Pinterest Marketing For Photo Businesses, with Julia Bocchese

The Dead Pixels Society Podcast host Gary Pageau interviews Julia Bocchese of Julia Renee Consulting, an SEO, AI search, and Pinterest consultant in Philadelphia, about how she shifted from corporate publishing and a travel photography site (plus a Viking Age history master’s) into nine years of SEO and Pinterest work. She explains Pinterest is closer to Google than social media because it’s a visual search and discovery engine designed to drive users off-platform to websites, supporting long-term traffic and conversions rather than follower-based engagement. They discuss Pinterest’s focus on user-requested features like hiding AI-generated content, improving on-platform shopping, and an ad model aligned with search intent where ads can be saved and keep driving traffic after spend stops. Bokeyze recommends testing multiple content types over 3–6 months, linking pins directly to relevant website pages, using captions for muted video, and optimizing site speed, UX, and calls-to-action. She highlights Pinterest Trends, seasonal posting 3–6 months ahead, demographics (about 70% women, strong 30–50), and limitations for analytics with third-party sites like Etsy.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Erin Manning 0:00

The Dead Pixels Society Podcast is brought to you by Media clip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers. Welcome to The Dead Pixels Society Podcast, the photoimaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau.

Gary Pageau 0:18

Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society Podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau, and today we're joined by Julia Bocchese, who's from Julia Renee Consulting, and she's an SEO, AI Search and Pinterest consultant based in Philadelphia. Hi, Julia. How are you today?

Julia Bocchese 0:35

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Gary Pageau 0:38

So before we get into Pinterest marketing and SEO tactics, how did you get into this kind of niche area of the SEO world? What's your background?

Julia Bocchese 0:48

Yeah, so I have no SEO background, no formal SEO background. I was doing a very boring corporate publishing job and I wanted a creative outlet. And I actually do enjoy photography. I'm still a hobby photographer, definitely don't want to do it professionally. But I started a travel photography site and learned SEO, Pinterest, all sorts of marketing strategies to help that website grow. And then when I was ready to quit my boring job, I actually went to grad school to study the Viking Age. So seriously, nothing related to SEO. Like Viking cruises.

Gary Pageau 1:24

True.

Julia Bocchese 1:24

Viking Vikings. Yes, Viking Vikings. Yeah. Yeah. So I had my master's in history with the focus on the Viking Age. But I wanted a flexible schedule to go to grad school. So I started freelancing, doing a lot of content writing for small businesses, doing a lot of social media management because I had learned how to do that from my own website. And then realized that I really hated Facebook and Instagram. I loved SEO and Pinterest because of like all of the data. And then also just the long-term results you can get from it. It's not flashy, it's not trendy. I know a lot of people prefer the flashy trendy, but I really like seeing the long-term growth over time. So during grad school, I accidentally built a business and I've been doing SEO and Pinterest for going on nine years now.

Gary Pageau 2:09

Wow.

Pinterest As A Visual Search Engine

Gary Pageau 2:10

So as you mentioned before, you were like stalking me earlier listening to some podcasts of prep for this. And you actually came up with you mentioned that in one of the prior podcasts, you mentioned that Pinterest is, I think I myself were the guess that Pinterest is not the thing it used to be, but it's still of high interest to a lot of people and it still has a lot of users. So can you explain to the audience how Pinterest is different from some of those other platforms you mentioned, especially from a business standpoint?

Julia Bocchese 2:39

Pinterest is much more similar to Google than it would be to Facebook, Instagram, threads, TikTok, wherever, because it is a visual search and discovery platform. So it's essentially a search engine just with images and videos. So when people go to Pinterest, they're going to search for information or for inspiration, ideas, things like that. Whereas on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, it's about getting views and followers and engaging with people. Whereas people on Pinterest, it's more like a library where they go to search for information, get what they need, and then is it your website? But they're not necessarily following you or commenting on pins or engaging in those ways. They're just searching for the information. So if you have the information that they're interested in, it's a really good way to lead them to your website, get them to sign up for your email lists, purchase products, become clients. So it can really be a really good way to get more clients and customers, rather on Instagram and Facebook. You might have a lot of people who follow you because they really like your pictures or who you are, but they might never turn into customers.

Gary Pageau 3:45

Yeah, that's always been one of the things I've noticed about the drive to grab followers, right? You do these, you do the dance on TikTok or you do the posts and things. And how many of those people are actually converting into actual paying customers, right? And obviously, if you're running ads on Facebook or Instagram or whatnot, you can track some of that. But I've found that it's really more of a promotional vehicle. It's not necessarily driving transactions per se.

Julia Bocchese 4:14

Yeah, so I definitely continue to use Instagram and TikTok and all of that, but it is, it can be a very different uh way to get clients in the door if you're on Pinterest. And a lot of people who want to like check you out to verify who you are before they work with you, they will check your Instagram and things like that just to confirm you're human, especially in the world of bot websites right now. Um definitely still use them. But you can have more of a strategy with Pinterest.

Gary Pageau 4:42

So I find your approach interesting because when I talk to people, especially social media consultants and people like that, we always talk about hey, limit this stuff because you can't be on all the platforms. It just unless that's your job. If you're running a camera store, how much time can you actually spend cutting videos and doing all that stuff? Unless you've got some Gen Z or millennial who's on staff who's gonna do it for you, which a lot of them do. Whereas Pinterest is more fits into your Google bucket of your search optimization and your traffic driving and things like that. So for people who haven't been to Pinterest in a while, of which I would count myself among them. How has it evolved as a marketing platform? What has Pinterest been doing to kind of differentiate themselves from these other platforms?

Julia Bocchese 5:28

I think one thing that Pinterest does really well is that they really listen to what the users want and they will actually implement changes based on that. So one thing a few months ago that was really big is they added a function where you can hide all of the AI created photos and videos and things like that. So you don't have to see it if you don't want to. Yeah. Wow.

Gary Pageau 5:48

So if someone actually does, for example, an AI created wall decor thing, and let's say you're doing store, but they're they don't actually have any products, they just they just have AI stuff. You can the Pinterest can detect that, that it's AI generated and then hides it from you.

Julia Bocchese 6:06

You do have to manually do the settings, but yes, you can hide all of that.

Gary Pageau 6:09

Wow, that's cool.

Julia Bocchese 6:10

And they're really focusing on improving the shopping experience on Pinterest. So they keep hiring, I forget where the latest CEO, I think maybe from eBay or something like that, just to make things easier for people to be able to purchase products directly from Pinterest instead of like having to go through the website and the checkout process. So they are making these improvements that are making things easier for users. But one really good thing about Pinterest is unlike Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, the purpose of Pinterest is to get people off of Pinterest and onto websites. So the core of that has been around this entire time. That really hasn't changed, other than maybe this new easier shopping experience they're working on. But a blog post, they want you to go visit the blog post and get information. So that has stayed the same, which is why it's so great for traffic and has remained so great for traffic.

Gary Pageau 7:03

Yeah, that makes sense because the business model, of course, for a meta platform is to keep your eyeballs stuck to it so they can show you ads. Now, Pinterest, how do they make money? Pinterest?

Julia Bocchese 7:16

Through Pinterest ads.

Gary Pageau 7:17

Okay, so tell me more about their ad plan. How intrusive is it?

Julia Bocchese 7:21

Yeah. So the nice thing about as a user seeing Pinterest ads is that a lot of times the ads are related to something that you're searching on Pinterest. So if you go to Pinterest and you're searching for kitchen table, you're not gonna get a lot of ads for like cars or gardening or something, something that's not related to what you're actually searching for. Sometimes that might happen based on like previous searches that you've done, but usually it's aligned with what you're searching for. As a business, that's a really great way to fit your ads into what people are searching for already. It's a really good way to get more traffic. And then one thing that I like about Pinterest ads that I don't see anywhere else is that people can actually save the ads because they are integrated just naturally as pins are. So if they like whatever's in your ad and they save it for later, even if you stop putting money behind that ad, that pin will continue to live on and can still drive traffic and get more views. So even if you stop totally running your ads tomorrow, but other people have saved your ads already, you can still get traffic from that. So that's one thing where Pinterest ads are different from meta ads. But it can be a really good place for businesses to have their ads because again, it's really good for driving that traffic.

Gary Pageau 8:36

So one of the some of the feedback I've heard uh regarding what's changed with Google search is they prioritize their own AI, right? The Google AI in the search results so that people's search results are falling down farther down because you know Google's offering the the AI-driven answers as opposed to the either the organic search or the paid search. So I've I've heard from people in my industry that their Google results have gone wonky because they're not getting the results that they normally would expect because Google is prioritizing their own AI stuff. What is Pinterest doing? Are they doing anything along those lines or are they uh working differently than that?

Julia Bocchese 9:21

Not that I have seen so far. They actually made a change just in the last couple weeks about the tagline for Pinterest about being like an AI-driven visual search engine, something like that. But I'm not it's not clear what that means yet.

Gary Pageau 9:36

How it's gonna affect results.

Julia Bocchese 9:38

So I'm not sure in exactly what that's gonna mean for the future of Pinterest. But since Pinterest's whole goal and everything is getting people off of Pinterest onto websites, I don't think they're gonna have that kind of AI overview that answers the question. So you don't need to click on a website. And a lot of times the content on Pinterest is a little bit different from Google, whereas like you go to Google how to boil an egg, something super basic, super generic. On Pinterest, you're not searching how to boil an egg. You might be searching for much more like detailed, unique doubled egg recipes, something like that, where you're not gonna get the answers in cutly overview. You do need to visit the website to get the recipe, get the ingredients, everything like that. So I don't think Pinterest is gonna have totally copy the AI overview thing that Google has, but they they might in the future have some sort of AI capabilities. But it's also interesting because they allow you to block AI results. So I don't think they're ever gonna go completely AI direction.

Gary Pageau 10:37

So if you were a photo lab or someone who is producing wall decor or things like that, what would you recommend to somebody? Would you be showing customer results? Would you be showing like how-tos? Would you be showing a variety of those things? Is it okay to mention mix and match those, or do you have what's the strategy for something

What To Post For Real Leads

Gary Pageau 11:00

like that?

Julia Bocchese 11:00

Yeah, so I would definitely test out different types of content to see what performs the best. It's very similar to Google with whatever you put on Pinterest today, you're not going to get results tomorrow. You do have to give it time. So don't put a bunch of pins on Pinterest and then make a decision next week on what performs the best. I'll give it at least three to six months. Definitely test out different types of content. You do need to have some kind of content. So whether you have a blog post, podcast, products, or even if you have videos that you're using for Instagram reels, you can repurpose those as video pins. Do you need to have something to put on Pinterest? I would definitely test out videos on maybe how to arrange wall art or different sizes that you need to get for different sized walls, different types of frames, how to mix and match. You can also show a process of printing on different types of paper or different types of material. I personally would love to see how you can print on metal. I think that sounds really cool. Yeah. So if you can show the behind the scenes, show the products, show your services. The thing that is different on Pinterest is people don't necessarily care about who you are, which sounds harsh, but they are there to search for information and for ideas, whereas on Instagram, they may be following you for you. But on Pinterest, they don't really care about you as much. So I wouldn't do a bunch of videos where you are just talking, you're not showing anything because no one on Pinterest, unless you have a ton of followers, really knows who you are. Also, another thing to note for videos is most of the time the volume is off on Pinterest automatically. So if you do have a video where you're talking or something like that, you should have captions so that way people can immediately see what you're talking about without having to turn the volume on. Things like trending audio, those don't matter on Pinterest like they do on Instagram.

Gary Pageau 12:49

It seems to me like almost like Instagram, Facebook, etc., are personality driven. And Pinterest is content driven. Yeah. You really need to understand it's a completely different approach. You may have to do a completely different style of video or post. Yeah, definitely. Okay. So now when you're driving traffic from Pinterest to your website, what are the handoff is not clear there about where are there strategies to make that easier so that let's say, for example, I'm looking at that video on how to make that metal print, I should be going directly to ordering metal prints, right?

Julia Bocchese 13:34

So definitely link to whatever makes the most sense on your website. So if you have a services page because it's something that would be a custom service and you have the details about it, you can link to that. If you have a category page for metal prints, link to that. I yeah, I wouldn't link to a longer video or to like your Instagram page or something like that. Make sure it's something that's on your website.

Gary Pageau 13:55

Okay. And you can, of course, track that. How does Pinterest stack up to other platforms in terms of ad tracking and all that stuff? Because having done some Facebook stuff in the past, it's pretty impressive what you can do with those things. Of course, the Google ads is probably the gold standard for that. How does Pinterest stack up for the novice user, for the person, not an SEO junkie uh person?

Julia Bocchese 14:18

So I don't do anything with meta ads, so I don't have a good point of comparison there. But with Pinterest ad tracking is pretty straightforward. You can see like keywords that you're getting the traffic for. You can see if you're running different ads, which ones are getting traffic, which ones are getting saves, impressions, all of that. When you before you set up your ads, you do need to what's called claim your website or basically add a line of code on your website that will connect it to your Pinterest account. So you can get those. But that also means that you can also track your organic traffic as well when you have your website connected with Pinterest. So that way you can also see, even just on the organic side, like which pins are performing the best, how much traffic you're getting, how many saves you're getting, if there is any pin that's getting a ton of impressions, but no saves or clicks, all these different things that can help you create your strategy going forward.

Gary Pageau 15:08

Does Pinterest have any decent support other than people like yourself to advise them on this? I was wondering where you go for help. Because I mean, it's all industry built around social media advertising. But I never really hear much about Pinterest, right? How and maybe you're the best person to reach to. Yeah.

Julia Bocchese 15:26

So Pinterest, I do have uh the Pinterest ads experts that you can talk with if you have questions. There's also the Pinterest business community. Um it's a free community just of Pinterest users, but then also people who work with Pinterest. So that way you can, if you have an issue, if you have questions, you can post them there and then get different people to help you.

Gary Pageau 15:46

So if Pinterest's uh objective is to drive into a website, does that have to be your website or could it be like an Etsy store or something like that? Is that a problem if you've got multiple platforms? Because that's very often what happens in our industry, right? You have people who have an in-store platform for uh camera sales and things, but they may have a different platform for prints, right? Can you mix and match among those in one Pinterest account?

Julia Bocchese 16:12

For any third-party website like Etsy, you can't claim it, you can't link Etsy to your Pinterest account because you don't own Etsy. So that's the only thing where you can't get the specific uh data for your Etsy shop. You can, when you look at Pinterest Analytics, you can see all of the data for everything that you've ever pinned, but you can't sort it between your website and Etsy. And like you have another third-party website. So that's the only thing if you do have something like Etsy, you can definitely pin to it, but you can't really easily sort the data there.

Gary Pageau 16:44

But you can just measure the traffic, clearly.

Julia Bocchese 16:45

Yeah. And then I know on Etsy you can also see like where your traffic is coming from.

Gary Pageau 16:51

Part of your approach is it all starts with your website, actually, correct?

Julia Bocchese 16:56

Yeah. So you have to have a good website because otherwise you're just driving traffic for the sake of traffic. And if it's not set up well for conversions or for product sales or something like that, then kind of what's the point?

Gary Pageau 17:08

Right, right, right. What are some of the things that people could improve on when it

Fix Your Website For Conversions

Gary Pageau 17:14

comes to getting people in to convert? Because that's one of the challenges our industry has is it's basically one of the very few products, consumer products, where the end user actually has to do something to transact. Because if you don't upload the pictures, everything else, if you're just buying a pair of shoes off Zappos or whatever, you're just buying shoes. You don't have to put anything into it. So, what are some of the things people could improve on in those types of environments?

Julia Bocchese 17:42

Yeah, I think just first of all, making it as easy as possible, making sure your site loads quickly. So if someone's uploading a bunch of photos, it doesn't take five hours and then they lose interest and get distracted. Um, so making sure anything like that is just really easy and straightforward. Uh, see this a lot of times with blog posts where you have a really great informational blog post, but then you don't actually have a call to action to lead people to your product page. You don't have any links to any specific types of printing that you're talking about in the blog post. Making sure that you, if you have a blog post or on your homepage, making sure you have calls to action that lead people to different product categories or to contact you if they have questions, especially if you do something that's very customized and they need to contact you for information or for a quote or something like that. So making sure the user experience on your website is set up really well so it's straightforward, people can easily find what they're looking for, they don't have to hunt for things, and then also everything can just be uploaded really quickly and everything's straightforward.

Gary Pageau 18:45

Because one of the challenges that people have with marketing is they want to sell everything, and they've got literally hundreds of variations of different products. We have this size print, that size print, this size print on this media, this print, this size print on that media. And it's they tend to want to drop everything on people. And now I'm thinking that actually Pinterest might help with that because it lets help people narrow down their choices because people may be looking at Pinterest and looking for bamboo prints or ideas to to do bamboo prints. So you can actually offer all of those things in a less confusing way is because Pinterest is actually narrowing narrowing those choices down for you.

Julia Bocchese 19:27

Yeah, so you can have a pin that just talks about one specific type of product, get them to click over to the website where you have that exact product link or the car checkout, something like that. Yeah, so they don't get distracted with 500 different products.

Gary Pageau 19:41

When people are searching on Pinterest, is there any data on trends that people are searching for that you can follow? Like that during this season, people are interested in these kind of things.

Julia Bocchese 19:54

So I'm smiling because there is an exact tool for that. It's called Pinterest Trends. It's free. It's the link is trends.pinterest.com. And yeah, you can type in a keyword or you can just browse to see what is currently trending on Pinterest and get that data on like when things are most popular throughout different seasons or compare keywords to see which ones are get more searches, things like that. I will say it doesn't have the most specific data yet. So if you are searching for something very long-tailed keyword, essentially, they might not have data for that, but you can at least get a general sense of when people might be searching or what the more popular keywords would be. I definitely recommend checking it out. You can also start to type keywords into Pinterest, and it's going to auto-populate with what other people have searched before. You're not going to get the trending throughout the year data or the exact number of people who have searched it, but it is also a good idea to see how people are searching different phrases that they're searching and kind of get an idea for what to target.

Gary Pageau 20:54

Because timing is like everything, right? If you're trying to position for the fourth quarter and you decide that probably too late.

Julia Bocchese 21:01

So Pinterest is very similar to Google, where you do need to have any seasonal pins up three to six months in advance. Christmas, you need to have things up in August, both because you need to get it up in time for your pins to start ranking before people are searching, but also people in Pinterest plan ahead. So they are planning for Pinterest in like, or sorry, they are planning for Christmas in like September. They're like planning their Christmas card photos and like Christmas card photo designs and presents for people if they want to get things printed. So you do need to start planning for those major holidays well in advance.

Gary Pageau 21:39

Is there a an ideal or persona for a Pinterest user? Is there a typical Pinterest user?

Julia Bocchese 21:51

Gen Z is growing on Pinterest. So at the age ranges from like teenagers to 60s, about 70% are women. It's usually like the largest

Trends, Audience Shifts, And Next Steps

Julia Bocchese 22:02

chunk is between I think 30 and 50. So yeah, a lot of moms. Which is great for my audience. Exactly. Yeah. So moms who are planning the Christmas card photo shoots and everything and all of the like it is a pretty good mix. So even if you think your target audience isn't on Pinterest, I would at least try and see if they are. Men are growing on Pinterest. People who are retiring are also growing on Pinterest. So it is a pretty good mix.

Gary Pageau 22:30

And you said it the platform's still growing, right? It's not you mentioned eBay earlier. I thought they used to be the hot thing for a while. But you say Pinterest is still growing. Is it growing domestically and also internationally?

Julia Bocchese 22:41

Yeah. And whenever they roll out new updates, they always start it in the US before they expand to the other countries. But I think they are getting more users in other countries. So they're trying to shorten the time that they roll out new updates everywhere.

Gary Pageau 22:54

So where can people go for more information on finding out about what you do and how you can help businesses?

Julia Bocchese 23:01

Yeah. So my website is juliarenee consulting.com. So I do have lots of blog posts, of course, on Pinterest. If you know I'll know dig into more strategies, I can also find out about my Pinterest services there. Thank you so much. And wishes. Thank you.

Erin Manning 23:19

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at www.theadpixels society dot com.