Episode 614: The Foundations Of Pinterest Success: How To Keep Pinterest Simple and Growing For Your Blog with Abraham Busick

EBT614 – Abraham Busick

Intro 00:10

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Supercut  00:16

Hey, food bloggers, check out our new SEO supercut, a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from SEO episodes we have recorded recently. Go to eatblogtalk.com/SEOsupercut to get access today. 

Megan Porta  00:53

Do you ever feel like you overthink Pinterest? I feel like food bloggers do this a lot. Myself included. Abraham Busick from Grace Lane co joins me in this episode to talk about everything Pinterest. First of all, I love that. He points out that Pinterest is not a social media platform. Pinterest is a search tool that people go to when they have a problem and they need an answer. So as a content creator, we need to figure out how to effectively deliver those answers to people. One of Abraham’s strengths is statistics and analytics. So he really gets into Pinterest analytics, what we should be looking at and how to find good keywords to stand out on the platform. And his overarching message is, don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink those little details that we hear about, like exactly how big your pins should be, or whether we should be putting video up produce high quality content consistently over time, and Pinterest will serve you in your business. This was a great interview. I hope you love it. It is episode number 614 sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  02:04

Maybe you are eager to join one of the Eat Blog Talk mastermind groups, but not quite ready to make the full investment the Eat Blog Talk accountability group could be the perfect solution for you. For just $34 a month, you will be part of a supportive community that offers weekly accountability check ins a private Slack channel, live productivity sessions and monthly zoom calls with fellow bloggers and me. Megan Porta, we are here to help you stay on track, stay motivated and connected as you build your brand and work towards your big blogging goals. If you are ready to move forward without the pressure of a huge commitment, visit eatblogtalk.com/focus and claim your spot today. 

Megan Porta  02:43

Grace Lane Co is a Pinterest management agency with a focus on bloggers and email brands. They love to share their proven strategy that keeps Pinterest simple and growing even through algorithm updates. 

Megan Porta  02:55

Abraham, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?

Abraham Busick  02:59

I’m doing great. Megan, thank you for having us. How are you doing?

Megan Porta  03:01

I’m doing good, and I love your accent. I always love talking to people with fun accents. So thank you.

Abraham Busick  03:08

Absolutely, like I guess I worked on it myself, I guess.

Megan Porta  03:11

All your life, right? Yep, we’re gonna talk about Pinterest today, which is a hot topic this year. We so just devour Pinterest information. So we’re just excited for what you have to share. But before we do that, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Abraham Busick  03:27

Sure, and again, thank you for having us on having me on here, Megan, we really don’t take that lightly when somebody shares a platform for us to be able to pour back into their users. So thank you for having us on course, a fun fact about us. So I was thinking about this leading up to the call, and for the most part, we lead a pretty boring life, but I guess I’d have to say so me and my wife were kind of we don’t like to be tied down to one area all that much, and so we have moved in our 14 years of marriage twice across the country to different states without ever having visited that state before or the area and didn’t have a place to live, just packed up our all our belongings and family and moved out. The most recent one was in 2022 we moved here to New Bern, North Carolina, from Indianapolis. And why? They thought we were crazy, and we probably are a little bit but that’s just kind of how we live life. 

Megan Porta  04:17

So that’s awesome, and it worked out well, I’m assuming. Oh, yeah,

Abraham Busick  04:21

we love it here, and we’ll probably be here for a while now. We have two kids in school, so I think that part of our life of just packing up and moving is over. So…

Megan Porta  04:31

I love it. Very adventurous. Adventurous spirits. You guys must have. We would love to hear a little bit about your company. Abraham, so Grace Lane Co. does a Pinterest management company. 

Abraham Busick  04:40

Yeah. So Grace Lane co it’s a play off our kids middle name. So our daughter’s middle name is Grace, and our son’s middle name is lane, and so it’s a play off that. But, yeah, thank you. That was all my wife. That was Melissa. I can’t take credit for that at all, but our company, so we started this a little bit about our history, actually. So we have been small business owners in various sectors. Sectors since 2017 and one of our biggest pain points with our various businesses was trying to find quality, affordable, effective marketing that really could generate either leads or website traffic for us pretty consistently and steadily, and where your efforts could be multiplied as well, instead of just constantly living on that hamster wheel of restarting every day or every week with various platforms. So we started doing some stuff with Pinterest, and we realized very quickly that we under we liked that platform. We like the way it’s set up and how the longevity of content. So about three years ago, it just kind of morphed into us helping people randomly who needed help with it. And then we formed our business, and it’s kind of all history. Since then, it’s we have a little over about 25 clients now that we manage their Pinterest for them, and we love it because it allows us to tap into my wife’s creative side and my kind of nerdy analytics side when it comes to breaking down data. But that’s what we do. We have a focus on really trying to provide affordable Pinterest management to small businesses, brands and bloggers. We really have a heart for the smaller people, because, again, being private small business owners, for many years prior to this, we understand what it’s like where you don’t have a lot of budget, you don’t have a lot of wiggle room, but you also need to get your name out there. And so that’s what we do. We’ve been doing it now for a little about three years.

Megan Porta  06:24

Awesome. I love how you kind of just fell into it and that it stemmed from a love of the platform, which, I mean, I think all most food bloggers can relate, because it’s such a beautiful visual platform, right? And it’s just so appealing visually. So I think, yeah, we’re on the same page there. Okay, so you have been working with people for three years, and you’re serving others in the blogging space as well. You said, correct?

Abraham Busick  06:49

Correct. So our clients primarily bloggers, lifestyle bloggers, content creators. We help brands of all sorts, but the majority of our clients are definitely bloggers and content creators on that side of things.

Megan Porta  07:01

So overall, in 2024 because I know it’s been kind of an up and down year in many areas, all across the board, not just Pinterest. How has Pinterest done with your clients? Has Have you seen a steady increase? Have things kind of stayed the same, just overall? Have you made any observations?

Abraham Busick  07:18

So 2024 overall, for the clients who have been with us since the beginning, honestly, has been a banner a year, for the most part, for Pinterest traffic. There was, I’m sure many people on here. There was one time in April and one time in August where Pinterest tweaked something in the algorithm on their end, and accounts tanked for a little bit. But one thing we are very happy and pleased with whatever Pinterest did when we gave it time to correct itself rather than overreacting, everybody’s accounts bounce back to greater than what they were before those tweaks. So Pinterest has been great. I know a lot of people are confused with the platform, are frustrated with it, but I will say this when it’s done right, especially right now, post COVID. You know, COVID happened four years ago, and that kind of changed the landscape of a lot of things, but post COVID, when Pinterest is set up and done correctly, it’s becoming the number one website traffic driver for a lot of our clients. We have one client in particular who, in July and August, she got over 35 40,000 website visitors just from Pinterest to her various blog articles. Nice and so, yeah, I think Pinterest is great. You know, it’s going to be, it’s It’s an acquired taste for a lot of people, but I we love it, and we believe in and 2024 has been a great year. 

Megan Porta  08:32

Good. I’m so glad to hear that. Do you feel like, okay? Because I feel like there are so many people on Pinterest trying to put their content on there, and it’s just becoming more and more saturated each year. Do you feel like that is serving like not serving us well as content creators? Is that making it harder for us to get our content out there?

Abraham Busick  08:52

Oh, I think first of all, more users on the platform is great, right? Because it gives you a bigger audience, potential audience for your brand and for your blog. Having said that, what that’s done is it has weeded out what I would call people who don’t take Pinterest seriously. They kind of do it on the side and they don’t understand the algorithm, so they’re used to just treating it like Instagram or Facebook or various other models when they just put the content out the same instead of tailoring it to Pinterest. So in some ways, I think it has made it maybe a little bit harder for just the everyday user who doesn’t quite understand the platform. But having said that, because of the growth of the platform and the investment that Pinterest has made into making it better on the algorithm side, when you stick with it and you figure it out, I think it’s benefited a lot of a lot of our clients very well to have a lot more availability, or people to spread their blog to and get their message out and the brand out too. So it’s kind of all depends who you ask, I guess, yeah, but I think that more people in the platform has been great, and just, you just got to make sure that we’re setting it up correctly and managing it well for success. So, yeah, absolutely.

Megan Porta  09:58

So let’s talk about about that a little bit. So how is the Pinterest user different from maybe like a Google user or a Facebook user? 

Abraham Busick  10:08

Great question. And so we get that a lot now. I’ll just kind of back up a little bit. One of the a lot of things we see from clients when they first come over to us is they want to treat Pinterest like Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, but it’s such a different platform. So Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, a lot of times, users are on those for an entertainment basis, for the most part, and they’re on there scrolling their feed right, aimlessly with no real purpose. On the flip side of that, Pinterest, though, people are coming to Pinterest and they’re, they have a problem they’re going to search for, right? And in the food world, that could be either they’re trying to plan out meals for themselves, for the family, for the week or for the month, getting ready to host a party, planning a holiday get together, meal for family. And they’re looking for specific they have a problem. They’re looking for when it comes to the menu or recipes or wanting to do something creative or different or unique when it comes to that, instead of just the normal, traditional routes. And so if you can understand the mindset of that, that every, every Pinterest search that somebody is making is honestly a problem that’s waiting to be solved. And if you can think about that when you’re putting your content together, and try to frame your content around, okay, if this, this content is an answer to somebody’s problem. And so what would I search if I had a problem that this content could answer for somebody, and you start to kind of build that in and frame it. But the Pinterest user, they operate differently in the aspect of they’re not on there for entertainment purposes. They’re on there specifically looking for a solution to a problem. And I think another area a lot of people don’t understand about Pinterest is that Pinterest users are planners. We’re starting to put out stuff now, and we’ve been doing that since September for some of our clients, around Christmas and Thanksgiving and some of the bigger holidays, because you got to give the algorithm time to rank your your SEO work on the side of it. And they’re they’re planning out their menus and a lot of their stuff that they’re looking to do now, even though Christmas is still over two months away, right? So I think that’s the big thing as well. Instagram is a little more instant results. People are kind of in the moment on Instagram and Facebook and Tiktok, but the Pinterest user, they’re planning stuff out 60 to 90 days in advance a lot of times.

Megan Porta  12:15

I love that perspective. So yes, Pinterest users are planners. I don’t always think of that, but as a content creator who’s always been like, I’ve always focused on Pinterest, that’s so true, I’ve always thought like months ahead, like a season ahead, basically when I’m putting content on the platform. So yes, that is true. And then also, you mentioned just thinking about people’s problems or pain points, so kind of thinking like a marketer, right? Like, what is their real issue? Like, why? What pain is causing them to come onto the platform and search for my recipe and then trying to make that into a solution for them? 

Abraham Busick  12:53

Correct. Yeah. I mean, if you can think about it just from the the aspect of, okay, what, what problems does my recipe solve? You know, whether it’s a simple and easy recipe or it’s more of an elaborate, you know, dining like get together recipe, like all these different things, and you want to think about that when you’re putting it together, because you want to know your target audience for that blog or that recipe. So when you’re setting it up on Pinterest. Again, with Pinterest being an SEO platform, you really want to make sure you have the right search words built in around some of your descriptions and your titles and your copy on Pinterest, to make sure that it’s reaching the right people. So yeah, that’s one the biggest thing we try to stress to all our clients is and we handle that on our end for them, obviously being Pinterest managers, but for those who do it themselves, really sit down and think about, okay, what problem does? Does this blog recipe solve? And then how can I frame that to make sure it gets in front of the right people to solve their problems for them? So I think a lot of people, maybe they don’t believe it how serious or how needed their content is, right? But when you can get out of your own way in that mindset and realize that your content is valuable, and your content is needed, and Pinterest and people are better off with your content if they can find it. You really start to take it a little more seriously from that aspect, in your writing and in your marketing of it, because you are it is important, right? Pinterest is a much better platform when everybody’s on it and contributing, yeah, and so getting that out of your way, in your mindset, and framing that up, I think is a big deal.

Megan Porta  14:21

So when you talk about solving people’s problems on Pinterest, are you talking about doing that right up front, in the pin image, or in the description, or both? 

Abraham Busick  14:29

Great question. So yeah, we we try to do it in both for people when we’re managing theirs and because, here’s the reason. So like, so if I’m trying to solve a problem with the recipe, I have less than a second to catch the Pinterest users attention when they’re scrolling past my pin, right? And so I want the messaging of that pin to jump out at them right away. So I want it to be simple and concise and frame that up. So let’s you know, if talking about Thanksgiving coming up, you can have, you know, 15 best side dishes for Thanksgiving that are simple and easy, something like that that grabs their attention, rather than just a picture of various foods, but they’re just going to scroll by because it doesn’t catch their attention. So we try to solve it on the image, if possible, then also definitely in the description, kind of just answering the questions look like a how to dinner ideas. You know, whatever the recipe is about, there’s so many ways you can frame it up, but just really thinking about, okay, if my pin catches their attention and they click on it to read the pin description, let’s go ahead and and pique their interest enough by answering a little bit of their problem in that description, so they go ahead and click on and go over to your blog to get the rest of the recipe.

Megan Porta  15:40

Yeah, Pinterest has really forced me to think this way. I think thinking like a marketer when you’re a blogger is so important, not just on Pinterest, but everywhere. And I’ve been so focused on Pinterest for a lot of my blogging journey, which has been pretty long. So yeah, I can thank Pinterest for that. Just really forcing me to think like, Okay, why are people here? And I need to, like you said, within just a second or two, deliver that solution to people, so that they click and learn, try to learn more about it. So I guess talking about that like creating content that is specific to Pinterest. Do you have any tips specifically for that? 

Abraham Busick  16:19

Yeah, so again, I’m a big I’m a big believer, and everything starts with mindset. And so I think you got coming back just to one more point on the Pinterest user, is that the the Pinterest user wants to be influenced, and they want to be influenced by people they can relate to. And so when you’re getting your content together, don’t be afraid to be authentic and be unique to yourself and the content that catches your eye and your attention when you’re on the platform, because that’s going to be the people you attract as well, typically. And so when it comes to creating content, there’s really three categories that we try to break down for our clients. It’s the type of content that performs well on Pinterest. Number one is just the obvious tutorial, how to bake or how to make, or how to cook, or how to you fill in the blank when it comes to recipe bloggers, what, how that might translate. And then also things like my favorite type of or my favorite dishes for, or my favorite holiday, my favorite desserts, you know, all those various categories that could fall under that. And then number three is also inspiration, and this is where kind of your authenticity and your uniqueness can shine and make you stand out on Pinterest is if you have a different take on some different styles of dishes or types of meals or recipes, not being afraid to let that show out and kind of inspire other people as well as they’re going over through your content. But the biggest things, again, tutorials, favorites, and then inspirational type or inspiring unique type content, as far as when don’t be afraid to stand out and be a little bit different and be true to yourself when you’re creating that content. But does that make sense? 

Megan Porta  17:55

Yeah, that makes sense. And then, do you for bloggers? Do you recommend doing, like, roundups. I think you mentioned that earlier, like, 15, favorite, whatever, fill in the blank, something like that.

Abraham Busick  18:07

Yeah. So we do a little bit of everything. So we have clients, some of our bloggers, they’ll just be one off on recipes. So there won’t be a roundup of them specifically, but they’re definitely, if you can, if you can do a couple roundups with 10, seven, you know, whatever number you want to put out there that’s going to make the user feel like they have a bigger chance to like something by clicking on your blog, because they have more of a variety to choose from. And so it definitely doesn’t hurt. But one thing again, I always tell everybody is, if that’s not the type of pin that you would click on, then don’t try to, don’t try to make content around that. If you’re the type of person that’s drawn to a roundup type pin. So you want 25 different options, then definitely, because that’s going to be who you attract and typically to your blog. But if you’re somebody who you don’t want to sort and sift through 25 recipes, you want the answer now, because you trust this person that you’re you’re been on their content before, then lean more towards creating kind of one off blogs with that, but I think they both perform well. I think we can over analyze some of that stuff, maybe sometimes, and instead of just really focusing what we get down to later in the call, just really putting in some good Pinterest SEO work. Because I always tell everybody, we can take, if you know how to do the Pinterest side of things correctly, you honestly can take mediocre content that’s set up correctly and outperform high quality content that’s not set up correctly on the back end. So I wouldn’t overthink some of those things too much. You end up getting paralysis by analysis, right? Yeah, but they definitely help for sure, to be able to do some roundups if you have value to add through doing that so… 

Megan Porta  19:41

Almost every Pinterest conversation I have with like large groups of people in the blogging space turn into overthinking situations, because you can overthink every single aspect of how big should my pins be, what exact size should they be? What font should I like? There’s so much that you could overthink. So I think sometimes you just have to just get in and do it, like you said, and not think about every single little, tiny thing.

Abraham Busick  20:09

Oh, 100% 100% for sure.

Megan Porta  20:12

I would love to hear your thoughts on the algorithm on Pinterest, because I know there is definitely one there, but I think it’s a little bit different than maybe the Google algorithm and other algorithms. So could you tell us about that? 

Abraham Busick  20:25

Sure, and so one thing again, that I always kind of start off with the premise of the Pinterest algorithm is a lot of times when we see people struggling with the Pinterest algorithm, it’s because, again, they’re treating it more like an Instagram or a Facebook or a Tiktok, because they view Pinterest as social media, and Pinterest is the furthest thing from social media. It’s basically, we tell everybody to think about it more like a visual Google. It’s a very heavy SEO platform where your content is going to live on for access for a very long time. And so it’s not there for entertainment purposes. It’s not social media. Let’s think less about entertainment when we’re getting content ready for the algorithm, and more about if we were setting up stuff on our website for our blog, and how we might set it up that way, since it is more of a visual Google platform, but our visual SEO platform, but there’s really four keys to the Pinterest algorithm. We try to keep everything basic and simple very foundational. So we have found, if we can control these four different categories within the algorithm, every time the algorithm changes, these four things are always going to stay foundational to any algorithm changes. So if you can manage these four things well as your foundation, then even when things happen, you might fall a little bit with traffic, but within typically, four to eight weeks, you’ll have made that up and more with algorithm changes. So the first category, which is the most foundational for the Pinterest algorithm, is Pinterest keywords, or Pinterest SEO. I can’t stress that enough. You can have the best quality content, but if you don’t understand how to do Pinterest keywords and how to look those up, and how to work those into your copy and into onto your pin image and into your title. Then you’re just, yeah, that pin is going to sit there, and you’re going to be frustrated because you’re going to keep putting out content, and it’s not going to be working. And so SEO Pinterest keywords, Pinterest key phrases are the most foundational when it comes to anything else we’re going to talk about if I if you take away one thing from this conversation, Pinterest, keywords, number one, most important thing to the algorithm, and if you need help finding where to search for those, we can either cover those later or now. As far as where do people look for those? 

Megan Porta  22:33

Yeah, let’s do it now, since it’s in my brain, yeah, go for it. Yeah. So

Abraham Busick  22:36

there’s really three areas that we have our clients, if they’re going to do it on their own, find their keywords. So we don’t like to use third party platforms for Pinterest keywords, because a lot of times, if you’re using those, you’re going to find out those keywords are really outdated by 30 days. And so if you’re using those exclusively, by the time you realize something’s a keyword, it’s already been a trend for about 30 days, and you may have missed out on a good part of an audience for your content. So, but so we really everything where we find keywords is all within the actual Pinterest platform itself. So Pinterest trends go that’s a great place to go and start to see some more generalized topics that would be relevant to your blog to start looking for and seeing how those are faring. So if you get on there now and you start typing in Christmas and Thanksgiving, you’re going to see through the graphic on there how that stuff’s already trending up. So you definitely want to check there in the Pinterest trends area first, and then the Pinterest search bar. Obviously, if you get on there and you just start typing something around your blog or your topic, you’re going to see a list of phrases that are being searched within the last 30 days that are popping up relevant to that, that you can work into your copy, on your description, or maybe, maybe even onto your image, or into your Pinterest title. And then Pinterest ads, a lot of people don’t under nodes. You can go there and look at search volume for different keywords. But if you go into the Pinterest ads creator, and you pretend that you’re going to create an ad, and you go over to the where you start adding keywords and phrases for that you can actually start typing in, and it’ll show you the search volume for the last 30 days for those keywords that you’re putting in. And we always tell everybody, if you’re not a very big, if you have, don’t have a very big Pinterest presence when you’re if you’re using Pinterest ads, try to stay away from words that are 5 million plus for your keywords because you’re fighting for screen time at that point. If you’re fairly new to the platform, or your presence isn’t very big, and try to stick to keywords that are ranking under a million search terms per month. If you’re going to use that just again, because you’re going to have a better chance at getting more screen time in front of the Pinterest user, as opposed to using some of those higher ones. But yeah, if you Google Pinterest trends, a link will pop up. You can find that pretty easily on the Pinterest search bar. Obviously, everybody knows where that is. But then for the Pinterest ads, if you go into the ad creator and start pretending to make an ad, you’ll see a little there on the right hand side, a little box where you can start typing in keywords and see the search volume for those so the. Amount of keywords, I think is pretty important for what you’re going to get into because with Pinterest being an SEO platform, you know, just putting in one or two key phrases or keywords just isn’t going to cut it if you’re trying to really get traction on the platform. So think that’s another area with Pinterest SEO that people can make a lot of mistakes as they throw one key phrase they found out and think they’re good or two. So for our clients, we focus on getting a minimum of four to five keywords or phrases, sometimes more to be honest, if it’s able to, but at a very minimum, four to five keywords or phrases into their actual Pinterest description, getting a one to three keywords or phrases onto the actual Pinterest image or video, if possible, and then also getting one to three Pinterest trending keywords or phrases into the actual Pinterest title as well. Because we really believe in putting out quality over quantity on Pinterest. And when we set up pins for our clients, we want these pins to live on, you know, for one, two and three years. So as they continue to do this, that multiplication factor happens because those pins are still drawing people for such a long time, but the only way to do that is to really attack that pin from many different angles with the various keywords, and make sure you have several different angles so that that one pin can be searched for and popped up with on Pinterest.

Sponsor  26:17

Hey, we have spots available for the 2025 mastermind groups, and I want to give you a chance to grab one of them. One of the things that is not talked about a lot are the long term benefits of being in a group like this one. So instead of saying what’s going to be different in my business in a year, the question should be what positive things will have happened in my business in five years or in 10 years, because I joined this group for more information about these groups and to apply go to eatblogtalk.com/mastermind. Current mastermind member, Lucy from Southern Food and Fun, talks about the long term ROI in this clip. “Anybody on the fence, you know, I highly recommend the mastermind. It’s expensive, but it’s an investment in your business and investment in yourself, I feel like the return on that investment will be yours.”

Megan Porta  27:08

Would you mind going through an example with me? Because I know it’s especially, since this is a an audio platform people are listening, but if they’re at their computer, maybe they could just kind of work through it, if you don’t mind. So for example, when you’re using the search bar on Pinterest, I was just typing in slow cooker chili. So if I am doing research for that word or that keyword, and I type in slow cooker chili, where do I go from there? 

Abraham Busick  27:35

Yeah, so I just typed that in front of me as well. I have let’s see, 12345678, probably 10, plus different variations of that phrase that popped up. So you start going there, I would start looking up or long tail phrases like, how to make slow cooker chili. You know, if there’s something unique about your slow cooker chili that you’re looking for as far as a flavor or an ingredient, or if that’s unique on your recipe, you’ll want to include that as well and some of those but and then also when you’re using the search bar. So one thing we really like to tell people to do is, yes, you want to get some very specific keywords in there, for sure, because that’s that’s where you’re going to find the bulk of your audience. But don’t be afraid to use some more generalized keywords and phrases as well. So for example, we have a client, she just did a big fall dinner party, and she wrote a whole blog about it. And so we did some pins that were very specific to the menu. As far as the keywords were all focused around very specific parts of the menu. But then also we did some very generalized keywords about just fall dinner party menus, fall dinner party recipes, fall dinner party desserts or appetizers and some pins that were just very covered a very broad spectrum for those who are just starting that planning process and don’t quite know what they want on their menu yet, but then also doing some very specific but on the search bar there. Yeah, so if I start typing in, let’s see. So if I took out the word just slow cooker as well, I started just putting in chili recipes, and then the various ways around, like chili recipes with beef, chili recipe, no beans, chili rest, you know, all those different ones pop up. So I think it’s you want to get some specific ones in there, but you also want to try to not be so specific that you’re missing people who are still in that planning process as well. Does that makes sense?

Megan Porta  29:20

Yeah? Yep, definitely. And then you can also use the little bubbles underneath. So you can either do the drop down where the other word options pop up, or those little bubbles, right? You can just keep clicking on those. Like the homemade, Best Easy, like those little things that pop up, yeah?

Abraham Busick  29:37

So those are great, maybe to to kind of jog your mind. We typically don’t use those little bubbles for keywords, because sometimes those little bubbles are the algorithm just learning you specifically, and it may pop words up that aren’t necessarily being searched but are maybe they’ve noticed you tend to like a word like that. So just be careful if you’re using those bubbles for your keywords, because they may not being. Be being searched as much as what you might think. Okay, on Pinterest. 

Megan Porta  30:03

So, yeah, okay. And then over to trends. Trends is a mystery to me, and I hear this a lot from other food bloggers as well. So if you, let’s say I type in slow cooker chili there too. I just don’t always know what I’m looking at. So like a trend graph pops up. Okay, that looks great. I don’t really know what that means.

Abraham Busick  30:23

And so that’s just Yeah. So for example, I don’t know that I’d necessarily type in slow cooker chili in the Pinterest ends. I think I’d stay more generic and just type in chili. And you’ll see some different search terms that are popping up there. But the big thing that just starts to show you, and we tend to use this more around seasonal trends and holidays is to see, okay, are people starting to search for this now see, if you search just chilly, you can see, obviously, over the summer chili’s not very popular, a very popular search term or topic within Pinterest. But now that we’re getting closer to fall, you can see there, as you’re starting to go up on August, you start to see it slowly trend up to where. Then in September, it just shoots up. So if you have chili recipes that you’re wanting to get out there that are pretty popular, or you want to write one, as you’re watching that graph, you would start to see, okay, well maybe in October, I’m thinking of chili. By August, people are starting to search more for that on the platform. So if I waited till September or October to put that out, that I’ve already missed out a good chunk of Pinterest users who would find value in that content would have went over to it. So that’s more of just to start to see, okay, When should I start putting out content around the topic? To know, does that make sense? So like, when you go and you can see chicken chili, you can see the various runoffs of chili and how they’re performing, but we use that mainly, like I said, around seasonal and holidays to start to see, okay, do we need to start putting out content? It feels like every year, for example, for Christmas and Thanksgiving, it gets a little earlier and a little earlier and a little earlier. But it’s good to see that for our clients on Pinterest trends, because if not their competitor or other blogs are taking advantage of that, and we want to make sure that we’re also tapping into that for our clients as well. 

Megan Porta  30:24

Are there other ways that you use Pinterest trends, aside from just looking at that graph to see when things are spiking and trending? 

Abraham Busick  32:09

Really not a whole lot for us. So we focus that mainly just to get a good grasp for okay, what type of content is being searched around, what different angles may be for our clients. Content is being searched seasonally in holidays. Some people put a little more stock into that, but again, we tend to use that just more for informational purposes. For us to start to see, okay, we need to start putting out content within the next week or so. For for example, for chili, if we were doing that for this one, by about the first week of August, we’re saying, Okay, it’s starting to trend up. We need to get stuff out for that within the next week or two for our clients that have relevant content to that. 

Megan Porta  32:44

There is this cool little thing that pops up. I don’t know if this has always been here, but right when you go into Pinterest trends, I just noticed it’s like trends in the US matching your pins. And then it shows like trends in meat crock pot recipes up 30% white chicken chili up 200% dinner in America up 2,000% so that’s kind of cool. So you can get an idea of what what is spiking now?

Abraham Busick  33:08

Yeah, and that also does give you, when you’re going over to the search bar or into the Pinterest ads, kind of a different way to approach maybe some keywords you haven’t thought about that might be relevant still within your copy. I will say we do use Pinterest trends as well for clients who are using Pinterest ads. So when you see top trends that are relevant to your pins, that is very important if you’re doing Pinterest ads, as opposed to organic because you want to make sure you’re tapping into those especially kind of general topics on the Pinterest ads side.

Megan Porta  33:37

Yeah, and I love your suggestion about going in as if you’re going to create an ad, and then just seeing what comes up. I’ve never even thought of doing that. I think that’s brilliant as well, just to get an idea for those keywords.

Abraham Busick  33:49

Yeah, so it’s one of those things most people don’t even realize, especially they’ve never done ads before, that you can go in there and pretend to create an ad, and you can start to see search terms around different keywords and how long, how many times they’ve been searched within 30 days. And that stays pretty, pretty accurate. My understanding when I’ve when I’ve talked to various Pinterest people about it is that that’s updated almost live with Pinterest. So for example, you might see that, well, a search term has 5 million today, but two or three days from now, it’s down to three or 1 million or less than that, so that it’s a great way to kind of keep your pulse, your thumb on the pulse as well, for some things with Pinterest, relevant to your to your blogs. 

Megan Porta  34:30

Yeah,nwell, that’s great. Anything else about the algorithm before we move on?

Abraham Busick  34:35

Yeah, so that we spent some time on SEO. The second thing I’ll just hit these last couple ones real quickly. Kind of the pillars this consistency. And so a lot of times, what we see people do is they they’re just not very consistent with their message or with even their activity on Pinterest. So pinning one or, you know, 10 pins today, but doing nothing for two or three weeks going out on Pinterest will hurt you in the algorithm. So if you’re putting out a bunch of pins one day. And then not doing much, you know, the rest of the month. We always encourage clients to kind of spread those pins out instead of throwing a bunch out there a lot of people. That’s not such a big problem now, because they use some schedulers and things like that to help with that. But being consistent with your output, the algorithm does watch that. And so the more consistent you are to where they know what days and times you’re posting and they have a rhythm for that, the better the algorithm is going to help you promote your content. Number three is quality, and this is where we again, we focus on quality over quantity with what we do, because we don’t want to put out garbage content just for the sake of putting out content on Pinterest that will hurt you overall in the algorithm as well. So make sure when you’re putting out content, less is more if you don’t have very much to say, right? If you don’t have much content that you feel like can add value, don’t just make up something for the sake of making it up and putting something out there in the world. And then lastly is fresh pins. And fresh pins doesn’t mean a fresh blog or fresh content. It just means creating a fresh pin, maybe for that same blog, approaching it from a different angle or a different perspective. But if you can control your SEO and your Pinterest keywords, your consistency, your quality and your your freshness of pins out there, it doesn’t matter what’s going to happen in the algorithm, those are always going to be foundational to Pinterest success. Because that’s, that’s, that’s how the platform operates at its very core. 

Megan Porta  36:17

So I love all of those. Consistency is so huge. I see people get just frustrated that they’re not seeing progress. They’re not seeing their numbers go the direction they want them to go. So they give up too soon. And I’m always like, No, you have to keep going. Just it’s kind of like that faith thing. You just have to know it’s working behind the scenes, and you just still have to keep doing the work. 

Abraham Busick  36:40

Oh yeah. I always tell our clients, you’re gonna you’re probably gonna overestimate your Pinterest results for the first year. But if you can continue doing quality content and just kind of put the results out of your mind for a little bit and tie your emotions to the activity instead of through the results, I can promise you, by year two and by year three, you’re gonna have way underestimated the potential of Pinterest for your blog. 

Megan Porta  37:04

I love that so much. That’s the best line. Okay, so what about Pinterest analytics? This too is like, I know you’re an analytics person. I’m a creative person. A lot of food bloggers are like me. So going into analytics can be a little bit daunting. So can you talk us through that a little bit? 

Abraham Busick  37:22

Oh, yeah. So this is where I kind of get to nerd out a little bit. My when I was in the corporate world, before we even had our own businesses, I made my living off data analytics and data management and Pinterest, like so many other platforms, the data will tell you an often very simple solution to what you feel like is a big problem, and it’s really not. It’s just a simple tweak you have to make, maybe understanding what that one analytic number is telling you and how to combat that. So many times people want to hit the panic button because they don’t understand the analytic side of Pinterest, when, honestly, usually it’s just a small, minor tweak that needs to be made somewhere that that creates a big results. So there’s really we, we kind of divide the analytics down to basically three categories, because, again, there are tons of categories of analytics on Pinterest, but when I’m speaking to somebody who maybe is just getting started in Pinterest or doesn’t really have a data mindset and hates data, we want to keep it as simple and controllable as possible. 

Abraham Busick  38:20

The second category is kind of a funnel, so we start with impressions, and then we’re coming down to pin clicks. And that’s obviously basically just how many times a user your pin caught the user’s attention on Pinterest and they stopped and just clicked on the pin to read the description or to get more information. So they haven’t left the platform yet to go to your website or your blog, clicked on the pin to read that description and get some more information. So a lot of times, from an analytics perspective, if we’re seeing that, impressions are up and you’re the right keywords are being used, but our pin clicks just aren’t really lining up with where they should be. For the amount of impressions, things that will directly affect that is going to be a the quality of the image or video. So if it’s poor quality, very grainy, then the user is not going to catch the user’s eye. But then, as well, a lot of people don’t think about this part, but we touched on it a little bit earlier, is the messaging that you actually have on the image or on the video with the word. So what type of problem is that solving, you know, communicating what that pin will do for the user right out of the gate. So if your your impressions are up and your keywords, you’re using the right keywords, they’re irrelevant, but you’re not getting a lot of pin clicks. The first thing I would check is the quality of image or video, but even probably a little bit deeper is, am I putting any messaging on that image and video, and is that message resonating to catch the eye of the Pinterest user? So any questions on pin clicks, as far as that one, does that make sense?

Abraham Busick  38:20

So the first one is obviously impressions. Everybody knows Pinterest impressions, because that’s right there on the screen under your your profile name, right? And what one thing we always tell everybody to be careful about with impressions, though, is, while it is a very important metric, it can kind of be a vanity metric that basically the only thing the impressions tell you is, is is your pin, are the keywords in your pin actually making your pin show up in the algorithm, so it doesn’t tell you if you’re getting in front of the right people. So I always use the example. It’s silly, but for if you have a recipe and you’re putting it out and it’s popping up for somebody searching something about car tires, who cares if you have an impression from that? It doesn’t matter that person is not going to take action on your pin, right? And so impressions, if you’re not careful, can kind of be a vanity metric that mean nothing. They don’t add any revenue to your blog or to any traffic to your blog. But basically, what impressions is going to tell you is, are my keywords working? And then if my impressions are not going up every 90 to 120 days, so you should have measurable success when it’s done consistently, and write every 9220 day blocks if you’re seeing your impressions are not going up and growing typically, what that means is you’re probably either using keywords that just you’re not really researching your keywords, so you’re not using relevant keywords, or you’re not using enough keywords. So kind of like I went back to before, you want to make sure that you’re not just putting out one or two keywords or phrases and thinking you’re going to be good on the Pinterest side of things, you want to really attack that pretty heavily and get a minimum of four to six. So I said a lot of times we’ll do even more than that for each pin within the pin description, the pin title or on the image. But at the at a minimum of four to six different types of keywords or phrases that are relevant to make sure that the algorithm can kind of attack that from different angles for people. So impressions very important. It starts there because it lets you know if your keywords are working. But don’t make that your only focus, because we sit down with people all the time, they have 5 million plus impressions, but they’re getting less than 1000 outbound clicks to their app, to their website or to their blog. Like, who cares about? 5 million impressions at that point? Right? Yeah. So basically, impressions just going to tell you how many times your pin was on the screen for the Pinterest user. That’s all it tells you. Doesn’t tell you if it showed up to the right person. It doesn’t tell you if it anything other than your pin popped up on the screen. And so whatever keywords you included, those keywords did work, and your Pin popped up on the algorithm. 

Megan Porta  42:17

No, that makes sense. I think yeah, you’re talking through it in such a natural flow. So, yeah, this is perfect. 

Abraham Busick  42:23

Okay, and then the last category that we kind of put our biggest emphasis on, again, we’re trying to keep there’s, there’s a ton of Pinterest analytic data points out there, but we want to kind of keep it down to three simple ones. The last one is going to be saves and outbound clicks, because that ultimately is where your your blog is going to get traffic from, or if we’re talking to a business, that’s that’s where you’re going to make your revenue from, is how many people actually took action and either saved that pin for later, used to go to go to it later, or actually clicked on the pin to go visit the website or the blog to make a transaction. So that’s where we put our biggest focus as far as analytics, because to me, that’s that’s the biggest thing that’s going to directly affect the success of our clients. And so that just answers basically how many people took right action on the pin. And if you’re seeing you have good impressions, and you’re seeing you have good pin clicks, and you put your outbound click ratio is low, or your saves ratio is low, basically what that’s telling you is then you’re not getting in front of the right audience. So again, it could be you have you’re just maybe you’re either too broad or you’re too targeted. It’s hard to say without looking at the specific keywords you’re using, but you’re not getting in front of the right audience, or there’s not a clear call to action either within the description or on the actual image or video. So it’s kind of silly, but I will tell you, and studies show that if you put a clear call to action as simple as you know, click the link today to get this recipe, as simple as that, you’ll see anywhere between a 30 or between a 20 and a 30% increase in outbound clicks when done consistently, as opposed to somebody who’s putting no call to action anywhere on the image or in the description. 

Megan Porta  44:02

Oh, so you recommend doing that right on the image? Yeah. So, well, a lot of times

Abraham Busick  44:05

we’ll put a little button that says, you know, read more or read now, but whether it’s in the image, we do we try to put it on the image. But I think the bigger message I want to put out here is make sure you have a call to action somewhere, whether it’s on the image or in your description, when, when the user is reading it, my guess we’re just at that point in society where if we don’t tell the user the next step to take. 

Megan Porta  44:29

They do need direction, don’t they? Right?

Abraham Busick  44:32

And so just the bigger message I want to get there, just make sure you have a call to action somewhere very clear and simple, whether that’s putting a little button on your image or video or putting it at the end of your description, you know, click the link to read more to get the recipe. So many different call to actions you can put in there.

Megan Porta  44:48

yeah, do you experiment with like video versus static images versus two images with text in the middle? Like different styles of pins?

Abraham Busick  44:59

Yes, you know, that is a really good question, and we get that asked literally at every training event or podcast that we do. So I love that. So our experience is that video pins are great for getting attention to your Pinterest profile people, you don’t get as many outbound clicks typically on a video pin as opposed to a static pin. So we try to do a mixture of both, if the content is there to support it, so meaning we’ll do like an 80% static and 20% video, as far as pin output, if we’re going to do videos. But to be completely honest, a lot of our clients have just gone away from doing video. I know everybody keeps talking about Pinterest and video pins and idea pins, and they’re great for gathering impressions, but if you’re trying to drive that, that outbound click number, your don’t, you just typically don’t see as many outbound clicks on average from video pins as you do from static pins. So probably not the most popular answer. I know Pinterest really wants to push video pins, but as of right now, we tend to see a lot more outbound clicks on static images. And as far as kind of like doing different different images, like putting two or three, we haven’t seen a big difference as far as that affecting the outbound click ratio at all. So I think if you like doing two or three, great if you don’t one image with the correct messaging and setup is suffice as well. But we have not seen that make a big difference on outbound click rates,

Megan Porta  46:24

Okay, any other little like, nitty gritty things that you see works really well for bloggers. I don’t know what that would be. Just anything that stands out?

Abraham Busick  46:34

Yeah. I mean, just the big thing for that we always push is just, again, quality and consistency, right? Like so find a routine, be very disciplined with that routine, and treat Pinterest less like a hobby and more like a business, because it’s basically, it’s a giant form of advertising. But as far as the foundational things on Pinterest, that’s that’s really what we try to get our clients that we’re coaching instead of managing, for really to focus on. Because if you can control these couple foundational things that we’ve talked about, not that you won’t find other avenues that you can add to that, but we always want to just start with that foundational and build upon that as you go on, because that’s where the bulk of success is going to be found.

Megan Porta  47:12

Awesome. I like to hear that it’s easy but hard. 

Abraham Busick  47:16

We always like to say it’s simple. Yes, simple. There you go. Simple. We know the steps you have to take aren’t necessarily hard, but they do require discipline and consistency.

Megan Porta  47:27

Yes, for sure. All right, anything else you want to mention Abraham before we start saying goodbye?

Abraham Busick  47:33

No. I mean, like I said, the only thing I would just really encourage people to do is try to, in the first year of Pinterest, really tie your emotions to your activity and not to your results on the platform, because the way the algorithm works, it’s designed to cut down spam, so in your first six months to a year, there is nothing you can do other than just put out good quality, consistent content to try to trick the algorithm. So the first, especially the first 90 days. I know can be frustrating and kind of demoralizing when you’re first starting on the platform, but if you can take your eyes off of that, and just like you mentioned earlier, have faith that it’s working and it’s going to pay off in the end, and tie your emotions to that activity and just keep doing it, keep your head down when you look up a year and two years and three years from now, you will be astounded at the difference that Pinterest will make for your blog as far as traffic goes.

Megan Porta  48:27

That was so great. I think that will give people a lot of motivation encouragement as they get into Pinterest or continue with it. So really appreciate that, and just thank you for everything. We appreciate you being here today Abraham and sharing all of your wisdom with us. So thank you so much.

Abraham Busick  48:42

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having us again. Megan, I appreciate it.

Megan Porta  48:45

Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to end with?

Abraham Busick  48:49

I do so I am a big motivational, positive mindset kind of junkie, and so I think the biggest thing this is this is true about life. This is true about every business or brand, blog, whatever it is you’re trying to do in life, relationships. The biggest thing I want to just stress is never make permanent decisions off temporary emotions. You know, a lot of times we get entire emotions and we make a decision that has a very permanent or long lasting consequence, especially in this world of blogging and Pinterest, and I always encourage everybody hit the pause button before you make any permanent decisions off those temporary emotions, kind of step back. Let yourself obviously feel the emotion, sit in those for a little bit, but then remind yourself of truth as well before you make any decisions, so you don’t do something that could be catastrophic long term for yourself. 

Megan Porta  49:39

I love that. Thank you so much for saying that. That was a great way to end. We will put together a show notes page for you. Abraham, if you want to go peek at those, they will be at eatblogtalk.com/GraceLaneCo, tell everyone where they can find you. And yeah, how can we seek out your services? 

Abraham Busick  49:59

Perfect, yeah, so we can find we’re on Instagram. You can find it’s just Gracelaneco. There are a couple different GraceLaneCo, oddly enough to do different things on Instagram, weird. And so we ended up putting GraceLaneCo LLC on Instagram, just so it kind of stand out. So you can find our handles on there for Instagram, but our website, as well as GraceLaneCollc.com you can find see some of our work there as well for some of our clients. And then we always tell everybody, we try again. We put a very big focus on trying to have affordable Pinterest management packages for people who are smaller brands and bloggers and just getting started. So our typical Pinterest management package starts at about $350 a month and goes up. So if we can do anything for any of your listeners, we would love to have a conversation, whether it’s coaching, whether it’s Pinterest management, we’d love to have a conversation with them and see how we can help you all grow your Pinterest presence. 

Megan Porta  50:53

Awesome. I hope you get people interested in that. I’m sure you will everyone go check out Grace Lane Co and thank you for listening today, and thank you so much for being here. Abraham, I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro  51:08

If you enjoyed this topic, you’ll also love the episode I recommend in the show notes, click on the episode description to find the link. Thank you, and I will see you next time you.