Podcast EP42: Pinterest: Smarter Not Harder Edition with Kayla Watkins of Pinterest for Bloggers

 Welcome to Podcast Episode 42: Pinterest: Smarter Not Harder Edition with Kayla Watkins of Pinterest for Bloggers

On today's episode, we're thrilled to have Kayla Watkins from Pinterest for Bloggers as our guest! Join us as Kayla reveals how she leverages Pinterest, the ultimate traffic driver for her clients. Learn how Pinterest can bring stability and longevity to your business, diversify your income streams, and lead to impressive results, such as a 170% increase in website traffic and sales from older content. Tune in for invaluable Pinterest strategies that let you work smarter, not harder!

Resources mentioned in the episode:

• Tailwind (get 50 free AI caption credits with this link!): https://www.tailwindapp.com/i/katewaldoandco

Find Kayla Watkins of Pinterest for Bloggers here:

• FREE Guide to Mastering Pinterest SEO: https://pinterest-for-bloggers.myflodesk.com/freebie 
• Website: www.kaylawatkins.com 
• Instagram: @pinterestforbloggers

Connect with Kate Waldo here:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• katewaldoandco.com

Kate Waldo + Co Programs:

• Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs©
• Pro Organizer Success Kit
• Take the free Business Health Check Quiz!

Talk to you soon!

XOXO,

Kate

Owner + Founder, Kate Waldo + Co. 

Creator of the Smarter Not Harder: 3-Day Workweeks for Millennial Entrepreneurs©  Program

P.S. Curious how you can grow your 6-figure business while slashing your workweek in half? Click here to learn about the Smarter Not Harder© program!

Some of our content contains affiliate links which provide us with a commission at no cost to you. Kate Waldo + Co. only recommends affiliates that we know, use, and love. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

 Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the three day work weeks podcast for millennial entrepreneurs. We have a lovely guest here today. And before we get into who we have, I want y'all to like tune in your brains to this episode because We're going to be talking about something that really leverages your time in an amazing way.

And it's something that I've started to dig into, but Kayla knows all about this space. So Kayla Watkins, I am so excited to have you here. Kayla is the owner of Pinterest for bloggers, which is an organic. Pinterest marketing agency. So they work with lifestyle, fashion, beauty bloggers. And if you are a professional organizer or you're service based business owner, and you do any kind of affiliate marketing, keep, keep with us here because this applies to you as well.

So she helps you. grow your community and make more money strategically by growing your website traffic with Pinterest. So Kayla, thank you so much

for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk all things Pinterest. I know.

And to start off with the topic, part of why Kayla's on here is because she is a super mom, but she's a super mom with boundaries

that I love because she,

in 2020 with her first baby, she took two weeks of maternity leave, but then she got pregnant with twins.

And I would love to hear, like, Your take on this because she ended up doing a six month paid maternity leave with her twins. So that's a huge difference and in the meantime has worked with over a hundred clients in her career. So Kayla, what, tell us about

it. Yeah, I, yeah, so I had my daughter literally March of 2020.

So not only did it was my first daughter, but it was like straight after the pandemic. Like we all had just gone inside and I had my daughter like the next week. It was crazy. So I took two weeks off just the way the It rolled out with a pandemic. My mom was actually not able to work. So she was able to help me thankfully.

Otherwise I have no idea how I would have done it. But I knew when I was pregnant with the twins, I was like, there's just no way I can do that again. I knew I was like, the twins was very much a surprise and I just did not. No, I could just not fathom doing that. And plus I would have like a two year old.

So I, there was really nothing better than that really to force me to, make good hires, to really trust my team and then be able to trust my team during those six months. I just. learned, you know, how truly capable they were. I knew they were capable, but it's, it's a hard thing as a leader to let your business into someone else's hands.

So I was kind of forced into it. And it was the best thing for my business because I found out you know, how well they do without me and how much I can kind of keep those boundaries as a mom, you know, ongoing really. And so they really stepped up and they took care of all the clients. And I got to be more of the strategic, I partner with them and they would do the implementation.

So I, I've kind of remained in that role. I do some implement implementing, excuse me, but I really have remained in like the more of the strategic role and let my team do that so that I can still mom, my husband, I both work from home, but. You know, we are the, still the main childcare so, yeah, so it's kind of like still a balance and something I'm figuring out as I go, for sure.

Quite a

journey. How do you feel about your life now? Do you feel like you have more of the entrepreneurial, like, dream versus when you first, like, back in 2020 when you're, like, new baby, scrambling all the things, no team, all that?

Yeah, I, I definitely do. I think I, I don't think I was sure at that time I was, I would ever be able to, like, have the same level of business and like, customer service with just, if I had other people doing it.

And I learned very quickly that, you know, actually, they get better customer service because they're able to implement. I'm able to focus just on the strategy and the things that really, I'm the best at and bringing in people and educating people on Instagram and that type of thing, too, which I love.

So I'm able to stay in that role and they're able to do this sort of day to day scheduling things. And they've also been with me for a while, so they're really getting better and better at it and learning to be like, kind of stand on their own at it. So. Yeah. So I, I definitely am more leaning towards that.

I like the time freedom now. Now I'm too attached to my, away. I spend the summer, like my husband is the director of a summer camp. So my whole family moves to the summer camp for June and July. So I, like we lose all childcare cause it's like an hour away in the middle of the woods. So I'm able to do that now and you know, leave the regular client stuff to the team and focus on other things while I'm there for work.

So. That's just, yeah, been a great, yeah, blessing and surprise,

really, from all of this. That's incredible. I mean, especially, like, you sound like you're working in your zone of genius, your team is too, and that time flexibility, that, all of that freedom of being able to go as a family somewhere to go camp and be a unit and not be, like, super stressed that you're Sacrificing business while you're doing those things.

So question, how does Pinterest play into, obviously you do Pinterest for a living, but how for our listeners who have a service based business or they have a blog Or like an influencer business. How does Pinterest play into this? Because I think that some of y'all listening know that Pinterest is a search engine, but some of you may look at it as just kind of another social media platform.

So catch us up to speed

on that. Yeah. So Pinterest really is. It's a search engine, and it's very different from, you know, your Instagram, your TikToks, where that's about connecting with the community, nurturing a community, and Pinterest really is about meeting people, like, and it's usually cold, searching for the exact content you're creating, and they don't care who gives it to them, they just want high value content, and so that's where you can pop up and they can run into you.

Beefs go through your high value content, determine that you're someone that they want to stay connected with, they want to learn more from, they want to work with if you're a service provider, and and that's how they can get introduced to you, and that's how it can kind of become into a community, and then you engage with them on Instagram and nurture them and all of that so it's really a great place to get new people into your world, which I think is something that people don't really think about, they're, you know, they're kind of struggling with getting new people on Instagram, you're very reliant on an algorithm, and and how it serves up your content.

And Pinterest is really about creating that high value content and then using keywords and search terms to show up where people are actually searching for the exact type of content or create. So if you're an organizer, people are typing in, you know, how to organize my bathroom closet or whatever. And, and you're showing up and saying, here's exactly how you do that.

And they're saying, okay, who is this person that just provided me with all this information? Oh, wait, I can pay them to do it for me. Okay. That's a much better solution. So that's really one of the beauties Of the platform. It's also just like the brain space the user is in is very much like to shop.

Like that's just the type of person that's on Pinterest. They're looking to shop to plan and they're looking way in advance to do that. So it just, it gives you a good place to pop up in sort of the customer journey and where they're at because they're directly looking for your service or your content when they're searching on Pinterest.

So that's like a great Yeah. Place

for that. Yeah. And that was the, the biggest. Oh, like light bulb moment for me when I realized that I was going to all these conferences and every single takeaway was get on Pinterest, get on Pinterest, get on Pinterest. And the difference is that people are going on that platform to buy.

They're not or find a solution to a problem. They are not there to death scroll and just like by their time and they happen to come across your profile and they're like, Oh, that's cute stuff. Or, you know, maybe I could use that, but they're not. In that mindset, whereas on Pinterest, they definitely are. So, that's a very big distinction as far as platforms.

Now, how, for people who are not already using Pinterest, or they're just dabbling a little bit, talk to us about how can we leverage Pinterest to work smarter, not harder, and have something that isn't adding to our plate, but does add to the bottom line.

Sure I think there's many different levels that you can participate on the platform, right?

So if you would like to work basically the easiest possible way to use platform and I Just across the board. Let me say this first across the board I believe pinterest is meant to be repurposing other content I don't think pinterest is a place you need to start from scratch from or create specifically for pinterest I think it's a perfect place to To reuse every other piece of content you create, whether it's a TikTok video, an Instagram reel, an Instagram carousel, a blog post, your photos from like a shoot when you're or when you're going to work and, and you, and you take the photos of the after pictures.

It's a great place to use all of that on one platform. So you've already created this content. You've already done it. You've already spent the time making it. You've already paid for a photographer to do it. So it's. A very good way to just make that give that an extra life, right? And give it an extra place to perform and reach new people.

So I very much believe in that and I believe that you can, because everybody kind of gets hung up on the fact that I recommend like three to five pins a day, right? Which seems crazy, but In comparison to Instagram, where you're starting from scratch, this is just reusing other content that you have, and you're reusing it to different boards, and you're sending it multiple places, so it just gives every piece of content so much more of a life it just has a longer lifespan than other platforms.

So that's one way that I definitely think that it's working smarter, not harder, is you're just repurposing, you're not starting from scratch, you're not coming up with a whole new strategy for what kind of content to create, you're just using that content in a way. That reaches the right people. It's more about the keywords you use to share it than it is the content itself.

And it's still, your content from like four years ago can actually still be relevant on Pinterest, whereas if you were to try and recycle some graphic that you used on Instagram from four years ago, it probably wouldn't work so well right now, right?

Totally. Evergreen content lives forever on Pinterest, so anything that is evergreen and not like, you know, 2020s.

is going to live forever on Pinterest, which is what's beautiful. It's what people are searching for. So they're always going to be searching for, like, you know, how to organize under my sink. They're always going to be searching for those tips. And so they always get a chance to be found on Pinterest.

Amazing.

And so how can, so you guys, offer Pinterest marketing services. Can you talk about, like, what if people were to do this on their own? You talked about the levels of, like, your involvement. Can you include, like, what is the most basic level and then what would be, like, a do it for me?

Sure. So I would say on the most basic level, what you're doing is you're taking the content that you create on either a weekly or monthly basis, depending on like what you want to do.

I always advise you use a scheduler. Tailwind is a pretty affordable option for a Pinterest scheduler. I just think because you're posting more than once a day, it's easier to Put it in the scheduler and just let it go, and you can just do it in one sitting. Pinterest also has a schedule in platform if you don't want to spend any money, so that's totally doable too.

But I would recommend you start with just three pins a day. So you're going to take your content from that week, let's say if you're doing it on a weekly basis. I posted this blog post, this Instagram image, this Reel, and you're just going to pin those images to all the relevant boards on your profile.

So if you posted an image of an organized closet, you would post it to your closet organization board, your bedroom board, you would Posted to how to organize your closet whatever those boards are and you're just going to repeat that so every pin goes to multiple boards And so it gets that kind of lifespan and then You're just sharing your content from other platforms onto pinterest and making sure it includes a link back So you're gonna always include a U R L, which is again, the beauty of Pinterest.

People are searching for stuff and they know to leak the platform. They're not just staying on the platform forever. They wanna go through to get the actual information. So make sure you include a U R L and then make sure you title it and include a description, which is essentially like their caption.

That includes words that people are searching for, so less cutesy, less about you more about how it serves that for that example, like. tips to organize your under your bathroom sink. And then in the description, you want to share a little bit about what that blog post or that Instagram reel is about.

And then always a call to action. So read through to learn more tips or follow me for more organization ideas and content. So you just want to include a title, a description, some sort of call to action and make sure you have that link to where you want to send them. And remember that you're sending all these cool people to your site, so make sure your site is set up to convert to.

So make sure your site is encouraging them to work with you, encouraging them to check out your services, hop on your email list, whatever the sort of preferred, route is for your customer journey.

Got it. And if someone didn't want to, or this feels maybe a little overwhelming, or they're like about to go on summer break and they're like, okay, I want to take advantage of this, I want this extra traffic coming to my website, to my social media channels, all these things, those How do I set this up in a way that doesn't add a lot more to my plate?

Cause I've already got a lot going on.

Yeah. I think really that the best way to do that is really just sit in one sitting and, and do as many pins as you can be consistent. If three feels like too crazy, then just start with one, whatever you can be consistent about. Sit at your computer, input all those images into Tailwind, send them, or add the title, add the description, and just schedule them out, and they will send at the right, you know, optimized time for each day.

Tailwind does that for you, which is why that's like a platform I recommend. And then you can just schedule that out in one city. You can schedule it out for all of the summer if you want to and just do minimal posts per day. And it really will go do its thing, go by itself, start moving, and you'll start to see the, the, the traffic going up and up.

The metric they call it is outbound clicks. It's going to take time with, with like any search engine. It is a time. It is a thing that takes time because Pinterest needs to categorize your content, know what it is and who to give it to, so just know that it takes time and don't be discouraged if after a few months it's still like slowly trickling but depending on your niche, especially in the like, DIY home decor, home organization world you know, that's going to go up quicker than other niches really, because that's just Dream Pinterest content.

So but yeah, so just be patient with it and just start sending out those daily pins and pulling those images that you already have on Backstock that maybe you post on Instagram four years ago, but are still great photos and still helpful. Yeah, start, start pulling those out and scheduling those out one at a time.

Got it. And if someone didn't want to do all of this by themselves, what does it look like to work with a company like yours to either Do the management or set up. Talk about what those options look

like. Sure. The way we kind of do it is we have a done with you option and a done for you option. The done with you is really we're setting up the profile and your strategy and your graphics.

I'm sure we've all gone on Pinterest and seen those like text overlay graphics. Those are really easy to set up and they're really easy to use to put your, to make your content go further as well. So we set those up in Canva. We make those templates for you. We set up your profile. There's a lot of like SEO sort of jargon and things that go into setting up a profile and optimizing it correctly.

So we do that for you so that you know your foundation is strong. And then we give you a strategy, which basically says like you pin this many pins of this type every day. Here's how you do it. Here's a loom video showing you how you would do that in tailwind. And we tell them how they can do it and in the time they have available and let them kind of go from there.

And then I do like email support, which I'm sure a bunch of other companies do too, which is so that as you're doing it, if questions pop up, I can help you because I feel like it's hard to be sort of left on your own, even with a strategy from a professional. So we have that option where we do the setup and then we kind of let you go and give you support as we do that.

And then we also have done for you, which is really just. You helping us with the initial branding and then we do everything else. We pull your content into an air table. So we're making sure we see all of the content that's coming out and then we're sending out strategically through Pinterest. And so we're doing the five to 10 pins a day.

Mixing the formats, using the graphics. Looking at the analytics, seeing what's performing, and then, you know, continue to go down the route of like, what's doing better we have strategy calls with you, so it's just like a very in depth approach, I think if you are very much reliant on traffic to your website, if you have like affiliate links on your site, if you, get ad revenue, or you get paid through ad revenue to your site, that's fantastic.

You're in like Mediavine or something like that. Pinterest is really the way to go because it is a platform that sends you website traffic. It's most of my clients like number one traffic driver over all the other social media platforms. So that's a really good route to go if you're really dependent on website traffic.

And if you're more just trying to repurpose content, then you could definitely DIY or get set up and then sort of run it yourself and see how it goes.

Can we talk about some numbers? Like, what, can you give a example of someone who was either just kind of dabbling in Pinterest or not really using it at all?

And then what it looked like when they started to implement this strategy as far as did it bring in money? Did it bring in followers, but clients, what did that look like? Sure,

all my clients increase their website traffic, I don't know what the percentage would be, really, I'm trying to figure out an average is what I need to figure out for my own business but I had this, a new client that she's more of like a fashion content creator And she really just, she's a fashion content creator, but she also does recipes, which of course is like a sweet spot on Pinterest.

And she just grew her traffic by like, it was like 170 percent in the six months that we started working together. And she just kept seeing sales, which is what I like to see because affiliate platforms aren't great at tracking this, but she just kept seeing sales. So this old post that she had written like a couple of years ago about her son's nursery.

And she just kept seeing sales to the content to the affiliate links in that post because it was her number one pin and Pinterest just kept driving new people to the site. People were seeing the beautiful nursery, getting inspired for their own, like, safari nursery was a theme. And so they were buying the giant giraffe, they were buying the crib, and so she's making money from this.

Posts that was from years ago. That's getting traffic directly from Pinterest consistently, and she's just seeing those numbers rise which is a great thing. We've helped clients get into like media vine, which requires a certain amount of traffic per month, and they were like on the edge, but they couldn't get over this like 1000 hump and we helped them get there.

So that's been really fun to yeah. So it's, it's been a great way for people to grow their traffic to grow their affiliate sales. Yes. To be able to do brand deals. Like they add this on to like brand deals and partnerships and they do pins for them. Which has been a great way for them to grow their income

that way, too.

Yeah, because something that I'm really passionate about is that people have multiple income streams, and this is one that is, yes, you do have to put in the work up front, and you do have to maintenance it, but it's in Way more in the bucket of set it and forget it, and especially when you work with someone to help you set up your profile to be optimized and you know that you're doing it in a way that, that actually is helping you gain the metrics that you want and need so that you get that ends up being dollars in your bank account.

It's kind of a no brainer. So yeah. Totally.

I had a wedding blog like in 2016 is probably the last time I posted. I was still getting like paid out through reward style. Like last month I got a little, like a tiny bit of income, but I'm still like, why am I, I haven't posted since 2016, but I use Pinterest solely to promote that blog.

I didn't even use Instagram really. And I'm still getting paid out because I still get so much traffic to that blog. From my Pinterest strategy, you know, I don't even know, six years ago, seven years ago. So yeah, it's, it's crazy the power and the long term power it has. I really think it's a great way to add a little bit of stability and, and like you said, diversifying your, you know, your revenue streams.

And

Pinterest is also a very transparent platform, right? Like they tell you what they want, what they need and what they're doing. It's not like Instagram where people are like, what are we doing

today? Yeah, it's a great place to even look for content ideas. I always recommend that like your, your, if your ideal audience is on Pinterest, see what they're putting in the search bar about your niche and see what they want to learn because that's a great place to start and to see what should I make content about?

Because I feel like that's always a question in any business owner's mind, they write exactly what they want to see and what content they're looking for. And you can see, you know, what people are searching for and use that. Just like Google, but more your target audience than Google is. Google's the

white internet.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for giving us all this insight. I am really fascinated by how Pinterest is so different from any other platform that we may think of it as a social media platform, but it's, it's so unique and can actually make you really great money and, and lead to lots of leads and new clients and followers, all those.

All those great things. So thank you for being here today, Kayla. This is awesome.

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

And I know that people are going to want to hear more about what you give all sorts of great tips and insight into Pinterest. Where can people find you? Where can they work with you? How do they find all the things?

Sure. I think the best place to follow me is on Instagram. My handle is Pinterest for bloggers. So definitely check it out there. I do a lot of DIY tips there too. And then Kayla Watkins. com is my website if you're interested in working together. And if you have any questions, just DM me on there.

Welcome to DM me on Instagram and I'm happy to help.

Awesome. And we'll make sure to link all of that in the show notes. We'll link tailwind for you guys. And if you aren't already following her, go follow Kayla on Pinterest, Pinterest for bloggers. Kayla, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you.

Happy to be here. This is awesome. I'll talk to you soon and we'll see you guys on the next episode.