The Pinterest 101 that should be on every Interior Designer’s bingo card

If you listen to just one episode of this podcast this year and action all of the tactics to help your business grow. This will be my top pick.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of topics covered ;
Pinterest's Relevance for Interior Designers
Setting Up a Pinterest Account
Board Organisation and Strategy
Keyword Research
Content Creation Strategies
The Value of Consistent Pinning
Leveraging Idea Pins
Cross-Promotion with Other Platforms
Pinterest for Client Collaboration
Overcoming Fear and Procrastination
SEO and Pinterest
The Role of Visual Content
Avoiding Common Mistakes
Utilising Analytics
Paid Advertising on Pinterest
Actionable Steps for Growth
The Importance of Authenticity
Repurposing Content
Engagement Strategies
Longevity of Pins
Navigating Pinterest's Algorithm
Creating a Content Calendar
Learning from Analytics
The Power of Keywords
Starting Small and Scaling

Find Jo here on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sojo_social
And her website for books, content and services ;  http://sojosocial.com.au/hello/?fbclid=PAAaaJQSWHJqvRk6GeX_XP4oFd_N4k9rY_esRzvJXpSQzCoj2Xi_EwS3Ml7lc_aem_AXoRgrQ592QlcEEgrO0x200TEDJ37qy1od_opUPSW3lNPJDp_CeWRLElhZkWCqMvu8g

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Transcript

0:11

Welcome to Designing Success from Study to Studio. I'm your host, Rhiannon Lee, founder of the Oleander Finch Design Studio. I've lived the transformation from study to studio and then stripped it bare and wrote down the framework so you don't have to overthink it. In this podcast, you could expect real talk with industry friends, community, connection, and actionable tips to help you conquer whatever's holding you back. Now let's get designing your own success. I'm actually so excited to bring you guys this particular episode. I got off at the chat that I had with today's guest, Joe, just buzzing, absolutely buzzing. And the thing that I love specifically about the episode is it is full of actual tactical, actionable things that you can go and do to get yourself on Pinterest, because I know how many of us And I put my hand up, you'll hear throughout the episode guilty of thinking, Oh, it just was bigger than it just was like such a bigger effort. But so was Instagram when we all first started that, like you didn't know what to do with the hashtags. You didn't know how to cut up a reel. You didn't know anything. You just forced yourself to know it. And Pinterest really is that same form of apprehension just because we're not used to it. So I can absolutely attest. I'm putting a lot of focus in there now that I just haven't been in the past, even though I bought the Pinterest lab, as you will hear in this easily five years ago, and I should have five years of pins and all the shame I have because I don't. However, let's not dwell on what we didn't do and look to what we can do. And I'm hearing out there that the climate is flat, that a lot of people are feeling like they're not super busy. So really, there should be no excuses that why we are not sitting down and thinking about who's my client or potential client. How do they, Show up on Pinterest. What are they searching for? What kind of things will they type in like paint color or facades, exterior inspiration, or what are they actually going to type in and then let's create some content so that you are matched to them immediately. Anyway, I'm going to stop there because everything you need is inside of this episode. We're going to pick up where I started with. Jo who runs Sojo or socially Jo. She's a Pinterest manager. She's amazing. I know you're going to love it and I will chat to you at the end.

RHIANNNON: 2:31

Hey, Joe, how are you? Good. Thanks. How are you? Good. Thank you so much for joining me today.

SOJO: 2:38

My pleasure. Thanks for

RHIANNNON: 2:39

having me. I think it's going to be a good one. My intention with this particular episode is I am pretty aware that a lot of designers, myself included, I'll put my hand up from starting a business, I'd be terrified of Pinterest or it feels like a beast that is difficult to tame. So I thought if we could get someone on who could break it down a bit or give us a bit of insight around. Exactly. How much of a commitment is this? How much time is it going to take? How hard is it? That sort of thing. I think that will be broadly welcomed by a larger audience of all the interior designers that are listening and might actually go, you know what? I will give it a little try. Never say never yeah I just really feel like opportunity for designers is all across Pinterest. And whenever I think about what will you do, if you want to do a home project, whether that's a DIY or hire someone, the very first place that I go is to open a Pinterest board for that room of the house, or I just go over there to get all of this inspiration from things that have been done in the past. And so it feels crazy to me not to be. In that environment as a designer, like not to have your work, have your design philosophy, just to have your branding, have yourself there and be part of the mix. I feel like we just missed so much. So much opportunity.

SOJO: 3:58

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's why it is such a great platform for people in this industry.'cause it's not for every business. I'll be the first to say that. But for interior designers it is'cause people go onto Pinterest for inspiration, like you say, and that's your bread and butter, that's what you're here to offer everyone. So absolutely. It makes it a perfect sense for them to be on the platform.

RHIANNNON: 4:20

I think I read a while ago that words like interior design, room decor, home decor, and interchangeable between Australian and American type language, but those are some of the highest trending Pinterest areas or reasons people go on. So that is, yeah.

SOJO: 4:37

Absolutely. I think I did an Instagram post. And it was the top five most searchable categories on Pinterest. And I think interior design was at least two or three of the top five. Or, variations of. So yeah, definitely a place to be. It's

RHIANNNON: 4:52

one of my little frustrations, I think, sometimes is the amount of energy I see going into platforms like Instagram, which are also important. They have their place. They're also visual. But when all of your eggs go into that basket, and there's no consideration for other platforms that are possibly very relevant, just as you say, like Pinterest is a hugely relevant thing to the design industry specifically, but even, the opportunity that's on Tik TOK, which we're not here to talk about, but, Is there email marketing all across all the other things? I feel like everyone's I want to get my Instagram driving a direct lead generation results and then I'll branch out. But that's really long commitment with Instagram and your content has a really short lifespan. Like even though they're improving that as a platform, what is the sort of lifespan of a if I go and make the effort to put one pin onto Pinterest, what can I expect from that?

SOJO: 5:44

You can't expect much from one pin. I

RHIANNNON: 5:48

mean, if I was good, yeah.

SOJO: 5:51

Generally speaking your standard pins on Pinterest can continue to generate views and, drive traffic to your website through your account. For up to two years usually it's around six, 12 month mark, sometimes more depending on the content, obviously but it's at least a few months and, usually a lot more, whereas Instagram, what, couple of days, if you're lucky. Unless the algorithms, definitely playing in your favor, you might get a week, but it's definitely a longer term exposure through Pinterest. Yeah. I

RHIANNNON: 6:26

definitely cry for all that dead content. Cause I feel like people struggle with repurposing and actually understanding that just because you've seen it before doesn't mean anybody took any notice the first time. And you can reuse that and you put all this love and energy into making one thing once and then never Re breathing life into it, but also if you've made this amazing piece of content, that's getting engagement over an Instagram. It should be really easy for you to duplicate that in a way that's, changing the size and shape and slightly changing slight tweaks, but I'd rather make a slight tweak to something that I know is good content, then create something from scratch and have to really sit down and write it all out. Definitely. Can you give me a bit of background or walk me through the basics of setting up a Pinterest account? Because I bet there's people listening who have not delved into it at all. So specifically tailored to interior design business, is there any tips or things that I should be aware of?

SOJO: 7:23

Yeah, I think the first thing and this applies to anyone Pinterest is so often people will create an account, they'll fill out their name, they might write something in the bio, and then they stop pinning straight away. That's just skipped a whole bunch of steps. You really need to have your whole account set up properly before you start pinning. That doesn't mean you're having a shop linked or your website completely verified and rich pins enabled and all of that sort of stuff. It's about having all your profile section filled out properly and optimized. Having your name, your account properly optimized. Having boards set up. Before you even start pinning. So you're already organized and you have the platform to start working with. And of course, we've spoken before, you know what I'm going to say. Keywords. You have to have that keyword research done and ready to go before you even create a single pin. Otherwise, you just, I don't know. Fluffing around in the dark and you just don't really know exactly what you're doing and your pins are not going to get seen by the right people. So I think with interior designers specifically, you have to have a goal and a purpose and you have to have really worked out who you're targeting on the platform, what they want to see and therefore tailor your content towards that. And if you haven't got that worked out and if you haven't got all the proper fields and everything in your account worked, filled out correctly and optimized, you shouldn't be pinning a single thing. Sorry. I would say that they're probably, in a nutshell, what I would say when you're first starting up on Pinterest, or if you're reviewing an account that you've had for a while, you haven't really used, make sure all those boxes are ticked before you start actually pinning content.

RHIANNNON: 9:04

Awesome. Where would you get that kind of intel? So you're saying like, make sure you know your client and what you want to do on Pinterest, but if you maybe don't use Pinterest through the eyes of a design consumer. So maybe we're just pinning things that we're like, I love this cover of Vogue Living, or I love this mid century modern interior or whatnot, and it's not even your aesthetic. I feel like it's all good for us to say, okay, put all of these ducks in a row, but should they be getting professional advice? Should they just be taking a guess and then reading the analytics and switching it out to see later on what got engagement? What's your tips for actually knowing that juicy stuff that you're trying to plan

SOJO: 9:43

out? Yeah, there are a bunch of different ways and it depends on the individual how, marketing savvy, they are, how, in tune with different techniques and strategies of individual is I've had clients who they just don't get that side of it and therefore enlisting a professional. Is the way to go, because they can just steer you in the right direction, set you up on the right path, answer those questions, clear up the confusion. But if you are marketing serving, you think that really, you can give that a go. There are a few different things that you can do. You can, first thing I would always do is. To get in the head of your ideal client and think about why they're using the platform and what types of things they would be looking for, you can think about the inquiries that you might get online through social media, your website. What questions are people asking? What questions are people asking other designers? You can stalk their Instagram, for example, and see what types of comments they're getting or what content is generating. Interest through their accounts just to get a bit of inspiration. You don't have to completely go it alone. There's plenty of other people who have been out there and done it before and you can see what's working for them. And just I guess spending some time on interest on the platform, pretending to be a, an ideal client and having a look through, see what comes up, see what types of things are trending. There are the. Hello, the thing we could get into. There's a Pinterest trend feature that you can get through on the app on the website. You can have a look at what's happening in different categories and regions and all of that. So there are a few different ways that you can really get into it. Googling what's working on Pinterest right now for, your particular niche. Sometimes Google turns out rubbish results, but sometimes you can get some gold in there too. Yeah, I think, yeah, it really depends on you, the user, what you want to get out of it, where you're at with your marketing strategy, that sort of thing. And yeah, different different things that you can throw at it to work it out.

RHIANNNON: 11:41

It's carving out the time sometimes too, isn't it? It's actually saying it is. Yeah, I think that's one thing that stops people. Like I'll again, put my hand up the website verification piece for me as a new designer. When I first started my business, that really held me back because the tech. Talk or the way that it was explained seemed beyond my knowledge level at that time and then when I got it done, it was as simple as finding a YouTube clip where somebody Broke it down and it was a four minute YouTube clip and I pressed play and then I pressed pause and then I went and did what they did. And then I came back and I was like, yes, I'm up to this step. And then I did the next bit. And it was a four step process. It took me about four minutes and watching the four minute it basically doubled to eight minutes, but I got full guidance. And there's free content like that out there from hundreds of Pinterest managers that are like. Get on there. This is how you do it. But that for me, I remember that feeling. I think it took maybe an extra eight months of procrastination because of that website verification terminology, holding me back and me just going, Oh yeah, that's right. I have to link my website or verify my website through Pinterest. That seems really hard. Or I didn't have a website in the very beginning for a while. So yeah, some of those things I felt. Gave me permission to procrastinate and I kept getting into a mental pattern like that with Pinterest. So every time I looked at certain things, I was like, Oh, keyword research, that's going to be really hard. I'm not an SEO expert. So I don't want to go and do that because I'll probably do it wrong. Like I was getting myself into a really just downer like mindset around Pinterest and it. Yeah, I got the result that I was putting in. Cause I kept procrastinating, kept saying Oh every single new year's like business plan of my business in the six years that I've been in business has included, this is the year of Pinterest. You're going to do it. I have, I bought in my first or second year of. Business, the Jenna Kutcher Pinterest lab course. I'm on module one. Like I just did it. Like I got in there and module one is let's sit down and discover keywords. And I went keywords. That's really scary. And I stopped and I'm sorry, Jenna, if you're listening and hello, I'm going to have a massive,

SOJO: 13:59

I'm very

RHIANNNON: 14:00

excited if she was listening, but I haven't done your course. I've only paid for it. It's yeah, I think it's. Good to normalize that feeling that people are actually giving themselves permission to procrastinate because it seems hard or it feels hard. I this year have stuck to my guns and I have pinned daily and I have made an effort and I have changed my ways completely and I want to be the voice of saying what I thought was going to add, two hours of time onto my already very busy schedule, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is taking me. Upwards of 10 to 15 minutes a week. Okay. It's not taking me a long time. And I really think there's lots of people listening. They're assuming it's hours or it's like really involved. And honestly, I don't know if it's working yet, but I wake up every day, things have been pinned older pins. Like we talked about longevity. I've got like some that are four or five years old of mood boards and things that still get interaction. Yeah. And cause I've had. Bursts of energy with Pinterest in the past where I've known, I really want to do it. And so I pinned, I promise, because I'm saying this audibly to like accountability, this is not a burst. This is my new way of life. But yeah, I just want to recognize that if you're feeling like that, don't feel bad about it. That's quite a normal thing, I think to dip in and out. And if you're afraid of anything, you've got to put in the work, you've got to learn and reach out and get help

SOJO: 15:29

yeah, absolutely. I find that with most people who were hesitant towards using Pinterest. It's there's multiple elements to it. It's the, I don't understand it. It's new. It's different. That's overwhelming. I don't want to get involved. And it's also the time aspect. I've already spending all this time on Instagram and Facebook and my emails and my website and all that stuff. I really. I don't need to add something else to my basket. And so those things combined, they're not going to work when people do things like they will look at the user rates of Pinterest in Australia, and they'll see that. The numbers are actually not really that high. And I don't think that helps with encouraging people to use the platform. But the problem is that when you look at those numbers on the website, they don't break it down by industry and the niches. And, they don't really explain the value of it to especially to people in the interior design space where people are on there and they're using that platform in Australia. It's just because the numbers are not there. They don't have that motivation to really jump on it when they compare it to something like Instagram or

RHIANNNON: 16:39

Facebook. And we're talking about Instagram and Facebook. They are a social media platform. So can you explain to everyone just the difference between because Pinterest, although it gets bundled into social media as a social media effort and energy, it operates a little bit differently. So do you want to give us a bit of back end on Pinterest as a

SOJO: 16:57

platform? Sure. So Pinterest is not a social media platform. It's a search engine, and you're absolutely correct. Everyone always, for whatever reason, loves it as a social media platform. It's a search engine. It's based on Off that it works the same way as say, Google people put in their search terms, their keywords, what they're looking for and results are generated in that. The goal of Pinterest is to find inspiration, find ideas, find the things that you're looking for, even if it's products to buy or services to use. And then it drives the content from the platform through to your website. Ideally, it's not about engaging. It's not about mindless scrolling to see what, your friends or acquaintances or celebrities are up to it's got a completely different purpose and feel it and operates in a very different way.

RHIANNNON: 17:48

That's great. And sometimes just thinking about it again with the consumer hat on and how you use it. When you go in, you generally go directly obviously to the search bar at the top and you type in living room, dark feature rug, la, like exactly what you want to see. And then you wait for it to match you. So it's service snap or matching you with what you want to see. And so remembering when you are putting pins up. You can just put the title as the type of thing that you're going to search or making sure, when we talk about keywords and SEO, it can be as simple as always thinking about I want this piece of work that I'm posting onto Pinterest or pinning onto Pinterest to come up for as many people. So what are the types of things that. I want it to be matched with and pop up with. And sometimes it's just hearing what SEO and keywords are from a different perspective can sometimes hit differently to where you're like, Oh, so all I have to do is anticipate the game of match. Like it's that simple from when I was a little kid, and thinking about, I want to make sure that whoever types in, Pinterest will go, you are exactly what they're looking for and will serve you up. And Pinterest, I feel the Pinterest algorithm isn't quite as maybe aggressive as Instagram. It's not as opinionated. It's very black and white. Like you want this, you got this. Like as long as you have made the got this part really obvious to Pinterest. Behind the scenes, it'll always serve you up. It won't be like, I want to know who interacted quickly when you first posted and how much time you spend scrolling and all that sort of stuff. It, I feel like it's a little bit more simple and it's a lot more accepting and wants you to get off the platform. So where we do link in bio and other things on social media, That you can be penalized for too much of that in your stories and constantly driving people off the platform, because that affects advertising income and all sorts of things. But Pinterest absolutely wants you to get off like Pinterest wants to like Pinterest, the success of Pinterest is that they've sent X amount of people over to your website in a monthly period. So I feel like it's working with you instead of against you. So if you've got. Yeah. Eye rolling problems with certain other rhymes with Minstagram at the moment. And you're feeling like you're not getting the kind of reach and engagement that you used to get. Maybe this is your sign to put your eggs into a basket that wants to make all that money you spent on your website and all that money you spent with your copywriter and all that time and energy worthwhile and starts to really, Turn those pins into leads because people will go over, see your portfolio, see what you're all about and actually hit the contact us button and be like, how do I work with you? Or where did that rug come from? I think it's quite a good journey to be able to have messages that say, message me for details on the suppliers or, Again, asking for engagement when we talk about conversations and things that looks a bit different on Pinterest, though, doesn't it? It's not all chatty back and forth engagement like you would expect on social media. So can you talk us through what we would expect to get or see from. Audience followers, like what are we supposed to be thinking about as a new Pinterest user?

SOJO: 21:01

Yeah, that's right. And it comes back to the fact that it's not a social media platform. So that really, it doesn't invite for a lot of engagement and conversation. So generally you can expect not a lot in a short answer. You can get comments on your post and sometimes you can get a little bit of back and forth with viewers or followers and sometimes people might send you a message as well, but it's really not something that's generally something you should expect and measure your success on. I know on that, that rhymes with Instagram platform, it's all about that engagement and getting the likes and the comments are even better than the likes. We don't really care so much about that on Pinterest. It's just a little bit of a bonus, but it's not a key success factor. So yeah, if you're not getting the comments, if you're not getting the private messages or whatever, it's nothing to be too stressed about. If you do get them, great, obviously reply and engage with in that way, but it's not definitely not one of the main focuses when using Pinterest. Yeah,

RHIANNNON: 22:04

I think it's so good to set up that expectation because you can feel like crickets or a failure, but it's actually, when we go into the business analytics, like backend, you just want to be seeing that people have clicked through to see from the message page or from the text that you've done, click through to check it more out and then maybe click over to your website and, or maybe like your monthly viewers on your page is growing and those sorts of metrics. Can be considered successful, you're moving in the right direction rather than being like, I'm putting up all this thing and I'm getting no positive reinforcement. I think that's hard to, from a generation where we get instant gratification, we're asking you to play a long game. You're not going to get any love for it. Nobody has said, Oh, you're here at last. You procrastinated for years. And now you're finally showing up consistently. And I like what you're doing. Nobody. I was expecting a letter from Pinterest, the head of Pinterest. I got nothing. No one's actually.

SOJO: 23:00

I'm

RHIANNNON: 23:00

still a certificate. I've done it guys. I'm here and it's nothing and there's no interaction at all, but I am watching people. Download the free guides, get access to the thing, head over to the resource library for designers on my website and deep link through. And that to me, I'm going win, win. These are eyes I wouldn't have had before.

SOJO: 23:20

Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. So

RHIANNNON: 23:23

I'm going to ask your opinion or help for the ideal Pinterest profile, or board strategies for interior designers, because I feel one of the disconnects that I hear a lot is I don't know how to love design things and pin them that are other people's work, but also create new things that attract people to my work and differentiate between what I did and what I love and what is a good sort of ecosystem just to start out. How do we build this? You said before at the beginning, like we should get all of our board covers in order and know what we're going to do. So can you talk me through that? Yeah.

SOJO: 24:03

Yeah, I think one of the common mistakes that people make is they might have, say it was, I don't know. What's the design trend? What's the topic?

RHIANNNON: 24:13

Scandinavian.

SOJO: 24:15

Scandinavian. They love Scandinavian design. Personally, they get inspired by it. They find content that they like on Pinterest around Scandinavian design. But it's also something that they work with and they do for clients as well. So they've got their own work that they could perhaps put on Pinterest in that area too. And what they will do is they'll have one board, the Scandinavian design, and they'll put both types of content, theirs and others in that same board. That gets messy and confusing for any potential clients or anyone who's interested in seeing what you have to offer because they have to weed out what's yours and what's not. So I would say for every type, every category like that, that you want to use in your Pinterest account, have separate boards. You can even call them the same thing, as long as you keep them separate and have one for your content. And one for your inspiration and things that you just want to share with people. You can even put, say, Scandinavian inspo. And then the other one is your design. So just, having those different accounts and categories sorted in your boards is definitely the best way to go about that. There is no limit on how many boards. You can have a hundred of them if you like, if you're keen to keep track of them and, it's populating the ones that are yours and all of that. But yeah, so there's no limit. You can have all as many as you like, all the different categories, just keep them clean and organized. One thing to keep in mind is that when you do. Pin something to a board, it pushes that board to the start of your when your account, when you go and view all your boards, it puts that one to the start. So if you haven't done anything with your content for a while, but you start pinning a lot of stuff from other people's content into those other boards, they're going to be the first ones people see. So try and mix it up. Make sure you're putting up your stuff more so than you put, repinning other people's content as well.

RHIANNNON: 26:08

But yeah. You can like bump your board. So as long as twice a week you go in and do you mentioned Scandinavian by Oleander and Finch, just go and repost one other thing in there. So that comes up to the front. Yeah. Yeah. I like, I

SOJO: 26:21

tend to get

RHIANNNON: 26:22

lost. I think there is a confusion around does everything on my business profile have to be created by me? And then I no longer get to do what I love, which is use Pinterest. Cause I know most designers use it, even if they're afraid of using it as a business tool or opportunity. Labeling them in the board covers is really good, but I also think there's a real. Argument for having clear boards that show your curated eye of what parts of Scandinavian design you connect with, as you say, you're inspired by, et cetera, because then we can say to clients, Hey, I know you're having a bit of trouble working out whether you're, really I don't know, design wise, if you're really modern organic or Scandinavian, let me share both my Pinterest boards with you. And you can tell me if either of them. Yeah. So you are actually using it. That brings us to sharing boards, because I think people in the design industry understand this could be used in a better way. There are times where you can actually specify enough products into the shared board with a client that they can shop from the Pinterest board if need be, like not always right because of trade discounts and so on. So don't count on that as the new way to run your business. But every now and again, there's enough kind of in there that you can be like, Hey, Our combined board is over here and you can look at all the info and you can also see a couple of pieces that I'm going to put into your finalized master shopping list. What's best practice for collaborating with clients, thinking about volume, thinking about how do we best use it with our interior design clients?

SOJO: 27:49

Yeah, I think volume is a good point. I can imagine some boards could get completely out of hand. You've got clients going in there and pinning a thousand different things that they find on the platform that inspire them. So I guess. It's if you were sitting down with a client and you both had some interior design magazines and you were cutting pictures out and sticking them into a scrapbook or something, it's like an online version of that. So it's a collaboration of ideas. You can throw things back and forth. You can put things in to give ideas and vice versa. So I think Yeah, definitely communicating with the client why you want to use this as a platform to work with them and to, work out exactly what you're going to be doing together would be key. And yeah, you started off pin the things in there that you think would work and encourage them to do the same and just keeping it open. I think it's just a, it's almost like a brain dump, like a sharing space for ideas and they won't always be the right ones, but it's just, I think having that platform is just really valuable in that digital space, but you can just. Collaborate together. Yes. And throw around

RHIANNNON: 28:56

ideas. Been really handy in my business, but some tips that I will give you is one, when you're done with that client archive the board, so you don't have it 160 clients later, you're going to be grateful for that little part of the process where you can actually toggle it to an archive and you no longer have to have it like in your main board. And the second tip that I would give is to start anew with every client brief and every client, because if they just invite you to their Pinterest board, what I'm finding is I'll go in and I'll be like, okay, so you opened this Pinterest board for, Jones Street property before the slab pour, before the, Like even drawings were finished and now we're up to furnishing that property. And I'm talking with you, but I can see 360 pins and an evolution of your style as you've been influenced by trends and before you've worked with the designer. So I might then go in and say, Oh, okay. So you've got a lot of blue velvet couches in here. Maybe that's the direction I'll go in. And then you provide that concept to the client. And they're like that's so me two years ago, pinning, like I'm not into that anymore. So just the tip out there, if you're listening, it's just a new project, new board collaborated with client. Keep it simple. Try to keep the pins that go in there. Like really you go and pin five for me to give me some thing and I'll pin a couple to make sure I'm picking up what you're putting down. And then we'll use that 10 to inform the. Brief and the concept, but without having to have this site, because some boards, as you say, get really outrageously full of ideas and too many ideas is too many. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, archiving those boards at the end, when you're finished with them means that you'll keep it pretty tidy and like a client area. And you don't have to feel like all the time you've just got all the front facing client facing boards and created pins and saved And client work that's where it gets really hectic and it feels like you're not in control of your profile. I feel. Yeah. All I'm going to jump back to something you said before around that difference between creating and saving pins and in the saving pins area, I want to open the can of worms around ethics and sharing Pinterest images and sharing Pinterest images across multiple platforms because I've been. Very vocal about this in the past that you should not share other people's work from Pinterest on Instagram, because they really feel that a client can land on your page and it misrepresents, even though you've done all the right things, even if you've tagged X designer and photographer and whatnot. If it's just a collection of images that you have nothing to do with me as the consumer who has nothing to do with the industry, we'll just go on and be like, this girl is amazing. I love all of her designs and we don't look deep, but we're not critical thinkers anymore in general, in life because of the internet. And so I wanted to get your take on what is the laws of Pinterest? What it's not the wild west. It's been around for a long time. They've got strict. Copywriting laws. I'm sure. Can you talk me through that side of it?

SOJO: 31:53

Yeah, so I think this is another area where Pinterest and Instagram do really differ. Pinterest is not just about finding ideas and inspiration, but about sharing that as well. And if someone repins your content, you get a kick out of that. That's a bonus to you. It's when you put something out on Pinterest, you're almost expecting it to be shared and repinned and, that sort of thing. So as long as you're not screenshotting the image and then repinning it as your own. If you're just genuinely repainting that content, that's completely fine. And yeah, one of the elements of the platform, you're then taking that over to your Instagram. That's different. I've always, I used to do a lot more work in Instagram marketing, as opposed to other than Pinterest. And this question came up a lot. If someone's content is on Instagram, you, there are options, there are apps that help you repost it and all of that sort of stuff, but it is definitely a no, especially with businesses who are in that visual space or designers or photographers you just really sharing their content is not the done thing You can, people will often say, if you ask permission to go and share it, then you can do it. So if you desperately want to share some content for, X, Y reason, get in touch with that account and get their permission to do so before you do it. But really, like you say, I think it's best to keep your content your own on Instagram, because it does, Things. And yeah, definitely. You don't want to be getting that credit when it's not necessarily yours, but that's the difference. Another difference, like I said, between the two platforms. So yeah, take your content from Instagram and put it on Pinterest. Absolutely. But don't take someone else's and put it on Instagram. Yeah. And it's

RHIANNNON: 33:41

good to think about it like that. The differences, because it's like when I'm on Pinterest, it wants me to drive. Traffic to my website and it wants me to share other people's work on my Scandinavian board. If I love that Nordic or Scandinavian design by a designer over there, I can just pin it and that's publicity or sharing or, it's driving a result for them. Yeah, it's a collaboration and you do need or. Yeah, or just good PR. It's spreading the word of this project or this image further and further, the more that it gets pinned or picked up. And I think it's good to have different hats when we're dealing with different planning of social media or doing different things. It's like when I'm in Instagram, I'm doing this and this is, the purpose of Instagram and what it will reward and what it will like. And then you've got to really shift when you're over on Pinterest to think, okay, I'm over here now. And here is about. Pumping shared images and putting up new things and directing to new URLs that like, write a blog, do a pretty picture for it and pin it and that sort of thing. Just interrupt and say, I'm super impressed that I've actually only heard you say keyword once. So I think we need to get into more about the SEO. I know I might be wrong, but when I go back and edit, I'm pretty sure you've only said it once so far. Is the best way to convert Pinterest into WordPress? interest or somebody actually liking your pin into actual paid clients or projects? How do we get them on Pinterest?

SOJO: 35:06

That is the golden question, isn't it? And If I wish I had a secret formula that you do this will happen. So yeah, obviously the ultimate goal of using Pinterest is to get paying clients onto your website and getting in touch with you to get to that point. You've got to play the long game. It doesn't start with you. Start painting, people start looking at your pins and they go straight to your website. You have to build the momentum first. Sorry. You will, in those first few months of being on the platform, you'll look at your insights and hopefully your views are going up, people are clicking on your pins, all of that's going up. The click through rate is what, one of the last things to come. I'm not saying that it's going to take you a year or two to get there. It might just be a few months. But obviously that is the goal that we want to get people there. How do we get them there? So the first thing you've got to create those engaging pins, they've got to be attractive to the user. They've got to grab their attention when they're in the search results, the picture has to jump out at them. The title has to jump out at them because then we want them to click on the image, the pin, and then that gets them through the website. So they have to look good and they have to tick that box. But then the other thing is they've got to have the right keywords as part of the pin. If you're not getting views on your pins. They're most likely because you haven't, they're not optimized with keywords. If you're getting views on your pins, but not click through to your website, once you've got the momentum going again, you maybe don't have enough keywords or you don't have the right keywords. They're just not optimized to a point for the people that you want to get through to your website, your ideal user. So it's basically just a lot of ticking boxes and It goes back to that overwhelming theme, you're like, oh, keywords, oh, titles, descriptions, images, all of that. But once you've broken it down and once you actually do know what boxes need to be ticked, it's not too complicated. It's just a matter of getting to that point. And once you've got all those boxes ticked, really, the click throughs and the traffic to your website should come if you're doing it all correctly. It's not rocket science, but it's just, yeah, getting it right.

RHIANNNON: 37:25

And then I guess you rely on your website to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to converting as well, because there's no, that customer journey, when we think about it, if you got the right keywords. I'm interested in that pin, I click on it, I click through, I land on your website, and your website totally misrepresents what it is that you've been pinning. As in, there's a disconnect. It doesn't really hug them when they arrive in your home. It feels very much like you've just ignored them. And they've got to get their own drink of water and do all their own things. So I think it's important to remember all the way through. If you want to convert pins into paying clients, you have to step them through to paying client level. You can't Let Pinterest drive them into your website and then They're gone, there's nothing there of any interest.

SOJO: 38:11

You have to give them a reason to want to go to your website. For example, a blog is the perfect thing to generate that content from Pinterest to your website. Generally, people, sometimes they're on there looking to buy things, but usually they're looking for ideas and inspiration. So if you're just, if you don't have, a free reason for them to go to you, whether it to be read a blog or to download a free race or something like that. It's really a barrier in getting that traffic through. So finding something that you can pop on your website to entice them and give them that reason to want to go to you. And you think, Oh, they're just reading my blog. What am I going to gain from that? Or they're just getting my download. What am I going to gain from that? Goes back to the whole marketing thing. Once they're on your website, they then look at other things or, you've captured them through your downloads and that sort of thing. So it's just about that reason, giving them that. So if you're looking for a way to connect to a single landing page, you should definitely consider wanting them to go

RHIANNNON: 39:03

to your website, inviting them there. What are your tips? Cause I know there's some people listening who haven't done the website yet. So should they be even looking in the Pinterest space or should, is there a solution to connect to deep link into a different place, a single landing page, a link tree? Like what do you think is a good way to still be on Pinterest? Maybe before you have a working website.

SOJO: 39:24

Yeah, obviously, it's ideal to have a website to take people to. You can direct people to your social media. If you've got a great Instagram that you're really proud of, been working on for a long time, you can direct people from Pinterest through to your Instagram not really, perfect in terms of your strategy, but it is just another way to harness that. And get that attention and maybe build connections with potential clients. People might be more likely to send you a message through Instagram. So it's not a, it's not a great big loss there. Even if you have something really simple set up and 1 page up something just to connect them. Even if it's just a landing page for a download or something like that, which you can set up through your email marketing platform, it doesn't necessarily have to go through the website. It's best practice, but not your total deal breakout. It's still a great place where you can be there and getting in front of people who you want to show your work to, who you want to see your work and you can get in touch with them in other ways.

RHIANNNON: 40:21

Yeah, I love that because people will behave differently on Instagram. If you don't have a website, they're much more likely to drop a new DMs and say, Hey, I saw this mood board on Pinterest. Like, where is the rug from or whatnot? And that's

SOJO: 40:32

fine. They might not even know how to contact you on Pinterest and it's far more a common or comfortable thing for them to get. Yeah, connect with you on some social media, which makes sense.

RHIANNNON: 40:42

And the other thing that I would suggest, because I'm all about momentum and forward momentum and progress over perfection is you can publish a one page, one page template from Canva, a website template. You can publish it as a URL to give the link. So if you wanted to go in, type in a website, just even website on the template section of Canva, if you know how to use Canva, you can edit everything with your own images and your own text, and then you can publish it as a live URL. And now you have a website for Pinterest, or you at least have a URL that you can use. So it's just something it's really basic and it's not really your design. It's not being done by a web developer. It doesn't have it's not going to be your end. It's a first viable version of everything is the most important thing you can do. Just do something. Because if you're just not going to do anything because you're still waiting on Nothing happens when your website goes live. I say it all the time. It's a really exciting time. I'm working on mine. I have this huge document briefed into my designer. I'm so excited about the rebrand and I think no one else gives it. No one cares. No one's going to do anything that just like my Pinterest procrastination. There's no party at the end of it. So I'm not holding back on doing things just because it's not the way I want it to be. I'm pinning every day and I'm directing them to that website, even though I'm a bit like I know it's not doing the heavy lifting and it's probably not a great experience. It's an experience and you can find me in other ways from that area. So it's not terrible, but it's not optimal, but it shouldn't hold you back. Point to whole, all of this, is just writing a list of things you need to do to pin. Maybe one of those things is spending 45 minutes on Canva to edit a template and have a URL that's about you and how they can contact you and get in touch.

SOJO: 42:23

Yeah, that's a great idea

RHIANNNON: 42:24

know they're going to really love to hear about this. What are your ideas for knowing what do we pin before we have images of finished projects? What does an interior, a new interior designer pin if they haven't got before and afters? What else? Yeah,

SOJO: 42:38

right. Yeah, that's a good one. Inspiration, ideas that you have, you can put together your own mood board, for example, flat lays, all of that sort of stuff. If you don't actually have, photographs of work that you've completed, you can share. I think in that sort of situation, the ratios of how many pins you put of your own content and how many you repin would be very different. But you can still show your style and what you're, you're capable of doing it. What you know, you can put together for people to still give them that idea and the inspiration from repinning other people's content. Yeah, so putting together mood boards, flat layers, you can even use Canva to do that sort of stuff as well, if you don't set it all up properly on a board and get a proper photograph of it, there are other ways around it. You can create your own colour

RHIANNNON: 43:24

palettes. Colour palettes are a big searchable thing. You're the colour master. You've been to school to study this. You know how colours get pulled together and the psychology of colour. I think that creative stuff is endless, isn't it? Furniture selection menus, five coffee tables that go with GanderNet. I'm just using the same style, but five different lamps that you could use in a modern organic or Japan y style house. Or you could pump the content without having a single photographic image at this point. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you might've done a photo shoot for your own branding. So just make sure you're removing background and getting your face on these and owning it. Then it's really. Not just a collection and curation of five lamps, but it's five lamps from the lens of Oleander and Finch. And this is how you get me to choose more things for you. And it's coming up with a bit of a plan, isn't it? To be a brand and not just a bit submissive and pin other people. Yeah, absolutely.

SOJO: 44:21

Yeah, so it's always often comes down to just thinking outside the box. And what can you do? What can you put out there? If you're in, if you're becoming an interior designer or starting your own business, you're creative. You've got that in your mind already. You just need to apply it in an online world, which is different. And I understand challenging for some people as well, but I'm sure they've got it in there that they can think of something to put

RHIANNNON: 44:45

out there. But even with the, in the world of AI, like being able to say if I wrote 10 dot points of how I took this floor plan, what I considered and why I made changes that I made in 10 dot points, and then pumped it back into AI and said, write a blog post that steps through the methodology of how we went from floor plan A to the new presented floor plan. That might not be a client. It might not be a real job, and it might only take you 10 minutes to back and forth with AI and tidy up and personalize and make sure. And then that is a blog once again, that you can do whatever you want. You could put a background image and then save that in Canva as a URL. And you've got a new URL to send people. So you might have a landing page for all your blogs. That doesn't mean you can't make. A hundred individual blogs with URLs in Canva to link that makes sure obviously down the bottom, you have a banner that is your whether it's a QR code to something or you don't have a website, but that's your name, your contact details, how they get in touch with you, make sure you make a bit of a mainframe template that doesn't just show them the blog content and say, bye bye, like my floor plan. Like you have to make sure there's like a. A bit of what next for the client? Great. I've read your blog. Now I know directly how to reach out to you even on Instagram or if the links go through, you say, don't know as well, just more like little Canva tricks and hints you can hyperlink anything under the words and things, just, it allows you to link. So if you do have a landing page, you can keep. The journey going from the one page blog over to the landing page and move people around your faux website until you have one. Very good. I think you could probably sit down and you mentioned at the start, knowing who you want to talk to, you can probably write a whole bunch of really creative ways to show up afters, just based on thinking about an ideal client, name them Katie, then think what a Katie type in that search bar. And everything I do has to be the matching content because I want to keep coming up. So we have to be really literal sometimes. I think people drop that step because we get so panicked about keywords and SEO optimizing and it's a search engine and I'm not good at search engines, but keeping it really simple is a good idea. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, can you share any tips for creating like a content calendar that keeps Pinterest account consistent and easy? We talked about it being like a long game and being consistent. What's the expectation? Once a day, 10 times a day, 100 times a week, like what's best practice?

SOJO: 47:15

I think. When it comes down to this and the same goes with any of your social media. Failing to plan is planning to fail if you're not organized with your content, you're just not going to do it. So it varies as to if you Google how often should I be Pinney, you're going to get a whole. A lot of different answers. Sometimes they'll say three pins a day. Don't worry, everyone, you do not have to do that. Others will say minimum once a week. I think a good sort of place to get to is about once a day. But like with social media, I've always said to people, don't commit to something that you're not going to be able to sustain in the long term. So if you say no, I'm going to do it once a day. And you get, you do that for the first four weeks and you go, I'm completely burnt out now. I'm not actually interested in doing this anymore. It's too hard. And now I'm just going to drop the ball. And you don't pin anything for another month or so, and then you might pick up again. So think of something that's sustainable and that's going to work for you. Once a week is not going to generate your results. And the same goes with anything. The more you put into it, the more you're going to get out of it. So the more you can pin, the better. I think once a day is a great place to start and work from. And I think. You can easily generate pins, bulk pins, more of them with the same sort of content than you can on Instagram. For example, if you have a blog article, you can create 10 pins just from that one blog article, add a different image to each one. You can use the same keywords, the same title, the same description, but if you've got 10 different images, you've got 10 different pins right there, ready to go. You can't go on Instagram and put 10, So if you're sharing the same posts in a row about the same blog topic, that's just not, no one's going to appreciate that. That's just not going to work, but you can do it on Pinterest. So it's easier to pin more frequently because of the way that you can create content and share content on the platform. So I would think in terms of planning it out, have your different content pillars that you're going to think about. The different items that you want to share on the platform or what you want your audience to see. What you think that your audience want to see on the platform and you sharing and plan that out what that looks like and then break that down into subcategories as well. So actually work out what you want to pin before you sit down and create the pins. And work out your schedule, what you're going to pin and when. Sounds overwhelming, I don't want to scare people, but it's one of those things, like you say, you sit down, you spend an hour or two on this and you're sorted for months. You've got that content plan done. You don't have to recreate that content plan every week. You just have to make new content to fit in with it. And then we've talked about before scheduling that too. If your expectation is you're going to have your content and you're going to get onto Pinterest every single day to pin that new pin, that's not going to last. No one wants to do that. Even if you don't have any clients yet and you think, I've got plenty of time, I'll do it. You're not going to. So it's really about planning ahead and scheduling. There are different options that you can use for scheduling. But it's just, the whole making sure you've got that plan, you know what you're doing before you do it, and then just locking in that time to put it into place, pop something in your diary for once a week, once a fortnight, once a month, you can pin a month's worth of content in one go. You don't have to worry about algorithms changing and people's interest changing all that sort of stuff as quickly as they do on social media. You can keep up a lot more easily.

RHIANNNON: 50:46

And Pinterest, again, in the back end, does not penalize you or worry that you've used to schedule a third party app or you don't have to be there organically to reply to comments because it's probably not going to be any comments. Yeah,

SOJO: 50:58

yeah, that's right. The pressure's off there. So you can pin in advance and not have to worry about being there and engaging. Yeah, there's a third party platform called Tailwind. It's a pricier option. So depending on your budget, but. They actually have a close partnership with Pinterest, and so there's definitely no penalties with using one of those platforms. There are other ones you can use, like Later, that also work, quite effectively. They don't have all the insights and bells and whistles and things that Tailwind has. But there's also an inbuilt schedule in Pinterest too, so you've got different options there. And it's actually, unlike Meta Business Manager for Facebook and Instagram, it's far more user friendly and intuitive and is a lot easier to use, so yeah.

RHIANNNON: 51:40

That's what I've been using in in Pinterest for the moment and for anyone who is listening and going Right back from the start, we said, it just sounds like this monumental extra thing. I have been pinning 15 pins a week. So thinking about it, like five, five and five, I create them five, five and five, and then I spread them out over the five days. Or over the seven days, some days have two, some days have one, some days have three, but it's it's been something that's been achievable for me in less than 20 minutes in that week for the 15. So I just want to give people a realistic, like they're all new images. And the other thing to remember is you talked about no pressure to get to change captions and to do things. No. Nobody's really reading the captions the way they are in Instagram. So in Instagram, we want to bring value. We want to bring personalization. We want to bring a little bit of our flavor, make sure that we're really authentic and relatable and all these things in Pinterest. It just needs to pick up on your keywords to spit you out to Katie, who's searching you. Correct.

SOJO: 52:44

That's right. You don't want to just copy and paste a list of 10 keywords and pop them in your description. It still needs to be somewhat user friendly and have the, a call to action and some sort of information in it. Guide people through to your website, but it doesn't have to be a perfectly written caption with, some emojis, but not too many, and it's gotta have, the right tone of voice and to match on this and that, and all of those sorts of things. You're right, it doesn't really matter all that much. And you can use the same caption, over and over again. If it's the same type of pin, the same category and subject, you can use the same caption. No one cares. No one's even going to notice.

RHIANNNON: 53:23

Yeah. So two sentences about the content of the blog and then one sentence about, click here to read it or, follow the link to, or follow, what does it even say at the top there? Visit? Visit the website. I'm trying to picture the pin.

SOJO: 53:37

Yeah, that's it. Two, three sentences. A couple of extra keywords at the bottom as hashtags and just to, bulk up that visibility in the search results. And that's

RHIANNNON: 53:46

it. You're done. And a bit like Instagram, Pinterest does serve you up common hashtags when you start typing. So if you start typing interior design, or if you're not sure when you're just starting, you can just attach to some of those more common ones. Is that right? Or is that not a good idea? Thing to do.

SOJO: 54:03

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The it's different. It's like we've on Instagram, if a particular hashtag has millions of results attached to it, you don't really want to use it because you're not, it's so saturated the whole platform. You're just not going to be found using that hashtag. It can be as relevant to you as anything, but it's just not going to work for you. But on Pinterest, it's very different. That's a search term. So if you've got that search term in there, it's going to benefit you in the results when people are coming through. It doesn't matter how popular it is. It's popular for a reason. It's because people are searching for that and they're using it. Those, that search term, those keywords to find content. So you want to be using it too.

RHIANNNON: 54:45

You mentioned emojis just before I'm going to go out there and imagine that if it's an SEO world, those are not really that welcome or necessary at all on Pinterest. Oh, just leave them out. Yeah,

SOJO: 54:55

cool. You won't get lucky on Pinterest. I think it's just not right.

RHIANNNON: 54:59

It's a different. Cause there's a lot of designers that just wouldn't know. And so they'd still just be like maybe copy and pasting previous captions from Instagram or like bringing things across. I think it's nice as a Pinterest user. I'm not looking for. Yeah. Thumbs up, smiley faces. I'm, yeah, I haven't seen it much. So that probably tells me there's no need for it because no one's putting that in the search

SOJO: 55:20

bar. No, definitely not.

RHIANNNON: 55:23

So idea pins or story pins or the pins that we see on Pinterest that have got movement video, they look a bit more like reels. How can or should interior designers use those types of content?

SOJO: 55:36

Yeah, so they used to be called story pins. Now they're called idea pins. That kind of came when Instagram's revamped this part of the platform in recent years, they work differently to your normal posts, pins rather, and they come up in a different spot in search results and in your account. So they're like stories on Instagram. They're up the top of your feed. They're very different content to what you would see in someone's Instagram feed. So the idea of idea pins is that they are moving. So they're video, they're slideshows or carousels. They could be animated, different things like that. Just to give a different type of content to your audience, show them a different side of what you can provide. They don't have to be, just like with stories on Instagram, they don't have to be as perfectly curated as your pins. They don't have to have, the exact right angle of a room. It can be, there's a bit more flexibility around that. It's all about having that movement and showing people different things. What's, people often say what should I use? What's best? Really, both should be used in your strategy, your Pinterest strategy. If you're just starting out on the platform, I'd probably get your head around the static pins and normal pins in your boards first and then start to move into the idea pins. However, if you've already, if you're comfortable with video and you've already got that content from Instagram, by all means, bring it across and start putting it in your idea pins. Idea pins generally. Get more engagement and more views short term. So if you compare them in the short term, ID pins will tend to perform better initially, but it drops off quite quickly and you don't get that longevity that you do with the other pins which is why it's good to have both because obviously that's great getting that initial injection and Interaction and engagement, but we don't want to forget about the other pins as well, because that's what's going to give you the longer term views as well.

RHIANNNON: 57:36

And do they, I'm just thinking about my experience with ideas pins. When you search something, it comes back a bit like the Instagram explore page, right? So they grab more attention because they're moving and they're, yeah, then the static. When I'm reading one that says click here to read my blog about. Tiling in X and I'm seeing an ideas pin where someone's actually tiling in that same tile. I'm definitely going to immediately shiny object move towards the pin. So you can just reuse your reels and things if you've created content over on Instagram, once again, but you've got a bit of a bank of video, you can schedule that out over the next two months to start to pin a few of those. Performing or ones that you think would be good for the audience on Pinterest. Yeah,

SOJO: 58:20

that's right. It's about getting that content as well. That's one of the reasons why I say don't stress about being part of your strategy initially because video does overwhelm people. A lot of people that you hear on Instagram saying they don't want to do reels, I don't want to do stories because video just they're not comfortable with it and we want to get people using Pinterest. So if that's going to be a barrier to them, using it, then, that's why the pressure's off in that sort of scenario. It's like a choose

RHIANNNON: 58:44

your own adventure, isn't it? If you're someone who does feel comfortable, go ahead with the idea pins, but you won't be penalized by having a Pinterest account that's full of static pins. No,

SOJO: 58:54

you will probably get better, more results. more quickly if you do embrace idea pins. But it's not like you're going to fail if you don't. Yeah.

RHIANNNON: 59:05

And you're better off just getting started, get a first viable version, exactly as you say, just get in, learn the first bit first and plan for, end of year Q3, we're going to be all about these idea pins, but don't. Yeah, overwhelm yourself, I think, is a good.

SOJO: 59:20

That's right. I think it's also important to say you don't have to do idea pins as often as you pin either. You can do, say you do your 15 pins a week, you might include two or three idea pins. You don't have to go, one for one the whole way through.

RHIANNNON: 59:33

Two more questions before we go. One is going to be, I know people are always really keen to immediately Look towards paid advertising, paid pins. I don't know what this is, but I see it across all platforms. People haven't even tested what works and what doesn't work. And they're immediately like boosting posts, trying to get more pay, pay, pay. What is your advice for when is an appropriate time to be putting money on this platform and actually using specific in past or new with boosted financial backing?

SOJO: 1:00:06

Yeah, I think people often gravitate to paid ads too soon because they almost see it as a quick fix, a quick win. They're going to get that injection into their account and they're going to build from there. But I think if you don't have the fundamentals, So if you're on Pinterest and you don't have your ads set up, the basics, everything else sorted, you don't have any content on your account. You really should not be looking to paid advertising until you've got that sorted. It's if you posted three times on Instagram and then started running ads and people go to your account and they've only got three posts there. It's just, going to lose it all. You pay for Google advertising, but there's nothing on your website. Like you wouldn't do that. And I think it's the same on Pinterest. If you don't have things set up properly, the better the foundation is. The better results you're going to get from the paid advertising as well. I feel like

RHIANNNON: 1:00:52

you'd be paying for the wrong follower too. If you haven't worked out your messaging, your marketing, and you're not seeing that it's really working, you could be putting the wrong keywords in getting eyes across to your business who are going to drop off straight away. So you've paid for that traffic to your website. But it's someone who was never really intended to be your true client. So I think it's that's right. Yeah.

SOJO: 1:01:15

Yeah. If you don't have your audience set on Pinterest from using the keywords from pinning from repeating the right content and getting the right people through to your Pinterest organically, then you don't have your proper goals set up there and your audience set up and getting the right people through, so Pinterest doesn't know that either. Part of using your keywords is not just to get in front of the right people in the search results. It's about telling Pinterest what you're about and therefore they match you up with the right people with organically and also with paid. Yeah, it's absolutely having those foundations in place to get the most out of your. Your hard earned money being spent on advertising.

RHIANNNON: 1:01:56

Yeah, and I think your energy is much better spent organizing your board tiles to be keywords and your boards to be set out and all that stuff and like fapping around trying to get a winning, as you say, a quick win or a win through an ad. I feel like. Maybe add the time to spend on ads will let you know, like when you start waking up every day and this pin's been, this person's pinned this and this person's pinned that. And you're like, Hey, I think I'm feeling like I'm cracking the code. Like maybe I should throw 15 in here and see what happens. Yeah. I am a hundred percent behind that strategy. I think it's really important that they go back to those foundations because They're really scary, aren't they? Everything we've talked about, I'm sure there's people listening to this going, nah, I was right. It's too hard. But it really is just about, it's not, it's really not yeah, preaching to the newly converted,

SOJO: 1:02:52

I did think that in the beginning, a few years ago when I made the transition from Instagram marketing and I first started learning about it, I almost stopped because I'm like, Oh, this is too different. I'm not really sure I'm going to get my head around this. Then once I actually did and really got into it, it made sense. And it's, that's what I say to people. It's not as scary as it looks. So I hope we can, yeah, win some people

RHIANNNON: 1:03:15

over. I hope that eventually there's more people who have listened to this and done it, who are like, Oh, now I'm on the other side. I agree. Please come and DM me in four months time, if you're pinning all the time, because you listened to this podcast, because it will absolutely make my day. To know it's the same as we've run some masterclasses inside of my course for emerging design is the framework. And we probably went a bit over time in our last one and really went into some areas where they're all off frantically optimizing the pages and they know exactly what they're doing, which has been really beneficial, but it's like nice for them to come back in a few months and be like, That was the kick up the butt that I needed to get started. And all you need to do is, YouTube is available to you. You can reach out to Joe. I'll put details in the show notes. You do one on one Pinterest strategy sessions and, or set up, can guide people into that. This, you are totally capable of this. This is something we can do. We just don't want you to do it. I can speak for

SOJO: 1:04:12

totally agree

RHIANNNON: 1:04:12

more. We can do this. We can do hard things because when we get in there, It's actually, and I'm a bit embarrassed by how long I've procrastinated it. Yes, it is a hundred percent more time consuming, more, also when you get on Instagram, you I'm using inverted commas here, scroll for research. When you get on Pinterest, you go in, Look up what you need. You get the matching thing. You do what you need to do with it, whether it's pin it, show it to a client, and you get out again. So it's more productive use of a platform than I find you can just go, TikTok or Instagram. Next minute, you're in a rabbit hole. You're like, I just spent two hours researching when in fact, I've just caught up on everybody's gossip and I know what's happening in the world. Yeah,

SOJO: 1:05:01

yeah, we know where Taylor Swift and Kelsey went yesterday when he was in Sydney, who cares?

RHIANNNON: 1:05:10

So I'll leave you with this last question. What's something you wish all interior designers knew about leveraging Pinterest for their business? Ooh,

SOJO: 1:05:20

I think what I, and this goes back to at the beginning of our conversation that Pinterest is not the platform for every business. And I've had clients come to me wanting to. Get onto the Pinterest or potential clients, I should say. And I've said, it's not right for you. We can try, we can do this. We can, put things up and we can try, but I'm really not seeing it as a platform. That's going to get the content, the results that you're looking for. If you're an interior designer, it is, it's like this platform was made for you to connect to clients, to, build your portfolio, all of those things. So I just really want people to understand the value of using the platform. Forget about the numbers of people in Australia who use Pinterest. It's not about that. It's right. People are on there waiting for you. Use this analogy before, but if there was like a highway where you had all your potential clients driving down that highway every day, you'd want to put a billboard up on that highway. It's just the people are there and you just need to get in front of them. And that's just. They're waiting for you. So yeah, don't be scared. Jump into it. Make it work. There are, people like myself who are there to make it easier to get onto it and make the most of it. I think, yeah, just stop hesitating like Rhiannon did. Just get into it.

RHIANNNON: 1:06:45

I love that though, because it's return on investment and we're always saying work smarter, not harder, but there's literally an answer to sitting here. You just have to. Get past module one of the pictures. I don't know.

SOJO: 1:06:57

See, that's the thing. And that's why I thought about creating Pinterest courses and stuff over the last couple of years. But what I've found the most beneficial is working with people one on one because everyone's at a different stage. You might start a course and half of the first module, so you're not going to end up going through it. So sometimes you just need that nudge in a different way. So

RHIANNNON: 1:07:17

yeah. And. The knowledge that the outcome, like if I had it wasn't an overly cheap cost when I bought it five, six years ago, but if I had known if someone had said, Oh, you can just spend the same and work with me for an hour, we'll get your website verification done. We'll get your board set up. We'll have your profile optimized. And I'll talk you through how to build a simple pin and how What sort of keywords you might be looking at in your industry. That to me was all I was actually looking for. And no shade, it's probably in there. I just haven't done the course, but it wasn't instant to me. The first, it was a bit of a yeah. Okay. I need to get past this part. I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's really helpful to be able to work with people in a more sort of transactional where when they finish working with you, they're like, okay, I'm in the Pinterest world now, like I can take it from here because I have a working understanding of what I'm doing and that we can revisit in a few months. I feel like we're going to have to revisit this chat in a few months. So if you want to hear more from Joe, please drop into my dms at oleander underscore and underscore binge. And let me know that you love this chat and let me know that you want to go higher because obviously there's, this is all the setup stuff. This is all the. Talking you into the idea that you need to be on Pinterest, but there's plenty we can talk about like in our masterclass in the framework about what next and how to actually yeah, get more leverage out of it. So thank you so much more. I know. And I know that I, as selfish as it is, I'd love to sit here and just talk to you for the next five hours and get my very own one on one version of that course. But I have loved this conversation. Thank you so much for all your time and generous knowledge and I'll pop links into the show notes so people can reach out to you directly.

SOJO: 1:08:59

That's great. Thank you. My pleasure.

RHIANNNON: 1:09:02

Okay. Bye for now. Bye.

1:09:04

Oh, how was that? I hope it was as fun for you to listen to as it was for me to have this conversation. It just kept, got me really energized about getting onto Pinterest. I felt less fearful. I know that you can go back and pause when you need to pause, write notes where you need to write notes and just get yourself a bit of a action plan for going, okay, not going to overcomplicate things. There is a very easy way for you to connect your your Instagram and TikTok and other platforms. directly into Canva. If you don't know how to do that, come and see me in my DMs at oleander underscore and underscore Finch. It's one of the things that I teach in my marketing workshop. Pinterest is also something that I go through how to schedule, how to plan, how to know exactly what to do and pop it all in a content calendar. My marketing workshops run months. Mostly the dates are available now up until June, so if you are interested in when that is next running, just DM me the word workshop and you will get available dates and a flyer for the workshop so you can find out what we actually do in that day. There is something so magical about spending an entire day out of the business focused on brainstorming. How do we get higher up the filter? How do we get you in front of people before the people have already booked an interior designer? How do we get you up the top before the For they actually have a photographer in mind. So those are the sorts of things we work on in the marketing workshop. I love bringing that workshop to life. It's a small group. I only generally take about five a month so that we can go in and each person will get their turn. And we can really start thinking about, have you tried this? This is what we should do local area marketing. This is why LinkedIn is good or why it won't work for you. This is where you should be and just really get your messaging, right? You're targeting, right? Give you some more confidence, get you some clients and make sure you know how to content plan. So if that's of any interest, as I say. Message the word workshop to my Instagram at oleander underscore and underscore Finch, and you'll automatically get all of the details. I'm actually running a framework only version of that marketing workshop this weekend on Sunday. We're doing a four hour session. It's all about brainstorming. I know all the girls business. I'm going to go in and we're really going to practice that content calendar. And we are going to make sure that each of them walks away with really strong messaging and really strong control of their marketing. But until next week, have a wonderful time. Go and listen to this as many times as you need. Cause I know I've gone back and made notes as I have been editing and I will chat to you on Tuesday. Bye for now. That wraps up another episode of Designing Success from Study to Studio. Thanks for lending me your ears. Remember, progress over perfection is the key. If you found value in today's episode, go ahead and hit subscribe or share it with a friend. Your feedback means so much to me and it helps me improve, but it also helps this podcast reach more emerging and evolving designers. For your daily dose of design business tips and to get a closer look at what goes on behind the scenes, follow at oleander underscore and underscore finch on Instagram. You'll find tons of resources available at www. oleanderandfinch. com to support you on your journey. Remember, this is your path, your vision, your future, and your business. Now let's get out there and start designing your success.