Click the button below to be reminded when Lights, Camera, Live® is on air.
Click to read transcript +
Stephanie Liu: Hey what's up you guys? It's Stephanie Liu, and welcome to another episode of Lights, Camera, Live. Hey you guys, today I have an amazing show for you, I am beyond excited, I have the Peg Fitzpatrick on Lights, Camera, Live. I'm officially freaking out, and you should freak out too, because if you have been wanting to learn how to use Pinterest, I have the Pinteresting marketing expert on the show for you today. So, if you're just tuning in, go ahead and let me know where you're watching from, I'm here in San Diego, and let's go ahead and bring Peg onto the show. Peg, where are you?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Hi, I'm in New Hampshire, where it is not sunny, but I have a Diva Light.
Diva Light, Diva Light is everything, isn't it? Do you also have like the Selfie Ring Light to put on your phone?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I do have the Selfie Ring Light. First I had the LuMee Case, which was the Kim Kardashian thing, do you remember that story when she was like, she had it backstage at the Oscar's and everybody was like, what is that? How does she have perfect light? She is an investor in that company. Have you seen the LuMee Cases?
Stephanie Liu: I didn't know that she was an investor, really?
Peg Fitzpatrick: She didn't disclose it anywhere.
Stephanie Liu: Oh gosh, yeah, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But anyway, but yeah, the LuMee Case is awesome, 'cause it has lights all around it, and it has a little button, but I do have the Selfie Light that goes on, it has a couple settings, 'cause you never know when you're gonna need a picture and the lights not gonna be perfect.
Stephanie Liu: I love it, alright, so we already have Mike Alton tuning in from Saint Louis. So thank you Mike Alton for joining the show, we have Shawn from Toronto, and surprise surprise, it's raining in Saint Louis.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Well here's a little Mike Alton story, I actually--
Stephanie Liu: Oh yes please!
Peg Fitzpatrick: I found you Stephanie, through Mike.
Stephanie Liu: Oh really?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, Mike and I have been friends for a bazillion years, 'cause we met each other on Google Plus, back when that was awesome, and then Mike met you at a conference a while ago, so he was talking about you, 'cause Mike is, let's face it, the most generous person, and he shares everybody's content, and he's so kind. So anyway, I found you because of Mike. And if you don't know people, I stalked Stephanie on Facebook and friended her. Which I never do that either, so it was random.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, I am so happy I am not on camera, 'cause as soon as she said that you guys, I literally was like, I die, I die. Okay, so alright you guys, so today's show we are talking about Pinterest marketing tips, insider tips for entrepreneurs. If you guys have been wanting to drive traffic to your website, this is the episode that you should go ahead and tune into. And if you know anyone that would be interested, go ahead and tag them in the comments. If you're a part of any Facebook groups, or if you wanna share this to your timeline, go ahead and do that now, because we are going to get into the thick of it. So before we get started, let me tell you why the Peg Fitzpatrick is so super badass, okay? I wish I had drum roll music for you Peg, I would just like Alright you guys, so Peg is the coauthor of the best selling book, the Art of Social Media, Power Tips for Power Users, which is coauthored with Guy Kawasaki. Please tell me how that happened.
Peg Fitzpatrick: I met him on Twitter.
Stephanie Liu: Twitter? Oh my gosh, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Back, it was like, you know, seven years ago, so I met him on Twitter. I was starting a Twitter chat, and I tweeted him.
Stephanie Liu: And, it just happened from there?
Peg Fitzpatrick: He responded, he responded. At that time, he was on the Twitter all the time, 'cause that was his favorite. So I tweeted him, and I said hey, I'm gonna read Enchantment for my first book club, but I actually didn't think he'd respond, because even at that point he had a lot of followers, and he tweeted me back, and he said, hey, I'd love to come to your book club. And I was like, it was like a real aha moment for me, like oh my gosh, you can speak with authors, who's books you're reading. It was amazing, like I was like And then it just snowballed from there. That's a whole other show Stephanie.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, I mean no, that's like, I'm so in love with you right now, okay. So Guy Kawasaki you guys has dubbed Peg as the best social media person he's ever met. And--
Peg Fitzpatrick: IS that a compliment or what? Coming from him.
Stephanie Liu: That is a compliment, and honestly she's probably gonna be like the best guest I've had on the show.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You're the best guest on your own show, you're awesome.
Stephanie Liu: She spearheaded successful social media campaigns for a couple of brand names that you already know. Brands like TJ Maxx, Adobe, Motorola, Audi, Google, Virgin, oh my goodness Peg, welcome, welcome to the show, beyond excited to have you here.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Thank you so much for having me Stephanie, I'm super excited. As I mentioned, I love your Facebook Lives, you're fantastic so I'm happy we connected.
Stephanie Liu: Alright you guys, so let's go ahead and get started about this whole Pinterest thing. So, okay, I still think that there's this misconception that Pinterest is only for women, and it's only for moms, right? Like what would you say Pinterest is best used for these days?
Peg Fitzpatrick: So here's the thing Stephanie, I saw from the very beginning, when Pinterest was in beta. I was not a mom, well I'm a mom, but I'm not a mom blogger, I don't write about mom things, I barely even talk about mom things. It's just not, that's not what I do. But I saw really early on that there was potential for marketing, it's just people weren't really thinking of it that way. They were like oh, you go and you pin things. And honestly I'll tell you like a revelation I had way in the beginning was oh my gosh, you can click on that and it goes somewhere? Like I used to pin things all the time, we're talking, you know, this, when it very first started, but you know people use it for all different kinds of things it's not just for recipes and makeup tutorials. You can find those there, and they're amazing there, like that is a true story, but, if you're marketing, if you have a product, it's definitely the place to be. Because everything links out, everything is gold there, I mean every single thing. Like Instagram, a lot of people get Instagram and Pinterest confused, they think, well they're the same, you know. Why should I have one if I have the other? Instagram, you know, I'm already there. They're 100% different, and as time has evolved, they've even diversified even more from what they were. And to be honest, I picked Pinterest, I was on Instagram too, like way early on that, back when it was a little app, and nobody else was on it, so it wasn't even fun. I didn't know anyone at all, I couldn't connect with people. So it was like, wow, there's like three people on this app for photos. Does anyone wanna do it? So I focused more on Instagram, I'm sorry, on Pinterest. And even so though, like my follower count, which this will be relevant later, my follower count on both of them was about the same. Pinterest and Instagram.
Stephanie Liu: Wow.
Peg Fitzpatrick: So they followed about the same. I have like maybe 30, I don't even know, 35 or 36,000 followers on each.
Stephanie Liu: Wow.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Each of them. But guess which one brings me blog traffic?
Stephanie Liu: Pinterest!
Peg Fitzpatrick: Pinterest, where do you have to hustle your behind off to get traffic or people to notice you?
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, okay, goodness gracious. Alright you guys, absolutely loving this because Pinterest for one of my clients, he's an LGBT blogger, Two Dads with Baggage, he has, you know, two gay dads and two adopted daughters, and he was very much like Stephanie, I don't think Pinterest is gonna work out for us, and we had someone on our team fully dedicated to Pinterest, and now all of a sudden, we're getting 54,000 monthly page views, just in terms of that. And that probably pails in comparison to what you have, but for someone--
Peg Fitzpatrick: But, here's the thing though, besides just the views, how many followers does he have?
Stephanie Liu: Oh, you know what, he doesn't have a lot of followers.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Right.
Stephanie Liu: Oh, oh I see what you did there.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You don't have to have a lot of followers. I snuck you into answering that for me.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But that's another beautiful bonus of it. I have like 30, whatever, 36,000-ish followers, and I get 2.6 million impressions a month.
Stephanie Liu: That's insane.
Peg Fitzpatrick: It's a lot, it's a lot. So, it's all about coming up with a strategy that works for you. I can see their stuff being super popular there. I don't know what they write about or what they share, but, I just even the title of it is so cute. Like, I just think it would be popular. So yeah, so it's not just for, it's for anything that you want it to be for. That's the other thing about Pinterest is, it's really personal, like, what you share in your Pinterest, I learn about you, so if I go to your Pinterest, I should learn more about Stephanie, which I should have done that before, just to see like--
Stephanie Liu: Oh god, I was like, please don't. It's probably like nursery stuff, no I'm just kidding.
Peg Fitzpatrick: No, but that would tell me more about you, right? I mean, okay, sometimes they're aspirational. Sometimes, or like you would know. I was planning a trip to Italy, and I was like, veraciously pinning, 'cause for like the past year I've been pinning, 'cause I've been so excited about this trip that I just finished up. But I pin stuff all the time for that. I pin things for the holidays. I was pinning like mini pumpkin pies today, like how awesome does that sound? Mini pumpkin pies, imagine that.
Stephanie Liu: Yes, if you guys like pies, go ahead and leave the comment pies please.
Peg Fitzpatrick: If pumpkin is your favorite, leave a message, leave a comment. If it's not your favorite, I will send you my grandmas pie recipe, and it's the best in the world. So, then you will eat pumpkin pie. But anyway, so it's really a place where you share personal things, but also it can be for your business. So not to confuse the two but, so you can have boards that are just for you or you could have boards that are like just for your business. People always ask me if I'm a business, should I have a separate one? Like, if you had one for you and one for your company, I don't have, I have everything on mine, because I'm not like, Coca Cola, I'm me, and then I have other things. So I just have those on separate boards. I feel like people really like to see more than one thing. The company that I manage, I have, they're a dry cleaning chemical company, which is a challenge, but there's a lot of different ways to connect because I have like a boho wedding board, which dry cleaners do wedding restoration wedding dresses and all those things, so it's very relevant. And so those boards are popular. I have dream closets, I have like, eco friendly house cleaning homemade things, like all different kinds of things. Recycle projects, those, and they all relate back to different aspects of the company. So that account has like maybe 600 followers, and I get like 40,000 impressions a month. I stay really targeted and really focused, and it does bring traffic back to our blog because of that.
Stephanie Liu: And so, okay, you guys listen, we had like this whole list of questions, but when you talk to Peg it's just like, wait, wait, wait, now I wanna learn more about this. So if you guys have questions, drop them in the comments, 'cause I'm about to fully geek out with her. Okay, so just the fact that you know one account is driving so much traffic to your blog, I'm assuming then that you are tracking the analytics, or you're using some type of like Google UTM parameters to say like, okay this is coming from this board, or this business account, and whatnot, is that right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I use a couple different things, I use Google analytics, yes you can see those in there. I will have to say, I don't add a UTM code to like, each pin that I do because, I just don't have that much time I have a lot, I pin like a lot of content from mine specifically, but I also have, Pinterest Analytics, which tells me a lot, and then I use Tailwind, which is my very favorite thing, and there's tons of analytics in there too. So I feel like I always have a handle on things because I check those, but yes, if you were managing it for a client and you were tracking a specific campaign or different things, you can 100% do UTM codes for every single pay in and all your important content, but you can find it through other analytics as well. Depends on how deep you are into it.
Stephanie Liu: Got it, got it, so we already have someone, jumping in here, Pam Brossman, you are new to the show, so wonderful to have you here. And she's asking Peg, how are you monetizing your pins and your boards? I'm assuming this probably has to deal with like affiliate marketing, is that something that you specialize in too?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, there's different ways that you can monetize your Pinterest, it depends on what your overall goals are. I do have some affiliate marketing that I do that I coordinate with blog content. So for example, I have Bluehost as someone that I do affiliates with. I love, I only do affiliate things for companies that I really love. I have to use them and really love them. Because if I'm telling you about it, that means that I'm giving you my word on that, that's important to me, like really important to me. So, and it should be if you're gonna do affiliate market. So if you wanna do, I mean it should be, you can make your mind up,to do, but yes you can do affiliate sales. You just have to make sure that you disclose everything, because that's really important on your website. And in your pins you would wanna say that it's sponsored. So I don't specifically monitor my Pinterest. For me, I'm a blogger, so my whole world rotates around PegFitzpatrick.com. It's like, that is like my planet, and then I have little things in my solar system.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, I love that analogy, you know what? I've always described it as like, social media's like my digital breadcrumbs, and if they want like the full buffet then they go to the website. But I love the planetary thing, okay.
Stephanie Liu: Right.
Stephanie Liu: Cool.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But that's, you know you have to decide what your home base is. There are some people who only have Instagram, and they only have Pinterest, but I will tell you, having your own home base on the internet is so important. Because, and the perfect example, which I already mentioned, is Google Plus, where I am a verified Google Plus-er, and I have like a million and a half followers there. And they're closing it.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, what are you gonna do, what are you gonna do? 'Cause Mike Alton was just like, you guys.
Peg Fitzpatrick: There's nothing you can do. But that's why Mike has a website. I mean, it stinks that you have, it stinks that you have all of that, but I have never put all my eggs in one basket. I mean, look at, let's talk about Vine. Shawn Mendes is famous, and we all know who he is today, because that kid made some great vines. And then they closed to it. Thank god he got the record deal first, right?
Stephanie Liu: Well and that's a good point too, because I had a Facebook Live broadcast, and then it accidentally got deleted 'cause of a Facebook glitch, and I was like, oh my goodness, that sucks. Fortunately though, I have ECam for my Facebook Live broadcast, and it kept the HD recordings. So instead of just re-uploading the video as if it was a live video, I went ahead and I snipped it, and I just made it into a four minute video, boom, boom, boom, this is what you gotta know, and that was perfect.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: So it wasn't lost. But that's always the thing, like you can't put all your eggs in someone else's basket. So I don't wanna, so there's a lot of ways that you can monetize Pinterest. You could have affiliate things, you could work with brands to create campaigns. But still that would to me lead all back to your blog. Because on Pinterest, you just have the image and a little bit of text. So, yes, if you had millions of followers on Pinterest you could get someone to pay to do that, but I've never had any brands reach out to me specifically only to do Pinterest.
Stephanie Liu: Oh interesting.
Peg Fitzpatrick: For a Pinterest--
Only campaign. But I've had, you know, like I've had that be part of the campaign. Like TJ Maxx for example, one of the best brands, I just love, raise your hand in comments if you love TJ Maxx and you would try to only go once a week, because if you don't you'll get too much stuff. I love TJ Maxx so much. They found me from my blog. They found my blog, and they did a Google search, and you know, my blog popped up. But I think it also was a Pinterest pin. I've gotten speaking engagements from Pinterest pins that have ranked really high in Google search. Pinterest pins can rank in Google search. You can rank through a pin. So I have one that's on how to do Pinterest marketing, and that's led to a lot of great things, because I wrote about that really early. I've gone back and updated the post, so there's different ways that you can earn money, like you know, it could be, you know, TJ Maxx that popped up higher in search, and they clicked on the website, they liked my website. So it's usually like a combination of things. And I don't just do affiliate, I'm not Pat Flynn, Pat Flynn makes about a zillion dollars. He's like the king of affiliate marketing. And--
Stephanie Liu: Yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Darren and Pat like cornered the market on making money from that. So good for you guys, I love you both. But I haven't, I don't make as much as they do from it, so it's not my biggest thing. So you could though, you could make money from that, or you could have an Etsy shop, you could have, if you create digital products, or anything like that, you could be on Creative Market, which is another one. You could do links to Creative Market, Creative Market also has affiliate programs, so you could find ways, if that's what you wanted to do, if you're not a creator, and you're not sure how to do it, you could start out doing that. Like you could create a really great Pinterest presence, you could talk about WordPress, blogging, and then you could sign up for Creative Markets affiliate program and then you could link to things in there and you would make money when people clicked on that. That actually, you know, my design blog, on my design boards on Pinterest do great. I have some do it yourself design blogs, and I pin a lot of things, I used to work with Canva way back in the day.
Stephanie Liu: Oh wow.
Peg Fitzpatrick: People didn't know what Canva was, I did, I kept it a secret, but then I actually worked there for a while. And so I've worked on Canva's Pinterest and my Pinterest, and they have like, I don't even know, I think their Pinterest is up to like a million, or 11 million impressions a month or something like that, it's insane, and guaranteed that drives business for them. But when I started, they were like, Pinterest doesn't do anything for us because it just doesn't work. They said Pinterest doesn't work. And I was like, typical me, if you guys knew me, Mike knows me, I'm stubborn, so if you tell me like, Pinterest doesn't work, I will make your Pinterest work.
Stephanie Liu: I love it, I love it.
Peg Fitzpatrick: At one point Mike told me Pinterest didn't work, and then I went and I gave him some unsolicited advice. which I do that with Jeff C also, Jeff gets a lot of my, hey Jeff, you know what you should do? But anyway, it does word for businesses, but you have to do it in the right way. And they had somebody that was pinning things, but she didn't really know, like she was doing and managing a ton of different things at the time. She didn't know all the things, and so with some quick updates, it immediately started getting traffic.
Stephanie Liu: Brilliant, okay, so one of the questions that we have so far Peg is, for someone that is a busy entrepreneur, right, like we've now opened up the floodgates in terms of this is what you can expect or this is the opportunity that Pinterest has to offer. So as the busy entrepreneur, how can you fit Pinterest into your schedule with creating your content, live streaming, repurposing it, pinning, and all that other stuff?
Peg Fitzpatrick: The best thing about Pinterest is it takes a lot less time than everything else does. Less time because, especially because you don't have to talk to people there at all, unless you wanted to. You don't have to comment, you don't have to respond to comments, you don't have to respond, like there's zero expectation of that at all. So they try to add some of those features in, and people just really were like, we already talk, I think everybody talks on Facebook Messenger. Like where do you guys talk to people? I'd love to know. I think Instagram messages and Facebook messages are still like super popular for people to talk to each other. Pinterest, I never talk to anybody there at all, and my Pinterest does great. So if you took all the time that you spend talking to people on Facebook out, imagine how much more time you would have just to do things.
That's--
Right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: You'd be so much more productive, that's how I feel like whenever I'm talking to the 360 Marketing Squad, like we're always sending each other gifs and whatnot. Okay, but you've talked a lot about tools that you're using that's making it really easy for you. And PS, by the way, if you guys are just joining, we're talking about Pinterest marketing tips, and one thing that I just wanna call out, because what blew my mind was Peg was just like, this is how many followers, or this is how much page impressions we're getting and how much traffic, but you don't need to have a lot of followers in order to make that happen, and I was just blown away. So, if you guys are tuning in, for sure, grab your pens, get your notebooks, because like, I'm sitting here trying to manage this show, but like, I need this! Okay, so let's talk about your tools--
Peg Fitzpatrick: We can give you a Pinterest makeover some time.
Stephanie Liu: I would love that.
Okay, let's talk about Tailwind, 'cause that was one of the tools that you had mentioned.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, so Tailwind is the tool that I love, there are a lot of tools now that you can pin things from them, but they don't work like Tailwind does, and they have like a system where you can repeat things easily. So, for example, you can go and you can create a schedule in Tailwind, you could just do one chunk. Like if you're focused, which you should be if you're a marketer, you know exactly where you wanna lead people, you spend your chunk of time doing your blog, you're doing your pins, you're creating like, okay, so we're taking this show for example. We're gonna turn it into a blog post, we're gonna pin the blog post, we're gonna make quotes from the pins, we're gonna like, create like a couple different ways to pin things. One of the things that people do is they do one thing, they don't do it the right size, so if you just make on tall image, that's gonna do a great job for you, but if you wanna excel, you could do more different kinds of things. Repurpose it in different ways. Like I know you had something that you did recently on how to repurpose your Facebook Live, so it's the same for Pinterest. So you could do one thing, and that' great, but if you wanna succeed, you just need to do a couple more. So if you chunk your time in Tailwind, you can create a whole bunch of different things for your specific blog, specific brand boards. I have probably 100 Pinterest boards, they are not all for my brand. Some are for a vacation, some are for recipes, some are for clothes inspiration. I use it for a whole bunch of different things. But I focus on my board that is my blog post, and then I have another one that's like, blogging tips, and I have some that are Pinterest tips, so those are like my focus that are gonna have my blog content on it, the most important. So I schedule things in those, and then I fill all the rest of the schedule in with like holiday things, seasonal things, and those are popular at all different times of the year. So one of the great things that I haven't mentioned at all is that Pinterest pins last a really long time, as opposed to tweets which are gone in like 10 or 15 minutes, and Facebook posts, and Instagram posts, like all those things disappear, or people delete your email. But Pinterest pins live on, and I have a great example, that I just got today in my email. One of the best things you could do is sign up for Pinterest email, which I never recommend that either, 'cause I hate getting email, but Pinterest has the best email out, and it's all like things, they send you pins that you might like, and the more you pin, every email, I like all the pins. I will go pick all the pins, they're so targeted, they're so good with watching what you do, and sending you things that you want. So it's very very helpful. But they also send out things like today I got one with November trends, so it's the beginning of November, and it has trends. So I'm gonna go fill my Pinterest Cue up for the month in Tailwind. This email had like eight different trends, and I can add those into boards that I already have, and then they'll be popular.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, I have an idea. Because, there, okay, I feel like everyone has their content calendar in terms of the themes that they have for specific months. So what if, what if you actually did keep all of the Pinterest emails, and then what if they actually, if you could reverse engineer their content calendar and be like okay, every November they talk about X, Y, Z. Every December they talk about X, Y, Z, and then you could just pre populate your boards, and then just be like okay, maybe I'll show up in the newsletter blast. That's a possibility right? You could do that.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You could actually, I was just trying to find it, but Tailwind already made that little calendar. But yes, that is an amazing idea. 'Cause even if you're just blogging, even if you're blogging or Facebook Live, say you're creating your Facebook Live. So you're creating your Facebook Live calendar for the month you could use their trends, and then you know that those are gonna be more popular, because they're already trending. So one example was a pin for essential oils. Those are so popular, everybody's talking about them, like do you use them, what do you use them for? And there was one that was immunity boosting essential oils. Which, we're getting into like, cold and flu season and everything, so I guess people, and it was like up 1000% for the year.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: And so I always like to see, well like what was so popular? So I clicked on it, clicked through to the blog post, and then I clicked on the pin, and it went to this one ladies pin and it was an Instagram post from somebody, who sells essential oils. So she had done an Instagram post in 2015, with a really cute ad, like, immunity boosting, just some like text from WordSwag or Canva or something, and it had like, it was a cute, like a little flat lay, but she had a really great description, and she was good. She had her email in there and her phone number for sales. And it wasn't like, but it was written very well it was like, hey, if you're worried about your immune system, blah, blah, blah like it wasn't salesy it wasn't pushy, but she did that Instagram post in 2015.
Stephanie Liu: That's insane.
Peg Fitzpatrick: And now she's gonna get a flood of traffic. I actually don't even know her, but I sent her a message on Instagram saying, hey, just so you know, your pin was featured. Now the interesting thing is she didn't actually pin that, somebody else pinned her Instagram post.
Stephanie Liu: Oh wow.
Peg Fitzpatrick: So she can't actually edit the pin or anything like that but if that happened to you, you could edit the blog post. So say for example if Mike Alton's blog post went viral. After he freaked out--
Stephanie Liu: About Google Plus.
Peg Fitzpatrick: He could always go back and edit that a little bit to add something else, like I did that for my Pinterest marketing blog post. I added like my Pinterest class, Pin It Like a Pro, I added my class at the bottom, in case hey, if you like this article, maybe you'd like, you know, obviously they might like more, right? So, yeah, it lasts a really long time. So that is just something, so if you're already on Instagram, you could create a board with all your Instagram content, or if you're already like, I do Instagram posts from my blog posts, I could pin those. So it's not the optimal size, but square is pretty close to the optimal size and nothing gets cropped or anything. So yeah, they just last so much longer. I have pins from years and years ago, that still bring lots of traffic to my blog. Some of them aren't even, oh gosh, I just saw one the other day that was like, I wrote it so long ago, it's such a bad blog post, but it was like, How to Have a Positive Happy Day. Like it was just supposed to be happy, it was like barely any writing, and it has like thousands or repins.
Stephanie Liu: Wow, that's amazing.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Because people liked it. So thousands of, from years ago, I think I even wrote that one in like 2011.
Stephanie Liu: Very cool, okay, alright, so we talked about, but I'm like, my face hurts because I'm just smiling so much and obviously all the comments are just people are like oh my god, I'm taking notes too! Okay, so we talked about Tailwind, is that the only tool that you're using right now for scheduling and--
Peg Fitzpatrick: It's the only one I use for Pinterest. There are other ones that you can use, Buffer has it, but honestly there's a lot of features in Tailwind besides just the fact that I love their schedule. You could, so say you do what I said, and you go and you do your chunk, or your big group of your brand important things, then you're filling it in with other content. They have a little button so you can just shuffle it all. And then it mixes it. So it won't like, all of Stephanie's things in a row, it'll have like Stephanie's blog post, Instagram post, it'll have trip to Italy, like it mixes it all up. So when people go, 'cause you don't want your pins to be like all yours.
Stephanie Liu: That's true, yeah, 'cause there's also trends, right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Pardon me?
Stephanie Liu: There's also tribes, do we wanna talk about tribes a little bit?
Peg Fitzpatrick: So yeah, getting into other things there, there are tribes, so it's kind of like Triber, which was, I don't even know if people use Triber anymore, but it's kind of like a way to join a group of people, and then you can share content. So you can have tribes that, like you can start one and invite people, I have one that's Instagram Tribe and it's only to share Instagram content. I have other boards that people have invited me to, that are like Pinterest boards, or just social media boards, so I'm always really picky to make sure that like people are actually sharing in them, that they're not just blasting their stuff, that it's monitored, you want tribes that are focused, 'cause you wanna be able to go in there and find great things, it's a quick way to add other content. And you're helping people. So if I share your things, you might share my things. It's reciprocal. That's kind of like the community building aspect, and that's how you connect with people, is if you like them, share some of their things on your pins and they'll notice if they start getting repins. So there's tribes and then there's another thing that I'm totally blanking out on the name for, but it's where you can just--
Stephanie Liu: Oh it's the smart thingy that they just did, right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, it had a different name on it. There's a feature in there where you can add your blog content and then it just repeats it on a certain, evergreen content.
Stephanie Liu: But you were saying earlier, you could create your one image, and then pin that, but go a step further and create different versions of your pins. Do you have like a shortcut tool that could help you do that Or are you just creating a Canva template, and then you're just duplicating it, swapping photos, testing different things, like what's your recommendation?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I do a couple different things, so I do have Canva, I've used Canva for so long, that I have so many blog posts in there, what I do is I like to use my analytics, and I go back to see which pins were popular, what styles got repinned and then I'll reuse that template. So kind of like, testing your own content, like did this image do well? 'Cause sometimes you might do a tweak or something, and it's like, people didn't really repin it, it wasn't popular, so I wouldn't repeat that kind. I also use Easil, I don't know if you've used Easil. Shout out to Annette, 'cause she left a comment saying, that she was thinking of coming to watch this. But Easil, they're so nice, they made some templates for me, so I have some custom ones that they made. Theirs has a lot of different features in it, that I don't use yet, 'cause it's like a little bit more complicated, but it has more layers and more things, but you can create really unique content, so, I like to use Canva and Easil, and what I'll do is I'll make a great pin, and then you could also repurpose that as an Instagram story, you can resize it.
Stephanie Liu: That's very cool, okay, so I, so as you've been mentioning the different platforms, so shout out to Tailwind, we showed their website, now I have Easil on here, so she'll get her love and her shout out. So you were saying Easil is the one that kinda has all these different templates that you can use? Aside from Canva?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, and you can make gifs in there too, so you can make gifs of your things and you can share the gifs on Pinterest. You can pin gifs, so you could make something a little animated. So say for example you wanted to do like, it's not, Pinterest is not great for like an announcement for something, like for example, we were gonna be live, so I was on Instagram Story saying, hey, I'm gonna be live, come join me, but you wouldn't do that on Pinterest because things take a little bit longer to travel around, and you want timely good things. So it's not great for announcements, it's great for longterm evergreen content. So when the blog post is live, and you want people to go watch it later, you could make a gif. But you could make a little gif from the video and you could like, so there's different things you can do. There's like fun things that a lot of people aren't doing. Gifs are fun, they move a little bit, and you know, we like motion, right?
Stephanie Liu: So if you were to do a gif would it be like the square or would you try to create like a tall gif? Like what are some--
Peg Fitzpatrick: Well you could create, you can create, say you make your, okay, so you're in Easil and you make the tall image, right? Then you could just move around a couple of the elements on it, I've don't that before too like, little arrows like moving. And then when people see it, it's like an image, with just a couple little, I'll share one that I made, I'll find one and share it in the comments. So people can see, but you can just make a graphic and just animate like, a couple things in it. You could do, hey Stephanie, and you could put, and it could be like a little moving hey, you know? So you can do that, you just copy down the pages. They have a little tutorial I'll share. Easil has a tutorial for making gifs in there, on their website. They have a great blog that shows how to use their stuff. I like to try to do, which I'm sure, I know you do the same for Facebook. You like to try to be on the cutting edge of what's out there, not repeating and rinsing. So if you have other ideas that you have done, by all means you guys, try 'em, if you see people are repinning 'em, keep at it, it's just important that you add content. Most things on Pinterest are repins. So if you create something new, people are gonna love it, and repin it. I always try to, you know, impart that in people, just make some new things and pin them. Make sure that your blog is shareable. Social Warfare is a plugin that works great. You can add the big image into the plugin if you don't wanna have a big image at the top of your blog post, if you want it buried. Tasty Pins is another one. So there's ways that you can just make it easy for people to share. You wanna make sure when people come to your website if they click the Pinterest button, check your blog, what pops up? Are ads popping up? Because people are not gonna pin an ad. Is a bad image popping up? Is no image popping up? It's almost 2019 people, you need to have a good image or people aren't gonna share it. It's just not gonna happen. Social sharing is down a huge amount as it is. So you really need to optimize your content and make it so when people hit the share button, when it goes somewhere it looks great. So check the pin, the little pin extension in Chrome and see what comes up on your website. You might wanna get rid of some things. I used to have some things in the side bar that would like pop up, and you would think, well people would do that, but they would pin like the wrong sized image or something weird. So you gotta, I know, I'm like, why did you pin this small image? Why did you pin the blog header image, that's not the good one people. But people are gonna pin what comes up if they like it. So make sure that you have a big image there for them, but I always start out, when I publish a blog post, I go to Pinterest, and I pin it there first, to get it going, and then people can repin it. So with Tailwind, I can hit the pin button and share it, and then I can schedule it into some tribes with one click, and then I could put it into my evergreen thing, that it's gonna repeat forever on a certain board, and then it's just gonna keep rollin', keep rollin'.
Stephanie Liu: That's brilliant.
Stephanie Liu: And I just had--
Peg Fitzpatrick: To do it once. That's just one pin so.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, so one question that we have from Pam so far is, when you're designing pins, do you find that your animated gifs perform better than your regular images or do you just split test it and figure out what works best for your brand?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I haven't done a huge amount of gifs. I tested it. I can't say that they were more popular, because I have pins that are graphics that have been on there for so long, and sometimes you just get one pin that keeps going on and on and on, and those are graphics. But I mean it could be a gif at some point, but so far I haven't necessarily noticed a huge up surge in traffic from them, but I still am willing to try stuff.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I mean I'm super excited to try out Easil, and do the animated gifs just to see if that'll get more people to pin, a lot of the Pinterest images that I'm working on, wow. Okay, so wonderful, I love all these ideas, I'm like, in my mind, I'm like I need to get a transcript for this episode, turn this into a blog post. Get all those different apps, 'cause this sounds brilliant. PS by the way I just wanna give a shout out to Pam who's been asking a ton of questions, we have I who's in here, Mike Alton of course. So again, if you guys have any questions about Pinterest marketing, this is the time to do it, because you could either engage with Peg right now, or you could chase her down the hallways at Social Media Marketing World, 'cause I know I will as soon as I see her. So one thing that I also wanted to ask you is what about group boards? How do you know if a group board is good or if it's spammy and you know, does that actually help out entrepreneurs and bloggers?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Good question, they actually are really good, but they could be really bad. So it is important to make sure that you only join boards that you know, you can tell really quickly if it's spammy content, if you go into the Pinterest board and it's just all the same person pinning their blog content everything that they pinned goes onto your Pinterest presence.
Stephanie Liu: Oh, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: So, you have to think about that, do I like the content that they have? 'Cause if you're on a group board, when you go to your, when I go to Stephanie's Pinterest presence, that group board is gonna show there. So you need to make sure that they represent what you want your Pinterest to represent. So it's a little tricky that way, that being said when you're in the right group boards you can get tons of more repins. I'm in some really really great boards, there's some mom bloggers that I met on Google Plus, which I never would have met them anywhere else, and they invited me to a couple of their better blogging boards, which that was kind of the only, their other stuff is all like kids crafts, and kids recipes, and really amazing stuff, and they have amazing Pinterest accounts. And they invited me to their boards where I was relevant, and I'm so lucky because they get more repins because of that.
Stephanie Liu: Oh wow.
Peg Fitzpatrick: So yeah, when you get the right ones. And never just think, well if they're, this person isn't relevant to me because I'm this and they're that, like, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Connect with people who are interesting and doing great stuff. I actually learned a lot from people who are doing different things on Facebook, and you know, Mommy bloggers, for some reason got a bad rap, but I'll tell you what, they make a lot of money.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah they do, yeah they do, and daddy bloggers are stepping into the arena too. So that's amazing.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Which they should, because why should it just be mom bloggers, dad bloggers, dads need to do 50% of this stuff, right?
Stephanie Liu: That's true. Okay, so how do you find these group boards? I mean, I feel like a couple of people have reached out to me, which I thought was great, but I was like how do I find them? Are there certain tools that you're using? Is it manual? Do you reach out to them? How do you even go about the process of, okay I want to now participate in a group board because Peg told me so. What do I do now?
Peg Fitzpatrick: So there's a couple of different ways that you can do that. Some I found, like looking on my Pinterest Analytics, if somebody pins something from my boards and it started getting a lot of repins, I looked at the board to see where it was. And it was on a group board that was getting a lot of interaction. So sometimes the group boards will have at the top, accepting new applications, like the profile, send me a message, and ask to be on the board. If they're open, people are really open about it. Some of them have so many people on it they're like, this is closed, no more people. 'Cause the people who are monitoring them, some people are spending a lot of time, talking to the people like don't pin this, don't pin this, you know, they want tall images. People are very particular because it does go on their Pinterest presence, as I already said. So they're used to be a website called PinGroupie, I'm not 100% sure if that's still around. PinGroupie.com, you could search that for types of boards. And you could also just look on Pinterest. But the best ones that I found, were people who had been pinning similar things to me. And they had repinned my stuff, and I found it that way. 'Cause there's a thing, you can see, it says boards that have pinned your boards. Boards that have the most pins on. There's a lot of great stuff on Pinterest, you can see who's pinned your stuff the most, and what boards they're on. So you can do a little research and say, oh, well this person, this board's doing really well, so then you can ask, and no one's ever said to me no, I don't want you on my board. I have, you know, you do get the random people that invite you to boards, most of those are not really, like the right kind of fit for me. And companies can do group boards too. I'm on, let's see, I'm on a couple group boards, I'm on one with HubSpot, 'cause I was doing something with HubSpot. I can't even remember, I have a couple of other ones. And Canva's done a ton, Canva is a good example, they are on a whole bunch of group boards now, helping their stuff get a lot more pins. You just have to make sure, you know, check back on all of them every once in a while, you can't just leave 'em and not do anything, and then also you wanna make sure that you're actively pinning your content to those boards too. But once you have that, you can set up a little thing in Tailwind, so every time you had a Facebook Live video, you could pin it in your brand board and then it could go in a couple of the other ones that were related, and then you can spread it out over time, they have interval. So you could pin it into five things with one click and then it would schedule them out like every three days.
Stephanie Liu: I love that, I love that, and I'm all about that. And that's all through Tailwind?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, I need to revisit Tailwind, because obviously I'm not using it to it's fullest extent. Which is why I was like super excited to have you on the show, 'cause it sounds like you are focused on your website, making that your main hub, and then Pinterest is your go to in terms of driving that traffic. And so realistically, how much time do you spend on Pinterest?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Not as much as I should, I barely spend any time there, for real, I hardly spend any time there at all.
Stephanie Liu: What does that mean, hardly any time?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Some days I don't even go there. And last night I just happened to go at the end of the day, like literally, I don't spend, I'm being honest, like, I probably spend, and sometimes I tell myself, Peggy, what are you doing? If you look at your blog traffic, where are you spending your attention? I should tell myself, spend, if Instagram is giving me 10% of my blog traffic, and Pinterest is giving me 60%, why am I spending more time on Instagram?
Stephanie Liu: True, true, true. Okay, so then--
Peg Fitzpatrick: So literally I don't, I'm being 100% honest, I barely spend any time on Pinterest. I pin very every time I see stuff to go on there, I put it in Tailwind to make sure I always have stuff scheduled out, and then I pin things live to like from my phone every once in a while, like, usually when I'm going in, if it's for business, it's great just to be able to go and do the Tailwind. If you go on to Pinterest, you know, you might end up start looking at stuff--
Stephanie Liu: Down a rabbit, that's exactly what I was going to ask you I was gonna ask, you know, do you get dinged if you're only using Pinterest from the Tailwind perspective? Are they sneaking on your profile to say no, no, no, she hasn't even logged into Pinterest, she hasn't done anything manual?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I don't think they actually do. But I tend to just do some on my phone too with it, 'cause I'm not 100% sure that that's true, but Tailwind is an official Pinterest partner, so everything that they do is up and up with Pinterest, so.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, okay, cool. So it's funny because Curtis just asked the question, he's like, no, no, no you gotta be specific, is it two hours or three hours, like how much time?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I don't even spend two or three hours, literally if you wanna count per day, probably 15 minutes. And it should be two or three hours, I know. For real, you don't have to spend that much time. But I mean, when I have a blog post, when I'm doing a blog post, I do spend time making my image, making the great graphic, and then writing the Pinterest description, and adding hashtags, which we didn't talk about yet, but.
Stephanie Liu: Oh yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: We'll see if we have time for that. So literally, the time for me that's put in the most is when I make my blog post making great Pinterest graphics and then I also sometimes make, I like to make inspirational quote graphics to go for my boards. 'Cause people really like those, and I really like them. I like quotes as a boost, you know, start your day off or your nights.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah. Okay, so we talked about when you have a blog post and you wanna create different pins for it you could do animated graphics, you could use tools like Easil, you could schedule it, you could use SmartLoop on Tailwind, but if you're in a group board, are they gonna look down on you if you are creating five different versions of the same blog post or are they just like, no, no, no you can only pin it once? And then--
Peg Fitzpatrick: I've only pinned, I would normally only pin it to a group board or in a tribe just one instance of the blog post.
Stephanie Liu: Got it.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You don't wanna be that person that's like, oh and here is my blog. They're all bloggers, they all see the link, they all see that it's going to the same place. I would not like it if people did that in my group boards, so I don't do that. For the group boards and those things, I only pin one instance usually. Unless I create something else that I really love, or if it's like a really long time lapse in between, you could go into the group board and see like, is there a ton of content going there? Is anybody gonna care that two months ago I added this blog post? If it's way down no ones even gonna see it. So in that case you could do it again. But in the same day, I wouldn't.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, so don't be that person.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You don't wanna abuse your group boards, because honestly if you get into a group board, say you're just, you have like a thousand followers, and like I put you in my group board and I have like 35,000 followers, you wanna respect that, you know what I mean? You wanna respect your group boards, 'cause that can give you a lot of new followers, and a lot of new eyeballs, a lot of new people, so I err on the side of being a really great board member, I don't over pin, I always pin other things from there. If I go to the boards and they're really like, I never like anything there or it's not really a good fit anymore, then I'll just leave the board.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You know, like, and then just focus on, so when I am spending time there, Who was it Georgia--
Stephanie Liu: Georgia said Curtis--
Peg Fitzpatrick: Okay, so Curtis, if you have time to spend an hour a day on Pinterest, God bless you, and I would focus on you know, rearranging your boards for the holidays, so an hour in November and December, move your Halloween boards down, organize your stuff, put your top boards at the top, if you have any holiday content put that in your rotating five boards at the top, so when people come they see really great content, and then make pins, make new pins for your blog post. That's the thing is like, unless you're, I only publish like once a week, and honestly I've been so busy with work that I haven't even been able to do that. So if you're doing new content all the time, add new pins all the time, if you're not creating new content, go find out your top post and just make more new ones for your old ones. Just make 'em different, add different images, there's so many different ways that you can just keep the fire burning. I like to go back, like I said, and look to see what the top posts were that people had pinned, sometimes I'll repin them. 'Cause sometimes the top pins from your content, like the one I gave as an example earlier, she didn't even repin that, she didn't even add that to Instagram. That was just somebody who followed her on Instagram, pinned it, and now like three years later, she's getting traffic from that, but she didn't even pin that. So sometimes people are pinning those. So if I was her, if I was that girl, I would be pinning that thing everywhere. I would do everything I can to just fan, I always fan the flame, anything that I find that's like popular or doing well, I'll add a link to that pin. So there's a lot, we haven't even talked about that. There's so many ways--
Stephanie Liu: I know, that, okay--
Peg Fitzpatrick: Can bring people to your pins, so if you have a great pin, if I was that girl, you could add an email that was going out, that we could just put a little PS. PS, oh my god, I can't believe it, Pinterest featured my Instagram. If that was me I would be dying. 'Cause guaranteed Stephanie, that's gonna lead to direct sales for her. Pinterest sent out an email. Pinterest, I don't even know how many millions of people are on their email list.
Stephanie Liu: I'm about to stalk their email list, I'm just gonna like, every--
Peg Fitzpatrick: It's the best email, it is.
Stephanie Liu: Everything about live streaming, I'm just gonna subscribe to their emails, and just be like what is your content calendar? And just like reverse engineer it, and figure out what people are putting out there.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, and I'll put in a link for Tailwinds too, so you can get their, what trends every year, 'cause it's--
Stephanie Liu: Yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: And one of the things that's really different is it's very early, like right now Thanksgiving, some things are trending, but honestly it's been trending for like two months already. Pinners are planners. They plan everything out really early. So Christmas has been, like that started, like I swear to god it was like August. People were like pinning, 'cause I have a couple boards that are, I have like a homemade love for Christmas, it's like homemade Christmas crafts and ornaments and things like that, and every year it gets popular. I have a Thanksgiving pin that every year just gets really popular, so it's the only place that things just pop back up. I know that--
I know the tweet from 2015 is popping up.
Stephanie Liu: So it sounds like, okay, yeah like Christmas is 30 days from now and whatnot, but it sounds like people were pinning earlier because they wanna get social proof and get featured, is that what you're saying?
Peg Fitzpatrick: A lot of people are just really using it to okay, so here's the thing, Michael's, if you drive by Michael's, their parking lot has already been full for a couple months, 'cause they're actually making stuff. People are there buying stuff to make it. So people are really planning their lives, when people make things for the holidays, they're way already into that right now. It's November, if you're making all your Christmas cards, you have to start early. I make all my Christmas cards.
Stephanie Liu: What?
Peg Fitzpatrick: You have to, I know. I stamp 'em all, I glitter them, I do all of it. I used to do it a lot, but you have to start really early. So a lot of the people are actually makers and creators. So things just go early. And that's a little bit different you, for Twitter, you're not gonna start tweeting about stuff for Christmas in August and September, people are gonna be like no, what are you doing? But on Pinterest, you can pin that Christmas tree any time of year.
Peg Fitzpatrick: No one's gonna judge you.
Peg Fitzpatrick: For Christmas, it's your place.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, so let's talk about these hashtags. So I've got your hashtag freebie on your site, up behind me.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Oh yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Because Terry was like all, three exclamation points, tell us about hashtags! So let's talk about that.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, a hashtag, okay, so when Pinterest came out, and for the first eight years it existed, they said don't use hashtags. And so I used to tell people, don't use it, 'cause they told you that it could hurt your pins and that algorithm. So I never ever used hashtags, and then they came out and they said, well, maybe we'll start using hashtags now. And I had like three days where I was like hyperventilating I was like, what about my old pins, what's gonna happen?
Stephanie Liu:Yeah, how do you edit all of those? I mean did you have to do it all manually?
Peg Fitzpatrick: You have to do it manually, but I didn't go back and edit them all, I was like, you know what? I can't even do that, like that's impossible. So I did my top 20 pins, and then I just worked forward. So hashtags, they say that you can use up to 20, they say, like use the 20. But it's more important that you pick good hashtags then having more hashtags, just like Instagram. You can use 30, but if you don't have 30 good ones, that aren't really targeted to your post, what's the point? So on Pinterest, again you want to, you can create hashtag groups, and reuse them so you could create a couple hashtags, you could create a hashtag group for each board, so say you have three main brand boards, Stephanie's blog, Stephanie's Facebook Lives, and hire Stephanie, because she's the best at Facebook Lives those are your three brand pages.
Stephanie Liu: I'm like, what, on like Post-it note, you guys.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You need a big one. You can create a hashtag group for each one, and then just cut and paste it into your pins when you do them to make it easy on yourself. So I like to use Trello, do you use Trello at all?
Stephanei Liu: I use the Asana App, but same concept, right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Okay, I'm obsessed with Trello, I have so many boards on Trello. So I have hashtag boards on Trello that have like, just cards with hashtags. So just create hashtags group for your boards, and then you can just cut and paste 'em. So do the work once, and then make sure you save it, and then it makes easier. So just the same as Instagram. So you just wanna make sure, you could have the name of the board, and then just think about things that are trending, you could go through that trending catalog. It's fall y'all, or pumpkin spice, depending on what things you're pinning, and then just create your hashtag groups, cut and paste it, and so it's not rocket science. If you've been pinning for a while, you could do what I did, go into Google Analytics, find your top pins and add the hashtags in there. I do some that, you know, and immediately saw results for them, like at Instagram 101 was a, I think it was even a Google Plus hangout that I did or something, but I turned it back into a blog post and everything, and I rank high for some things like Instagram 101, and beginning Instagram, because I use hashtags on those. So, they're important for your pins, when you click on it I think you see the most recent hashtag results. So it helps with, keeps things current and relevant, so it's an interesting mix up, things that were newly pinned, and then sometimes you'll just see things that have been there for a long time.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, wow, okay. I'm like still trying to take notes and run the show. Oh my god, I love this. And shout out to Mike Alton who is dropping the links for all of Peg's guides, the website, Tailwind, Easil, all this stuff, you are the man. So you guys, we've been talking for almost an hour now Peg, seriously, like I could talk to you forever, Like I want to message you everyday and just be like, this is what I'm doing.
Peg Fitzpatrick: You can.
Stephanie Liu: So go ahead and check out Peg's website, because there's so much in here, I'm diving headfirst into this, and going to just have my buffet of, of Pinterest info, but I was going to ask you, and god, now the question is kind of escaping me. Darn it, I'll have to ask you again, in fact you guys, if you have any questions too, and you're watching the replay, hashtag replay, just drop them in the comments because Peg has solely been focused on just like looking at the camera, and not even looking at the comments, but she said that she'll go ahead and ask those too. Okay, so going back to Pinterest. Okay, I'm all in, you've officially convinced me that like, sorry Instagram.
Peg Fitzpatrick: I still like Instagram too, it's just, if you're looking for blog traffic or click throughs, honestly, Pinterest is just better, for everyone. Everybody that puts their effort into it, it ends up paying off, I am not, no exaggeration at all, everybody that's followed the things that I tell them for Pinterest gets more traffic. It's just, it's not that hard, that's the thing, that maybe it seems like it, honestly it's so much easier. Facebook, you have to know so much, and hustle, and you know, answer the questions, and make sure that they're fast enough, or your page will get down ranked, and then this change, and Pinterest is like, all your stuff just keeps going out, and you're like oh hey, forget to go to Pinterest today, still pinned. It's so good.
Stephanie Liu: I'm like literally sitting here like, what have I been doing with my life? Why I have not been pinning? Okay, so, you do majority of your pinning anyway on your phone, is that how you do?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, I do a variety, I mean, because it is like a big, a lot of big blog traffic for me, I do, I use it for reference, I use it for so many things like, inspiration I'm looking for ideas, I use it a lot on desktop, but like at night I just like to pin. Sometimes the last thing I'll do is go through stuff, I check my boards, see what Mike pinned, see what Jock pinned, I just see what my friends are pinning and I just like to see what's going on. It's interesting. Instagram's the same, you know how you're just scrolling through and, then they do suck me in with their emails too, I have to say, their email, like, we found 20 pins that you'll like on mini pumpkin pies. And I'll be like, I think, I never heard of a mini pumpkin pie, now I really do want it.
Stephanie Liu:I kind of want one now too. I'm like, why am I all the sudden so hungry and thirsty, and just
Peg Fitzpatrick: I know, but here's the thing I've found. Okay, I always make regular pies, but somebody took like the biscuit cutter, and they did this, they took it into the pie, and they just cut out these perfectly round circles of pumpkin pie and then they did cool whip, so it looks like a fancy restaurant dessert that was, and I was like, who thought of that? I mean I don't know what happens to the rest of the pie, I'm assuming that your husband just eats it.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, you know, okay, we did do that, 'cause my husband made this tres leches cake, and then he made all the layers, and then he would, we have like this Minnie Mouse cookie cutter thing, and so he cut that out for our daughter, and then he just ate the crumbs.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Right, right? Can't go to waste, but yeah, I do it on my phone when it's just me away from the computer I count that as not computer time. That's what I tell myself. But I do use it on desktop too, and then of course, because I write about it and talk about it, I'm always like, you know what I mean? A little bit more desktop just because it's my job too, you know?
Stephanie Liu:Yeah, okay, I remembered my question, and I have to ask you, 'cause if I don't ask it, I'm gonna pull my hair, okay. So if we are creating all these different pins for let's say, one blog post, but sometimes, those other versions don't fit in with our brand guidelines, but they're like the top performing pins, would you still take that pin and embed it into your blog post or would you only keep the one that fits in with your brand colors and all that other stuff?
Peg Fitzpatrick: That's a good question. It depends on your blog, like how strict is your blog, 'cause you could, there's different things you can do, you can embed the pin, like you just mentioned, you can pin it and then go back and embed it, and there's, you know, if you have some that are doing well, you could even create a blog post, like top three holiday pins, for example, and put 'em, embed 'em so they're in there. I make all my pins on brands. So that's hard for me to answer.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, okay, I asked because, for the client I was telling you about, for Two Dads With Baggage, she would usually design like, five to 10 different pins per blog post, and sometimes she was just like, Stephanie we're just gonna test it out and see if this font color, or you know, this type face is going to work better, and sometimes it's the ones that I'm like, no, no one's gonna pin that, but they pin it! And I'm like, oh crap, if I actually put this on this site, client will just be, no, I don't want that. So I was curious on what your thoughts were.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Right, well, in that case if it's really off brand, and they're blog is super strict on all their things, then I wouldn't.
Stephanie Liu: Got it.
Peg Fitzpatrick: 'Cause that's important to them, and they have their brand. But that being said, even on my own blog, I've gone through, I started blogging in 2011, so I don't even know how many makeovers I've had, but it's been several, so if you go back, there's still gonna be different ones on there, you know what I mean, like, different ones, different styles, so it's not the end of the world. I try to stay on brand, I mean, if that was the case, and you had one that was super popular, maybe it would have their branded graphic at the top and the pin down at the bottom if you loved this, pin this. So it wouldn't be the first pin that you saw, it could still have all their on brand stuff, and maybe just surrounded enough with other stuff, so it, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Stephanie Liu: Okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But that's a good question, that's a good question, but it's a tough question. I would say if they're really strict with their brand guidelines, then I would just do them different ones for Pinterest. And I think that's fine. I mean, I do it all the time, like I said, I changed different things to make 'em a little, you know, if you're doing 10 different versions, you can't make 'em all look the same.
Stephanie Liu: That's true, yeah. That's why I was wondering, 'cause yeah, she would change the border colors, the type fonts, and maybe like a different image, and so, yeah, okay.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Sometimes the title's different, sometimes the title's the same, so, I think it's good to test, because you know, sometimes exactly what you said, sometimes the one that you think, same with headlines for blog posts, sometimes you'll tweak something and then it will be really popular and you'll be like, that's the one I didn't think was gonna be popular, right? Doesn't that always happen?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Well, and it's always funny too, 'cause sometimes I feel like the tweet that has the typo is the one that gets retweeted the most, and you're like no.
Stephanie Liu: I know, and then you're like, do I edit it, or not edit it?
Stephanie Liu: Do I delete it, 'cause it's already been retweeted. Okay, yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Nope, not if it really got popular. Then you just every time you look at it, you have to remind yourself, yes, check things before you hit send.
Stephanie Liu: Well, okay, so what about editing your pins? Do you ever go back, okay, so we talked about, you found out that hashtags you can now add hashtags, so you're like okay, I'll do my top ones. Do you do any other editing like, what if you changed your blog URL? Can you go back and fix that or is it just kind of--
Peg Fitzpatrick: You can, you can edit the URL, and you can edit the description. If they're popular, I try not to change anything, except for maybe I would add hashtags. I don't wanna mess with it if it was already popular. You know what I mean?
Stephanie Liu:Yeah.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But if you found something that was the bad link for some reason, like if the blog post was gone or something like that, like, I had, a horror story, I had a VA that worked for me that deleted a bunch of my blog posts. And they weren't a popular pins.
Stephanie Liu:What'd you do?
Peg Fitzpatrick: I got 'em all back, so. I fixed, I found a way to fix them so they linked, it was, believe me, at first I was like what? I freaked out, but in that case, I found out because the pins weren't leading to any, it led to a 404. And I was like, that does not lead to a 404, that's a good pin. But if it was an instance where I changed the URL or, I don't know, if you changed something, you could actually fix that. You could go in and edit the URL on it. But, I think, in general, like I know on Instagram for sure, if you go back and make a typo and you edit it, it kills the algorithm immediately.
Stephanie Liu: Does it?
Stephanie Liu: Yes, do you do that?
Peg Fitzpatrick: No, I've never done that, but I've heard some, you know, other gurus say, you do your post, you do your hashtags in your captions, and then 30 minutes later you go in and you change it again.
Peg Fitzpatrick: No, that used to be the thing before they, if you edit any things. If you have a typo in there and you go in and fix it, the post will, it's almost dead in the water. That's my unofficial, yeah. It does, so if you make a typo, don't change it for like 24 hours. Because, they got sick of people doing that, going back and editing and changing.
Stephanie Liu: I know, people have time for that.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, for Instagram they do, it's their whole thing, that some people that, they just have Instagram. And they're probably making tons of money if they're really successful, so it's worth it. But not anymore, because even, people used to do it in the comments too, they would put a hashtag group and then delete it, and then go back and do another one and then delete it, but Instagram is on to all the games.
Stephanie Liu: Oh my goodness. So when that blog post mishap happened to you, how were you alerted that you had the 404 error? Was there something in Tailwind where it gave you some type of like inspection?
Peg Fitzpatrick: You know what, I can't even remember how I initially found it. It was just like, I think I clicked on a pin and, I check things, like something was there, and I clicked on it or something, and it didn't have the rich pin on it or something, like there's rich pins, which we didn't get to, we don't have time to talk about but--
Stephanie Liu: We don't, no.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Rich pins are, give that bold type on there, of the title, and that means that your blog is verified on Pinterest. And they know your sites a good site. And like, the rich pin wasn't there or something, and I was just like wait a minute, why isn't that? So I clicked and it was a 404, so I just found out. And it was so many posts. That's like a whole other bad long story, but it was like maybe 20 or more posts they deleted.
Stephanie Liu: Oh god, that sounds so painful.
Peg Fitzpatrick: It was, but I fixed it, so it's not as bad. But if I hadn't figured out how to fix it, it would have been really bad. 'Cause they were 100% deleted off my website.
Stephanie Liu: God, that breaks my heart.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But you can actually fix that.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, that's true, okay--
Peg Fitzpatrick: Horrible, and who knows how long like, how much blog traffic I lost or, Google juice or whatever.
Stephanie Liu: That's true, that's true.
Peg Fitzpatrick: But I don't think about that.
Stephanie Liu: Okay, if you guys are like geeking out as much as I am and just in love with Peg, please go ahead and give us some likes, give us some hearts, give us some shares, because she has dropped so much information, and Peg, it's literally been an hour now, and I don't wanna take so much time out of your day, but you've been amazing. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna go ahead and put the camera on you, and then I'm gonna show off your website. So is there anything that you want me to click on here so people can learn more about you? There's literally people in here that are freaking out.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Just, you know, if you guys wanna sign up for, I have the ever email, but if you sign up for an email, I'll send things out occasionally. Or I do have a Pinterest hashtag guide that's really awesome if you guys wanna learn how to create a Pinterest strategy, which I highly recommend, you could do that. Or you can just, you know, pin my blog posts, that's happy. If you guys wanna learn more about Pinterest, I do I have some great Pinterest boards on Pinterest. Like, how to use Pinterest, all things Pinterest. I have one that's like Pinterest tips for success, so I do have some carefully curated articles on Pinterest on Pinterest
Stephanie Liu: I love it, and they look so gorgeous, you designed all of this, is that right?
Peg Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I did my own website. I love my website.
Stephanie Liu: Yeah, your website is legit.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Thank you.
Stephanie Liu: Alright Peg, well thank you so much for your time this has been absolutely amazing, you guys for sure I'm gonna get this video, this interview transcribed. It'll be in the blog post, this is the one where I'm like, I will pony up a dollar a minute just to capture every single word that Peg just said.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Awesome.
Stephanie Liu: So thank you so much for your time, again, if you guys have any questions, go ahead and drop them in the comments, but if you wanna get started, 'cause I know I'm gonna geek out, head over to her website, PegFitzpatrick.com, and Mike Alton will be a doll, 'cause he'll go ahead and just type that in the comments for me. So having said that, we'll go ahead and say bye. Peg, thank you so much, you have been absolutely amazing.
Peg Fitzpatrick: Thank you for having me, and hey to everybody, I will come back and check the comments after. So, thanks for watching.
Stephanie Liu: Alright, bye you guys! Bye, take care!
Struggling to drive organic traffic to your site?
Or wondering how you can grow your email list without burning a hole in your pocket?
Me too!
That's why I've invited Pinterest expert and co-author of best-selling book The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users, Peg Fitzpatrick to Lights, Camera, Live so she could share her secrets with us.
To watch the interview, click the play button on the video at the top of this post.
Now let’s dive into some of the amazing tips that Peg had to share on the show.
Why does Peg recommend spending more time on Pinterest than on other social media channels?
Fans, followers, subscribers - who cares! Yes you can build a following on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on but you know what’s really going to drive traffic?
Pinterest.
Unlike other social media platforms where you have to hustle to get organic reach, Peg thinks that Pinterest is easier. Once you’ve pinned your content, it keeps getting shared. If you forget to log on to Pinterest one day, that’s okay - your content is still pinned so it’s all good.
“Pinterest pins rank in Google search and you can rank through a pin!”
Why should you build your own home base?
But what if you’re trying to build your authority - aren’t you supposed to be omnipresent?
When it comes to building your brand online, Peg recommends making your website your home base. It’s the one place you own online and your audience knows where to find you. Plus, you never know what might happen to that shiny new social media platform in a few years - anyone remember Vine? #RIP
As someone who recently had a live stream “accidentally” get deleted on Facebook, Peg’s comment really resonated with me. I freaked when Facebook took down my live stream but it was okay because Ecamm kept a recording on my desktop that I could repurpose. In fact, I ended up just editing the hour long broadcast into a 4-minute video tutorial on How to Use Headliner to Repurpose Your Livestreams.
What are some tips for designing pins?
One of the challenges that most entrepreneurs make when using Pinterest is actually creating the pin.
Peg recommends using tools like Easil to quickly design a pin and even experimenting with animated pins to make your content stand out in the feed.
Do’s and Don’ts of Pinning
Now that you’re ready to start pinning, Peg has a few suggestions on how to get your content re-pinned:
Design multiple variations of your pin - try different titles and images to find out what works.
Check Pinterest Analytics and Tailwind to see which design performs the best.
If you’re a part of group boards, only pin your blog post once. You don’t want to be that person that’s spamming.
“You want to respect your group boards because that can give you a lot of new followers and a lot of new eyeballs. ”
What do successful Pinners do?
“Pinners are planners,” she said, “they plan out everything early.”
She gave the example that power Pinners were already pinning Christmas content in August so that they could get the social proof on their pins and have an opportunity to get featured in Pinterest’s trending newsletter.
Unlike other platforms, pinning Christmas content during the summer is okay but if you tried to do that on Twitter, people would look at you funny.
In addition to planning your content in advance, Peg recommended adding hashtags to your pins.
You can use 30 hashtags but it’s more important to pick good hashtags than having more hashtags, just like Instagram. - Peg Fitzpatrick
If you have old pins that are performing really well, she also suggests going back to edit them and add a few hashtags. If you have a lot of pins, just focus on your top performing pins.
Want more tips on hashtags? Download Peg’s Pinterest Hashtag Guide.
Which Pinterest tools does Peg recommend?
Peg absolutely loves Tailwind for scheduling pins, sharing to Tribes, and using SmartLoops.
“Tailwind is the tool that I love, there are a lot of tools now that you can pin things from them, but they don’t work like Tailwind does, and they have like a system where you can repeat things easily.”
As someone that’s just started with Pinterest, I have to second Peg’s recommendation for Tailwind. After my interview with Alisa Meredith on the episode, “Pinterest Marketing Made Easy,” I joined several Tribes and have been able to get a few of my pins re-pinned easily.
Obviously there’s still a lot of work that I have to do (e.g., more pin variations, join group boards, figure out SmartLoop, etc.) but so far I feel like I’m in a pretty good place and am headed in the right direction.
What about you?
What are your next steps for taking
your Pinterest game to the next level?
Tell me in the comments below.
RESOURCES:
▸ Save time, pin smarter with Tailwind
▸ Stephanie's Live Streaming Gear: https://bit.ly/2J523hL
▸ Join the Social Media Strategist Group: https://facebook.com/groups/smstrategist
UPCOMING EVENTS:
▸ Social Media Marketing World 2019: https://bit.ly/2MRY8Ko
MUSIC:
▸ No Worries featuring Dyalla by Joakim Karud
you might also like:
DISCLAIMER: This website contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I receive a small commission. This assures that we can continue bringing you valuable content. Thank you for supporting Lights, Camera, Live! We only link to products we use or are highly recommended by trusted sources.
