Episode 675: Pinterest Trends For Food Bloggers – How to Drive More Traffic To Your Blog with Laura Piper

EBT675 – Laura Piper

Intro 00:00

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  00:37

Hey there food bloggers. Check out our new Finance Supercut. This is a bonus 15 minute episode capturing highlights from finance episodes that we have recorded recently on the podcast. Head to eatblogtalk.com/financesupercut to listen today. 

[00:00:56]

How does it sound to create fewer Pinterest pins and to spend less time on Pinterest but find the same success through the platform? I think this sounds amazing. Laura Piper joins me from laurapiper.co. She is a Pinterest expert and strategist who helps solely food bloggers in their businesses to grow their Pinterest accounts.

[00:01:22]   

 She talks mainly about Pinterest Trends in this episode, which is really intriguing. This is something that we’ve never are covered solely as a topic here on the podcast. She explains what Pinterest Trends is and talks through how to use it. If you really want to get the most out of this episode, definitely go to your desktop, your laptop and open Pinterest Trends as you listen or come back later and you can do it.

[00:01:51]   

 Then she talks about seasonal trends versus growing trends, which one to look at, which graph to look for. So you know, you see like the graph that kind of goes up when you open Pinterest Trends. You don’t want that. You want the graph to be at the lowest point when you republish a pin or create a new one.

[00:02:10]   

 There’s also a new feature that Pinterest just launched which predicts the future of a trend. So that’s really interesting too and Laura talks about that in the episode. There are so many good things packed into this episode. Laura covers a ton and I know this is going to be really helpful for you. This is episode number 675. Enjoy.

[00:02:26] Sponsor   

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[00:03:10] Megan Porta   

Laura Piper is a Pinterest expert who works exclusively with food bloggers. Her mission is to help them make Pinterest their number one traffic source without feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. Using her proven Pinterest strategies, along with in depth Pinterest trends and keyword insights, she simplifies the platform for food bloggers, allowing them to focus on what they love most, creating amazing new recipes. Hello Laura, thanks for joining me. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk.

[00:03:38]  Laura Piper 

 Hello, Megan. Thank you. And thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be talking Pinterest with you.

[00:03:45]  Megan Porta 

 Same. I am a huge Pinterest fan. I always have been since it emerged back in the day. So this is always a topic I love to talk about. Super excited to get into it. Before we do that though, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

[00:04:00]  Laura Piper 

 I do. It’s quite a strange one, but my family are huge LEGO lovers, from my husband to my son and my daughter. And I’ve never had my own LEGO set until recently. One of my favorite animals is a panda and LEGO brought out a panda set, so they bought that for me as a gift and it sits on my desk and makes me smile every day.

[00:04:24]  Megan Porta 

 I love it. You were talking to the right girl with the LEGO theme. You should see our basement. We have a LEGO lover in our house. And oh gosh, it’s a little. People come down to our basement and they’re literally like, oh my gosh, it is so full of Legos. But I love that your whole family gets into it. That’s so cool.

[00:04:49]  Laura Piper 

 Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it’s quite funny because my son is. I’m sure he was born playing lego. But yeah, we got Lego around. He’s there and he’s like, I couldn’t build my one quick enough for him. He’s like, come on, master.

[00:05:03]  Megan Porta 

 Hurry up, Mom. You should be faster than that. That’s really cute. Well, I’m glad that your Lego panda brings you joy. That’s adorable.

[00:05:13]  Laura Piper 

 Oh, I love does every day and it’s quite sweet. I’ve only ever seen a real giant panda once, and that’s actually was in Atlanta when I came over to the States.

[00:05:27]  Megan Porta 

 Okay. Cool. That’s another fun fact. Fun fact number two, we got a bonus. Thank you, Laura.

[00:05:34]  Laura Piper 

 There you go.

[00:05:37]  Megan Porta 

 All right, well, let’s dig into Pinterest. I would love for you to tell us a little bit about your business. I know you’re a Pinterest expert and strategist, so give us a scoop on who you are.

[00:05:47]  Laura Piper 

 Okay. So I started my business now, it was. It was February 2022, both children in school, and I wanted to do something. I had a business previously and I was going to be like a virtual assistant, something I could do at home, have a little bit of flexibility so I could still be there for the children.

[00:06:06]   

 And I came across a Pinterest virtual assistant. I was like, wow, I love Pinterest. I use it for everything from finding recipes, redesigning a kitchen, I think I was doing at the time, and I thought this would be great. So, yeah, over the years I’ve yet developed my knowledge and my skills. I gained plenty of clients, which is great.

[00:06:30]   

 And they were all in the food blogging niche and that was absolutely fantastic. I love recipes anyway, so that was really great. I love creating their pins. And yeah, we’ve kind of just developed from there, really. So I’ve really got to know the food and drink niche so well on Pinterest and from what works well to what doesn’t work well.

[00:06:54]  Megan Porta 

 Nice.

[00:06:55]  Laura Piper 

 Yeah. So that’s where we are. But three years down the line now.

[00:06:59]  Megan Porta 

 And then, I’m assuming you have probably different offerings for food bloggers who are looking for Pinterest support.

[00:07:06]  Laura Piper 

 Yes, I try. And I’ve got a couple of different packages depending on the level of support, because I know a lot of people like to do it themselves. So from audits and strategy sessions to us managing it completely for you.

[00:07:20]  Megan Porta 

And we’ll talk at the end about where people can find you, because I’m sure you know this, Laura, but a lot of food bloggers need Pinterest help. I mean, it’s a common issue, like how do I get support for my Pinterest account. So this is something that people are really looking for.

[00:07:35]  Laura Piper 

 Yeah. And particularly after, like the HCU update on Google. I was listening to your recent podcast episode and yeah, it just gives people another good, solid traffic line to their website.

[00:07:49]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah, and people, I find, get so frustrated with Pinterest, which is a shame because I have always felt like Pinterest is just a no brainer when you are talking food images. It’s such a perfect platform for people to go on and find you. So yeah to become frustrated with it and to just toss it out the window as an option, I think is such an oversight in your business.

[00:08:16]   

 If you’re a food blogger, you absolutely need to be focusing on Pinterest 100%. Do you agree with that?

[00:08:24]  Laura Piper 

 Absolutely. Do you know, Pinterest is. Classes are almost like a cold audience because people don’t necessarily go and look for the person. They go and look for a dinner recipe or chicken dinners or whatever it is they’re looking for. So they won’t necessarily go to find the person. What I tend to find is that this is one of my favorite quotes at the moment is Pinterest is the library where people go for inspiration to go and find something.

[00:08:50]   

 And Instagram is the bar where they get to know you. And you can actually link your Instagram account to your Pinterest account now. So when people have found your recipes, they’ve got a click straight through to Instagram, So they can then get to know the person if they like the recipes as well.

[00:09:05]  Megan Porta 

 I love that. That’s such a great, great way to explain it. So talk about Pinterest trends. This is a tool that is at our disposal, and I know a lot of people, myself included, who are a little bit intimidated by it. I know it should be helpful, and it is for people who know it, but I log in and I’m like, okay, I really don’t know what to do here.

[00:09:27]   

 So I’m super grateful that you’re going to talk us through Pinterest trends today. I’m actually kind of excited. If you can see me on video, I’m, like, getting excited. Yeah. So talk about Pinterest trends. If. If somebody doesn’t know what it is, what is it?

[00:09:41]  Laura Piper 

 Okay, so it’s a free tool that Pinterest has created. And basically when people go to Pinterest, they’re going to search for something. The Pinterest trends are the most popular search terms that people are currently searching for on the platform or about to be searching for. So Pinterest have currently got 533 million monthly users who are coming to the platform to search for a lot of recipes.

[00:10:09]   

 Food and drink is one of the top niches on Pinterest. And, you know, this tool is amazing. And it’s one of the reasons I love Pinterest so much, because they tell us so much information.

[00:10:19]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah.

[00:10:19]  Laura Piper 

 And you’re right. When you’re new to it, you’re like, oh, goodness, what does all this mean? And it is a complete gold line of information and I say you can get to the tool if you’ve got a Pinterest business account. If you just go to the menu at the top left and then the whole menu comes up under analyze performance.

[00:10:38]   

 I think it’s towards the bottom, you get the Pinterest Trends tool, and then that opens up and then you. Depending on how old your account is, the first section you tend to get on it is what’s working for your audience. And again, that’s amazing. Not what’s working. I think it’s what your audience is searching for.

[00:10:57]   

 That’s what it’s called. And it gives you some current searches that your audience have been doing as well on the platform. So, yeah, that’s a really gold mine there to kind of see what they’re searching for. And if you’ve got recipes that match what they. What other things they’ve been searching for, that’s a great opportunity to create some pins for those search terms.

[00:11:20]  Megan Porta 

 So that for that very first bar that shows up when you log into trends, is that catered to the individual account? Like, I’m seeing meatloaf. Okay. Because I do have a lot of meatloaf recipes. And then it shows chicken egg roll in a bowl. So that’s like delivered to Megan.

[00:11:39]  Laura Piper 

 Yes, that’s correct. So people who have interacted with your pins have then probably gone on to complete searches for those other areas. And I think underneath it tells you like a number, and that’s the number of searches has been happening for those search terms. So that’s. That’s fantastic. You can scroll along a couple of pages as well.

[00:12:00]   

 And it tends to be for your niche. I mean, sometimes you might get nails in there as well. But generally it’s other trends and other searches that your audience who have interacted with your pins have also gone on to search.

[00:12:15]  Megan Porta 

 So how do we use that information? So is that something like meatloaf and chicken? I’m seeing pork chop recipes now. Do we pursue more of that? Or like, how do we use this?

[00:12:30]  Laura Piper 

 So when do you get those? Then, as you say, you’ve got meatloaf. If that’s coming up, let’s say 25 times more searches are happening for meatloaf. If you’ve got a meatloaf recipe, I would be creating, whatever the words, if it is just meatloaf or meatloaf recipes, you’d want to try and make sure you get that in your pin title and description as well.

[00:12:51]   

 So on the one I’ve got in front of me, they’ve got the strawberry limeade recipes. And there’s 1043 more searches for that at the moment, which is huge. So, yes, I’d want to be doing some pins for that particular recipe on this account at this particular time. So, yeah, it’s a good opportunity to kind of see. Right. What recipes have I got that I could do that I could get those keywords into on the pins. Does that make sense?

[00:13:19]  Megan Porta 

 Yes, that makes sense. Yep. Okay, cool.

[00:13:23]  Laura Piper 

 That’s the first bit.

[00:13:25]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah, the very first part. Yeah.

[00:13:27]  Laura Piper 

 And it’s basically it says growing trends your audience loves. So if that’s what your audience is loving, then let’s give them some more of it. And then that’s what gets. That’s what gets your content in front of a larger audience. And then as you scroll down, you get to discover what the current trends are across whole of Pinterest in the United States.

[00:13:47]   

 And you can filter this down and I do. So on the left, you’ve got interests and I just tick the button for food and drink. So I get rid of all the other trends. As much as they’re interesting. We’re generally only wanting to know what the current food and drink trends are. And this is how it then makes it so much more simpler to look at.

[00:14:06]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah.

[00:14:06]  Laura Piper 

 Because our food bloggers don’t probably have very many nail blog posts about. So. Yeah, so then once you get rid of that, then we get a whole long list of words. It tends to default in the growing trends. And what that means is this is the growth volume in the last 90 days.

[00:14:28]   

 So 90 days, that’s about three months, isn’t that. It’s quite a long period of time. And what you’ll see with the growing trends, next to each keyword there’s a graph. And the graph has got quite a long line and it’s quite high up normally, and they always look fantastic. Oh, yeah, that’s trending.

[00:14:46]   

 Let’s do that. The thing with Pinterest is that we need to give Pinterest time to understand what our pin is about when we put it on the platform. And this is where Pinterest is so different to other platforms like Instagram. You put it on Instagram, people see it straight away. And not saying they won’t see your pin straight away, but Pinterest needs to understand and they will tag what your pin is about, and that can take them two to three weeks.

[00:15:13]   

 So you need to allow a little bit of time to get your pins on the platform. So when the graph is at the top, kind of almost missing the. The best or the most amount of traffic in those particular trends. And what we want to be looking for is what’s called emerging trends.

[00:15:30]   

 So it’s just when the graph is right down the bottom. So as the trend goes up, your content gets taken with it.

[00:15:38]  Megan Porta 

 So that graph that we see, when you click on growing trends, like you said, most of them are going up right there at the top. But that’s not necessarily what we want.

[00:15:48]  Laura Piper 

 Not necessarily, no. Because, like, if we look at the moment, we’ve got a lot of St. Patrick’s Day in the trends at the moment. And at time of recording, that’s about one week away. So you could still put one pin out or two. To be honest, we want to be doing them a month ago when those would have been right down the bottom.

[00:16:08]   

 Because a lot of people on Pinterest, Pinterest users are planners, so they start planning quite far ahead of any kind of celebration or holiday. And this is when we need to get a bit more organized with our planning of our recipe recipes so that you. With Pinterest, you can make the most of traffic.

[00:16:26]   

 And when you get the timing right and we find the emerging trends where the graph is right down the bottom, then that’s when the magic happens. If you’ve got it on at the right time, Pinterest has understood it, then more people are starting to search for it, then your pin goes out with it, and you tend to find you get much more traffic.

[00:16:47]  Megan Porta 

 So how do we find those? Like, right now? How would I go about that?

[00:16:50]  Laura Piper 

 So merging trends, as I said a few moments ago, Pinterest defaults to the growing trends. And there’s a filter just on the left that says growing trends. And if you click on that and change that, seasonal trends.

[00:17:03]  Megan Porta 

 Okay. Yep.

[00:17:05]  Laura Piper 

 And then the graphs start to look a little bit different. So at the moment, there’s still a lot of St. Patrick’s Day ones, and the graphs are quite little. But then what we have to apply to that is the time frame that we’ve got between now and St Patrick’s Day for Pinterest to understand that content.

[00:17:25]   

 So other things that we, as you can see, we’ve got spring dinner ideas, spring dinner recipes, Cadbury egg cookies. These are all kind of things coming in for Easter. So I think Easter is mid April this year, so we’ve still got plenty of time to be getting in on these particular trends. So it’s such a great guide to be going through these seasonal trends where the graph is literally like a straight line.

[00:17:53]   

 And as you can see, kind of next to each graph keyword, there’s this kind of crystal ball sign and that is a brand new feature that Pinterest has recently launched called they’re predicting the feature. And when you click on that, it goes to a new page for that particular keyword, but it will then show you how that keyword is going to perform over the next three months.

[00:18:20]   

 And it’s really then great to see because quite a lot of them I’m just going to click on Spring dinners, for example. Yeah, that’s going to start really peaking if you hover over the lines in the futuristic side of things, it gives you a date. So it’s likely to trend kind of like middle of April, 15th of April for spring dinners.

[00:18:43]   

 So we’ve got plenty of time to get our content with those keywords in. And this is another reason why I love the seasonal trends, because it keeps your recipes fresh. And also on point on Pinterest that if you’ve got a dinner recipe that’s light, you know, you could easily keyword that up with like ZT recipes and things like that, or lasagnas as an easy spring dinner idea.

[00:19:12]   

 And then you want. So you’re getting those keywords. You could get it on the pin design, the pin title, and in the description as well. The more we repeat them, the more it helps Pinterest understand those keywords and what our content is about. So that’s how we find emerging trends.

[00:19:31]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah, that’s great. I never even noticed the little crystal ball there. But like you said, it was brand new.

[00:19:38]  Laura Piper 

 It was. I think it’s a couple of months now that they’ve had that out there. But it is so useful to kind of, when you’re looking at which keyword should I be going after, you can kind of see how much time you’ve got before Pinterest predicts it’s going to peak. And they’ve been able to put this information out based on previous year’s trends and, and things like that.

[00:20:01]  Megan Porta 

 Okay, that’s helpful. And then over on the left under keywords, could you drill down on your search even more by adding like meatloaf or something?

[00:20:11]  Laura Piper 

 You can. So in the same section where you’ve got like the filter side, you’ve got the interest, which we’ve narrowed down by food and drink. And underneath that, if you, you’ve got a section called keywords. So for example, we’re in seasonal trends. And if I put chicken in, for example, it gives me the seasonal trends for chicken.

[00:20:34]   

 So for example, we’ve got chicken asparagus recipes, real chicken marinade. So these are. If you’ve got these kind of recipes on your site, these would be great to be doing pins for as well. So yeah, this is all under the seasonal trends because there are so many seasonal trends. I mean asparagus is just kind of starting that season.

[00:20:53]   

 Last year, two trends that were amazing was peaches. So when peach season started, I think it’s about May time. I’m just trying to remember back the different season because I always feel I live like three months ahead of myself. When I’m working with the trends, I sometimes get distorted. So yeah, now we’re looking at spring and even summer.

[00:21:17]   

 I saw summer dinner recipes in the trends today, so be really good to start working on those kind of recipes now. But anyway, so I’ve got a subject there now you’re searching by keywords. Yes, sometimes if you’ve got like if I was to put peaches in there now, there might not be anything in the seasonal trends, but there might be under the growing trends over the longer period.

[00:21:39]  Megan Porta 

 Okay, so the growing trends. I’m just gonna look. Okay, so you could. Yeah, I’m just comparing.

[00:21:45]  Laura Piper 

 Just get. The thing to think with the growing trends is over a much longer period of time on Pinterest compared to the seasonal trends. I tend to be things that repeat year on year as well as being just a 30 day window that they’re looking, looking at so they’re a little bit more current.

[00:22:02]  Megan Porta 

 Very cool. That gives me a good starting point. Instead of just blankly staring at my screen like what do I do here?

[00:22:12]  Laura Piper 

 It’s that narrowing it down. Once you’ve done the food and drinks, so you get in seasonal trends, you’ve taken everything out, all the other trends out. We’re just looking at food and drink. When you go down to the next bit and you can start searching. So like if you’ve got a lot of seafood recipes, if that’s all you do, you could search by seafood and see what’s currently trending under seafood or cake or baking cookies is always huge on Pinterest, obviously Cadbury egg cookies and spring cookies.

[00:22:43]   

 But it just means you can keep doing pins for your recipes and you could tag them up as spring cookies and then redo new pins for summer cookies. And it just helps keep going over. So it kind of takes the pressure of having that feeling. I’ve got to create new recipes all the time.

[00:23:01]   

 You can still create new pins. You can change up some of the keywords. So it’s keeping the pin fresh as well.

[00:23:06]  Megan Porta 

 So if we let’s say we find I’m clicking on this Cadbury Egg Cookies, that looks like it peek on April 1st. So if I have something like that in my arsenal, I can just get it published, republished as soon as possible or what’s the timing?

[00:23:28]  Laura Piper 

 So I know a lot of food blogs like to republish some of their pins, their posts on their. On the website. And yes, you can definitely do that. You don’t have to reissue it. It just is a case of just creating a fresh pin for that. If it’s going to be peaking 1st of April, you want to be getting that out quite soon on the platform.

[00:23:47]  Megan Porta 

 So would you say like a couple of weeks to get that fresh pin out or what’s the ideal time frame?

[00:23:54]  Laura Piper 

 So if we’re just taking that as an example, it’s going to look like it’s going to peak on the 1st of April. We know it’s going to take a good couple of weeks for Pinterest to understand what that pin is about. That’s if we come back a couple of weeks. Weeks from there, we’re kind of getting to kind of mid March.

[00:24:11]   

 So kind of once we go over mid March, you could still do a pin, but you may not get as much traffic as if you’ve done it sooner. So when we’re looking at timings, what we need to do is look at when it’s going to peak. And a good example sometimes of this is Christmas.

[00:24:29]   

 I always use this as a bit of an example that last year when I was looking at the trends and also Pinterest did a webinar on this as well, and we needed to start pinning our Christmas contents at the beginning of September. And that sounds crazy when you think, yeah, that Christmas is in December, but it takes a good two to three weeks for Pinterest to understand what the pin is about.

[00:24:53]   

 People plan so early, so that’s why they go into Pinterest to get ideas because they might be thinking and who they’re inviting, what gatherings are they going to have? So they’re already early on the platform. So when you put categorize it all in and we worked it all out and based on information that Pinterest gave us, yes, beginning of September was when we needed to start pinning our Christmas recipes.

[00:25:17]   

 Is it. This is a funny kind of time because I also think there’s a time where it’s too early as well, because I know some people go, well, it’s fine, it’s summer, let’s just start doing Christmas now, but if you’re not getting any engagement on those pins when you put them on, then they can just die off a little bit.

[00:25:35]   

 Nothing to say they would come back at a later date. But when Pinterest is categorizing pins, if you’ve had some engagement on them, Pinterest really loves that and so they oh, we’ve had some engagement on this. This is obviously something that’s going to be popular and they will show it more in searches.

[00:25:52]   

 So it’s getting that fine balance between what’s trending, getting it on early but not too early. So people are interested in it and I’m not going to start giving it any engagement and it’s a fine balance. But it’s okay if you follow the trends. Give it a couple of weeks of building time to allow Pinterest to understand you can’t go too wrong.

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[00:27:23] Megan Porta   

 So the holidays really kind of are the exception because people start looking for holiday content so early.

[00:27:29]  Laura Piper 

 They do. So at the moment our biggest focus is Easter, so that’s probably coming up in between them. We’ve had like St. Patrick’s Day then. So after Christmas it’s almost like healthy recipes are in December. You want to start the posting like your healthy recipes ready for January and then January we’re looking ahead to like Valentine’s Day and things like that.

[00:27:51]   

 And then you’re on Valentine’s Day and everything on the platform Valentine’s Day. But then you’re looking at we have St. Patrick’s Day and Super bowl was also in there. That was in January. That was so it’s quite nice. Even though we’ve got big holidays, there are so many other trends to tap into, especially in food and drink on Pinterest, there’s. There’s always, always something going on in the trends for food and drink, which is absolutely fantastic. And that’s what makes them so valuable.

[00:28:19]  Megan Porta 

 And I love that food bloggers have so much content. That kind of what you were saying earlier, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You don’t need to create completely new content every season. You can take what you have and cater it to the season. So if you have a really cute cookie, you could use that for spring, you could use it for Mother’s Day brunch, you could use it for summer baking.

[00:28:40]   

 I mean, you can repurpose all of that.

[00:28:42]  Laura Piper 

 Absolutely. And that’s why, you know, and that helps because Pinterest always likes fresh pins. So fresh pin is something they’ve not seen before. And it just means that you can, you can use a very similar pin design to what you’ve done before, but if you’re changing, putting different keywords and things on there, then they would class that as a fresh pin.

[00:29:01]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah, I mean, that makes it easy, simplifies everything for us. Right? We like to hear that.

[00:29:08]  Laura Piper 

 Exactly. And I always like to make it as easy as possible. It’s funny because that’s what I know. I actually struggle with the Instagram side of things because they are just so different from engagement to. Yeah, it’s just trying to understand that. The way I always look at Pinterest, it’s almost like Google Pictures.

[00:29:26]  Megan Porta 

 So this isn’t really about trends, but for the clients you work with, what do you find is a good amount of pinning to do? This is something else that’s, like, widely debated in our space because I know people who do like two pins a day, and I know people who do 30 pins a day, and there’s such a discrepancy there.

[00:29:49]   

 So do you have kind of a medium, I mean, or does it just literally depend on your account?

[00:29:55]  Laura Piper 

 It’s a really interesting one. Now, I, you know, I have clients who want to do 10 pins a day. I’m a bit of a firm believer you don’t need to do 10 pins a day. I had screwed. I started an account for a client. Well, it wasn’t last year. Must have been year before end of July.

[00:30:12]   

 By the following May, I think it was, we’d grown it from 0 to 3 million monthly views, and that was on doing 10 pins a week. So that was mostly one a day. And I think over the busy days of the weekend, we do two pins, and that was just by utilizing the different trends there.

[00:30:31]   

 And we did kind of look. We look at doing more quality pins over quantity. So we’re making sure we’re hitting the keywords. We’re making sure Pinterest is understanding what the content is about, rather than just trying to go for quantity and just, yeah, just kind of getting something out quickly. It’s much better to look at what’s going to be working on the platform because it may mean that you then don’t need to create as many pins and then you can then focus on, okay, let’s get these keywords in there.

[00:30:59]   

 We don’t need to create so many. So then again, it’s making it a bit easier on saying that. I know people who are doing lots of pins a day and they’re driving traffic. I think it depends on who, as a food blogger, where you would focus your energies. I feel Pinterest is such a good opportunity, and it’s actually much.

[00:31:20]   

 Sometimes it sounds complicated. It really isn’t, as long as you’re, you know, giving them fresh content. And when I say fresh content, I mean, like fresh pins. And you can create more than one pin for your recipes. I mean, you could create a batch of, say, five or six pins for one recipe and then just space them out.

[00:31:40]   

 You can schedule them out over five or six weeks. So you’ve. Then you build it up as you kind of go.

[00:31:47]  Megan Porta 

 Okay. So it sounds like utilizing Pinterest trends to the best of its abilities really can lessen the amount of work you do and the amount of pins that you need to create.

[00:32:00]  Laura Piper 

 Exactly. Obviously, if you’re doing really well and you’re driving the traffic and you want to get more. More pins done, absolutely, go for it. But if you’re like, I’m trying to, I want to do Pinterest, but I haven’t got an awful lot of time to give to it. Utilizing the Pinterest trends is the way to go, because if you can get those keywords into your.

[00:32:22]   

 And I get them into. I know I touched on this earlier, but into, like, the pin design, you want them in the pin title and in the pin description. The more you repeat those keywords and more it signals you’re giving to Pinterest so that they then understand what the pin is about. The board also that you save your pin to makes such a big difference.

[00:32:46]   

 And quite often people might just have dinner recipes, but what you might want to do, and this has been something again, we’ve just seen changing on Pinterest over recent months is that you want to have probably more specific boards. So you might want easy family dinners or chicken dinner recipes. Because the more specific it is, if you’re going after chicken dinner recipes as your keyword, that’s giving them more signals.

[00:33:11]   

 That’s more tick boxes that they’re getting. Oh, it’s on a chicken dinner recipes board rather than just chicken recipes. Does that, does that make sense? And the more signals we give Pinterest, the quicker and the better they understand it, the higher up the search feed they’re going to show those pins because they’re like, yes, we’re confident we know exactly what this pin is about and utilize the board description.

[00:33:33]   

 I see quite a number of accounts actually, that people don’t fill in the board description. And that is a huge, huge missed opportunity because you can get some extra keywords in them.

[00:33:43]  Megan Porta 

 Okay, yeah, that’s all very helpful. Is there anything else about Pinterest trends specifically that you think would be helpful to talk about?

[00:33:52]  Laura Piper 

 I’m just checking. So. So we’ve talked about the growing trends and we’ve talked about the time frame in which we want to get everything kind of looking at the trends and then the pins created and then on to Pinterest. I think that is, I think that’s kind of everything covered really. I mean, one thing that we, that I do to help my clients really is I kind of go through all the trends.

[00:34:17]   

 And because I’ve done it now for quite a number of years, I’ve got a good idea what about to come up in the trends. So I kind of put that, all that together so people can actually start doing, planning their recipes ahead of time. And you know, the trends are such a great opportunity to actually get some inspiration for new recipes as well.

[00:34:36]   

 So like to. Quite often we see quite a few different cheesecakes. I think I saw carrot cake cheesecake recently come through the trends. And that’s not just give somebody like a new idea really as to. Yeah, as new recipes that they might want to even create. So and at least that then you’re creating something that you know will do well on Pinterest because you can see that it’s actually coming through the trends.

[00:35:00]   

 I mean, another thing is this is in the trends, but it’s something I’ve talked about a lot, particularly in my newsletter is creating roundup posts. When you do a search on Pinterest at the moment, quite often at the top you will see quite a number of like 30 chicken dinner recipes. And I think the audience on Pinterest, I think Pinterest likes it because then people are saving those, saving those pins a lot more because they get to save one pin rather than 30 different recipes. So that is another area that we’re tapping into a lot this year is Roundup pie. So yes, if you. And you can use the trend for that. So if you’ve got like a lot of desserts recipes that, that could be Easter.

[00:35:43]   

 You could do like yeah, 20 easy desserts for Easter as a, as a roundup and then create some pins for that as well. And then I’d create an Easter recipes, at least a desserts recipe board as well to put them on. So that. That really helps.

[00:35:57]  Megan Porta 

 That’s a great idea. So I’m seeing under seasonal trends, spring dinner ideas. So you could create a roundup or a handful of roundups for that if you have a lot of dinners on your site.

[00:36:08]  Laura Piper 

 Absolutely. This is something when you use Pinterest as well and you do some searches, you just see so many more Roundup posts at the top of the search feed. And I think it helps keep people on your site longer as well with a roundup because when they click they then got to scroll down and look at each individual recipe as well.

[00:36:29]   

 So yes, with the. Using the trends and, and use them to get round up ideas. Absolutely. And it’s a nice way and hope that’s easy for your audience as well that then they can just group together some of the recipes into one page rather than having to create things from scratch as well.

[00:36:50]  Megan Porta 

 I’m a huge fan of roundups. I do a lot of roundups on my blog because exactly what you’re saying. People like just having everything in one spot and they don’t have to click around to 20 different recipes to find the best spring dinners. It’s just a good user experience.

[00:37:08]  Laura Piper 

 Exactly. And I think Pinterest really realize that as well. And I think that’s why some of those pins do go more to the top of the search feed. And as I said, if you’ve got spring dinner ideas, I would create a brand new board for the roundup and then you could do some individual pins for some of those recipes and still put them on that board as well.

[00:37:29]   

 So you just gives you kind of right. Yeah, kind of a whole grounded strategy there.

[00:37:35]  Megan Porta 

 Another question, is it. I hear this often too. Let’s say you’re looking at trends and you realize that a recipe or a keyword is peaking. I don’t know, like exactly two weeks from now, is it worth putting up or do we just forget it? Okay.

[00:37:51]  Laura Piper 

 No, I would always do one. I’d always do a quick pin if you can get one. Because you could still get. If you can get those keywords in there. I would always. So, like, obviously, as I said earlier, we were about a week away, or just under an hour week away from St. Patrick’s Day. I would kind of feel that’s kind of gone now. I would be looking more towards some of the others. Yeah, so when you kind of get in a week away, I would be looking on to the next thing already. But yeah, like if you’re coming good couple of weeks out still, I would still just do one because you never know.

[00:38:26]  Megan Porta 

 Right.

[00:38:26]  Laura Piper 

 You just need a few people to engage in it early on and that you could find posts to the top of the search feed as well.

[00:38:33]  Megan Porta 

 So you mentioned engagement a few times. When you say engagement, are you talking about people going and commenting on the pin? And you know how people can put images if they’ve made the pin and they want to share it, is that engagement.

[00:38:49]  Laura Piper 

 It is. But initial engagement, if it’s just getting some clicks and saves. Saves is the biggest thing for Pinterest and Pinterest particularly likes that because it’s keeping people on the platform to start with. So if initial engagement, if you put a new pin out and it’s had a couple of clicks and a save before Pinterest’s robot goes over it and tries to understand what the pin is about, they will notice that.

[00:39:15]   

 That it’s already had some engagement. So some clicks and saves. And then they’re like, oh, so this is something people are interested in. We will show it a bit more. And then when it gets more clicks and more saves, and then it’ll go up another level and go, oh, people really are interested in this.

[00:39:28]   

 So we’ll keep sharing it. And then this is how they get the pins to the top of the search feed. It’s all by signals. Comments also help. So people are commenting on your pins. Always reply because sometimes you kind of think you’re talking to a big black hole. Quite a lot of the time when people leave comments, you send something back and it’s not a comment conversational type thing, but it.

[00:39:48]   

 Pinterest does recognize the engagement, so always worth doing that.

[00:39:52]  Megan Porta 

 I always wondered about that. I have so many comments that I just. I feel like this would be a whole other job for somebody to go through here and constantly do that. But you say it. Pinterest does see it as positive engagement. So it’s worth it. Okay.

[00:40:09]  Laura Piper 

 Oh, I date because it is. Even if you’re just going to heart the comments and don’t reply to every single one, there is an option to heart to like the comment. But it is a good idea. We’ve been going through a bit of a funny time with Pinterest. They’ve been doing lots of updates, but Pinterest is getting a little bit of a name for AI spam images where people are literally creating and easily AI images and spamming the platform.

[00:40:41]   

 And this latest week, Pinterest has just actually launched a policy or I think on their business page they’ve now got an AI content policy and they’re going to start tagging AI images because they were getting a bit of a reputation because, you know, people have their different opinions. I personally would prefer to know that someone has tried and tested the recipe before I go and buy all the ingredients.

[00:41:06]   

 But yes, I’ve always, always wholeheartedly support the food blogger put their heart and soul into creating recipes rather than the robot. Robots aren’t very good at making recipes. Yeah, from my experience.

[00:41:21]  Megan Porta 

 No, I know that’s an issue right now and I’m glad you brought that up because poor Pinterest, you know, the whole image thing, I kind of feel bad for them having to deal with this new issue. Who would have ever thought?

[00:41:33]  Laura Piper 

 I know it’s, it’s incredible as out there, but the trouble is when is there people so want to abuse. Not I don’t abuse is the right word, but they also want to take it as an opportunity where they can easily create some images and drive traffic to a website and earn some money from it.

[00:41:50]   

 And Pinterest is trying to crack down and they want high quality content on the platform. And also like not everyone wants AI content and I think what they’re trying to do is say is label things. So they are starting to label this as an AI image so that people can make the decision themselves whether I want to click on that or I don’t want to click on that.

[00:42:13]   

 So it has been a bit of a tricky time and we are finding that Pinterest are very much following their community guidelines. So this would be a very quick reminder to everybody, just check the community guidelines. And it does comment on there about repetitive images. So repeating the same images. What they don’t want you to do is take one pin and go and put it on five different boards all at the same time.

[00:42:39]   

 You could probably spread that out over a long period of time. I know people who do that and they do it really successfully and that’s absolutely fine. But what they don’t want is all is if they’re trying to cut down on the spam side of things.

[00:42:52]  Megan Porta 

 I know, I feel, I feel bad for them too, and I don’t envy them at all. Got to be not very fun to sort through this issue.

[00:43:01]  Laura Piper 

 No, no, not at all. And they’ll find another way, people, and this is it. Pinterest will get it sorted and then they’ll find another way. But what we do find, though, is when Pinterest are doing these updates, engagement, initial engagement does sometimes suffer. I’m noticing new pins are taking a lot longer to get going.

[00:43:23]   

 And actually I’m seeing some of my older pins that I did nearly two years ago come up in the top of my search feed suddenly. So I’m thinking, I don’t know whether they’ve got extra steps that they’re doing before they start showing pins in searches. That’s the only thing I can surmise, especially since they, they’ve said about now they’re tagging, they can start tagging pictures that are AI.

[00:43:46]   

 They obviously got to scan it for. I think they said that in their policy that they will look at the metadata of the picture.

[00:43:54]  Megan Porta 

 That’s interesting because I’ve, I’m seeing a lot. I’m just looking in my analytics right now and I’m seeing so many old, old pins. I wonder if it’s safer for them to prioritize the older pins because those were not during the AI generated time. So I’m. I don’t know. That’s interesting.

[00:44:14]  Laura Piper 

 This is it. Well, this is, it is interesting. And funny enough, when I was using Pinterest any other weekend, I was seeing things come up for fall, fall recipes. And I was like, well, you don’t normally. Because one thing we have noticed over the last year with Pinterest is that they kind of have an update at the start of a new season.

[00:44:33]   

 So kind of end of August, beginning of September, they’ll do an update and you’ll start without even doing any searches. When you go into your home feed, you’ll start to see fall and pumpkin recipes and then they’ll do another update just before Thanksgiving, probably just after Halloween. And then you’ll start seeing Christmas.

[00:44:52]   

 They do these automatic updates, seasonal ones that we’ve really started to notice. And this is why we, when we create Pinterest clients, has really been going homing in on, on the seasonal trends, because Pinterest is almost driving you that way to start with their updates. But whenever they do an update. We do suffer a little bit, but it recovers. So keep going.

[00:45:15]  Megan Porta 

 Right. There’s always recovery, always. And people forget that when you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, what is happening? But we forget that things always bounce back. So keep that in mind if you’re seeing chaos right now. They do, yeah. Okay. What else do we need to know, Laura? Is there anything we’ve missed that you want to mention before we say goodbye?

[00:45:34]  Laura Piper 

 So, no, I think we’ve kind of covered everything. I said to you, said to you that I have like a food and drinks planner which I can give to you, you know, for free, so you can offer that to your, to your audience. And basically I’ve done. I do it twice a year, so I break it right down.

[00:45:52]   

 And so the current one is quarter one and quarter two. So that’s all the trends. So you can actually get a bit of an insight ahead of time so you know what’s coming. And then I’ll do another one this year for quarter three and quarter four. Because we want to start be thinking of fall in about June, July time.

[00:46:09]   

 But yeah, no, that’s. That’s been so lovely to talk to you about Pinterest trends. It’s such a big part of everything that we do.

[00:46:18]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah.

[00:46:19]  Laura Piper 

 And it’s worked so well for us, so it’s nice to be able to share some of what we do with you and your audience.

[00:46:24]  Megan Porta 

 I love this. This went so fast. I love talking about Pinterest. So the planner that you mentioned, how can people find that?

[00:46:30]  Laura Piper 

 If I give you a link to put in your show notes, they click on the link, then I think they just got put their email address in and then I will send that straight to their inbox for them.

[00:46:40]  Megan Porta 

 Great. Thank you for doing that. That’s awesome.

[00:46:43]  Laura Piper 

 Oh, no, that’s perfect. I use it myself every day. I put it together. But when I’m like looking at what my, what recipes my clients have got, I’m like, oh, watch this. Because I broke down even further to when to start posting a week by week kind of breakdown as well.

[00:46:57]  Megan Porta 

 Love it. That will be very useful for us. Do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to end with today?

[00:47:04]  Laura Piper 

 Yes. What I was going to say was. I know, I know. We’ve touched on this a little bit, but Pinterest has been tough for so many food bloggers recently due to all the updates that they’ve been making. But they are starting to tackle the influx of AI images. So I just wanted to remind you all that although Pinterest will always evolve, real high quality content will never be replaced.

[00:47:32]   

 So keep creating your amazing recipes and inspiring people. People will always want genuine, homemade, home created recipes and I will always wholeheartedly support you all.

[00:47:46]  Megan Porta 

 A that was so needed and perfect for what the collective food bloggers need to hear at this moment. So thank you for that. I. I really appreciate that. I know others will as well.

[00:47:58]  Laura Piper 

 Ah, you’re very welcome.

[00:48:00]  Megan Porta 

 It was so great to have you here. Seriously, what a great chat and thank you so much for taking the time for it. We will put together a show notes page for you. Laura. If you go to eatblogtalk.com/LauraPiper you can find everything we’ve chatted about today including the resource that we refer to.

[00:48:18]  Laura Piper 

 Oh yes, the planner. The trends planner.

[00:48:22]  Megan Porta 

 Yes, the planner. Yep. So will you reiterate where people can find you? Your website, maybe social media if they want to find you.

[00:48:30]  Laura Piper 

 Perfect. Yes, of course. If you’d like to get regular updates on what’s happening on Pinterest, come and find me at Instagram. I’m just at LauraPiper.Co if you’d like to see what services and how I could help you personally. If you go to my website which is LauraPiper.Co and you’ll find lots of details there regarding my audit and strategy session.

[00:48:51]   

 So if you are happy, if you want to carry on doing the interest yourself but you just like a little bit of extra help guidance or have an audit or cleanup of your account, that’s fine. Or if you just want it off your plate completely, I’d be really happy to look at that PDF as well.

[00:49:05]  Megan Porta 

 Awesome. Thank you so much Laura and thank you for listening.

[00:49:08]  Laura Piper 

 Oh Megan, thank you so much. I’ve been really enjoyed talking with you today.

[00:49:13]  Megan Porta 

 Yeah, I loved our chat. I will see you next time food bloggers. 

[00:49:21]  Megan Porta

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you and I will see you next time.