really knowing what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
Cara Chace: And I was just popping in there and started seeing how they were missing the boat on social media in a big way, as a lot of people in the music industry have in the past, obviously is different now than it was way back in 2011. But just started teaching myself everything that I could about social media, campaigns, not just what other people in the music industry were doing, but other entertainers, other businesses and industries. And very quickly, within a year and a half I went from being a free volunteer moderator on their Facebook page to being their social media manager for the band, for Dave Mustaine, for everybody. And that’s how I got to that managing 30,000,000 fans across 17 social media accounts. I started their Instagram, way back before it was even on android, when it was up only, all of that stuff.
Jeff Sieh: Was is it just you as the social media manager or did you have like a team?
Cara Chace: Well, I worked technically for the webmaster, so the guy that did their website, the fan club, the forums, all of that kind of stuff. And pretty much by the end I had a couple of people that were helping me with a moderating stuff, but it was pretty much just me. And I was getting to interface with universal music and their promotions and their tours and all that kind of stuff. It was a lot of fun, it was a wild ride for sure. That was my first social media job, and it was one of those why I’m are really good at this? Maybe this is what I should do. And that’s kind of how that all started with digital marketing. I knew nothing about it before, totally self taught and did it on a huge scale successfully. And let it go from there.
Jeff Sieh: So where did you go you were struggling, like when you first started, you’re like, okay, I’ve got to figure out, Instagram is brand new. Did you have resources that you went to or did you just start reading every blogger that you can find?
Cara Chace: Google.
Jeff Sieh: Okay.
Cara Chace: Google, yeah. One of the things that I’m really good with doing is I get inspiration from the weirdest, craziest places. So there was one day that I was sitting in Barnes & Noble reading a magazine, and it was when the whole hashtag campaigns started happening with Instagram. And brands were starting to have their own branded hashtags and this was like, this is brand new, not a lot of people were doing this, but I was flipping through this magazine and I saw Crate and Barrel had an advertisement that was a call to action for people to post on Instagram with their hashtag. And I thought, how can I do this for Megadeath? How can I do this for the band? And what I realized was that there’s no one more diehard than metal fans, I mean music in general, but you don’t have to work for that engagement.
Cara Chace: You don’t have to work for that interaction and that fun stuff with the fans. And people that are fans have collections, it’s a whole lifestyle, they go to tours, they go to concerts, they have merged, they get, all this kind of stuff. So I came up with the campaign Hashtag my Megadeath, and every month we had a rolling contest where people would post their T-shirts, listening a snapshot of SiriusXM in their car when it would come on, that kind of stuff. And we just had this rolling contest for engagement basically. And by the time that I left, and this was several years ago at this point, that hashtag was being used a thousand times a month on Instagram. And that was from me looking at a Crate and Barrel ad.
Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. So I think that’s one of the things about being creative is, what you were just describing is always be … I have like on my phone, Evernote, which I put everything on, so being inspired at Crate and Barrel or walking around and seeing something like, hey that might be a color I can dry on my Pinterest or whatever, is to collect that information. Even if you’re not gonna use it right then, having a spot to put it I think is key. And that’s a great story of how also that Crate and Barrel launched this monster campaign for a major band. So very cool. So how did you decide to, and I know you have some blog articles about it, and so make sure to put links and everything back to yourself, but about why you niche down on Pinterest, so what made you decide to do that?
Cara Chace: Yeah, so when I first started my business, I did all the things in social media. So I was building websites, I was doing email marketing, blogging, all the social media platforms, anything a business would need in the big umbrella of digital marketing. And I think we all do that when we start our businesses, you want to just not shut any doors and just see what happens. And after a couple of years I realized that I didn’t enjoy doing all of those things, I love blogging for myself, I can’t stand doing it for other businesses. And this was before Instagram let you add accounts and toggle. So having to log out and log in and for all the, and I’m like, please, I never want to do Instagram for a client again.
Cara Chace: And I had this moment a couple of years ago where I realized Pinterest was what I was on for myself and my own time because I loved being on it and I enjoyed it. And two, it was where I was seeing the straight line return on investment from point A to point B with my clients. And I was kind of tired of having that conversation about brand awareness and return on investment with general social media stuff, which can be a struggle when you’re dealing with clients to really impart that value, with Pinterest I was able to show that return on investment in a much more clear way. And niching into Pinterest let me really deep dive into it instead of feeling like I couldn’t keep up with all the changes everywhere all the time.
Jeff Sieh: Right, because it’s crazy. And I think also you mentioned you went to Pinterest because, you liked doing it?
Cara Chace: I like doing it.
Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And I think one of the things is Pinterest is one of the only networks you can go and feel good about, they have all these studies about how Facebook is depressing people and Instagram is not healthy for your team and all this stuff. You don’t ever hear that about Pinterest because people go to Pinterest, they don’t see fake news, they don’t see political stuff. They don’t even see, you know, your cousin that you don’t really like that much daughter’s birthday party. You got to go and it’s the stuff that you want to do and run the trails that you want to go down. And I think, and we’re going to get into what you think is going to happen in 2019, but I think there’s going to be a lot of the shift from people are frustrated with Facebook, they’re not seeing the return on investment. And on Pinterest they can take some of that maybe hatred and move to something that really does make a difference and is a lot more fun to actually be on and used.
Cara Chace: Well, Pinterest is where we go when we want to do something better. So I’m planning something, I want to better myself in some way, it’s an aspiring dreaming platform. So you’re already in that mindset when you’re going to Pinterest on purpose, on your phone, on your desktop, whatever because you want to do something better or you want to be better. And you don’t go on Instagram because you’re trying to learn how to do something better, you’re going there because you want to see pictures or it’s kind of a default thing you’re doing while you’re watching Netflix or whatever.
Jeff Sieh: Exactly.
Cara Chace: Right.
Jeff Sieh: I want to do a quick shout out here to Nazeem, and this is what I love about Instagram. He saw my post and says,” Jeff fresh back from the cabin break, looking great,” thank you Nazeem, my friend from Italy, he’s awesome, good to see here. And we’ve got Mike Alton in the audience also Frank Sell,” hey y’all,” right back at you Frank thanks for watching a bearded brother right there. So I want to do a little recap section because a lot of stuff happens. So what do you think last year was the biggest change that happened on Pinterest? Like if you could narrow it down, I mean there’s so much happening like you mentioned on social media things-
Cara Chace: So much.
Jeff Sieh: But what were the biggest changes you saw on Pinterest last year?
Cara Chace: I’ll try and narrow it down cause I have like a list here.
Jeff Sieh: Right.
Cara Chace: One, buyable pins going away and they’re within APP ECOMMERCE functionality, that was huge.
Jeff Sieh: Right, will talk about that, yeah.
Cara Chace: Yeah. Hashtags, than saying I know and post them, we’re like hey, we going to do hashtags.
Jeff Sieh: Don’t use them like[crosstalk 00:12:38]
Cara Chace: Nevermind, we’re not going to do hashtags, just kidding, yes we’re doing hashtags, all of that. And then the storm that it caused of people freaking out, and how do we do this? That was a big deal. And then there are major like … Hey Cat, nice to see you. Their major like please don’t use group boards for your marketing foolishness, this is not what it’s intended to be and we’re going to start having that effect. The Algorithm and if you get surfaced, that was a big deal because that used to be a real strategic points-
Jeff Sieh: Especially when you first started, right.
Cara Chace: Exactly. So that was a big deal as well. There’s more I could list, but I’ll keep it to those.
Jeff Sieh: Okay. So I’m going to go off on a rabbit trail. So group boards aren’t what they used to be. I still think there’s a place for them, but I do want to do a shout out because I really think Tailwind Tribes are great for those, the marketing thing. So if you don’t know what Tailwind Tribes are, it’s like group boards on steroids for niche things and people share your stuff and you can track it easy and it’s just great. So what are your thoughts on that?
Cara Chace: Yeah. What’s really cool about Tailwind Tribes is as long as you know what you’re doing in google analytics, if you go into campaigns, everything from Tailwind Tribes, the traffic you’re getting will actually show up in google analytics, where it’s harder to track from specific boards on Pinterest unless you’re using UTM tags and all that kind of stuff. So Tailwind, a lot of their built in functionality helps you make better decisions as a business owner without having to get all crazy, it’s kind of they do it for you. And I would agree that it’s a much more fine tune, less spammy place to be, and I think that’s why group boards got way out and left field for people’s, they just became a dumping ground like Facebook groups sometimes have gone that direction like wow.
Cara Chace: So it’ll be interesting to see what happens with Tribes over the next year as far as hopefully they don’t go that direction, and there are some things that are put in place to keep it from being too spammy, and all of that stuff that the whole marketers ruin everything that everybody thinks. So, but yeah, I have seen huge returns in traffic from Tailwind Tribes. And one of the cool things is we know Pinterest is a long term platform as far as your pin is getting seated in the feeds with Tailwind, it happens right away you start seeing that return on putting that pin up right right away. So it’s pretty cool.
Jeff Sieh: I’m going to go back to our comments real quick. Frank Sell says that Pinterest, of course has been great for organic. Yeah, that’s great Frank, it really does. And Alisa said, I love that Pinterest came out and said donate your old pins to add hashtags.
Cara Chace: Hashtags.
Jeff Sieh: Thank you. Yes, it’s really weird they become really transparent on some things and then other things are just like, we don’t know what you, your help is still on old content anyway. And of course Alisa, who works for Tailwind is whoa, whoa Tailwind Tribes. But Mike Alton agree group boards on steroids because he’s in couple of Mike dealing with drives and I know that he’s doing good. I saw some of his pins that look pretty viral lately that he put up there. So yeah, Tailwind Tribes are great. Kind of going off on a tangent there. But so what do you think is coming up new? I mean for 2019 for Pinterest? one of the things Dave pretty much said they’re going to go public, this next year. So how do you think that’s gonna Affect? Do you have any other more predictions for 2019?
Cara Chace: Yeah, that was big star in my notes, was the whole IPO rumor that’s going around about them going public, and I think this is going to be a case of their bottom line is going to matter to their shareholders. So I think it’s going to be good, there’s gonna be pros and cons. It’s all going to be about their advertising network, it’s going to be about promoted pins and I think they’re going to put a lot more effort into that. I think, and I’ve been saying this for a couple years, get in on promoted pins while the get in is good before everybody else figures it out.
Cara Chace: Everybody else is going to figure it out in this next year. So I think two things, one, prices are gonna go up, you’re going to have to make a lot more effort and have more knowledge about how to use them efficiently. But I think that because they’re going to be putting so much effort into it, they’re going to come out with better targeting, better tools, better ways to track ROI, better analytics and all those things that business owners demand if they’re going to invest in a platform.
Jeff Sieh: Gotcha. Cat says kinda on the same subject, I still get great organic traffic following a paid campaign with super cheap ads. So what you’re saying that’s great for now, but that may go up in this next year.
Cara Chace: What cat is talking about is the fact that she did a promoted pins campaign and that snowball effect, that happens[crosstalk 00:17:40]
Jeff Sieh: Oh, that’s fine, gotcha.
Cara Chace: So even though she’s not promoting that pin anymore, she’s still getting really great returns from it because of the money she put behind it several months ago, that’s what she’s talking about.
Jeff Sieh: Okay, and that’s unique to Pinterest?
Cara Chace: Yes.
Jeff Sieh: No other ad platform does that kind of thing. So once you paid for that initial promoted pin, you get the benefit.
Cara Chace: Pinterest ads are what boost is supposed to be.
Jeff Sieh: Yes.
Cara Chace: On Facebook.
Jeff Sieh: That’s great. That’s a great way to say. Nazeem has a great question. He goes, any cool tools that Cara recommends to enhance the Pinterest experience? Now I think that’s a really broad question Nazeem, so I’ll let Cara go whichever, because design tools, maybe one like create pins or you know, I don’t know of any tools other than Tailwind, like we said to enhance this. So what are your thoughts?
Cara Chace: I could not live without Tailwind. Lisa, thank you. And I use it for myself and for my clients and I could not do what I do without it, unless I wanted to be manually pinning all day every day, which no one wants to do that. I will flip back and forth between Photoshop and Canva depending on what I’m doing as far as graphic design. For my own stuff, I have custom templates, I do that in Photoshop, I’m comfortable with Photoshop. For client stuff, if I’m helping them with graphics, I tend to use Canva because it’s just easier to have it online and all of that stuff. So that’s pretty much it, as far as other tools, I mean the guided search bar.
Jeff Sieh: Your guided search is great, because that kind of gives you, we’ll talk about that a little bit key words we’re jump to that. One of the things that I would look Nazeem is I know a lot of people use Canva and a lot of times their templates get really hit hard. I’ve been using Easil, it’s E-A-S-I-L-
Cara Chace: I’ve heard of it.
Jeff Sieh: And one, it has great templates for like Instagram stories if you’re looking like that, they have a huge library of those, but also there are different Pinterest templates. So a lot of time if I just scroll through the feed and I go, oh, there’s a Canvas template, there’s another Canvas template. So trying to mix that up and have kind of unique looks I’d look at Easil because I’ve been really impressed with their templates so far, and you can have layers like in Photoshop, which is really cool, that camera doesn’t have. So check them out if you’re looking and needing some new design inspiration now. So-
Cara Chace: Perfect.
Jeff Sieh: Video pins, that’s something new that’s come out. What do you think about those?
Cara Chace: I think that is second only to the whole IPO thing. Videos, we all know that video is the way everything is going with content, with marketing, with content marketing. I mean it’s the way that everything is happening. What I really like about videos on Pinterest is they play really well with youtube, whereas we all know Facebook and youtube aren’t the best of friends. So Pinterest and youtube works well together. They allow you to upload videos in several different formats so you can do vertical, like you would see in normal pen, you can do square, but you can also do landscape. And I’ve had the chance to play around with this for myself, for clients, I’ve done some promoted video campaigns, and what I would say is while they’re figuring out how they are going to adjust their algorithm for videos, because this is new, you know Pinterest is going to go back and forth with best practices and all of that.
Cara Chace: I would say only bother with a format that is going to serve you across the most area, I’m trying to figure out how to say this. So for example, with promoted pin for videos, you can’t do vertical, you can only do landscape-
Jeff Sieh: Square.
Cara Chace: Or square, but if you’re just uploading a regular pin, you can do square, you can do vertical. What I’m trying to get to is I would stick with square because whether you’re going to promote it later or just have it as a pin that you hope gets some traction, it is going to hit both of those options, and I like to maximize what I’m doing and not do double the work and all of that. So I would stick for now until they come out with some sort of guidance or whatever, I would stick with square videos and when you go to upload it, they will give you the parameters as far as the file size and and all of that kind of stuff. But what I have seen do really well is promoting a video pin for a short amount of time and using that as a retargeting audience for regular pins later.
Cara Chace: So video pins are very expensive. I did just get a notification the last time I was in saying that they’ve lowered the bids, but if you’ve played around with promoted pins at all, you know that you can oftentimes bid as low as cents per click. With video pins when I first started playing with them, it was like $9 a view, which is crazy.
Jeff Sieh: Right.
Cara Chace: So-
Jeff Sieh: One thing I really want to point out to the audiences that when you do a video promoted pin on mobile, it takes up the entire, like two columns sets you?
Cara Chace: Yeah.
Jeff Sieh: For one of the[inaudible 00:22:56]
Cara Chace: Right. So you can only do promoted pin videos on mobile. It will not, that’s your only option. You can’t do it desktop or whatever. You can select whether it’s the entire width or just one piece. If you do the entire width or I should say one column, if you do the entire width, it’s more expensive obviously, because it’s taking up that much real estate. So if you have the budget, and I don’t know what they’ve lowered it to since then, but at $9 a view that can add up real quick. So if you have the budget to play with that for a couple of weeks and get a good engagement retargeting audience out of it, it’s worth it to retarget for regular pins later that are only going to cost you cents a click or less. So that’s what I know so far.
Jeff Sieh: That’s a great strategy. And so if people who … This is what, I think is so cool about video pins so people who aren’t familiar with them, on mobile, the best way I can describe it, it’s like have you seen the Harry Potter movies, and they have the newspaper that moves like windstorm. That’s what a video pin is, because you’re so used to scrolling through Pinterest and it’s just static images. And so when you come across these video pins where there’s movement and you can tap on a minute, it fills your screen, and the sound plays, it’s really engaging. And so I haven’t done any promoted video pins but I have done a lot of video pins, and I can really see the benefit of doing those. And I would totally agree with you is sticking with a square format, one, because you can repurpose everywhere else.
Jeff Sieh: I mean square video for us works really well when I do the social media examiner stuff, the square videos perform well there and Linkedin even. So Linkedin is a place you could put some of this stuff and Instagram course. So totally I think that you’re right on the money when it comes to square video and using that for Pinterest, because if you do want to promote that pin later, having that come across the whole feed, I’ve seen Marvel has been doing a bunch of push for their movies even on Pinterest. So it’s very, very cool. So-
Cara Chace: What I would do, if you want to start playing with it is, anytime you see a video pin and it’s that scroll stopper like you said, which is why it’s so great, save it to a secret swipe file for inspiration later. And I’ve gotten ideas just like I did with Crate and Barrel and the Hashtag campaign. I’ve seen stuff for like Digiorno pizza where I’m like that’s really fun how they did that, and I’m going to see how I can make that work for my content or my whatever. So yeah, keep an eye on it.
Jeff Sieh: Alisa did say it’s down to $2 minimum CPM for a standard video, thanks. Alisa is all about promoted pins, she is like the Queen of promoted pins, so I’m glad she’s here.
Cara Chace: That’s way different than $9. I think they got the message that everybody was like hmm-
Jeff Sieh: That’s pretty pricey. Yeah, unless your Marvel or some of those big gigs, it’s gets a little pricey. So alright, so that’s kind of our first section, we kind of recap stuff we’re excited about, but I want to get into because I know a lot of people may be joining for the first time, who should be on Pinterest? And what type of business do you think works well on the Pinterest platform?
Cara Chace: This is not to be funny, I’m totally serious, any business that has a website should be on Pinterest and it’s true. So the whole purpose of Pinterest is to drive traffic to your website. So if you are trying to sell products or services, if you’re trying to gain brand awareness, if you are trying to build up your brand as far as PR opportunities, all of that, you want to get people back to the property that you own so to speak, which is your website and that’s what Pinterest is designed to do. It’s unlike any other platform out there where you know it’s not about Instagram gives you that one little link or Facebook will push down anything that’s a link out from Facebook, all that kind of stuff. Pinterest is designed to get people to click through where you want to go. So there are obviously different strategies, different tactics, whatever, depending on what your business is about. If you have a website and you want people to see that website, there is a way to make Pinterest work for you.
Jeff Sieh: Right, I agree. It’s a no brainer I think. So what do you think keeps businesses from utilizing Pinterest? I know Alisa and I have had this conversation too, It’s like pulling teeth for some of these people. Why do you think it’s so hard?
Cara Chace: I think there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of how it works. So Pinterest gets lumped into social media. Sometimes it’s a lack of awareness. Sometimes it’s just easier to lump it in with social media, but brands and businesses don’t understand that it’s so much more than just the one more thing to do on their list. And there’s not that social aspect. I mean there’s communities and that kind of stuff, whatever, but it’s really not social media, it’s not.
Jeff Sieh: It’s a search engine.
Cara Chace: It’s a search engine, it’s a visual search engine, it’s keyword driven. If you can get your keyword style done and you can put up some good graphics, it is going to work for you. So it’s a lack of understanding of like it’s a search engine, it’s not just another place you have to participate and be on and be social.
Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Alisa says, could not agree more Cara, change your mindset to make it work, it’s worth it, preach it sister.
Cara Chace: Yes.
Jeff Sieh: And I think the other thing that, I know a lot of people struggle with making images and so they really work hard making a blog image, like their header graphic done and then they’re like, I got to make another one. Getting that vertical image I think is the other struggle. And if you can, once you make some templates and once you start, even Canva has a magic resize when people started getting stuff like that it just makes sense. You can add it to your process and it really does. It’s another, all those pins are links back to your website. It’s like a spiderweb that after you do it so long, you have all these places out there that last for a long, long time that lead back to your website.
Cara Chace: People use … I’m sorry, can I just-
Jeff Sieh: No, go ahead.
Cara Chace: People use that extension button in chrome to Pin it or they hover over the image and they pin it. That’s there because that’s what people do. That’s how they use Pinterest, is they’re on websites and they’re looking for images to pin to save for later. So if you don’t provide them with something that works with best practices, they’re going to pin a cruddy image and then that reflects on your brand. So I just wanted to interject that.
Jeff Sieh: Note, very, very important. So that could maybe tie into the next one. So if a business is just getting started on Pinterest, let’s say they listened to this are like, oh my gosh, I’ve been losing all this traffic, I need to be on Pinterest. What is the first thing that they should do it?
Cara Chace: Well, it kind of goes without saying, but the very first thing is make sure you have a business profile. A business profile is going to enable ads and analytics. So once you have that business profile, the very first thing you should do is confirm your website. That is how your website and Pinterest start talking to each other, so that you can track what’s working, start making better decisions as the CEO of your Business and what content people are gravitating to and saving and whatever. So it all starts with making sure you have that confirmed a website so that Pinterest and your website talk to each other.
Jeff Sieh: Very cool. And cat has a comment. She goes, I took far too long to get on it and I wish I did it sooner. It’s fab for introverts who want to have social conversations. Yeah, so like we said before, it’s a place where you can go and just enjoy it and pin the stuff you want. But you know what, if you’re not on it, you’re like, oh, I missed the boat, you haven’t missed the boat, you really have it. What they say is the best time to plant a tree is yesterday and then today or something like, whatever that saying is, but it’s not too late. So if you’re on the fence, come on over, the water is warm. So what we were talking about like what businesses do you know, what is the biggest mistake you see venture business Pinterest people do when they get on there?
Cara Chace: I would say two. One, they don’t know their keywords and we know that keywords is probably one of the most important elements, it’s how your content gets found. So my saying that I use all the time is keywords get you found, graphics get you clicked. So graphics aside, they’re not going to find those if your keywords aren’t dialed in, and the right content is surfacing for people that are searching for those keywords. So not knowing your key words and not having them everywhere in your profile that they should be is the biggest mistake. The second mistake I see it that’s more of a strategic mistake is they use Pinterest as a portfolio of their work, and what happens with that is they have a few boards with like 10 pins per board and often it’s the same pen across every board and that’s pretty much all they have and then they go oh see, Pinterest doesn’t work for me.
Cara Chace: It’s not a magazine spread, it’s not a portfolio of your work, it is a place for you to be seen as a curator of valuable content for your audience, that includes your stuff but it also includes other things as well, which is where the whole repining and finding valuable content comes in. So I would say that’s the second mistake is people get on it and go, I’m going to put all my stuff on these different boards and not repin anybody else’s stuff and see it’s not working. Yeah.
Jeff Sieh: So you mentioned keywords and descriptions, how important that is for Pinterest strategy. So what are some tools or best practices like you used to help you create keywords and descriptions for your client and your stuff?
Cara Chace: Yeah, so the best tool is what Pinterest provides, which is the guided search tool. So it functions just like the google search bar where the google, that was funny.
Jeff Sieh: The google.
Cara Chace: Yeah. Where when you start typing something in, it will fill in with what people are commonly searching for. So the mistake that I see people make sometimes is they try and put all these keywords in on Pinterest from google searches or other SEO tools that they may use, that can overlap, but it’s not the same as what people on Pinterest are searching for on Pinterest. So I always go to Pinterest first for, what are people searching for within the platform, and using the guided search in the little tiles that come up underneath to show me some other subject areas, I use a good old handy danny spreadsheet to start popping all of those in.
Cara Chace: And kind of best practices for anything like a pin description or a board description is to not do the keyword stuffing, really do have like one to two conversational pros sentences about what it’s about. I would say it can’t hurt you to go to google and some of the other SEO tools out there, but always used Pinterest first because that’s how people are using their platform.
Jeff Sieh: On that note, so do you think people really search for using hashtags on Pinterest? I mean, do you use them in your descriptions?
Cara Chace: I do, mostly because I’ve been told by Pinterest and other people and I tried.
Jeff Sieh: I use them.
Cara Chace: But here’s the thing, so when they first came back in 2018 and said, okay we’re really gonna use them now. They said something like no more than, I think the best practice was like somewhere between seven and 10 or something like that. And then it was, oh, don’t use more than three and now people are saying one. And I know Alisa says don’t put hashtags on anything you’re going to promote because then you’re just clicking through to other people’s content. So to be completely honest, I’m not really sure and it’s worth playing around. I do put them on, my best practice right now is a branded hashtag, so for me that’s hashtag Cara Chace. Then I’ll do one that’s more specific and one that’s more broad. So I might do broad, might be digital marketing and specific might be Pinterest marketing. And I don’t have any data one way or the other to say whether that’s good or bad. I would say we’re gonna have to wait and see if Pinterest reveals anything else about what they would like for us to do.
Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So that’s the thing, I don’t know how much. I know Tailwind was working on some studies on that, but it’ll be interesting to see. The only time I’ll click on that if it’s a branded hashtag just to see all the pins in one. That’s the only time I’ll do it, and I rarely do that at all. So, I just have been doing it just like you said because they said to do it and I do it the same way. Brand and hashtag first and then brand and specific. So it’ll be interesting to see how that works cause I still see people stuffing them and I’m like, that takes away from your description and put I’m going to put my 20 in there and I’m like, that just doesn’t do anything but looks fair to me.
Cara Chace: Right. And it does not surface like keywords surface. So there are a lot of … I’m not sure exactly the specifics, Alisa would likely where the hashtags get surfaced in search. What I do know is that you actually have to click on them, it’s not like they show up and if you’re searching for a keyword. So taking up your 500 character description with all of that junk is doing more harm than good, you need the keywords in there because that’s how their algorithm works.
Jeff Sieh: And here’s Alisa, once again with the brilliant comment she goes to say, they say people do use hashtag searches and it helps surface new content, so I use them in my descriptions, but I don’t personally use hashtags for search unless I’m researching. Great Point.
Cara Chace: Nice. Yes.
Jeff Sieh: Great Point. So we talked about video pins, your video campaigns, which is very fascinating. So I’ve always said that if you had a product, Pinterest is a no brainer. What are some basics, and I know you have a great blog post on this. If you want to sell product some products on Pinterest, what are some best practices or basics for that?
Cara Chace: Yeah. So, gosh, where do I even start? Okay, one, you’ve got to have good pin graphics. It’s got to be good photography, whether it’s product photography and maybe you’ve got a good collage or something like that. I always recommend brands, if they’re going to invest the time, the effort into Pinterest, they need to have good lifestyle photography of people using their products, whether it’s fashion, whether it’s an actual like thing, whatever it is, because we know that that does really well on Pinterest. It does well on Instagram, it does well everywhere.
Cara Chace: People want to imagine themselves and how they might use that product. So having good lifestyle photography of whatever you’re selling. The other essential piece is you’ve got to have your rich pin stuff set up. That can be really confusing for people, their instructions aren’t the best. You can figure it out if you dig around long enough or maybe you have someone that helps with your website that can help you figure it out, but rich pin data, it allows Pinterest to talk to your website and pull in information about that product if you’re on an ECommerce platform. One of the things that’s really great about Shopify, if you have your inventory set up, when you click on the pin, it will actually show you if it’s in stock or not, without having to go through to your website.
Cara Chace: And I have a feeling that that significantly lowers your bounce rate, because if someone is looking for something and they see it as out of stock or whatever, they’re not going to just go or go to a 404 error page and get frustrated and whatever. So whatever Ecommerce platform you’re on, having those kinds of tools enabled, and then on the Pinterest side, having rich pins and all of that is essential. Because we’ve all experienced that whole, oh, that’s a really cool jacket, and it’s been pinned a million times, but nobody ever knows where it is or where it came from or if it’s ever in stock again or what have you. So let your audience figure out or don’t make them figure it out, like lead them down the path on a silver platter.
Jeff Sieh: Cool. Well, that’s great. That’s great tips and here’s the thing, we’re running short on time because we geeked out so much on Pinterest, but I want to make sure to have you back and I want to just do a special episode just on products and talk about Shopify with you. That’d be awesome because I think we get a lot of questions in that because I know I have. So I actually went to my Shopify before because I have one that I have that I test called Manly Blender and I have teachers and stuff. And for some reason all my, every variation like small, medium, large, all those went across to Pinterest.
Jeff Sieh: So I have this monster board with incredible non products and so I’ve got to go clean that up. But I’d love to get your thoughts on Shopify because I know that’s a lot of people want to do Ecommerce and don’t know even where to start, so we’ll make sure that, have that as a special episode. So before we go, I do want them to … Where can they find out more about you and your pins and your services and I know you have a special evening course, I’m believe that you want to talk about that.
Cara Chace: It’s not a course, it’s a membership.
Jeff Sieh: Right, it’s not a course right there though[inaudible 00:40:48] yes sorry. Talk about that.
Cara Chace: So I’m at Carachace.com and it’s C-A-R-A-C-H-A-C-E so all C’s, all A’s. And my membership is called Pinterest Power Up and it is a membership instead of a course, because it started as a course. And what I realized in 2018 was the time suck of updating every time Pinterest does something new is not something that’s sustainable for me and doesn’t make any sense as a business owner for me or my students. So Pinterest Power Up is created as a place for people to go to get the latest and greatest, the updated best practices that what’s changed on Pinterest, what are we doing differently. It is as far as I know, the only membership site out there for doing Pinterest for your business, and learning how to do it correctly and knowing you have the most updated information.
Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. So we’ll make sure to link that in and all the show notes and thank you so much. I mean we could keep going on but I want to make sure you have some time. I know you have a newborn and that’s awesome. You know he’s crawling. Is your husband watching Design Inc, like you have a babysitter right now or you just step?
Cara Chace: Yeah, I have a babysitter a few times a week just so I can have meetings and do things involved, but a lot of my work happens in the wee hours, in the in betweens and all of that stuff. Yeah.
Jeff Sieh: Very cool. I totally understand that. So I want to make sure you get back and with that, but thank you so much.
Cara Chace: Thank you.
Jeff Sieh: And thank you all for watching today and we will have that special episode all about Ecommerce on pictures because I know you also do some stuff with Etsy and all sorts of things like that. And so I want to dive into all of that with you because like I said, go check out her content it’s awesome. Pin her stuff on her Pinterest boards, you know, repin that great stuff.
Cara Chace: Thank you.
Jeff Sieh: And we will see you next time everybody. Thanks so much for watching and as always, we’d love for you guys to go over to ManlyPinteresttips.com. We’re always adding testosterone one pin at a time. See you next time everybody. Bye now.
Cara Chace: Thanks. Bye.
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