EP 38: How your brand can get the most out of Pinterest - Meagan Williamson

Unlock the secrets of Pinterest marketing success for 2024 with insights from Megan, a seasoned expert who transformed her viral moment into a thriving business. Ever wondered how an educational psychologist can pivot to becoming a top Pinterest consultant? Megan's journey is nothing short of inspiring, and she’s here to share her invaluable strategies and productivity hacks that can drive significant traffic and engagement for your brand.

In this episode, we explore the evolution of Pinterest, highlighting its growing appeal among younger users who appreciate its aesthetic and drama-free vibe. Learn how to harness Pinterest's visual search engine to skyrocket your e-commerce success with a content-first approach. From an online glasses retailer to DIY enthusiasts, discover how Pinterest can match user intent with your products, driving more website traffic and sales than ever before.

We also delve into the nitty-gritty of effective Pinterest marketing strategies, including tailored content, the importance of social signals, and the best practices for pinning. Megan’s transition from psychology to Pinterest consulting is a testament to the platform's power as a consistent traffic generator and email subscriber builder. This episode is jam-packed with actionable tips and will equip you with the knowledge needed to leverage Pinterest for sustained business growth. Don't miss out on learning from Megan's incredible story and expert advice!

https://meaganwilliamson.com/

Struggling to prove marketing's worth to your board? Grab our free one-page Board-Proof Scorecard: 👉 Download the scorecard 👈

Got a marketing problem you would rather not admit to? Reply to this and we will answer it anonymously on the show.

Subscribe to our newsletter
The mistakes we see marketers make, every fortnight. 👉 [Subscribe here] 👈

Follow Chris:
X, TikTok, LinkedIn

Follow Will:
LinkedIn

Follow The Show:
TikTok, YouTube

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Pinterest Marketing Trends for 2024

Chris Norton 0:00

If you've dismissed Pinterest as a tool or a social channel for your brand , I would ask you to think again .

Meagan Williamson 0:05

Pinterest was relatively new and it solved a problem that I wanted . I went viral To this day . One of the biggest Pinterest users in the world pinned one of my DIY projects , so I went from getting about 300 to 500 visitors a day to my blog to 15,000 in less than a 24-hour time period . We sometimes think , like well , pinterest is just like recipes , baby shower planning . But the thing is is that , especially in the business space , or in particular niches or industries , your competitor is not using Pinterest ? How to start a business has between 500,000 and 1 million searches a month on Pinterest alone .

Chris Norton 0:52

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes , the only podcast for senior marketing professionals that celebrates the biggest mistakes and fails , helping you learn practical lessons from other people's misfortune . Also , you can double your return on investment and achieve record revenue . So if you've dismissed Pinterest as a tool or a social channel for your brand , I would ask you to think again , because Megan lays out some really great productivity hacks and tips on how you can get the most of it for your brand in 2024 . This is well worth a listen . So , as always , sit back , relax and take a listen to this about how you can get the most from Pinterest for your brand in 2024 .

Chris Norton 1:32

Okay , megan , well , welcome to the show . So we've invited you on the show because you've got I mean , I found you online and I just saw some of the stuff you're doing . It's fascinating because you work in the area of Pinterest marketing some of the stuff you're doing . It's fascinating because you were , you work in the area of pinterest marketing and pinterest for me and for will we . We saw pinterest I don't know eight , nine years ago , um , and it was .

Chris Norton 1:54

We're in the uk , you're in canada , and it was basically a predominantly female platform and it was . It was quite big on the e-commerce side of things , because people used to upload their entire catalog into Pinterest and then you'd get a load of backlinks and like that . You know , you get your graphics and all pinned up there , and that was sort of seven or eight years ago . And people at work we've got a team of 30 at Prohibition and I'd say 80 , 90 percent of them are female . A lot of them use Pinterest . You ask , will not so much , but the girls are using Pinterest . So my question is how do you use Pinterest in 2024 ? And how do you think it's changed over the last sort of eight or nine years , and why should people be using it .

Meagan Williamson 2:35

I know there's a lot of questions in there , yeah , loaded but loaded with actual wonderful observations . So I've been doing this 10 years . So I've been well , and I actually just celebrated my anniversary of when I first got invited to join Pinterest as a beta user and actually in a small connect . I was living in Belfast , northern Ireland , as a Canadian did , had a lot of extra time and I joined Pinterest because I loved what it had to offer was a little bit different , but you're right , it used to be what we used to call the like land of the Midwestern American mother , like middle aged women . And so much has changed . In particular , you mentioned the last like eight years .

Meagan Williamson 3:18

I actually think the last three years as a Pinterest marketer who's watching what's happening , who's seen the ebbs and flows . We have seen the demographic really shift and the biggest shift is that much younger people are gravitating towards Pinterest . It's the fastest growing demographic joining Pinterest and , from what I understand , is they like the quote , unquote , vibes , the aesthetic . They love going somewhere where there's no drama , they don't have to talk to anyone , they can get lost in , you know , ideas and inspiration . And it's interesting because we've seen some people say , oh , pinterest feels so different .

Meagan Williamson 3:59

In some ways , I think that younger demographics are bringing it back to its roots as a place to source that next step of your life , that next thing that you're planning . We have seen , you know , in terms of who's using Pinterest . You know , overall , a downward sort of younger folk group of people are the buying power , middle-aged women who like to plan things , whether it's a home reno , whether it's starting a side hustle or potentially , maybe the welcoming another child , getting a puppy

Leveraging Pinterest for E-Commerce Success

Meagan Williamson 4:35

. Pinterest is that place where they go to curate resources , ideas , tutorials , how-tos and , as a business owner , I don't think there's been a better time . I think that it's reached its age of maturity . We understand how the technology works and it's .

Will Ockenden 4:53

It's just this beautiful sort of renaissance where people are going back to like what we , what I would call like what social media was when it first started eight years ago so , for anyone that doesn't , or isn't that familiar with Pinterest , you want to talk us through the kind of user experience and how it differs from some of those more familiar social networks .

Meagan Williamson 5:13

So the way that it's different , and I think that , just to sort of paint a picture , I myself I always think back to like , why did I get on Pinterest ? And I was , you know of that demographic where we used to save images onto our laptops or onto our computers and put them in a folder If you were planning to go shopping , if you're planning a trip . We didn't really have a way we would bookmark , right , how many bookmarks would you have , like hundreds of bookmarks if you were planning a big trip with friends , or ? And what Pinterest offered was this place to collect things from our travels online in one place . So , as a user , you can go anywhere on the internet I in even on apps and you can save things that , for different reasons , resonate with you , whether it's a look , a fashion look , you like a makeup look , you want to try a home reno , uh , or , actually , I always liked it .

Meagan Williamson 6:09

My , my husband , my partner , who is also my business partner . He never used Pinterest and when our son was about one year old , he was like you know , I'm just going to go hang out on Pinterest . It's , you know , it's your full-time work . And he turned to me and he's like this is amazing , like I found sensory activities . I found things I can do with him that will be good for his language . There's ideas about like a project we could build something outside , and he just was literally becoming the you know , like a regular person using Pinterest .

Meagan Williamson 6:40

So Pinterest allows you to collect images and videos , save it to your account . You can create these things we call boards and on those boards you could call it like trip to Italy and you can source different types of information , whether it's travel guides you could do you know or even just people who live in those places . You could save TikTok videos so that you have a place to collect your ideas . So it allows you . It's not so social I like to say the unsocial social . You don't have to necessarily . There's not a lot of DMing , there's not a lot of talking to people in the comments . It's this peaceful place where you can collect ideas .

Chris Norton 7:20

So with that , then if you're a marketer and you're working for an e-commerce brand I don't know that sells spectacles , for instance , or something like that online glasses retailer , what's the benefits of being on Pinterest ? How would you use it if you were in the market ?

Meagan Williamson 7:36

So it's a great question . So really it's funny because I find that e-commerce although you suggested maybe it depends on your experience right , although you know you suggested like maybe it depends on your experience right like you've seen , I've seen e-commerce slow to adapt to Pinterest because often it's very product focused . Pinterest tends to really thrive and drive a lot of website traffic , a lot of sales , when you are more content focused or lifestyle focused in your brand approach . So sometimes we see that e-commerce struggle with that . It's like here's the glasses , buy the glasses , and so that might not be always the best fit for Pinterest , but if I was , you know consulting or had a client that owned a spectacle company , the way that you can use it , it's now really moved towards becoming an active marketplace . Use it . It's now really moved towards becoming an active marketplace . So not only are you sourcing you know different maybe glass styles that you're interested in but you can save product pins . So as an e-commerce brand , you can upload your catalog and it can live on the platform as a product link . But it's also a wonderful place to sort of meet your customers where they're at . Answer the frequently asked questions how do I take care of my glasses ? How do I know when I need to change the prescription ? What should I do if they break ? You know all those types of questions that come up during the customer journey .

Meagan Williamson 8:57

Pinterest is that place where people are heading to look for that information , and the biggest thing to understand as a business owner is that it is a visual search engine . So , the same way that you might go to Google and type in where's the best places to buy affordable spectacles or glasses , people would head to Pinterest thinking , well , what are the trending glass styles ? You know , I haven't I haven't gotten new glasses in five years . Or maybe they're looking for how to find glasses or spectacles that are flattering to my face shape . There's sort of more in-depth , visual based questions . So Pinterest , as a search engine , allows you to make decisions not only using keywords but also using your eyes .

Meagan Williamson 9:44

So for anything that's highly visual , it's just a beautiful place , and I want to mention , for those that maybe you know aren't in this mode of understanding or thinking about it , that , as a search engine , why I have always gravitated towards it and the students and the clients that I support , is because , as a search engine , it will deliver up your products , your services , your content , your blog posts , whatever it might be to people who have the intent to find it . So it pairs your relevant product to somebody who's looking for it . So that is like a beautiful thing , right ? The search intent is there and you're saying , oh , you're looking for modern cat eye spectacles . Here you go . Here's some blog posts on it . Here is a fashion influencer who's showing us different looks . Here are several companies that sell cat eye frames and you can save that and then make that part of the buying decision when you go to buy your glasses what paid um strategies are there then ?

Chris Norton 10:48

so like , because if you're , if you're a brand like you've just said , you can use it for like the lifestyle stuff . What ? Because there was promoted pins , right , and they've added more features , haven't they ?

Meagan Williamson 10:58

they have , they're really trying to scale that aspect of the business . Obviously , like most social media , like you you know , they have as a free platform they have to drive growth and revenue from something . So Pinterest ads are wonderful . They are a very different beast compared to meta ads or Google ads . They , I feel , like it's just a lot younger , like it's just not as robust . That said , I have seen highly , highly successful , you know , large scale ad campaigns .

Meagan Williamson 11:33

But when it works best , in my opinion , as someone who's supported both organic and paid strategies for very big brands , small business owners , is when you have a strong understanding . In the organic sense , I find that if you just come to Pinterest to run ads , sure you know you'll drive a lot of traffic . Conversions are harder depending on your price point , takes quite a long time to optimize ad campaigns . So people get nervous . If you're not , if you're new to you know media buying , it can be a bit nervous to run ad campaign for three weeks and only make one sale . You know we have been conditioned by meta . You start running that campaign , you're making , you're making sales , you're you're . You know you're cutting even or , even better , making a return within one to two weeks .

Meagan Williamson 12:20

But we don't see that same impulsivity on Pinterest . So it's a planning platform . So we do see direct conversions , a lot of assisted conversions coming from Pinterest . But you have to think about a search engine and the way that people use Pinterest . So , from a user perspective , people are often pinning today to make a purchase in three months . Can paid advertising accelerate that ? Of course , it's like Petro , right , like we're dumping gasoline or Petro on it . So , but in my opinion , I see the best returns from when you have a solid organic strategy . You figure out what works for your company , for your brand , and then you leverage that so that when you head into your paid advertising , you have a foot up already right .

Will Ockenden 13:03

You already know what your people like organically on Pinterest , and that is the most successful campaigns that I see people running so I think it'd be good to dive into in a moment some of those organic strategies , because I'm sure people are listening to this and thinking , oh yeah , that sounds now what ?

Will Ockenden 14:29

yeah , exactly before we do that . You know you've worked with hundreds and hundreds of brands in this space . What are the kind of ? What are the top benefits then ? The top , you know , commercial benefits , I suppose , for a brand being on on pinterest , that you see .

Meagan Williamson 14:43

So what I see best when it comes to brands using Pinterest is it's best leveraged for visibility and brand awareness . It really is top of funnel . I think that some people come to Pinterest thinking , well , I got locked out of my Facebook ads account or meta ads account , or we were trying to move away from Instagram , or we're not seeing the same return there , we're going to head to Pinterest , but it's apples and oranges . It is really quite different . So , as top of funnel , it's wonderful for discovery , it's wonderful for brand awareness and people discovering you , but you really need to bring them into your funnel , bring them into your world and nurture them in different ways . So the way that I see when I work very closely with larger corporate companies , oftentimes it's part of the eco marketing system , so they already have a really well established or robust strategy to Instagram . They're running remarketing ads , they have all their other audiences dialed in and now it's just about the numbers , right , it's just about growing and so oftentimes their Pinterest audience is very different , so they can quickly double triple . I worked with a brand . We did our consult in December and by February they had gone from about 6 million views in terms of visibility and brand awareness on Pinterest to 23 million to 23 million . So you can imagine , you know , like that's a significant amount of growth . And with that follows then people who are engaging with our content , following them and making purchases . So it just tends to be a very different world in that way .

Meagan Williamson 16:16

The companies that excel are invested in their content marketing . They're invested in creating content that's catered to meet their customer needs . So companies that often flop on Pinterest it's because they just try to take what they created for Instagram and they're throwing it up on Pinterest and kind of walking away from it . The companies that thrive and excel in the Pinterest space are dedicated , oftentimes heavily invested in their SEO , understand that it's a longer burn . So it's like you know , seo for your website that we're not likely to see a return overnight or even within 30 days . The real magic comes six months down the road , 12 months down the road . And so the the brands that are really loving it there , I think you know they're really focused on just bringing people into their ecosystem and all roads eventually lead to their website signing up for their email list and becoming a very loyal , obsessed customer , but tend to have really strong lifestyle-based content , are regularly creating content that considers their customer and trends that are happening . So in the last 12 months , we've really seen Pinterest trends emerge as this thing that sets brands apart . So when you can consider your customer on Pinterest , your products and your services or the content you're creating , and then think about how you can leverage something that's trending on Pinterest , it's like gangbusters . It is like , instead of having these ebbs and flows of seasons or , depending on the type of content you create , what we're seeing is it's sort of like you're positioning yourself like hey , we see that , you know , like metallics , metallic makeup was on an upward climb , climb and a client created something relevant to that and it was just like they already had the content . They just reshaped it , repurposed it and kind of adjusted the copy for this upward seasonal or upward trending topic and it was like , within like two weeks , like 10 million views , tons of saves . So that's something very special to Pinterest .

Meagan Williamson 18:27

We talk about pinning content and what that is basically called is saving a piece of content , and so Pinterest becomes this barometer or temperature check to understand the health of your content .

Meagan Williamson 18:40

If people aren't saving your content as a brand , it's not valuable and your content has to be valuable .

Meagan Williamson 18:47

So that's

Effective Pinterest Marketing Strategies

Meagan Williamson 18:47

why sometimes , when we see brands who come to Pinterest and it's sort of like they're just dipping their toe in but they're not really putting any effort into it . They're just throwing their products up and you know , saying a prayer , what we see is like sure , some people will save a product shot , but what they're really looking for is a little bit more value . You're giving them a reason to want to refer back , and that's what Pinterest is all about . It's always been that . So Pinterest has always been this concept of collecting and saving ideas , and we now see saves on Instagram , saves on TikTok a great indicator of if your content is going to go viral , and it sends social signals right Like . Now we're seeing that come out with the news from Google . The Google updates that social signals are more important than ever , and Pinterest has always been that . So it becomes this super complimentary channel to people or brands that are already investing in their content so what are the biggest mistakes ?

Chris Norton 19:48

you see brands making them just dipping straight in .

Meagan Williamson 19:51

Yeah , well , not necessarily like what I the the biggest offenders is that they often will just have their intern or social media manager take what they created for Instagram and slap it up on Pinterest and not adjust the copy . So pin people . Pinners use different words to search . The search intent is different . So I actually just was talking about this somewhere , but it was about how someone said you know , I really understand Pinterest keywords and I've been doing it for three months and I have no return . It was an Etsy shop owner and I said Well , why don't you send me your account ? So I had a little peek . It was just her Etsy SEO . So she had done all her Etsy research , pulled it over to Pinterest and was surprised when it didn't work .

Meagan Williamson 20:37

And I see brands often pulling like , yeah , just take our Instagram post and put it up , but you need to adjust the copy so it's discoverable . But the concept is it's a search engine , so do that little bit of extra research . I'm not talking three hours of research , I'm talking 30 seconds , one minute to extra keyword research , optimize it for the platform . I also think some of the biggest mistakes is that they sort of try to automate it without ever checking in on it . So I see people just sending over a single pin a day .

Meagan Williamson 21:10

Pinterest is as a search engine . It becomes like the more you feed it , the better . And so , if you can , and if you really think about all the touch points , most brands are creating something for TikTok , something for for facebook , something for their email newsletter , something's going out on linkedin . That's a lot of content that you can repurpose to pinterest . Uh , so really , you know , not taking the extra time , and then I've seen brands like they . They show up , they create one board , they promote a pin and they walk away , and that's to me that's just a missed opportunity .

Chris Norton 21:45

How did you get into this ? How did you get into Pinterest ? How did you suddenly get there ? I know it's Pinterest , yeah , yeah , why .

Will Ockenden 21:52

Pinterest , and why not ? You know there's a million social networks , isn't there ? There really is .

Meagan Williamson 22:08

What is it about Pinterest that grabbed you ? Without getting into my life story , I moved to Belfast in 2010 . I was a . I worked as an educational psychologist . I got qualified as an educational psychologist , recognized by the UK governing body , but nobody would give me a job . And I am a busy bee worker horse , you know , like I'm always just doing things . So I decided to start blogging because I had always read blogs myself . It was a hobby . My , my ex's mother was the only person that read it and part of that was I taught myself . Honestly , she would let me know when I had a typo , like with love , it with love . So I taught myself how to code , custom code a WordPress website . I because I was bored right Like a WordPress website . I cause I was bored right , like it was kind of like how do I do this ? I have all this . I went from being a well-established school psychologist , who you know in Canada , with a big friend network , to no friends , no job . Nobody would even interview me .

Chris Norton 23:00

And it was lonely .

Meagan Williamson 23:01

So I I created this website . I created this blog . I started talking about what I was doing , some of my journeys , and so I started kind of looking at like you started back in that day in 2010, . You started a blog . All your content lived on your website , and then social media started to come out and you started to realize , well , if I want people to find my blog content , I've got to make sure that it goes on Facebook . You know , instagram wasn't around yet and Pinterest was relatively new , and it solved a problem that I wanted .

Meagan Williamson 23:30

I saw an influencer that I really liked out of LA . She shared that . She was on it . I think she shared it on Twitter , and I was like , oh , I really like this idea that , instead of saving all these images to my computer and clogging up all my memory , slowing my laptop down , I could join this platform and save all the images for my own projects . Well , you know , six months later I went viral . Somebody posted one of my projects . To this day , one of the biggest Pinterest users in the world pinned one of my DIY projects .

Meagan Williamson 24:03

So I went from getting about 300 to 500 visitors a day to my blog to 15,000 in less than a 24 hour time period , and with that came exponential growth as an influencer in a social media like on in social media channels and so I started getting brand gigs and influencer deals and I grew to over 100,000 followers . And so and this was something I just did for fun and with that , when I started doing sponsored work with brands , they would say we noticed , you have a massive presence on Pinterest . Nobody's talking about Pinterest for brands . Nobody on our team knows what to do . Do you think you could come to an in-house training session ? Do you think you could create strategy ? And you know where this is going .

Meagan Williamson 24:50

Right , I went to school for way too long to be a psychologist to all of a sudden , you know people throwing money at me to do private consulting because nobody was doing it , and so I started doing consulting on the side . I still worked full time as a psychologist and , yeah , the rest was sort of history . It

Pinterest Marketing Strategies for Success

Meagan Williamson 25:10

was just purely out of demand . I didn't have a website . I was using a Gmail you know account that people would email me . And , yeah , a few years later , you know , I got a huge mass of one of the number one bridal companies in the world . The CEO emailed me said I Googled Pinterest consultant , found you Two days later you know , I was pushing my baby in a pram in a laneway did the call with a headset and booked him as a client and I haven't looked back . Wow .

Chris Norton 25:44

Amazing , booked him as a client and and I haven't looked back . Wow , and are you ?

Will Ockenden 25:46

one of these ? Um yeah , are you one of the few um consultants that works directly with Pinterest ?

Meagan Williamson 25:51

then I read on your yeah so I threw a risky move that I took a few years ago , introduced myself to the president of Pinterest Canada . They were hosting an event here in Toronto . This , will you know , not to dismiss younger folks , but I was at an event where a lot of interns were sent or younger junior employees on the marketing teams from brands , and nobody knew who she was . But I had looked her up on LinkedIn and I thought there's Erin . She's not talking to anybody . So I walked up , introduced myself and ever since then I have been a friend to people within the Pinterest teams . So they share information with me , they invite me to events , and then part of that is they also said to me that they really wanted somebody to come in and facilitate teaching and workshops .

Meagan Williamson 26:41

And you know it's a huge honor that , as far as I know , currently I'm one of the only Pinterest marketing external , non Pinterest employees that they bring in to facilitate workshops and teachings to different teams there . And , yeah , I love it . It's wonderful for me too , right ? Because it's a huge learning opportunity to see how the different teams work , to marry my knowledge sort of unbiased knowledge that what I can take . And then , obviously , you know , I hosted a virtual event in February and a Pinterest employee came and gave an in-depth interview , and so those relationships have really helped me to yeah , to really , you know , pull out in my , in my little niche that I have here in the marketing world how often should be pinning then on pinterest ?

Chris Norton 27:29

because , like you've given loads of examples there , yeah , like , because I think I've pinned about 4 000 pins , and I've from years ago and I'm still got , so I can't remember how many followers I've . Yeah , it's humming away , I bet well , that's , that's just it .

Meagan Williamson 27:44

It's like a I bet .

Meagan Williamson 27:44

Well , that's just it . It's like a snowball right , like it's this thing that just keeps going for you even though you're not there . And actually that's probably why , as someone in the social media marketing space , I've never even if there's been ups and downs like there is with any platform I have always personally myself and my clients really benefited from a channel like Pinterest , because I had a client who's set . Very sadly , her husband was diagnosed with cancer . She had to walk away from her business for six months . She still gained email subscribers , purchases every single day , website traffic from her efforts on Pinterest and my me supporting her , and so and I I'm , you know , I have two young children I've gone through different seasons of life where I'm more or less on in , you know , present in my marketing , and search engines like Pinterest and Google have always been my best friend , and that's sort of just how I've always been my whole life , even like when I was doing blogging and influencer work , I drove across Canada . I didn't even have service sometimes . So things like Pinterest have always worked for me . When people start to ask questions like how many pins should I add a day , I ask like well , how much do you want to grow ? And then , what can your content marketing sustain ? Pinterest doesn't want you just to share the same thing over and over again . We wouldn't do that on TikTok , we wouldn't do it on Instagram . Can you imagine if you went to a brand's Instagram feed and they just shared the same image with the same caption ? No , but people do think you can do that to Pinterest . I don't know why it results in an awful experience . But a Pinterest account , whether you are a brand or a small business owner , it doesn't really matter who or what you are . But if you're using it as a business user , it thrives . The more you add to it , the better .

Meagan Williamson 29:29

But consistency is key . So it takes about three weeks , just from , like , a technical perspective . Each and every person's account has its own cadence and definition of consistency . So it takes three weeks for the algorithm to learn what you can sustain . So if it's one a day , add one a day . So it takes three weeks for the algorithm to learn what you can sustain . So if it's one a day , add one a day . If it's two a day , add two a day . Sometimes there's like old advice you have to do 15 pins a day , you have to do 20 . You don't . But whatever you do , do it consistently . So if it's like two pins on Monday , two pins on Wednesday and two on Saturday , great , keep that up for three weeks and Pinterest will learn that that's the cadence , or you know that's the the what you're going to sustain on that account . But really it's the type of thing that I think start with like a modest amount , like one a day .

Meagan Williamson 30:18

Focus on , you know , dripping out and sharing high quality content , and once you start to see the return , you're going to want to double down . Like I was working , I did again the consult I did in December . They were doing three pins a day and you know they were sitting at 8 million and I said Well , you know what are your goals . Let's look at your business goals . What are your projections ? Okay , you know what type of content . They weren't even sharing all the content that they had .

Meagan Williamson 30:43

There are so many potential content vehicles . You can share podcast episodes . You can share webinar signup pages . You can share FAQ pages . You can share product collection pages . You can share you know there's so many different things Instagram posts , tiktok but you could grow your Instagram account . You grow your TikTok account . You could drive traffic to your YouTube . You couldn't drive traffic to your you know email signup page . There are so many different content vehicles available for business owners and oftentimes , when I look at accounts , they're only really pinning some old blog content or one video here or there . Pinterest loves video . Pinterest loves fresh links or fresh content . That's high value . So start out with one or two a day and then , like I said , this brand I work with they went from about three a day up to 10 and they went from 8 million to 23 million views and yes , don't worry , they had 100% growth in traffic . Their sales tripled from the platform .

Chris Norton 31:42

That sounds like like . If so , if you're a content marketer , sat there going , oh , I've got a blog full of like . You know we've got a blog . Uh , the prohibition blog is it's got like 800 900 articles on it . I bet we've pinned about 30 of them if somebody went through and pinned them all and optimized them all . First question actually is on the technical side of optimize . You talked about um pinterest , sounds like it , because it's a search engine . It's got its own sort of seo , so how ? You said it's different to like a caption on instagram , so how ? So how ? How long does a description have to be on pinterest to make it work beautifully for its its own search engine optimization ?

Meagan Williamson 32:18

well , like many search engines , you really want to write for humans , but maximize your keywords and your relevant keywords . So you're using your Pinterest copy . So , unlike Instagram , on Pinterest you have what we call pin titles , so that's the heading that appears below your imagery

Optimizing Pinterest for Business Growth

Meagan Williamson 32:34

video . This is one of the most important places to use your keywords . Oftentimes we've been conditioned , because it's a visual search engine , that we use text on screen . That text on screen is actually read by the Pinterest crawler , so it scans images and it scans your video covers to understand what I'm looking at . So don't forget to add text so that you're not confusing the bots . Right , the machine learning . Then you have your pin description and this would be similar to a caption in that it's where you provide more copy . But again , like , whereas on Instagram you might have some like a hook and a cute little description emojis and then 20 hashtags , on Pinterest we're really going to write that pin description to be keyword rich , to include relevant broad terms so that Pinterest understands what it's looking at . It's constantly trying to figure out , through machine learning , what is this pin about and who is this relevant to . So it's important to use , you know , terms like business owners , brands , like you know , with your 800 blog posts and here's the thing , chris it's not just 800 pins that you could be sharing and dripping out to Pinterest you can actually create five images , 10 images per blog post and drip those out . So this is potentially like 8000 pins . Then , if you have any video content , so if you're pushing out reels , if you're creating YouTube shorts or YouTube videos longer ones that you could grab snippets from , if you have the podcast , every podcast episode could be going up there .

Meagan Williamson 34:14

The thing is is that we sometimes think like , well , pinterest is just like recipes and baby shower planning and nails . Yes , those are huge verticals on Pinterest . But the thing is is that , especially in the business space , or in particular niches or industries , your competitor is not using Pinterest , and there are . You can go into the Pinterest ads manager , set up a fake campaign and actually look at what the search volume is for particular terms . So it might be how to start . A business has between 500,000 and 1 million searches a month on Pinterest alone . So if you have content about that , your competitors most likely aren't on Pinterest .

Meagan Williamson 35:01

And I think especially you started this interview by chatting about , like we have these assumptions that it's mostly women . It's well , first off , we know that middle aged women have the biggest buying power , right ? You know , we know that in a household . I'm not trying to say , like you know anything against that , but we know that . But it's sort of like a lot of men who work in marketing roles are like , say , well , I'm not on Pinterest , so we're not going to put our company on Pinterest , and it's actually , you know , like I get it . It's a smaller pond , right , it's not necessarily the type of traffic you would see from SEO efforts or it's not necessarily that you're going to go viral overnight , but if you're creating content for other channels , it's a no-brainer that you would want to move into a platform that isn't being utilized by your competitors and that people are there and thirsty for it is there ?

Will Ockenden 35:56

is there on that , actually , that this is an interesting point ? Is there , is there some underserved sectors where there is a massive opportunity ? You know you mentioned businesses , yeah . So while we're seeing Generic term , Good question .

Meagan Williamson 36:08

I , you know , I'll be completely honest with you . You know , from off the top of my head I don't have anything in particular . I do think like education in terms of business , and we're seeing an uptick in that across thanks to the digital marketing pyramid schemes that have exploded into social media and marketing . I think that there isn't as much people who what I would call are infopreneur based . So I even had somebody reach out to me last week and they're like well , it's , pinterest is really only for visual business owners , like photographers . I was like , excuse me , no , absolutely not . It's actually about your content . I think any business could thrive on Pinterest . It's actually defined by what your content marketing approach is . So if you are publishing content , if you are creating video , then you should be on Pinterest .

Meagan Williamson 37:02

I do think that we're going to see again like , let's look at what the younger generations are doing , because that's the fastest growing demographic on Pinterest . We are seeing more men use it . We are seeing also there was like a lot of news articles about how young dads were starting to use Pinterest because they want to be well , you know , I don't want to put say anything to to say like they want to be better dads . They want to have ideas for , um , how , maybe not to repeat mistakes that were made in previous generations . I'm trying to say that in a nice way , right ? Um , I think that what we're seeing is , too , is that a lot of business owners aren't thriving in the places they used to thrive .

Meagan Williamson 37:45

They feel like they're in this content churn that's not having a lot of return , so they're going back to basics and saying , okay , what has that return on investment for us ? How can we do more with what we have , especially for brands that are leaning into evergreen content ? Have , especially for brands that are leaning into evergreen content ? Pinterest is just like it loves content from three years ago , right , we again . We're like in this very strange world where some people are still thinking like I have to create a reel and go viral this week , and it's like it goes viral and then no one sees it again or you know ages , unless you republish it somewhere . Whereas Pinterest is like give me that blog post from two years ago , give me that podcast episode from five years ago and as long as it's good , and you know , evergreen content , even not evergreen content still goes viral .

Meagan Williamson 38:37

You know , you see people looking up travel guides for Portugal and it might say 2019 on it , but it's still really valuable , right , and so people are still consuming that content , even when it might feel you know that it says on it from best , best places to go in 2019 so me , megan , do people hire you then to obviously do the strategy right , the strategy for pinterest .

Chris Norton 39:00

But so let's use , let's use an example that , like similar to ours , where we've got , say , 900 blog articles on there . Would they hire you to then come in , look at , analyze the 900 blog posts and then , like you said , it's not just the blog itself , it's the eight pictures that's on . You know five or six pictures that's on the blog . Do you then implement that or do you give someone a framework ? Yeah , I focus more on the strategy piece .

Meagan Williamson 39:26

So I get brought in on very large teams

Learning From Marketing Mistakes

Meagan Williamson 39:29

that just don't have the knowledge base to know what to do with it . They know there's an opportunity , they've seen the potential , whether it's with their existing account and they have very little strategy , or they've been reading and they're very interested in moving on to Pinterest and so they'll bring me in . I do an audit and a baseline review and then I create customized strategies to say , okay , team , this is what you're going to do , this is what it's going to look like , and then we have ongoing consults as they scale their efforts . I've really moved into the education piece and to you know one to many model . I used to run a Pinterest marketing agency so I managed between 40 and 50 accounts in a month with my team , loved it , fell out of love with managing people . Like many you know , I found I was in meetings all day and I was sending emails all day to my team members , and so I really started moving towards being sharing via education and being brought into speak and selling digital products . And then I do a little bit of here and there , one-off consulting for brands , and that's really that's really what I do nowadays .

Meagan Williamson 40:38

I do mentor and train and vet Pinterest managers , though , because I get emails every single day hey , megan , do you know anyone that can do this ? Or we need a Pinterest manager . We just want to outsource it and , as I figured out very quickly when I was running my own agency , is that a lot of people will think that Pinterest is very simple , but they're not actually bringing critical strat . Like you know , they're not really thinking about how do we actually change what we're doing ? And you know there are people you can hire and , yes , they'll take your content and throw it up on Pinterest , but they don't understand the algorithm , they don't understand keyword strategy and they also can't bring in that piece of you know , this is what a small business owner or a blogger would do . The way that you show up as a brand or a well-established entrepreneur on Pinterest is very different and unfortunately , a lot of people don't have the ability to step back .

Meagan Williamson 41:34

Actually , this is where my background . So I say , like you know , I became . I was a psychologist for 10 years and sometimes I joke like , well , I'm glad that I spent , you know , $120,000 becoming a psychologist to work in marketing and not have any degrees in that , but actually I used to do what we call educational assessment , what you call them in the UK , educational assessments or psychological assessments here for the biggest school board in North America . So what I do is I look at what children or I would look at what children were really good at , what was difficult for them . I'd come up with a customized learning plan for that particular child .

Meagan Williamson 42:07

And so I bring that ability to sort of very quickly do a meta-analysis , analyze what's going on in the industry , what's happening with their content marketing . And because I have a background I started as a blogger and I did influencer work , creating content for brands I just I move in those spaces very easily because I used to be in those rooms , I remember , and so for me it's sort of that's what sets me apart when , why I get hired by household brands , because I understand that that sort of beast is very different than , say , a blogger who blogs about , you know , gluten free recipes or raising puppies , and those people are wonderful too and I love working with them . But understanding the content marketing , ad budgets , remarketing and bringing it all together , that is my like happy place . I love that higher level strategy and then helping teams execute in-house through my guidance .

Chris Norton 43:07

So this show is all about marketing mistakes . So , megan , you've got your background in psychology is making me feel really judged .

Meagan Williamson 43:18

Listen I used to when people used to ask me , especially men , this was like a common thing , like do you know what I'm thinking ? I just remembered that the other day and nobody has said that to me in a really long time . Listen , I don't have it . I have two small children . I'm not worrying about what you're thinking or what you're judging you .

Chris Norton 43:34

Yeah , I'm joking . I'm joking um . So our show is all about marketing mistakes and what you learn , so have you had any big mistakes that you've made in marketing that you've learned that we can all learn from what's one of your biggest mistakes you've made ? For me personally in my own business .

Meagan Williamson 43:53

I would say that and I've talked about this before , but it's sort of like I don't think I fully have told people why . So I made a huge financial mistake , but it was also a bat . I lost $25,000 early on in my business running , hiring a Facebook ads expert I'll do air quotes around the word expert and I we ran ads to a brand new funnel that we had never tested , that had not been tested organically . So from a coaching perspective , but also about my own business , I think it was really embarrassing for me because I think I know a lot and I generally make very I make risky decisions that are safe . I am the sole breadwinner in our family , so my husband works for me , but he is the caregiver of our small children . I'm the ambitious one , I love working and I I , you know like losing $25,000 in three months . You know , thankfully , I was in a position . I didn't you know it's not like I couldn't afford to pay our mortgage or we didn't lose anything but it , you know it was .

Meagan Williamson 45:05

I was licking my wounds after that and I realized like the biggest thing I learned was like don't run paid advertising to a funnel you haven't tested organically . Do not outsource something until you have enough understanding of it to ask the right questions . There were warning flags . My husband and I both picked up on them , but we kept thinking well , they charge so much Like clearly , when you're paying someone thousands of dollars a month to manage ads , they clearly must know what they're doing . And that person did not know what they were doing and it was an expensive mistake . So you're saying you basically burnt the budget yeah .

Will Ockenden 45:49

Didn't get any results for you and you just spent 25 grand in three months and realized that's right .

Meagan Williamson 45:55

So yeah , we were spending about like seven to ten thousand dollars a month on the ad spend , you know , usd . We were paying the person between twenty five hundred and three thousand dollars000 a month on the ad spend you know , usd . We were paying the person between 2500 and $3,000 USD a month and we did get some like freebie opt ins one person purchased . So during that 90 day period , one person bought my offer . It was only $67 wait , wait wait wait wait , it gets better .

Meagan Williamson 46:27

So the person that purchased emailed me and said I just had a baby four days ago . I should not have spent the money . I'm so sorry to do this . I'm asking for a refund and honestly , I think I laughed until I cried and I thought so . We had one purchase in the 390 day time period . They asked for a refund after four days because they had just literally she got out of the hospital and asked for the refund and um you know it was , but now I run my own Facebook ads .

Meagan Williamson 47:05

I you know like I've learned a lot . We now , when I hire you know my husband and I we have a lot of questions . We ask . We love outsourcing and hiring , but we scrutinize . I took this person as a referral . I thought if my friends are doing well with them , well , I love some of my friends , but they don't know as much as my husband and I do about conversions , events , about ad spend . So anyways , that definitely led to some major trust issues .

Will Ockenden 47:34

I'm not surprised , but you're still standing . You survived it .

Meagan Williamson 47:39

I did . And now it's like you know I'm , I never , I always do things myself first learn , learn enough to be dangerous and then I look to outsource . So even I started running TikTok ads for my own business . And you know like I never spend money I don't have , and that's the way I , you know . Thankfully I can look at it . But would I have liked to have done different things with that $25,000 ? Absolutely , things with that $25,000 . Absolutely . But now I do feel like I learned a lot and it helps me to teach , because I have a lot of business owners who come to me and they'll say like , oh , I want to start running ads , and you know they haven't proven their funnel yet , they it's . It's made me a better marketer , that's for sure .

Will Ockenden 48:18

That's the right way to take it . That's a good silver lining . Yeah , absolutely .

Chris Norton 48:22

Yeah , use it , as from every mistake there is a positive . I think yes , always . We've all lost money , though , haven't we ? I mean , everybody's lost money . It's the nature of the beast in marketing test and measure , but maybe you just didn't measure it quick enough . That 90 days maybe should have been 30 or something , I don't know . Yeah , no-transcript in pinterest , then , or you know , is it ? Does it have to be business to consumer , or or is b2b ? Does b2b ?

Meagan Williamson 49:12

yeah , well , b2b well , we kind of touched upon it earlier . Right , the b2b is a little bit smaller in terms of the numbers , but those people are on Pinterest , like one of the like I said , like how to start a business , how to market my business , things that are education-based , graphic design , branding , so all those like that B2B area is quite big and we do see , like again , it just depends , like it's sort of comparing apples and oranges . But those people are on Pinterest , they're looking for resources and education , but it's just a little different . Right , we know that those segments are a bit smaller , and that's true on Pinterest as well .

Meagan Williamson 49:53

What I would say is , if you're very local , like you only work with people in especially I don't know if you know this , but the UK is a testing ground for Pinterest , so they often test new features , you get access to things , and Pinterest Canada and Pinterest UK are in the same team and so they have English-speaking countries outside of America , and so you often get features before other people . But one thing that is sort of something to think about is if you only offer services as a B2B , or even if you sell physical products , but you only sell products in your country or even in your region . I would say Pinterest is not always a wonderful place for you because it does tend to be . The largest market is America , second largest is Canada , then UK and Australia , and so you just have to sort of consider that like what's my goal here ? People finding me , people booking me , people purchasing my physical or digital products . You really just have to consider that when you're thinking about how much effort you're going to put into Pinterest .

Chris Norton 51:04

Great and if people want to get in contact with you , megan , how can they find you , if they want to book you for your brilliant services ?

Meagan Williamson 51:11

Oh , thank you . All roads lead to my website and my email list , so the best place to reach out to me is via meganwilliamsoncom , so you can just Google that M-E-A-G-A-N . Williamsoncom . That's my brand website . My company is actually called pin potential . That's all my digital products and services . Um , but you can just look up my name and you can either join my email list and start learning for free and I share , I'm very , very dedicated . All roads lead to my email list , uh , but if you want to talk one-on-one , just shoot me an email and I reply to every email , usually within a few days . Well , how can people find you on pinterest then ?

Will Ockenden 51:48

yeah , that's the the obvious question for me , you're not on it yeah , I , I should have deleted my account .

Meagan Williamson 51:56

Uh , so you can just look up megan williamson in my account . And actually here's a funny , weird like thing that because I started my account and I had over 100,000 followers under my blog name , which was Row House Nest I used to live in a little row house when I was in Belfast and that's where I started my blog they won't let me change my handle to my name . So I'm a verified account as Megan Williamson , but my actual handle is Row House Nest and they won't let me change it because I had over 100,000 followers . I don't . That's like weird , I know .

Will Ockenden 52:29

With your connections . You can't get it changed .

Meagan Williamson 52:31

Yeah , they got me verified without even me asking . And yeah , I've tried to change my name a few times , but across social media I'm Megan Williamson or Megan A Williamson . So if you like video TikTok , there's short , snappy tutorials there . I love threads . Have you guys talked about threads on the podcast yet ?

Chris Norton 52:51

Well , we have touched on threads , I might get a threads expert on the show . Is there such a thing ?

Meagan Williamson 52:56

I don't think anyone has one .

Chris Norton 52:57

No , no , it's just everybody bullshitting . Yeah , I was going to say it's just bullshit .

Meagan Williamson 53:00

It's unhinged bullshit and it's working for me . It's like I love threads .

Chris Norton 53:06

I'm finding threads to be the Twitter . The old . It's like not X is now X . It's not Twitter , is it ? And everybody that's moved to . Once you get over the threads all being about people that have left Twitter , that's all the people .

Meagan Williamson 53:23

The other stuff's actually quite useful it feels like what it used to be , a little bit yeah , it's really , I think

Social Media Marketing Trends and Recommendations

Meagan Williamson 53:29

, injected some new life into um social media and it's interesting because it's connected right .

Meagan Williamson 53:35

So I just saw an announcement that they're going to be rolling out ads on threads yeah , which as a marketer , you know , I like as a person who loves threads , I don't like the idea of being interrupted , but I think it'll be interesting to see how it continues to evolve . I think people are looking for peaceful . You know , we're kind of like tired . We are tired , and so people are looking for places like Pinterest and threads . I think it's why TikTok has brought out notes like places that feel less visually or even just less stimulating in general , and so .

Meagan Williamson 54:09

I think that these all these big social media giants are kind of looking for a place or a part of their business that is less stimulating , as people say hey , I'm really overst overstimulated , but I want to go on social media , but I don't want to be bombarded by reels . You know dancing and singing okay , now a question .

Will Ockenden 54:31

We always ask our guests megan um , if you were us and you could invite somebody um onto onto our podcast as our next guest , who would you invite ?

Meagan Williamson 54:40

oh , I would invite . So there's a few people . My friend , iman , is an email marketer . She is well . She's from the UK but lives in Norway . She's the best copywriter I've ever hired Worth every penny . She is phenomenal . So if you're looking for someone in that space , or one of my favorite people to listen to right now in the podcast space , is a creator coach called Jay Klaus . I think that Jay Klaus is very thoughtful . Actually , I just jokingly said yesterday that also Jay and Iman should talk . Jay , yeah , he has a lot of really interesting ideas . I love the way he synthesizes ideas and he could be . He represents a lot of people who want to become creators and thought leaders online influencer related , so I think you guys would really like him and Iman .

Meagan Williamson 55:34

I think you would love her because she just she's a fantastic copywriter , just like the best , the best , and hardly anyone knows about her , which is kind of shocking to me , and I've I've hired a lot of copywriters . Copywriting is , like I think , one of the most difficult things in the marketing space .

Chris Norton 55:54

One of the most underrated things as well . People just seem to think it's easy and it's bloody . Not , yeah , and it's difficult to outsource , right .

Meagan Williamson 56:02

It's like that thing that you want off your plate . But then if you do it to the wrong person and they don't nail your brand voice or you know how yeah , she did magical things for me . I hired her to do a launch sequence for me and she took all my reviews and testimonials , mapped it onto objections and pain . It was like mind-blowingly beautiful . So I'll send invites for both so you guys can meet Ajay , I don't know .

Will Ockenden 56:28

Yeah , fantastic .

Meagan Williamson 56:28

Iman , I'll send a person to introduce you and , yeah , I think you would love both .