Episode 366: Expand the Reach of your Business by Implementing these Pinterest Strategies with Kate Ahl

EBT366 – Kate Ahl

Kate Ahl: Hi, this is Kate all from Simple Pin Media and you are listening to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. 

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I think just that transparency and willingness to be open and sharing for the pure benefit of somebody else’s success has been a big surprise to me. For me, that’s a big part of who I am too, as I’m very much interested in helping other people succeed, but it’s been very equal. There’s just a very equal amount of giving and taking, sharing, and sharing for other success, and other people are so willing to share what has worked for them purely to help other people succeed.

Megan Porta: Hello food bloggers. Welcome to Eat Blog Talk, the podcast for food bloggers looking for the value and the confidence that will move the needle forward in their businesses. This episode is sponsored by RankIQ. I am your host, Megan Porta, and you are listening to episode number 366. I have Kate Ahl with me from Simple Pin Media. She’s going to talk to us about the state of Pinterest as it relates to food bloggers. Kate Ahl is the founder of Simple Pin Media. She has been helping businesses discover, learn, and master Pinterest marketing for over seven years. She combines the data learned from working with clients, education from Pinterest and her knowledge of the platform to help people expand the reach of their business using Pinterest. Her mantra is to keep it simple, be authentic, and pin with purpose. In addition to hosting her own show, Simple Pin podcast, Kate has been interviewed on a number of podcasts including the Jasmine Star Show, Spa Marketing Made Easy, Proof to Product and Serve Scale Soar to name a few. Kate, it is such a pleasure to have you back on Eat Blog Talk. Thank you so much for being here today. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah. I’m so excited to catch up with you. I know there’s so much to talk about. 

Megan Porta: Yes, there is. Okay. Do we have a fun, another fun fact to share before we dig into it? 

Kate Ahl: Ooh, fun fact about me. Yes. I actually am obsessed right now with Boba Tea. Which is so funny. I have to actually, I have to talk myself out of not buying it because it’s so good. But I know some people have a visceral reaction to it because they think it’s gross because there’s tapioca in it. 

Megan Porta: It’s chunky, right? 

Kate Ahl: Yes, totally.

Megan Porta: I think that’s why I haven’t tried it, to be honest with you. I know a lot of people who are really loving it, but I’m like, Ooh, the liquid and chunky coming out. I dunno how I would deal with that.

Kate Ahl: I know. I have a friend who has family in Taiwan and Boba Tea originated over there and so she will only get the milk tea without the tapioca or the jellies. She’s like, I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t handle it. I’m like, that’s the part that I love the most. It’s really crazy.

Megan Porta: Interesting. All right, good to know that about you. We’ve learned some fun facts about you over the years. 

Kate Ahl: I know, right? The puzzles, all the things.

Megan Porta: The garbage. I don’t know why I remember that, but the garbage. You like garbage day.

Kate Ahl: I love garbage day. It’s my favorite day of the weekend. I will go out there to the garbage and be like, is this thing full? Because it’s not full, we’re not getting the most out of it. Let’s get rid of some more crap. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I hope everyone enjoyed our recap of all of Kate’s fun facts. 

Kate Ahl: I know, right? 

Megan Porta: That was unexpected, but awesome. Love to learn just random stuff about you. Okay. We have a lot to talk about. We’re gonna talk about Pinterest and you are the Pinterest guru that I know a lot of food bloggers go to as their main resource for Pinterest. So let’s just start with a general kind of catch up. Where is Pinterest at now? I would just love to get your thoughts. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I would say Pinterest has changed so much from the pandemic to now. We really had this huge wave of the surge of people really using Pinterest at the start of the pandemic and then really a big over 21 and half of 22 of users. In that time too, as well as we saw the rise of TikTok, it’s like Pinterest really wanted to capture a lot of that traffic, right? They wanted to capture a lot of that momentum. So that’s when they introduced idea pins, and then they introduced PinterestTV, which is a little bit of a different spin than something like an IGTV or an IG Live. Then I really wanted to focus on trying to keep people on the platform longer. But what’s interesting is that Pinterest has a different ecosystem than every single other platform out there. Pinners are really primed to use it in a certain way. So there was some pushback on these things that didn’t have links and some frustrations. So we really have had to figure out, and I’ll also state too, this is probably the other big change, is that Pinterest CEO and founder, one of the founders, stepped away from the company completely and then the other founder stepped down to be the head of the board and let Bill Ready. He was the former CEO of PayPal, Google Commerce, Venmo. He worked at Venmo, but really this new CEO took the lead to create Pinterest, to be America’s shopping mall. So we have a lot of changes when it comes to e-commerce. A lot of changes when keeping people on the platform longer. And at times it felt a little bit like, what’s happening here. We’ve seemed to adapt and see where 2023 will be interesting. We said 2022 was like our reckoning year, like what’s gonna happen on Pinterest. I think 2023 we’ll start to see some good lift on these changes. 

Megan Porta: Okay. So it’s interesting that the ownership changed. I guess maybe I had heard that, but I didn’t retain it. America’s Shopping Mall. Interesting. I think that’s such a huge change from what it was previously. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, a hundred percent. I think one of the things that’s been interesting to watch about this whole thing is that Pinterest’s ecosystem, if you will, of going to Pinterest, finding what you like, asking questions, not following people like you would on Instagram or even TikTok, that still remains like, we still have that core of who they are. We still have the core of search, meaning around keywords and images, things like that. It’s just we have different formats. It’s like we have a diversified platform of how to get to the solution that the pinner wants. Which opens up more drawers, I think, for multiple businesses to be seen by lots of different pinners. So it’s where we had one way before, which was one standard pin or a video pin. It’s like now we have multiple ways of connecting with a person who might be a future email reader or audience member or whatever it is that you are trying to use Pinterest to attract people for. 

Megan Porta: Do you see this as an opportunity for food bloggers? Obviously, you just said like multiple options for people seeing your content, so I can just see that as positive. Is there any negative to this for food bloggers? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I think I’m always gonna spend things as positive, so I’ll just put that out there right now. , I would say for a seasoned older food blogger who’s probably used Pinterest for a long time, these changes are very frustrating and feel very discombobulating. For our newer food bloggers who have started their business in 2020, 2021, they are seeing it much differently as there is a lot more opportunity for them. This is the one pathway where they know, this is where people look for recipes. This is where people look for ideas and they know that it’s really important to leverage. So we have a little bit of the old, which they know what they used to have and are sad they don’t have it anymore, meaning traffic and then the new, which are saying, this is getting me more traffic than all the other platforms. Why would I not use this? So we’re at a little bit of an impasse with two different views for food bloggers. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. I have a slightly different perspective. I’m quite an older blogger too, and I feel like I’ve just been through so much, not with Pinterest alone, but just in general, as a food blogger, that I just feel unshaken. Things are always changing, there’s nothing that is ever going to stay the same. Pinterest included. So I feel like. Whatever, we’re gonna roll with this. I’m used to it. I feel like newer bloggers are like wait, I started in 2021 and it was a little different than, like they’re what’s going on? So that’s my perspective. So it’s interesting to hear you say that and I’m sure there is a cat crew of older bloggers who are frustrated. 

Kate Ahl: I love your perspective. I think it’s, I think it’s the right perspective to say because you think about any business owner and the things that they go through with the ups and the downs. I think about business owners that they were so focused on the phone book, and then the phone book started to go away and we have the internet. It was like how discombobulating for them.

Megan Porta: Yeah, exactly. Okay. I love that. Just getting different perspectives and you work with a lot of people. Just digging into Pinterest platforms. So I love to hear all of that. Now when this episode is published, it will be nearing the end of Q4. So what do we need to know about Pinterest as we wrap up Q4 and head into a new year? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah for food creators, Q4 really is the time to get the maximum amount of exposure for your content. Most likely. Now, there’s some food creators that might be more in the healthy food niche. They are gonna get more play for their content in January and even half of February. So one of the things that you wanna think about when you look at any year when you approach it, is you wanna look back at the previous year to look at what your traffic patterns are. So that allows you to get a holistic view of the year to say, when do I need to push on the gas a little bit more, meaning maybe I’m gonna pin a little bit more, do some more idea pins, do a little more short form video, or where I can pull off a little bit and I know this is not going to be my time to get a lot of traffic, so I’m okay stepping back and maybe focusing more on less pins or trying something different or getting more experimental. So I would say that’s number one. Number two is to refresh your idea of why you use Pinterest. I think this is important for any business owner to ask themselves why they’re using any platform for their marketing, especially Pinterest for food bloggers. Because they want to be centered on this thing that says, okay, this is why I use Pinterest. This is how I’m going to stay committed to it, which I think creates what you feel is that unshaken feeling because you know why you’re using it and why you’re investing in it. Then I think the third part is to set yourself up to embrace some changes or try something new in 2023. Whether that is, I’ll share an example for us. This last July, I had the idea to start testing things just to test them, right? Just because I wanted to, I wanted to challenge myself, basically, not to believe my own advice over the years. Could I challenge myself to really turn it on its side. So I told my social media manager who I work with, I said, let’s in August pin just 20 pins a day. Let’s just grab whatever and see does that make a difference? Are we gonna be in trouble? Are we gonna decrease? What’s it look like? August for us is a lower time, so it was easier to test with it. We noticed a little bit of change, not a lot. So I said, okay, let’s go to the extreme. Let’s in September only do Idea Pins. Two a week. Let’s see what happens. My traffic went down significantly, but my impressions and my saves went up. I was like, but traffic is important to me because I use Pinterest to grow my email list. So let’s find a middle ground with both of these now. So if you have a month where you can play around with your own numbers, that’s a good thing to set yourself up for in 2023. I think when you plan for it, you can approach it differently. This is what happens to me, and I know it happens to other people. I see somebody post in a Facebook group or a thread somewhere and they talk about this amazing result they’ve had with Pinterest, and I immediately wanna try it. That kind of bumps me off my system a little bit. You can try it, but plan for it so you can really get true, accurate stats and know if it works for you or if it doesn’t work for you. Those are the three things I would suggest in 2023. 

Megan Porta: I love experimenting. I love just wrapping my head around something like, okay, I need to try exactly what you did in August and September. So when you say experiment, do you think it’s smart to look at what has been working? Like maybe it’s been Idea Pins have been working really well, so digging into that more or trying something that isn’t working. Which way do we go? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah. I think that’s all centered on your why of Pinterest. I look at Pinterest as a traffic driver to grow my email list. So my people that are coming from Pinterest are really in the how-tos. They’re really trying to figure out how to make Pinterest work for them, and they want some granular topics, right? So then, if I know that I want to grow my email list and the one way to do that is by getting clicks. Then the secondary way is through saves, I take the approach of I wanna try something that’s gonna elevate those and I wanna try to think outside the box. I could try Idea Pins. So if I look at idea Pins and I look at my stats, I can look at the ones that are most popular, which ones lead to the most followers and the most profile visits. So you can see those stats in Pinterest now. It’s actually super helpful. So then if I see I have an Idea Pin that has a really great topic that leads to profile visits and then also follows, that means I’m getting them to a point where I know I could create a conversion. So I think for me it’s all about why I’m using it. Sometimes I think it’s easy too to get caught up in some vanity metrics where I wanna grow a particular impressions or monthly viewers, but those don’t really align with my goal. So I would say you could test things that might not be how some people approach, like scheduling tools. I’ll say I’m really burnt out on a scheduling tool. Let me see if it works for me to get more traffic if I don’t use one. Or maybe it’s something along those lines, but I definitely will say that I will connect it with my conversion and then anything goes if it leads to that. 

Megan Porta: Okay. That makes sense. There are so many ways to experiment. You mentioned scheduling tools. You could experiment with that. You could experiment with different types of pins, whether it’s a hero shot or process shot. There’s so many different ways with pins because there’s visual components and there’s also so many different ways to get your content on Pinterest. So I feel like there’s this endless equation that you could tap into.

Kate Ahl: Which I think is really important for you to say. I love that you brought that up because that is the trap I think I see people falling into when we look at what somebody else has posted as an experiment, which inherently is not bad. That’s really good. We want ideas from other people. The filter you always need to put on that is, let’s evaluate their audience, their goals, their keywords, their images, because those pieces all play a very distinct role. You can’t take this sweeping idea of, let’s say a scheduling tool and say, I’m gonna turn off all my scheduling because Person A over here said they did that and their traffic grew by 50%. Then you come over here and you try doing it and you say, man, it didn’t work for me. I’m so frustrated. But when you put the factors side by side, you might see that they might have a factor that’s totally different from you. They might be targeting a different keyword. I’ve often said in the past that there are some food creators that they’re very, like Bon Appetite and their recipes take a long time. You have to go to Whole Foods and spend 1 million on some foreign spice. Then you can’t lay that side by side with an everyday cook. You’re not going to get the same results because an everyday cook has approachable ingredients. You can go to any supermarket. You can do a meal for less than $10. Right now in our current environment, that is going to win out because we’re in a recession, right? So people are pinching their dollars. They might not go to Whole Foods, but they might save that really fancy content for later because it’s aspirational. It’s not something that’s approachable every day. So that’s why I say, when you see those things of somebody else getting a result from their test, always weigh against who they’re targeting versus who you’re targeting. 

Megan Porta: Oh, that’s powerful. Yeah, so we’re never comparing apples to apples ever because nobody is you and there are so many variables really. Okay. That’s cool. So can we talk about repurposing content? Because I know that can be a struggle for food bloggers who can’t post new content every day and sometimes not even every week. So what are your thoughts about repurposing? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah. I hate to start the negative because I just said I was positive. But I’ll say this, the negative that I see is really just taking a Reel and posting it on Pinterest as an Idea Pin. You can definitely take the concept of your Reel and definitely download it. You wanna obviously strip all the watermark stuff and then upload it directly to Idea Pins. You know who I love for food inspiration is Entertaining with Beth. I think she does an excellent job at repurposing. YouTube is her first primary platform. Pinterest is her second, and then she has Instagram too. I love going to her Pinterest page to see how she’s repurposing her food content. It’s very much those shorter form videos, step by step. But it leaves you wanting more. And I think if you’re going to repurpose something, you have to remember that the pinner is a delight and surprise, right? Delight and surprise me. I don’t know who you are. I have no connection with you. I think the caution of repurposing from something like Instagram or TikTok is we approach those platforms with the assumption that people have chosen to follow us and they know us. Whereas on Pinterest, they don’t know us and frankly, they don’t care. But they really care about your recipe. They’re asking the question, can I make this? Is this doable? Do I like how this person is creating these recipes? Yeah, I wanna connect with them. So when you think of repurposing, before you take something from Instagram, because what I see is a lot of food bloggers, they’re crushing on Instagram, they’re amazing. But before you take something and pull it over, just see is this good content for Idea Pins? That’s where we see real. Being able to be repurposed on Pinterest is through Idea pins or very short form, less than 30 second videos. 

Megan Porta: If you had to describe the difference between Instagram Reels and Idea Pins, what would you say is the biggest difference?

Kate Ahl: I would say the biggest difference is one, if we have the talking or the overlay or you have this, I don’t know how to describe it, but the dancing stuff, we don’t want that on Pinterest at all. But when it comes to Reels, I really think that sometimes it can be this, sometimes it could be behind the scenes, which I think you could also put on Pinterest too. I guess I would say the differences really have to do with the type of content. Also I would say Idea Pins are slide based, so you can put multiple slides. So it’s a hybrid of a story and a Reel is an Idea Pin. You merge those two together. Whereas a Reel is just your 60 seconds, 120 seconds kind of thing. You wanna download that and break that up into slides on the Idea Pin and then it lives forever unlike a story that has to be saved to a highlight.

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Megan Porta: Do you have a personal preference as far as what kind of titles you like to see on food content creator Idea Pins? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah. When it comes to idea pins for food creators, what I really love is that opening slide that very much resembles your regular standard pin. It just tells the person exactly what it is because the pinner doesn’t read. Even when I’m on Instagram and I see something that’s a Reel, I look below sometimes to get more context, whereas pinners don’t read. So you have to understand that your first slide is really gonna be like, this is what it is. Then I like the hybrid of video and then static images as well. So if somebody is making a very simple cocktail, here’s an old fashioned one: step one, step two, step three, step four. Those can be some videos maybe showing a shaking or burning of the little orange peeler or whatever. Then at the end, there can be the call to action to follow or learn more. I like those general formats of both video and static images, but showing them step by step. Do you remember when Facebook blew up with all those tasty style videos? 

Megan Porta: Oh yes.

Kate Ahl: Exactly. So it’s a little bit like we see some of that really do well on Pinterest when you just really have a picture of the bowl and some of the video in the step by step. It’s like that works well. 

Megan Porta: Yeah. So that could become an experiment too, just doing the hybrid of static and video and movement and stills. That makes it really interesting, I think, really unique when you can add a lot of different components in there. So there’s a food blogger couple in my mastermind group, Brittany and Terrence from The Plant Power Couple. They are crushing it on Pinterest right now. They’re making really just interesting Idea Pins that are really inspiring to the rest of us in the group. I’ve been sharing their account with as many people as I can because I just love it like they do exactly what you said. They put video in, some of it is of them making the food. Some of it is actually like of them, their person, and some of it is just still images. So if any of you wanna be inspired, go check out their account too. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I was just looking for it too. When you say that too, like going to Pinterest to see what things look like. I think one of the greatest traps for any food creator or any content creator is we’re on our computer all the time, right? We’re creating idea pins sometimes on our computer, maybe in Canva. Then we are also, some people even, I think it’s better to upload on mobile because you get all the features on mobile obviously. But a lot of people are creating and they’re only seeing these images on these huge screens or they’re not looking at other people’s profiles like you just talked about. Or even engaging with the platform because they’re using the scheduling tool. Honestly, an experiment for somebody would be like, just use the actual platform 10 minutes a day. That’s it. Just play around with it. 

Megan Porta: We forget to go in there as a user once in a while, right? We get so caught up in that I have to go on my phone and create this Idea Pin and get it out into the world and then we leave and we don’t go back to actually consume the content. So I think that’s powerful right there. It’s so simple. Just, yeah, a set of timers. Spend 10 minutes there and see if anything changes. I might try that experiment. It’s fun for me to go into Pinterest and look around.

Kate Ahl: To search your keywords too. Search your name, search your keywords, see what’s coming up. You know what’s also fascinating is how much the app has changed. Because when Idea Pins came out, they had the bubbles at the top where you would first see Idea Pins resembled a lot of Instagram. Those are gone now. So Idea Pins are very much folded into the regular. Smart feed experience and the regular search experience. So we have this cool thing where your home feed, your smart feed, which is supposed to be designed to fit everything you like, you save, you search, you follow, you’re interested in. That’s a combination now of standard pins, video pins, Pinterest ads, and Idea Pins. So you have this conglomeration of a lot of different pin formats. If you think about what yours looks like, think about what your end users might look like and if they’re searching for particular topics, your hope is you wanna end up in their smart feed.

Megan Porta: Have you experimented with the new Pinterest trends much? I know it was very recently new, at least for me. 

Kate Ahl: Yes, I love it. I have to give Pinterest mad props for getting better analytics and getting better at trends and also doing cross country in their trends because it’s open to the UK, Canada, and the US right now, but in the beginning it was just US. So it left our Canadian friends and our UK friends, who are the second and third biggest users, with not a lot of tools. Now they just keep getting better and better. So I highly recommend anybody use it. It’s such a great tool. 

Megan Porta: Do you have any tips for how to use it? It’s new and different. It looks amazing, but I go in and I’m like it’s so different that I really don’t know where to start. 

Kate Ahl: I know. So I would say one of the biggest things is if I am going to think about creating future content, or let’s say, let’s take the play around approach. I like to search my most popular topics to see when they are getting the most traffic. So when I talked about at the beginning, like approaching 2023 with knowing your year, this will help you see when the search volume of these particular terms are highest. I like that because it really allows me to see if my stuff is truly aligning with that there. I actually like the board’s ideas. In fact, I want to pull it up on my computer as we’re talking because I think it is one of the coolest things to look at the boards that people are pinning to. They’ll give you examples of topics so you can go in and you can see top trends for the US. I like that, especially if you’re content depleted. I don’t know if that’s a good word to use. You have to come up with a lot of ideas and sometimes this is a great way to crowdsource ideas just by looking at top trends. Then you can go into discovering trends by dates, by interest, keywords, age, gender. There’s so much new stuff. I haven’t even played around with it as much as I probably should have. It’s pretty awesome. 

Megan Porta: Yeah, it looks intense in a good way. It looks like you could get really in depth, and maybe I should just set aside a couple of hours in the next few days just to sort through here and get to know it a little bit because it looks amazing. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, and even changing, I’m looking at it right now, I just clicked on top yearly trends. These are trends of the high search volume, which one of the biggest complaints especially for any type of content creator wanting to maximize SEO, is that Pinterest doesn’t have the equivalent of a keyword ad search, like a Google ad search, or not an ad search, the word search where you can see. Is it Google Search Console? 

Megan Porta: Yeah. Yup.

Kate Ahl: So people would complain like Pinterest doesn’t have the equivalent. You really just had the search bar on Pinterest and the guided search bubbles. This tool is really leveling up to get better and better with these yearly trends or the search volume. I’ve even been looking right now, the top three and mine are like dinner ideas, dinner recipes, easy dinner recipes, chicken recipes. Then for some reason I have a lot of nails, which I know are very popular on Pinterest. People search for them all the time. There’s a lot of things that you can see in there that I think you could take advantage of. 

Megan Porta: I don’t think I’ve ever searched for nails on Pinterest before. I must be in the minority. 

Kate Ahl: Oh, I haven’t either.

Megan Porta: I like pretty nails, but never thought to do it on Pinterest. That’s funny. 

Kate Ahl: I know. It’s like everywhere. It’s crazy. 

Megan Porta: All right, yeah, I see nails come up and then, but yeah, lots of opportunity for food. Soup recipes. Chili recipes. Which I have a lot of. Another soup, apple crisp. So this is worthwhile. It’s worthwhile to just go through here and check it out, I think.

Kate Ahl: Oh, absolutely. There’s the Pinterest predictions that they’ll link to a ton. I’m assuming that when this airs it will have Pinterest predictions for 2023. One thing to note about it is that Pinterest will publish this every year and they’ll say, see these things, basically like we’re the highest search volume. Also Pinterest is in control of the search volume. So there’s an element of it’s a little bit skewed, but you do wanna look for it, whenever you see those reports, go straight to your topic. So food. See what it is Pinterest is predicting will be popular in 2023 and try to create something around that. That could be a new way to get seen. If we know that Pinterest is pushing these particular keywords and topics, create something around that. 

Megan Porta: I don’t see any food in this. So I clicked on it. It’s at the very bottom of the Pinterest trend. Pinterest predicts, right? So yeah, I see no category for food here. How often is this updated on Pinterest? 

Kate Ahl: Interesting. There was one before. It should be updated. Go to category. It might be under food and beverage. So if you click on the filter, yeah. Then click on that, and then it will go below there . One of the funniest things for us every year is to see the pictures that they put in this. Because they feel out of touch with reality. In fashion there was a necklace sweater, like a sweater with no neck and this person is walking around. Yeah, it’s hilarious. 

Megan Porta: Oh gosh. That’s funny. Okay, so Pinterest trends. Good to check out. I was gonna ask you, this just came up about shuffles. Do you have any thoughts on shuffles and how that will grow, maybe for foodie creators? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah. I got early access to shuffles, played around with it. You know what I think it’s best for is actually, it’s not a marketer tool yet. It’s really great as a pinner tool. Granted, it’s not a Pinterest, it’s like a secondary app that Pinterest owns, but think of it as if you want to create a design board for redesigning your kitchen. Or you would like to create a vision board with all the things on it. Remember the collages we used to do as kids where we would tear things out of magazines?

Megan Porta: Yeah, that’s what it is, exactly. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, totally. So there’s really no way that we can see at this point. We’ve had some of our students test it too as well. There’s no point in using it personally. But actually our social media manager, Tabby, is building a house and she is all over it. She said, this is amazing because you can cut things out. It’s literally like cutting things out, like you would from a magazine and putting it in there. So I would say play around with it if you want to for fun, but it’s not a marketer tool yet. 

Megan Porta: I can see potential. I hope it does become a marketer tool because I love that you can, like you said, you can cut things out as if you literally had scissors and were cutting around them. Then when you tap on each image that you put on this virtual poster board, it links directly to your Pinterest pin. 

Kate Ahl: Yes, I do like that. That could be pretty cool. I would have to play around with it more in the food space to see. I could see design, photography and if somebody was building web design, if they were building stuff, and then it would lead to like a board where people put things together. Very collaborative.

Megan Porta: Or how about like a Thanksgiving meal? You’re putting a meal together. You can include all of your components of the meal, maybe some design elements about your table or I don’t know, there’s so many creative people in this space. I can see somebody just taking this to a new level and just experimenting and having fun with it. It’s so much fun.

Kate Ahl: It is fun. I will say that’s one of those things where when you see something new come out or even there’s, when Idea Pins came out, there’s a lot of pushback on I’m not using these, they don’t link, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it’s just play around with it. Nobody ever said that you had to use it. Just get to know it. That’s it. 

Sponsor: Yeah, it’s as simple as that. Be an early adopter. Why not? It might take off, maybe not, but then you’ll at least have a little bit of fun. You mentioned the video a little bit earlier. Do you think it’s still worthwhile to put videos on Pinterest? 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I do. I have very short form videos for sure. So that’s one of those things where in the main home feed you’ll see these short form videos that come through. I’m looking at mine right now. Some people are, there was a big trend of Tik Tok going up over here. But I think the only reason that is, is because TikTok has some of that aha. I learned it on TikTok kind of thing, where Pinterest has that same element of hacky stuff, people like that. So if you have a short, less than 15 second video, for sure. We see it a lot with Pinterest ads. There’s a big push with video Pinterest ads these days. So definitely test it and try it. It’s basically another way that you can share your content. A video pen does still link to your website. It’s a little bit harder to get to, but it still links.

Megan Porta: So would you say instead of the old school, like hands and pans, here’s how to create this recipe, throw in the flour. It’s more just that catchy snippet of a video, like we see on Instagram, that people are liking on Pinterest as. 

Kate Ahl: Yes, exactly. Anything that gets them inspired to create something, especially if you have a quick and easy recipe. Those are really doing well. If you have a long form recipe, I would turn that into more of an Idea Pin so that people can see if they wanna connect with it. But doing tons and tons of slides is not recommended. So you don’t wanna make 30 slides. Yeah, that’s too many. 

Megan Porta: What is the ideal number of slides, these dates for idea pins? 

Kate Ahl: I have heard less than 10 for sure less than 12, but five to seven is a sweet spot. 

Megan Porta: Okay, perfect. What am I missing? Is there anything else about Pinterest that food bloggers need to know going into 2023? 

Kate Ahl: Actually one thing I would keep an eye on, I wouldn’t necessarily think about pursuing it, but Pinterest TV is an interesting thing where it is produced by Pinterest. So you have to get an invite to do a show with them. But I think there’s some people who have had good success with it when they do get the invite. A lot of more DIY content creators right now have, but just check it out. There’s some cooking shows over there too as well. Just look at it on your phone and then see if it’s something you’d be interested in.

Megan Porta: Is there still an application? I know for a while there was a form you could fill out that would I dunno, speed the process along or something. We were talking about this on Clubhouse and a few creators on there had been invited, but they had filled out some mysterious form.

Kate Ahl: I remember that form going around. I’m not sure if it is, but you could probably Google Pinterest TV application and see if it pops up. I will say, actually before you Google, Pinterest does have a new community. The Pinterest business community. We’re actively involved in that. And one of them, they call them Pinterest pioneers. One of the educators teachers. But it is specifically for creators to get their questions answered by Pinterest. So one of the biggest complaints is that there hasn’t been this good bridge between Pinterest and creators. Creators really fuel the content for the Pinners, which is who Pinterest serves. So they created this forum. It’s a different url. Community.Pinterest.biz, that’s what it is. When you go in there, you’re gonna see something like a creator lounge. There’s articles, there’s conversation. So if you ever are curious about anything, or maybe you’re worried about a spam filter or being marked as spam or something’s not working, go here first because there’s gonna be a lot of people who can help troubleshoot and answer your question. Plus, there’s a huge archive of content that you can look through. We work very closely with the two people, Pinterest Jasmine and Pinterest Gabby, as we call them. We work very closely with them to help curate and create this great environment for creators. That’s as being part of the Pinterest Pioneer program, we give them feedback as to how to make this forum better. It’s so helpful. So I would tell people to go check that out. 

Megan Porta: Awesome. That looks like a great resource. I’m just scrolling through here now. Some good topics covered. So good to know about that. So with the Pinterest TV thing, you would say, if it is a possibility for a food blogger to definitely take advantage of that and do a, I don’t know what they call them, like call session, whatever.

Kate Ahl: Yeah, absolutely. Go into the creator lounge that they have here, this in the pbc, and ask about Pinterest TV and see if there’s any updates. Because they would have the latest and probably the quickest access to the application. 

Megan Porta: Okay. I did attend a few of my friends’ sessions, the Pinterest TV sessions, and they were really good. I liked that they kept them short and sweet. The ones that I watch for 30 minutes and they go through a recipe, talk through it, and they make the recipe and a lot of people are there. I was so shocked. Over a thousand people on one of them. I was like, what? That’s crazy. 

Kate Ahl: Totally. I saw that too, and I was like, oh my gosh, I have so many people commenting and commenting like they have been there. They’re regulars. What? What’s happening? But I think those are the things where, when we’re on our desktop all the time, there’s no way for you to see Pinterest TV on the desktop. So you would have to go, and now that I said that, I’m like, oh wait, that’s how it was before but lemme check right now. But I do not believe that you can see it on a desktop. I think you can only see it on mobile. I’m going to my home feed. There’s a today tab too. You always wanna click on that just to see what Pinterest is highlighting. But yeah it’s not there. I can’t see it. 

Megan Porta: So it’s a little mobile gem. 

Kate Ahl: A mobile gem. So make sure you get on your phone and look at it.

Megan Porta: Okay. I love how they put certain things just on mobile to make sure you’re going on desktop and mobile and utilizing all of their different ways to use the platform. What else do we need to know, Kate? Anything else that we’ve missed?

Kate Ahl: Man, I feel like we covered a lot. I think maybe just less like anything that we missed and more reiterating. Like really looking at 2023, and I can’t stress this enough, the people we see that have the longest success on Pinterest really are connected to why they’re using it. And they’re really focused on their end user. They’re willing to try new things. They’re willing to step into experiments, but that’s because they really are connected with their goals instead of chasing other people’s success like that. That’s an easy trap for us to get into in this industry. I feel like social media is one of those things where we’re all looking for that golden ticket. We’re still all looking to go viral and all these things. It’s a slow and steady once the race when it comes to Pinterest, and so if you can really just know why you’re using it, get connected with that, I think you’ll be really successful in the long run.

Megan Porta: And embrace those changes like you said earlier. I think that is a huge piece of it as well. Just knowing that it’s going to change, it’s going to evolve, and nothing is ever going to stay the same, and just embracing that. Just give you peace of mind too. Take away the stress a little bit. 

Kate Ahl: Yes, 100%. 

Megan Porta: Yes. Thank you, Kate. This was very enlightening and very fun to chat with you. So thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge with us food bloggers today. It’s been such a pleasure. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Megan Porta: Do you have another quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today? 

Kate Ahl: I think my one last time was don’t chase other people’s success. That i s still my mantra, but I do have a sticky note on my computer now that just reminds me of who I serve. It just says who do you serve? My clients, my customers, my community, and not other influencers. I think that is a huge trap when we are looking in our online world. It’s easy for me and I wanna be transparent about that, it’s easy for me to look at highlights and feel discouraged and remember that that’s not my business. This is the business that I have. 

Megan Porta: Oh, I love that. Why and who, right? Those are the focuses and the theme of our chat today. Tell everyone where they can find you. So mention your podcast and anywhere else you wanna mention. 

Kate Ahl: Yeah, so we have Simple Pin podcasts, so you’re in your podcast right now. Go hop over and subscribe to that. I think we’re in the 300 episode range too. So we’re both kinda on this same pace. We just actually opened a shop. Simplepinshop.com, where we have all of our products that you can buy, small products, courses, and past workshops. So if there’s anything we think people like to pick and choose a la carte, what they’re gonna learn. So go check that out. It’s our new baby. We gave birth too. 

Megan Porta: That’s awesome. Okay, everyone go check it out. And thanks again, Kate, for being here. Thank you so much for listening today, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode.

Outro: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be so grateful if you’ve posted it to your social media feed and stories. I will see you next time.