5 Pinterest Hacks for Explosive Traffic?!

Friends!

78% of my website traffic is from Pinterest! Find out these simple and effective Pinterest hacks to help elevate your podcast or blog.

Five Pinterest hacks you can implement today to increase traffic to your website, blog, and podcast. Secrets from a Pinterest coach that will get you leads! Pinterest is the holy grail of long-term residual marketing!

These Pinterest hacks will help you get set up, utilize Pinterest SEO and keywords, understand group boards, automate your pinning and re-pinning strategy, and understand Pinterest analytics.

I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00)
Hey, Lola. Welcome to episode 160 of the Mompreneur Mastermind show. I’m hanging out in my office in PJs drinking second cup of joe on a Saturday morning while the boys are out there playing. Why? Because I just did the most incredible Pinterest training for my mastermind girls and watching their faces light up when they finally understood how simple Pinterest could be. It gave me this inspiration and motivation to just pull out the most important parts of that training and really put together for you my five favorite Pinterest hacks.

(00:44)
Now let me tell you something about Pinterest, which is totally gonna blow your mind. Over the last two years, if you go to my website, stefaniegass.com and you dig into the Google analytics, 78% of all traffic to stefaniegass.com comes from Pinterest. Insanity. Why is that insane? Well, let me tell you, because Pinterest is somewhere that I’m not really hanging out. Pinterest is somewhere that I set it and forget it. It’s somewhere that we’re spending less than 45 minutes a week on as a team, maybe even less, but yet it is the residual marketing tool that everybody uses, but not many people know how to market on. We’re gonna change that today. I hope you guys are ready. Grab a notebook and pen. Let’s go

(01:45)
Let’s start with why Pinterest? Is Pinterest right for you and your business as a marketing tool? Here’s the thing about Pinterest people go on Pinterest and they pin a couple things or they’re sporadic about it and they wonder why is this not working for me? Well, let me tell you, Pinterest is the residual marketing platform, right? Some of the pins for me that have gone viral and that drive a ton of my traffic are from two to three years ago. So Pinterest is really the long game, but it’s like blogging.

(03:02)
Once you set it up and you’re using the proper keywords, you’re filling out those descriptions properly, you’ve got catchy graphics and all the things we’re gonna talk about in this episode, it will return you dividends in the future. Here’s another stat, two thirds of Pinterest users are moms. So those of you listening to my show, the Mompreneur Mastermind show, hello like two thirds of us go to Pinterest.

(03:27)
Raise your hand if you use Pinterest. Yeah. I see you Lola. You’re raising your hand. I use Pinterest all the time. At least once a week, I’m like, oh, I need a recipe idea. I need a organization idea. Or I’m looking for a way to create a planner, like whatever I’m searching for. I wanna search for it visually, which brings me to the next stat. 62% of millennials wanna search visually. Do you guys like to learn by watching by viewing? That’s what Pinterest is. It’s in essence, a search engine that’s visual. Did that just blow your mind?

(04:03)
Here’s another one high income households are two times as likely to use Pinterest. What does that mean? Well, it means if someone is mid to high level income and they’re on Pinterest using it as a virtual search engine, what are they ready and willing to do, ladies? Spend money, buy, consume. All of this is amazing, which brings me to the final statistic, which will make you hopefully feel very strongly about using Pinterest in your business. 48% of Pinterest browsers are shopping.

(04:36)
Basically Pinterest is poised to make you bank. And how many of you are not using it, or you’re not using it effectively, or you’re not seeing results from it or you aren’t consistent with it. So we gotta change all of that. That’s right. So what I’m here to teach you guys today are what I believe are the five Pinterest hacks that are responsible for driving 78% of my website traffic. So let’s start with number one.

(05:10)
The number one hack is testing and having graphics that are going to stand out from the hundreds of thousands of graphics that are already on Pinterest. So when we look at the graphics and we really dig into graphics, let’s start with, what’s been working for me. I started with a bunch of graphics that had my face on it, cuz it was branded. You know, it’s like, oh, how to make money from home. And it’s got like Stefanie Gass and like a little gold swoosh and like my red, Stefanie Gass lipstick red color.

(05:51)
Why was that not working because nobody knows who I am, because you know, unless you are some Barbara Corcoran and everyone’s like, Ooh, Barbara’s on this pin, having your face on a pin, your face, the same branding that you use, it may or may not work. And here’s the weird part is that you have to test it cuz you’re not gonna really know. But when I started to test having just really blatant flat lay graphics, it’s got a girl with her laptop and the background and then a huge, bright, vivid, hot pink square in front of it.

(06:30)
It says something like order of operations for mompreneurs, what to do when, and the whole thing is a huge, huge, vibrant title. Those started to highly outperform my own branded graphics. And so what I learned is that you have to test. So here’s the secret when you guys create a graphic and I just use Canva, it’s free, create a graphic. I want you to test, use one of you and your branding and all the things that would make someone go, oh, that’s that brand. It’s got that brand recognition.

(07:04)
Then use another one that’s like so opposite. So bright, so vibrant, it’s a flat lay graphic and then throw them both up on Pinterest into the same boards, give it a 30 day run. And then over time you can dig into those analytics to see which one is performing better. So for me, my strategy now is creating Pinterest pins that are super different from whatever else I’m seeing out there. They’re super bright, they are vibrant, they are title centered, so the title is almost the entire pin.

(07:37)
The title, which is gonna bring me to the next hack, is extremely specific to the pain point, the descriptions and the search keywords, my Lola’s will be searching for, or my avatar. If you’re new here, I call my avatar, Lola. So there you go. She’s a Christian mompreneur, she’s got three kids and she’s trying to start a soap business online. She’s struggling. Doesn’t know what to do first, how to do it. Doesn’t have the cash flow to invest a ton into her business, trying to get things to go online. She doesn’t know about marketing online, all the things she’s struggling with.

(08:15)
All the things she needs to make money from this business so she can leave her full-time job. Did I describe any of you right now? So that’s my Lola. As I create these pins for Lola, I’m gonna put myself in her shoes, which brings me to hack number two. So hack number one is graphics. And we talked about that. What my strategy is there, testing the graphic, using big, bright, vibrant graphics that are bringing us to hack number two, focus on Lola’s specific pain points.

(08:47)
For example, let’s go back to that graphic I was explaining to you the order of operations for mompreneurs. That’s what the graphic says on it. Big juicy, vibrant. There’s a hot pink square on that. It’s got a back lay of a laptop right below it. It says what to do when, business blueprint made simple. So if I’m Lola and I’m on Pinterest and I look for what to do first or business step by step or order of operations for online entrepreneur. If I use those keywords inside of my description, my title and my graphic, when this graphic comes up, I want it to be so in her face obvious what it is that she’ll click on it.

(09:38)
I also need it to be visually appealing. I need her eye to be drawn to it more than anyone else’s pin. There’s so many pins I believe on Pinterest that are focused on being pretty. They’re focused on muted color and you know, they’re white with some cream sprinkles and a flower, and it’s like how to run your business step by step. And the title’s small. No, Lola’s there to get results. And so she wants to see in your face vibrant promise, that is a specific promise to what she is struggling with right now today in her business. Do you guys feel what I’m saying here?

(10:20)
So as we go back to this hack, number two, it’s hitting on Lola’s specific pain points right there in the graphic and also right there in the description. When you create a pin, you have an area for your title and your description, that’s gotta be specific. So let’s go to my example. If we have order of operations for mompreneurs, what to do when, business blueprint made simple. When I create that Pinterest pin in the title, I’m gonna have something so clear, like order of operations for online entrepreneurs, step by step instructions to creating your online business.

(10:59)
Then the description is gonna say something with different keywords that Lola might be searching for. How to start your business, online instructions for creating your presence, brand service or, product online. And when to do what, like you gotta think about what is Lola searching for? And then when she lands on this, am I hitting the right triggers? Am I pulling the right heartstrings to get her to click? So I hope that that’s making sense for you. So also in this hack number two with description, you have got to focus on keywords.

(11:42)
So my Lola is probably searching for start a business online, make money online, work from home, how to be more productive, work from home mom, how to start a website, how to start a podcast, how to make money podcasting, how to link podcast to a blog, when to start a website, which website platform should I should I use? So get inside of your avatar, whatever you guys do right now. And I want you to make a list.

(12:11)
Here’s some homework from this episode, get a sheet of paper or open up your fancy website system that you use honey, and make a list of all the things your avatar is Googling. Where is she in her business or in her situation that has to do with what you do and make a list of at least 15 things your human is Googling. Now, every time you go create a pin, you create a podcast, you create a blog, you create content infuse, those words, those keyword phrases into your descriptions, your titles and your pins. Okay. All right.

(12:51)
The next Pinterest hack that I wanna talk to you guys about is group boards. So when you’re in Pinterest, you have your own boards that you create, right? You’ve got folders that you set up on your profile page, where you can then categorize your pins and plug them into the folders. Hey, that’s amazing. Make sure that your folders are titled really well again with SEO. So for example, my folders might be how to start a podcast, mompreneur resources, how to make money, how to monetize your online business or monetization ideas, or make money from the internet or whatever that might look like where I think that folder would be enticing for Lola to click on.

(13:44)
But there’s another tier of board that so many of you, gosh, probably 70% of the people I speak to are not using and it’s group boards. So, a group board is a public board that lives on Pinterest, where there can be a number of different collaborators. These collaborators come together and share pins that are the same niche. For example, there could be a group board called virtual assistant extraordinaire or virtual assisting hacks and tips. And that group board can have 400 different people pinning that have to do with the VA space, maybe their virtual assistants, maybe their virtual assistant coaches, maybe they’re people that are looking for virtual assistants, but everybody’s pinning in this one area of virtual assisting.

(14:32)
Why is that so beneficial to you to be part of that? If you’re a VA or you have resources for VAs, because this board has already been created, all the work’s been done in your niche. And there are people that are now following and subscribed to the board. So when you go share something you’re already sharing to, let’s say 2000 people who are subscribed and your pin gets shown. So it’s just more visibility for you than you can really do on your own. It kind of doubles your efforts. It’s like doubling down on a bet.

(15:03)
You can double down on your pin by itself. Hope your descriptions are good. Hope that your graphics are good and then hope this. Somebody searches for that and, and stumbles upon you and wants to click. Or you can double down in your bet and say, now I’m gonna do all those things and push it out to an audience that is ready, willing, and niched down to what I do, right? Mind blown. So more on how to fine group boards in just a minute. Okay.

(15:29)
The fourth hack that I wanna talk to you guys about is repinning. So when you go on Instagram, for example, and you share a new post, only the people that are logged in and that are active, that are engaging with you. And that the algorithm says can see it. That’s what, I don’t know, 5-15% of your followers? I don’t know. I have no idea, but I’m guessing it’s very low, but what if every day you posted the post again and you posted it again and you posted it again. Well, gosh, now hopefully maybe 30, 40% of your followers will see it over a week or two or month’s time. That’s exactly what we want to happen on Pinterest. Okay.

(16:18)
So it’s called re-pinning and it just takes time. You know, it just takes you remembering, Hey, that pin I did about the order of operations for mompreneurs. I pinned it two weeks ago. I should repin it again. So that it’s fresh in the minds of my people, on the group boards, it gets pushed back to the top, etc. But there is a trick that you can do. You can use something called Tailwind and Tailwind is a small investment in your business. I think my plan is 10 bucks a month.

(16:50)
When you use tailwind, you can set it up so that you have a whole list of group and private boards or personal boards. Tailwind will share it to all of these different boards for you. And then you can set up this automation loop, where it will reshare your pins for you over and over and over again. Okay. It’s amazing. You guys know anytime I can automate a system, I’m gonna do it. And this is the tool that you can use to automate Pinterest.

(17:28)
If you guys wanna try it, you can get a free trial through my affiliate link. It’s bitly.com/stefstailwindlink. Try it for 30 days completely free and just see what you think. I would not run my Pinterest business without it. And as you guys know, if I’m getting 78% of my website, traffic, thousands and thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of people every month to my website from this one tool, if I can automate the re-pinning process to me, that’s really priceless and it’s very inexpensive. So re-pinning is a great strategy.

(18:12)
If you guys don’t wanna spend any money, you can do all these things for free. You just have to plan it in. So if you need to do them for free block out an hour a week to pin your stuff, to create your graphics, pin your stuff, to all the different boards, do group board research and then another 30 minutes to repin to go back in and see which pins are doing the best, which I’m gonna talk about in our last hack here. And then repin those.

(18:42)
There’s no need to really repin stuff that’s not performing, which brings me to hack number five, which is analytics, digging into which pin is actually working. Why? Which boards are performing the best and why? And so inside of your Pinterest business account, which I’ll talk about more in a minute, you can find out, Hey, which pins are really performing. And I like to look at like a 90 day or a six month span of time inside of the Pinterest analytics and pull up which pins are doing the best.

(19:18)
So for example, if you were to look at my account over the last 90 days, I have four pins that are performing extremely well. They’re all in the space of podcasting, cuz you guys know, hello, I’m a podcast coach. I have the podcast course. One of my big initiatives is to drive traffic to my podcasting episodes on the show, my podcasting blogs get people to opt in for the podcast checklist or take my podcasting course. Right? So I have some pins, is podcasting, right for you? So big, like the title’s huge is podcasting right for you? This quick quiz will help you decide if you should start a podcast.

(19:56)
Then there’s a little banner across the top, take the quiz. It’s a vibrant blue and it has a microphone as a little a graphic. The next one, why you need a podcast in 2020 huge pink, very bright pink, the exact secrets to creating and monetizing a top ranked podcast. So what might someone be searching for? How to podcast, why do I need a podcast, how to create a podcast, how do I monetize a podcast, how do I launch a top ranked podcast? So all of those terms are embedded into my pins.

(20:29)
The next two, podcasting strategy session, naming tagline, SEO content map and more. And it’s very dark red. This one with like an overlay of gold and it has a microphone, but the title is at least 75% of the pin. The next one, Why starting a podcast will grow your online brand and make you more money. That one is a coral color, super bright, huge title, microphone back lay. None of these have my face on them. None of them have a human on them, which is interesting. Cuz some of the research you’ll find will say, your pin should have a face and it should be looking to the left and a woman’s face will perform better.

(21:07)
Here’s the thing. You don’t know what your Lola or your avatar wants and needs until you test it. So I would not have known that these, and these four pins, by the way, they’re very different from each other. They’re different colors. They’re different fonts, they’re different. And so what I wanna do is now take these four pins and create templates out of them and just change them ever so slightly, different titles, different back lays, but continue to use the pins that are working for me.

(21:38)
So when you guys look into hack number five, which is analytics, focus on what is working. Also on this analytic hack, which folders are performing the best? So if I have a board that’s doing really well, I should be repinning to that board. Also, if I have a board that’s not returning any clicks, engagements, saves, impressions. Can I rename it? Maybe the board’s name is kind of vague. I have a lot of boards that I was like when I started Pinterest. I didn’t understand. So they there’s something silly like inspiration. Well, okay.

(22:15)
But inspiration for who? What type of inspiration? What is it? So I might rename that and put, inspiration memes for female entrepreneurs or inspiration graphics for mompreneurs. Make it bigger juicier and more specific to who you want to click. Does that make sense? Okay. So here we go. The five hacks I’ve just shared with you are graphics that get clicked, graphics that are different graphics that stand out, testing graphics, descriptions, and specific pain points embedded in each pin that utilize those key words, those phrases that your avatar is searching for along with your homework to do that exercise.

(23:00)
Hack number three, group boards. I’ll tell you about that in a sec. Hack number four re-pinning, staying relevant, staying front of mind. Then hack number five, analyze and do more of what’s working both with your pin, templates, layouts and graphics and also with the boards and the folders that are working for you. So if you’re like, oh my gosh, I love all of these hacks and you’re ready to go, get on with your bad self sister, go, pin, Pinterest mania. What better time than now? Like here we all are.

(23:35)
If you’re listening to this, episode in the first half of 2020, we are facing the craziest thing. Like none of us have seen this in our lifetime. Our parents haven’t, our grandparents haven’t the coronavirus, the COVID 19 situation. We’re in isolation. Most of us are in quarantine, some of us have stay at home orders. And so what better time than to get the back office stuff done? Like Pinterest, like streamline the stuff that can grow your brand and business over time.

(24:06)
We all have more time and space right now. Cuz we’re home. We’re not carpooling. We’re not at sports events. We don’t have plans with our friends. Like it’s sad, but it’s also a blessing in disguise because when you have more time and space to do the backend stuff, it’s going to pay off for you in the long term. The best thing I ever did, you guys was fumble around and get Pinterest going before I knew what I was doing. The pins that went viral are pins that I just threw together. I had no strategy.

(24:36)
It was like, I’m just gonna get on this platform and thank goodness that I did because now it’s the number one driver in a huge way to my website and my website is the hub for everything. So if you guys are like, I absolutely need to do this now, I have a gift for you. My mastermind girls. And I just did 96 minutes of Pinterest training. Okay. I went through why Pinterest. Let me just read all the things that we went through.

(25:12)
How does Pinterest work? The consumer view of Pinterest, using Pinterest for marketing, setting up on Pinterest, editing your profile so that you can get found, creating home boards, SEO and keywords for your home boards. Then we went into group boards where to find group boards, which group boards are gonna be best for you. How to access group boards, how to tap into them, how to share to them on an ongoing basis, where to find them, how to request access. Like I give you the actual verbiage of all of that.

(25:45)
Then I went through the step by step of how I use Pinterest step by step, visually walking you through it. Step one, step two, step three, going through the graphics process, showing you my top performing pins and how we embed the graphics into your blog. All of this is in here. How we add pins manually, how we automate it. Like you guys seriously, how to title your pin with SEO, how to have descriptions that are gonna get found visually showing all of this to you.

(26:14)
How do you use Tailwind to upload and share your pins to repin, how to do content loops, what is a Pinterest tribe? What is a smart loop? All of it’s in here. How to dig into your analytics. Then we go through 1, 2, 3, 4 slides worth of Q and A from my mastermind girls. There’s like at least 10 to 15 questions in here that they brought to the training. Okay. Now, why am I going to make this available to all of you? Because I know that right now, more than ever, I need to help you with this. You have the time to do it. You have the drive to do it.

(26:54)
You probably even have a Pinterest account set up, but you just don’t know how to use it. You’ve heard my hacks and that’s all great, but I know so many of you are like, but show how to implement that. Visually walk me through step by step. Here’s what I can promise you. I want you to be able to in two hours, be a Pinterest pro and be like, I can do this and start your Pinterest journey because in a year from now, you’re gonna look back and go, oh my gosh, I’m a Pinterest expert, not. But Pinterest is driving all of this traffic to my blog and my podcast. And I don’t have to spend any time on there.

(27:41)
You guys, we spend less than 45 minutes a week on Pinterest, me and my VA. And I actually outsource it to her. I mean, she runs the whole Pinterest show in essence. And it’s like, this is insanity. So if you are interested in my Pinterest masterclass, it is a 96 minute training that I did for my girls. And I figured if I have this resource, let me make it shareable for all of you at an insane price. I also added in there bonuses and a full tutorial on how to create graphics in Canva for free. I do a tutorial showing you how, and then I have some other resources and bonuses for you in there to help you succeed on this journey. All right.

(28:31)
If you’re interested in that, I want you to go to pinterestmasterclass.gr8.com. Why? Cuz you are my human. You are here with me. You’ve been here with me. So many of you from the beginning. So many of you were here with me before this podcast, which is crazy. This is our show. This is our time to grow our businesses in a meaningful, authentic way that’s going to continue to help us grow and scale over time. And Pinterest is the number one way to do it. You guys, aside from podcasting.

(29:16)
Podcasting is number one. Pinterest is number two. It’s how we drive the traffic to the podcast and the blog. Okay. It’s the marketing arm aside from having the incredibly insane value that you guys are doing on your podcast. I hope that you get your Pinterest set up. Alright, Sis, praying over you now that however you’re dealing with our current situation, you’re finding inspiration. You’re believing in yourself enough to keep going. You are digging into the fact that God’s got all of this under control. He knows what’s going to happen.

(30:09)
He is going to make blessings out of our hardships. He is going to make sure that we come out of this okay on the other side, but we’ve gotta trust Him. Have faith in Him. Band together, rise up against fear and stand strong in our faith and belief that we will get to the other side of this. I know that that is the case. I pray that you find that strength as well. And I pray that if there’s anything you need, you lean into God, lean into His word, into scripture. And if you need someone to talk to DM me girl. I am seriously here for you. If there’s anything I can do, if you need prayer, please reach out. I love you so much. I’ll see you on the next episode. As always, love and light, Stef.