Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey dives into the untapped potential of Pinterest as a platform for driving traffic and revenue for D2C brands. Guest Natasha Chilcott, Director of Marketing and Sales at Marr Media Group, shares her insights into the nuances of Pinterest marketing. Unlike Instagram or TikTok, Pinterest operates as a search engine, allowing brands to engage with users who are actively searching for inspiration and solutions. Natasha explains the importance of understanding Pinterest’s unique attributes, such as its long content lifecycle and search engine dynamics, to create impactful content strategies. She emphasizes the need for brands to focus on high-quality, inspiring content tailored to user intent, perform regular testing, and maintain consistent activity on the platform. Additionally, she highlights the importance of keyword research and integrating insights from tools like Pinterest Predicts and Pinterest Analytics to optimize content and boards. Throughout the discussion, Natasha underscores that success on Pinterest, like any social platform, requires dedication, testing, and a strong alignment with user behavior and platform-specific best practices.
Key Takeaways
- Pinterest as a Search Engine: Unlike other social platforms, Pinterest functions as a visual search engine, with users seeking inspiration and ideas rather than engaging in direct social interaction.
- Content Strategy and Keyword Research: Effective Pinterest marketing requires strategic keyword research to create relevant boards, pin titles, descriptions, and content categories aligned with user searches.
- Consistency is Crucial: Brands should aim to pin consistently, ideally 5–25 pins per day, including a mix of original and repinned content, to maintain visibility and engagement.
- Inspiration Over Promotion: Content that integrates products into inspiring or practical settings resonates more than straightforward product shots. For instance, showcasing a water bottle as part of a workout set is more effective than a standalone image.
- Test, Learn, and Adapt: Regularly test different content types (e.g., videos, stills, infographics), analyze performance, and refine strategies based on analytics. The 80/20 rule—focus 80% on proven content and 20% on testing new ideas—helps optimize results.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Natasha Chilcott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natashachilcott/
Marr Media: https://www.marrmediagroup.com/
Pinterest Predicts: https://business.pinterest.com/pinterest-predicts/
Pinterest Presents: https://business.pinterest.com/pinterest-presents/
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.09)
Hey everyone. Welcome to the seven figures and beyond e-commerce marketing podcast. hope that everyone is absolutely crushing it today. Who wants to talk Pinterest because I know I do. And that’s why I invited my guest to the podcast today. Her name is Natasha Chilcott. She is the director of marketing and sales for a social media agency called Marr media group. Little bit about them.
MarMedia is a social focused agency that builds social communities that convert for D to C brands, helping them generate a meaningful return beyond followers and likes. I mean, we all want that, right? They offer both a social accelerator program for startups and small brands, which is a done with you approach, as well as a full service social media marketing done for you approach.
So depending on the stage of your business, you’ve got a few different options if you choose to engage with them. Today, we’re going to be talking about organic Pinterest marketing and how to turn your pins into traffic and revenue for your brand. And you know why I’m excited about this topic is one, I believe Pinterest is a severely untapped platform to grow a brand. I feel like a lot of brands are not using it or not using it.
correctly and too. This is the first time that we have touched on this topic in 50 episodes. So it’s going to be great. Natasha, thank you so much for being with us today.
Natasha (01:40.093)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Greg Shuey (01:42.158)
Yeah, it’s gonna be good. So before we jump in, would you take just a couple of minutes to introduce yourself to our listeners and really help them understand where you’re coming from and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?
Natasha (01:56.287)
It’s been a journey. isn’t everybody’s story a bit of a journey? So, you know, I had big aspirations when I was, you know, 20 years old, 21 years old in university studying my bachelor of business in marketing. I had dreams of big corporate career.
You know, maybe you’re moving to Europe and working over there and evidently that is not what happened at all. I actually graduated University and Honours in Australia and then I came back to Canada in 2017. I settled in a relatively small town called Kelowna out west in the mountains and at the time there wasn’t a lot happening here. It’s a pretty small place and
there wasn’t any jobs. So I created my…
business, my first business on accident, was a social media marketing agency called Shout Marketing. And I grew that agency for six years. Originally as a social media agency grew into a full service agency. I had two kids during that time as well. And of course, zero time off as an entrepreneur. So I was a little burnt out after my son was born and I decided to start floating the idea of selling the agency. So that’s what I did. I sold
that agency. did a transition and then I met Tessa who’s the CEO of MarMedia Group on LinkedIn and I joined MarMedia Group just over a year ago now.
Greg Shuey (03:27.264)
You’re like, why not jump back into an agency, right?
Natasha (03:30.055)
was not the plan. Okay, I had like big dreams of leaving agency life and going brand side. I thought I was absolutely done with agencies. But at the end of the day, this is what I know. And this is, you know, I’ve really, I think, come full circle and, and understanding agency life and what it takes to have, you know, success with client relationships and results. And, and anyways, so that’s where I am now. I’ve been here for over a year and
In the last year, we’ve had some really great growth. We had a build year. We’ve invested in our team. yeah, so that’s where we are now.
Greg Shuey (04:11.438)
That’s fantastic. Thank you for sharing. I always love hearing people’s stories. Everyone’s just so unique and their journey’s so interesting to me. So that’s cool. Is your town growing in Canada?
Natasha (04:15.997)
Yes.
Natasha (04:19.614)
Absolutely.
Very much so, yeah. So, yes, yes. So, Kelowna is about four hours out of Vancouver into the mountains and it is a very, very beautiful place that has now been discovered by many people from the big cities in Canada who decide to move out here now. And so, we’ve had a pretty booming economy here and then lots of growth. So, yeah, I can’t complain. It’s a beautiful place to live.
Greg Shuey (04:24.819)
everywhere is.
Greg Shuey (04:47.118)
Cool. I love it. Love it a lot. Well, are you ready to jump in? Cool. Well, one of my first comments when we were kind of introducing the episode is that, you know, I believe that Pinterest is an untapped platform for brand growth. I don’t know if you share the same kind of opinion or mindset, but, could we talk a little bit about that? Why do you think that is? and why might brands kind of shy away from Pinterest?
Natasha (04:50.653)
Let’s do it.
Natasha (05:02.164)
Thanks
Natasha (05:17.287)
I think that Pinterest is still such an unknown for direct to, I’m going to speak direct to consumer brands. That’s, know, that’s who we work with. I think most people that I talked to about Pinterest really don’t understand Pinterest. don’t, they don’t understand what it is as a platform, what it was really built for and how to leverage it. So they just shy away from it, right? you know, it’s very,
Greg Shuey (05:22.648)
Sure. Yeah.
Natasha (05:43.519)
for us to see the focus in our space on Instagram and TikTok. And, you know, a lot of people have been moving away from Facebook, but I think that that’s a mistake as well. That’s a whole nother conversation you and I can have. But when it comes to Pinterest, there’s just, like I said, I think there’s this lack of understanding, right? It doesn’t operate like the other platforms. It’s completely different. So there is this understanding that, of course,
Greg Shuey (05:55.288)
Yep.
Natasha (06:10.897)
It requires a big investment for somebody to give it the attention and strategy it needs. And therefore, I think that they just decide to wipe their hands of it. Ultimately, that creates a great opportunity for the brands who do want to leverage it, though.
Greg Shuey (06:25.346)
Yeah. So when you say that they don’t understand it, help us understand what it is and why it’s important.
Natasha (06:34.653)
Yeah, so.
Unlike, so we think of Instagram, we think of, you know, it’s a bit, it’s lifestyle focused. It’s, you know, we go there to, you know, sometimes be entertained and connect with people and, you know, aspire to certain things. And we go to TikTok definitely for entertainment, more short form, you know, snappy attention grabbing of content. We have feeds there. We can interact and engage and comment on those feeds and things like that.
we can direct message people. There’s all these similar features, say between the two of them. Pinterest is not that at all. Pinterest is a search engine, is what Pinterest is, right? It’s a search engine. So that’s where really the biggest difference lies is that it is more of a consumption platform than an engagement platform.
And therefore people don’t really know how to use it or they can’t use it in the same way that they use Instagram and TikTok or Facebook. So that’s really the primary difference that I see is that it’s a search engine and it’s a social search engine if you think about it like that, right? And so yeah, much different than the other platforms.
Greg Shuey (07:54.21)
So for a brand who’s just starting out, they’re like, hey, I’ve heard about this Pinterest thing, or they’ve used it before and they’re not quite sure how to leverage it for their business. Like what are those key elements that will help them build and execute a successful strategy on Pinterest?
Natasha (08:12.095)
So first of all, have to have a social strategy period. think that going blind into Pinterest is going to be a recipe for probably giving up on it at a certain point. I think from an agency perspective, we really want to look holistically at our social strategy and platform specific. So it’s kind of two tiered in the sense that you want to have a really solid understanding of what are the potential benefits of each of these platforms. So when we look at Pinterest, we look at Pinterest as an opportunity
Greg Shuey (08:21.954)
Yeah, fair enough.
Natasha (08:42.049)
to.
get in front of people who are intentionally searching for something very different than TikTok and Facebook or Instagram, TikTok a little bit, but in a different way. So, you we have the opportunity to get in front of people that are conducting an intentional search. that’s, you know, an opportunity that we want to identify. We have a big opportunity to drive traffic, right? To drive traffic to the online shop more so than any other social platform out there, right?
route to a product landing page through social media is a pin on Pinterest.
So we want to look at what the key benefits of the platform are, and then we want to work backward from that to say, OK, how can we utilize content in order to encourage people to take the action that we want them to take? Well, first of all, the first thing that I would do as a brand is I would use some of the analytic features that Pinterest provides, where you can actually look at what people are searching in your category. I would use that to come up with a content plan with at least three
to four content categories that have different forms of dynamic content between things like better stills, you can do videos there now, you know, there’s different types of content that you can do there. So I would look at, you know, what is happening on Pinterest in your category. And this is really like your Pinterest keyword research to work backward from that and look at developing out a content strategy that feeds directly into what we know that people are searching for there.
Natasha (10:17.391)
So if you do nothing else and that’s it, that’s your start, that’s a great start because you’re really paying attention to the consumers and what’s of interest to them.
Greg Shuey (10:27.992)
Got it, cool. So you look at the different keywords that people are searching for, and then you probably go even deeper and look at content. You look at engagement to figure out where they’re getting traction. And then you kind of reverse engineer from there.
Natasha (10:40.159)
And there’s some other resources too that Pinterest provides that are great. there’s Pinterest Presents, which comes out once a year, which mentions whatever the changes and updates to the platform are, what the best practices of the platform are. So that’s also a great place to start as a brand who is jumping into Pinterest for the first time. And then you’ve got Pinterest Predicts. So Pinterest Predicts is like your trend predictions. And this is their forecast for what’s
Greg Shuey (11:07.214)
interesting.
Natasha (11:10.133)
coming up. And this is also a great place to look if you want information on what kind of content is performing well right now on the platform itself. And that can help you inform how to distill your content categories into actual pieces of content. And that’s accessed through the Pinterest Analytics. And you can check it any time. So it’s really great for your content planning.
Greg Shuey (11:30.388)
Cool. Awesome. We’ll make sure to throw those in the show notes so everyone remembers to check those out. So we’ve talked a fair amount about content so far. mean, obviously Pinterest is a content discovery engine. So can you share with us what types of content typically perform best on Pinterest and how can brands really tailor that content to resonate with those type of users and shoppers?
Natasha (11:58.363)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so
It does vary from brand to brand, of course, and category to category in terms of industry. for the brands that we are currently working with in the direct to consumer space, the type of content that performs really well is typically your inspirational style of content. So think of, for instance, our brands who are home decor or home products and things like that. Pinterest is a big space for
for inspirational home decor, design, materials, all sorts, right? So when we look at that industry, for instance, we’re really looking at how can we tap into the needs and desires of that audience and what they’re searching. So for instance, if someone is searching, I’m just making something up off the top of my head right now. But if someone’s searching, you know, modern fireplace ideas, then we can actually, you know, curate our content
And usually what we’ll do is we’ll try some different styles of content, right? So one of them might be a video, one of them might be a graphic that breaks down the elements of that fireplace and the different materials that we used. One of them might be a still. So we’re consistently testing across those. What we’re seeing right now is that we are seeing better performance out of some of our video content on some accounts. And then for others,
Greg Shuey (13:29.166)
Hmm.
Natasha (13:31.027)
not at all. So it’s it is all over the place. So I wish I had like a blanket answer for this but
Greg Shuey (13:36.173)
Yeah.
Natasha (13:38.173)
Honestly, this is why we test constantly. We test our content types through our categories on a regular basis. Every month we review our analytics and we drill down, we refine our strategy on an ongoing basis because for one thing, the platform’s changing. Another thing, consumer behaviors are consistently changing. So we need to always be testing and asking ourselves the question. Otherwise, everybody
Greg Shuey (13:41.88)
Yeah.
Natasha (14:08.137)
has a tendency to get a bit complacent with these things and just wince and repeat what you’ve been doing. my biggest advice is there is no sure shot piece or style of content that is going to just perform the best. What you need to do is make sure that you’re testing your dynamic content types against each other and kill your low performers. Always look at where are we seeing low performance? Get rid of them. Don’t repeat them, right? Use the 80-20 rule and
Greg Shuey (14:10.328)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (14:19.118)
You
Greg Shuey (14:34.402)
Yeah.
Natasha (14:38.017)
and spend 80 % of your content on things that you see are performing well, and then use that 20 % to test new things and trends. And once they start performing well, move them into the 80%. That’s what we usually say. And that’s a strategy that has really allowed us to scale results on Pinterest for our clients.
Greg Shuey (14:55.15)
That’s awesome. Sometimes I’m amazed. You know, we do a lot of meta ads for our clients and I’m amazed at what works for some of them, right? Like I get that same question a lot as well as like, you know, what types of content? Well, you know, we have this, these frameworks that we build and they work between 70 and 80 % of the time, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. And then you’ve got to go back to the drawing board and get creative and test a lot. And so it sounds like it’s the same concept on
Pinterest as well.
Natasha (15:26.033)
It is, right? And, you know, similar to you, I think, I mean, this was TikTok, this was on Pinterest, but it just goes to show you, we posted a still on TikTok, and you’d be like, what? Like, a still on TikTok?
Greg Shuey (15:39.406)
I’ve never even heard of that.
Natasha (15:40.846)
Yeah, I know like we were testing this and we had some crazy performance out of this still and our client was like, what? Like, why are we posting this? And we were like, trust the process. Never stop testing, never stop iterating. you can’t do not make assumptions when it comes to social media marketing, right? We want to consistently be sort of pushing yourself and trying new things. That’s where brands really struggle to be honest, right? They want this sure shot.
Greg Shuey (15:54.339)
Yeah.
Natasha (16:10.609)
you know, plug and play way to approach organic social. And the truth is, is that you can’t do that. That’s not the brands who are performing really well are consistently, you know, getting outside of their comfort zone, trying new things, you know, iterating. and that’s how you have to do it. There is no just rinse and repeat that is going to work and allow you to scale over time. It might work for, you know, a period of time and then it’s going to go stale. So.
Greg Shuey (16:26.85)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (16:37.622)
Yeah. And I think that may be one of the reasons why organic social either doesn’t work for clients or it scares them away, right? Because it’s a significant investment in time and asset creation. And they either just do the status quo, which maybe gets them a little traction and then stops working or doesn’t work at all, or they just don’t do it because it’s too much. It’s just too much.
Natasha (16:52.51)
Yeah.
Natasha (17:03.551)
it’s the same, yeah, you’re nail in the head. So, you know, usually when I audit a brand, you don’t…
Greg Shuey (17:06.412)
Yeah.
Natasha (17:10.333)
There’s usually a couple situations that come up. One is like you mentioned, it’s like they’ve just kind of been doing a status quo, posting five times a week. And oftentimes they actually have really great content even, you know, I can see that they’ve, they’ve put a lot of like time and effort and energy into their content and their engagement is terrible and their growth is stagnant and they’re not generating much traffic from social to their shop and they’re not converting, making sales off of social. And it just goes to show.
Greg Shuey (17:15.694)
Yeah.
Natasha (17:40.313)
you that.
you know, great content is just a small piece of the pie as well. and that, yeah, a lot of brands are like, they don’t, it’s hard because a lot of them just don’t understand or have the resources in order to, to leverage it correctly. Right. a lot of them have, you know, maybe one social media coordinator or social media manager on their team. They’re a single person. We all know that, really great creatives aren’t very strategic and really great strategists are very creative. So don’t get me wrong that there are some unicorns out there.
I’m not saying that this person doesn’t exist. But what we typically find is that there’s one or maybe two people who are trying to do the job of a graphic designer, a video editor.
Greg Shuey (18:23.214)
Yeah.
Natasha (18:23.449)
a videographer, a photographer, a strategist, all of these different pieces that you’re like, nobody has all of the skills for four different platforms that all have different algorithms, different needs. We talk about Pinterest. Well, it’s hard to find someone who is a Pinterest expert and a TikTok expert.
and has all the skills to service both of those platforms appropriately for a brand. So honestly, unless you’re building out a team of three, four, five people in-house for a social media team, you’re going to struggle to really leverage the platforms the way that they can be and really generate the growth and the sales that are possible through organic, which most brands think that that isn’t a thing, but it is a thing. You know, we have clients who we sell hundreds
Greg Shuey (18:50.125)
Yeah.
Natasha (19:15.265)
of thousands of dollars worth of product for each quarter. And people are always shocked when I tell them that. But when you have a team of experts and specialists that are every day looking at the numbers and tweaking things and creating content, then these things are possible. So it really just depends how deep you want to get into it.
Greg Shuey (19:39.384)
Yeah, it’s not cheap and it’s not easy.
Natasha (19:41.959)
It’s not you.
Natasha (19:46.053)
No, it’s not. No, it is definitely the most labor intensive, I think, of the digital marketing. I mean, I run a full service agency. So maybe this is just my experience. But when I was running shout marketing, and we were full service, and you know, we were doing social media marketing, we were doing paid, we were doing SEO, we were building, you know, websites and
building websites is a lot of work, don’t get me wrong. But in terms of your ongoing retainer services with agencies, mean, social media, as far as I’m concerned, takes the most hours. It is the hardest to execute because of the…
the communication that’s required on ongoing basis with the client and finding the sweet spot between that agency-client relationship for social, it can be difficult to do. Sometimes I ask myself why on earth I got into this industry.
Greg Shuey (20:40.59)
and then why you did it again.
Natasha (20:42.623)
And then again, I know, like how did I end up here? So it’s just what I know now, but it is challenging. It is challenging. And I can’t blame brands for, know, their accounts going stagnant and them like struggling like the conversations that I have is like they’re struggling to do what needs to be done. And I get it. It’s hard. Like we’re struggling. We do it every day.
Greg Shuey (20:46.296)
Bye.
Greg Shuey (21:01.184)
It’s yeah. Yep. So I think we’ve established it’s resource intensive. You’ve got to create a lot of content. So how often should brands be pushing that content out onto Pinterest to maintain a strong organic reach? Does timing matter where it’s placed on Pinterest? Like walk me through that.
Natasha (21:26.377)
So some brands are gonna shudder when I say this, but five to 25 pins per day is typically what we would shoot for. Now, remember that…
Greg Shuey (21:33.09)
Holy smokes.
Okay.
Natasha (21:40.647)
All of those pins don’t have to be your original content, right? Pin other people’s content into repurpose, know, repin content as well. So we’re not talking about 25 original content pins every day, and that would be a full-time job for somebody. But we wanna make sure that just like any other platform and any other content, we wanna ensure that we don’t compromise the quality, right? So if, you know,
Greg Shuey (21:43.63)
Okay.
Natasha (22:09.725)
it’s 20 pins day, knowing that probably about half of that should be your own original content. If that’s just not possible, then you don’t wanna just go pinning anything and everything. Yeah, exactly. Don’t put on crappy content, doesn’t matter what platform we’re talking about here, okay? And then when it comes to, there was a second part to your question, and I’m blanking on what the second part of your question was. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (22:21.39)
Don’t put out crap.
Greg Shuey (22:35.298)
You know, I’m probably blanking to timing. Timing!
Natasha (22:39.193)
We’re both in shock over the 25 pins a day. So, and then when it comes to, there was a time you mentioned timing. We are moving away from timing as being as important as it used to be on social in general, not just Pinterest. You your optimal times to post. Honestly, these things are a lot less important than running, you know, an active account that is consistent, that is also engaging.
And what I mean by that is, so what you’re doing that on Pinterest when you’re repinning other people’s posts and clicking their links and things like that, right? You’re going and you’re using the platform. So these platforms, they want you to use them not just to, it’s not a monologue. You’re not supposed to stand there and just talk about yourself all the time. You’re also supposed to be a conversation at social media, right? So you have to understand that if you spend all your time just pinning those 25 pins a day and you don’t do anything else on the platform,
then you’re probably not going to see the, no, not probably, you’re not going to see the, no, you’re definitely not. And the same goes for Instagram, TikTok, whatever platform you’re talking about, right? We have to spend that time utilizing the platform in the way that it was built to be utilized, right? So that’s something to consider. We’re not as concerned about the time as we are about, are you using the platform as an engaged account the way it was supposed to be used, right?
Greg Shuey (23:38.338)
Fear not.
Greg Shuey (23:44.29)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (24:03.331)
Got it.
Natasha (24:04.543)
And then the other thing that I wanted to mention is that we really want to think about those keywords when we’re creating content. We talked about that a little bit earlier, where we have our content, know, categories based off of things that we know that people are searching. We have to carry through that, keywords through to our title, our description, our, the names of our boards.
you know, the links that we’re sending people to, we want to tie that into the whole piece. So again, if you’re gonna go on the lower end of, you know, those five to 25 pins a day, ensure that you are taking into consideration that keyword research in each element of, you know, the Pinterest strategy. So again, you know, your titles, your pin titles, your board titles, your descriptions, all of the different pieces.
You want to create a valuable piece of content around that. And don’t underestimate the description either. I see a lot of content on Pinterest that has essentially no description. It just has a link, which is the link is very valuable. But we want the description that you’re not going to get the visibility that you could if you don’t have a good description that accurately describes the content and what it is, the value of it is.
Greg Shuey (25:12.739)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (25:26.659)
Yeah.
Natasha (25:27.241)
Just don’t skip any of those pieces and focus on the quality over quantity just like anything else, right?
Greg Shuey (25:32.652)
Yeah, interesting. So you mentioned boards. Once upon a time, boards used to rank really well in Google and drive a fair amount of organic traffic. I don’t see it as often anymore, but I would imagine it’s still incredibly important as part of your strategy inside of Pinterest. So can you talk to me a little bit about that? What role do boards play in that strategy?
Natasha (25:43.273)
Yeah.
Natasha (25:51.581)
Yeah.
Natasha (25:57.193)
So again, with not to rehash the keyword thing over and over again, with the looking at, again, how people are using the platform, what are they searching in relation to your product or products? Sometimes we’ll use boards as more of like a categorization. Sometimes they’re more inspiration-based. So I’ll give you an idea, one of our fashion brands that we work with.
we have boards around particular styles. So each of our content that fits into your cool mom style, we will integrate into that board. So we’ll use it from a categorization perspective as well as tying into those keywords. There’s a lot of different ways that you can approach boards. And again,
Greg Shuey (26:33.518)
Hmm. Yeah.
Natasha (26:49.199)
Also not to rehash the trying, the testing, but that as well. know, we want to, sometimes we’ll build boards and we’ll pin content to it. And it’s, you know, it’s not really hitting the way that we thought it was or we’re not getting the views, the visibility on that content the way that we thought we were going to. So we will rehash that and try something else. So play around with categorization based on keywords. Also,
Try to think in the mind of the consumer. depending on what your product is, let that inform. Or how you even break down and categorize your content or your products on your website can be helpful too. So again, it really just depends. I’m trying to think of another example. We have one of our clients who does water bottles and kids cups and
Greg Shuey (27:44.472)
Mm hmm. Yeah.
Natasha (27:46.035)
things like that. So we’ll also do like themes, know, themes around, know, mommy daughter matching this or that, or like themes around like holidays and whatnot. And those will tie more into our more seasonal kind of searches and emotional or back to school kind of pieces.
Greg Shuey (28:04.684)
Yeah.
Natasha (28:08.167)
Again, remember it’s a search engine. So everything that we do, we wanna do with the intention of understanding how the consumer is coming and behaving there, what they’re looking for and how we can create value for them. But again, Pinterest is very inspirational based, right? People are going there for ideas about things, right? They’re not really going there to buy a product.
But nobody’s going to any social media specifically to buy a product usually, unless we would argue about TikTok shop, but that’s another conversation. So yeah, remember that people are going there, they’re using it as a search and they’re looking for inspiration. We can create enough value for them and then gently course them down our funnel toward the shop. That’s how we do it, but we do it in a way that first comes to serve the user with
value and inspiration and on things that we understand to be important to them. So you really have to know your user. everything I was saying really relates to any platform apart from some of the specific things we’ve mentioned about Pinterest, but this is true for any social. And to be honest, this is where brands really drop the ball is that they treat everything as like a promotional opportunity. here’s our product. here’s our product in black. here’s our product in mint.
Greg Shuey (29:22.254)
100%.
Natasha (29:29.353)
Here’s our product on a fancy background. It’s like, no, people don’t want just a picture of a water bottle. That’s not going to inspire them to purchase the water bottle necessarily, right? They’re probably more likely to look for that on Google than they are on Pinterest. But if we can inspire them with a themed workout outfit and matching water bottle, different, different approach. So yeah.
Greg Shuey (29:52.482)
Different. Yep. I like that you bring that up because I also believe that a lot of brands drop the ball by not understanding their customer, understanding what their unique buyer journey looks like, how they consume content, where they search for content. And, by doing that research upfront, you can solve a lot of problems really fast and accelerate your ability to tap into the right platforms with the right content. And dare I say the right timing.
Natasha (30:11.379)
Mm-hmm.
Natasha (30:19.18)
Yeah, exactly. And remembering that, you know, that comment I made about it’s not a monologue, it’s a conversation, you know, you’re going there to create a community around something. You’re not going there to just post content about your product all the time. I can’t say this enough. I’m honestly surprised how many brands still just post, you know, studio product photography over and over again on their socials and wonder. And then when I have a conversation with them, they say,
Greg Shuey (30:24.93)
Yeah. Yep.
Natasha (30:49.071)
so organic social doesn’t, doesn’t, you know, doesn’t convert sales for us. It’s like, well, like, why is this interesting to anybody? You know, like this isn’t actually interesting or valuable content. You’re not seamlessly integrating into their daily lives through their feeds. It’s like, when they see your content, it’s like, there’s somebody else trying to sell me something. And, you know, let’s leave that for the ads. You know, let’s leave that for the ads. The organic content should more seamlessly just fit into their feeds.
Greg Shuey (30:52.248)
It doesn’t work.
Natasha (31:16.999)
just like anything else that they’re viewing from friends, family, influencers, you name it. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (31:21.048)
Yeah. All right. So we’ve talked about a couple of them. We’ve talked about types of content being posted as a potential no-no, but like what other big mistakes do you see brands make when trying to get traction on Pinterest?
Natasha (31:42.675)
Definitely they’re not pinning enough. Yes, yeah. So you see some of them, they’ll do a board and they’ll pin some things to it and then the three months will go by and a new collection will launch. A new collection in their handbag brand will launch and then they’ll do a new board with a and then they won’t touch it again for eight. Like this is completely, yeah.
Greg Shuey (31:45.848)
Pinning enough, yep.
Natasha (32:07.783)
It’s not that it’s pointless, because remember that Pinterest content doesn’t have an expiration date, unlike content on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, which once a day has gone by, it’s pretty much done. That’s even long, probably. But Pinterest content doesn’t expire. So it’s not that that content’s not valuable at all. But just remember that the point that I made about when we don’t show up consistently and use the platforms how they’re intended to be used, we
Greg Shuey (32:20.782)
Yeah.
Natasha (32:36.509)
really limit the possibility for visibility on the platform. So we’re not going to get as much out of it if we don’t put into it what is intended to be put into it. So that’s just something to consider when you think about kind of intermittently adding your boards and pins to Pinterest. Definitely try to come up with a consistent approach that you’re, again, even if it’s on the low end.
Honestly, even if you were like, we’re just gonna pin once a day, that would be better than every three months, obviously. And this is kind of like the rule of thumb. The other mistake that I see is obviously that hyper-focus on just product content as opposed to product being integrated into something that is more inspirational for clients. again, that’s where we see that we have the most traction and that’s where we see that we make the most sales.
Greg Shuey (33:25.315)
Yeah.
Natasha (33:31.817)
directly from Pinterest is when we integrate our product into something. So instead of pinning a picture of a coffee table on a white background, we want to integrate that coffee table into different settings that tie into the different design choices that people might make for their homes and search for. So that’s what we’re trying to do. Remember that creating content
to be shared and saved is kind of like the holy grail across any of the platforms. So definitely for Pinterest, we want people to repin to their own boards where possible as well. So remember that when you’re creating content. Don’t make the mistake of just thinking, I’m just putting a picture up for someone to look at. We want to create a use for that piece of content. So yeah, don’t make the mistake of just pinning all of your studio shots.
to Pinterest, it’s just terribly boring and not likely to lead to any sort of meaningful traffic to your online shop.
Greg Shuey (34:39.212)
Yeah, I love it. So kind of wrapping up, mean, the last question that I love to ask folks is like, what predictions do you have for next year? We’re coming up on 2025 really fast. We know that digital marketing in general changes really fast. Social platforms change. Like where do you think Pinterest is going next year and how can brands capitalize on that?
Natasha (35:06.914)
I’m like the type of person in social media who typically doesn’t make predictions, but I do follow what I do listen. So if we listen to Pinterest and Pinterest predicts and Pinterest presents, which will be coming out soon for 2025.
That’s where I would be getting my information from if I was a brand who wanted to look at utilizing Pinterest in the upcoming year. you know, in terms of where the platform is going, I think that we will continue to see more dynamic integrations with Pinterest in terms of what you can do with content there. We, you we saw it, you know, you never used to be able to pin a video, for instance. Like these are all things that we see that are happening on the other platforms. Pinterest will continue to make adjustments and things like
that to their own platform and the capabilities that you have on the platform. It’s not as fast moving as tech.
Greg Shuey (36:05.676)
Yeah.
Natasha (36:06.717)
You know, it’s just not because it’s such a different style of platform. So the good thing about Pinterest is that you’re not going to every week be like, my gosh, what are we doing this week? You know, this week with Pinterest, like what’s happening? we going to, we got to, you know, change our strategy, you know, constantly like we do with the other platforms as an agency. We have a little bit more stability and consistency with that platform, which is the good thing about it, right? So if you, you know, pay attention to Pinterest presents, what they
Greg Shuey (36:08.492)
Yeah.
Natasha (36:37.441)
as you know where what the best practices are going to be up in 2025. Listen to the platforms, listen to what they’re telling you and use the platforms as they’re intended to be used like I said before and check out your Pinterest predicts and look at the the forecast of what is trending in real time and and
basically build out your content calendars accordingly. So what we don’t do as an agency, which maybe other agencies do, is we don’t say, is what we’re gonna do for the year. We say, we have short sprints. We just call them, know, these are our short sprints. This is what’s happening right now on these platforms. And this is what kind of reaction we’re seeing in real time from our users. Therefore, we’re going to do this for the next 30 days.
Greg Shuey (37:27.682)
Got it.
Natasha (37:29.107)
Having an overarching strategy is a great place to start as a brand, like I said at the beginning of our conversation. But what you’re looking at there is generally speaking, your positioning, your tone of voice, your target personas on social, how they use the platforms, those types of pieces. When it comes to your content strategy, it’s moving and shaking. Constantly moving and shaking, right? Be on it, understand your general direction and your categories and what you’re talking about when it comes to your messaging.
Greg Shuey (37:48.372)
Yeah.
Natasha (37:58.367)
the actual content itself, how you put together a reel, what audio you’re using, what type of pin you’re going to pin today. These are things that you’re going to be informed of on a weekly basis from the platforms. So just pay attention, listen. these are the things that are hard to do and hard to keep up with if you have a limited team. Or in some situations where we see the founder who’s still managing the social with smaller brands.
that are hard to keep up, I think that’s why you’re not seeing the performance. So remember that there is no one size fits all between any brand, doesn’t matter if you’re in the same industry, and that you have to be on these things on a regular basis in order to tweak what you’re doing consistently to see the results and be able to scale.
Greg Shuey (38:46.456)
I like it. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for being with us. I totally appreciate it. I think we learned a lot of really amazing things. Some of my key takeaways are you got to know your customer. You got another customer journey. You got to build an overarching social strategy, which never occurred to me before. And then figure out how the channel plays into that strategy. Velocity of content is important. Testing is important. You just got to get out and you got to get, get going, right?
Natasha (38:52.873)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Greg.
Natasha (39:16.083)
Yeah, and like I said, listen to what the platforms are telling you. Remember that, you know, you want to…
treat each of these platforms unique to what they are and understand why people are going there in the first place and what they’re using them for. Don’t lose sight of that. Ask yourself that, you know, when you’re planning out your content, just ask yourself, how is this valuable to somebody? How is this? Yeah, how is it? How is this going to impact them? What am I? What journey do I think that they’re taking through this content? What am I trying to get them to do here? And lead with value and then, you know, connect that with your with your CTAs and where you want to see people
Greg Shuey (39:40.622)
Why are they here?
Natasha (39:57.371)
going and what actions you want them to take and test and refine over time. That’s the, we don’t have any big secrets over here, you contrary to popular belief. We don’t have some writing on the wall or some magic, you know.
sequence that we use. It’s just, it’s process and we use process in order to drill down on strategies and results for clients and the consistency and the dedication over time is what will produce great results for you on a platform like Pinterest.
Greg Shuey (40:33.006)
Fantastic. Awesome. Well, to our guests and our listeners, take what you’ve learned here, which I think we’ve learned a lot, come up with a couple of action items that you can start executing against, and take massive action. Thank you everyone so much for joining.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
