Creating Searchable Pinterest Boards
Megan Auman
Lessons
Establishing Your Presence on Pinterest
27:51 2Using Pinterest as a Business
24:38 3Creating Searchable Pinterest Boards
24:45 4Growing Your Pinterest Presence
29:13 5Create a Power Pinning Strategy
36:47 6Optimizing Your Site & Creating Your Pins
28:33 7Remixing Your Content w/ Brigitte Lyons
34:11 8Creating Your Pinterest Content Plan
20:08Lesson Info
Creating Searchable Pinterest Boards
So let's, talk about the types of boards that you should create, so the first one is boards where you can pin your products, that's boards plural and none of those boards are going to be here are my products, right? So if we look at kind of my top boards I can pin my products on well, I have a tournament so I can pin them on martin modern holiday, I can pin them on black and white and sometimes gray I can pin them on fashion and style, depending on high photograph them, I can pin them on street style. I can put my art on art displayed, I can pin my jewellery on holiday style. I do have one board that says mega nomine style that I devote to my block posts, but I don't have one board that's specific to my product. I can put them on professional style. I could put them on statement necklaces, I can put them on accessorize with casual style, so pretty much I can put my products on any of these boards in the first two rows. And actually, if we keep going down, I've got a whole bunch more ri...
ght, but none of them are specific to my product because what you're doing here is you're curating your product within a lifestyle for your customer. So I'm showing my customer how my product works in their professional style in their holiday style in their casual style in their home, right? So I'm not putting everything to one specific board so that's that first piece is boards or you can pin your products, you also want boards that reflect your customer's interests, the things that your customer is actually looking for, right? So I paid a lot of home decor I know that my customer likes home decor part of the reason I know this is because I do a lot of trade shows, and while I'm there selling two stores, there are always a lot of interior designers there and they are like, look, I can spot him from a mile down the aisle on there like a beeline to my jewelry I know that that works well for my audience, so I can't allow that I also happen to like putting a lot of that it's a bonus, right that's really what you want it's should be things that are of interest your customer but it also has to online with your interests. My customers are probably foodies I am not fruity, I think cook like twelve things right? And that's like up from the four that I could cook when I got married, so you know I'm not gonna pin a ton of food I like one food board throw it in there occasionally if it's mostly if it's really beautiful while style and if it's my brands aesthetic, right, so you want things that your customer is going to be interested in, but not if it feels like drudgery to you. You have to be excited about pinning that board or you're never gonna put anything on there, but think about the needs of your customers so freshly picked she does this really well where she is thinking about my customers are looking for things for kids if they're you know they're looking for kids style to be sure, she actually has a great strategy where she tries to catch people know she sells baby moccasins, but she actually tries to suck people in before they even have the baby. Petrus is the perfect place for that because remember, people are planning for the future, right? So she has a maternity style board, so things that are kind of related to around your product those are going to be great board ideas and then you can use seasonal appropriate boards that fit with your brand. So some people do boards for a lot of different holidays, they'll do valentine's day, that's easter, they'll do christmas, those air great ways to tap into what's going on, but you should on ly use them if that's easy for you I couldn't never figure out what to put on like a valentine's day or in easter board and quite frankly I really struggled even was creating ah christmas board right? But you could do if it fits your aesthetic so I realized I could pick a really modern holiday and create that kind of bored it fits in with the seasonal things that people are looking at but it's still very on brand then I actually got smart and realized my favorite part about the holidays is dressing up so why would I not create a holiday style board so that's something else that that I do actually is you know I don't create things for specific holidays, but I am aware of the time of year and I'll create like a summer style board a winter style of false style and with those seasonal boards well actually rearrange them so if it's holidays the holiday boards come up, those come down in the summer and my summer style board comes up no, not no so they always they're always there because once once they're public, you can't take him out a secret oh uh even bring secret boards public, but you can't go the other way, it's just that you move them down in your collection of boards what happens is when people go to your pinterest profile, they're probably not going to look more than three or four rows down that's actually an advantage to us because it means we can slide things down that we don't care about we can move things around as we need teo it's really those first couple of rows that make the big impact and so that's really the next challenge to you is you don't have to come up with fifty or a hundred great boards what you really need are like ten to fifteen that are really clear for your brand right? And then everything else we can kind of shift around and phase down and those ten to fifteen have to be boards where you can find a critical mass of pins you can't get too narrow or specific so tiffany you're probably not going to create a board just like real thin hoops right? I've tried that sort of thing before you can find any content for it right? It's really hard to find penn yeah and boards they don't have a lot of pins are boards that are going to get shared they're not going to get found and it also means that the content on those boards doesn't have a lot of other content to relate to and that hurts all of the pins in that board so in your case you could maybe do an earings board, but to be perfectly honest you're probably just going to do a jewelry board or maybe you're going to dio in your case like a minimal or a simple jewelry board whatever that minimal is a word that gets used a lot of interest so we're all right that doesn't feel like you you're like I don't want to do it, tio you're gonna figure out what that descriptor is no have a minimalist fashion board and that actually very much so fit, right? I mean, you could totally keep that and street style board haven't exactly right, right? So you can have a couple of those other things, but you always want things where you can find that critical mass right and that's why again, boards that are specific to your own product or service don't really work anymore because you don't get those critical massive pins if you're like, I'm only gonna pin the things for my blawg there's not really going to be any content on it, so and we're gonna take a look at our studio audience boards in a minute, so when you're creating your pinterest boards, you want to use searchable rather than clever board names. So if it's a street style board call it street style don't call it like on the block or something you know you call street style, you're inclined streets out, but you know if you're a big brand with a lot of followers, you can use those otherwise pick the things that people are searching for make sure your board is appropriately categorized now in terms of setting up people with a quick question came in and I do have some use that you don't actually have a website set yet, so they use things like, etc is that ok to link to that site your etsy shop or something? Or would you recommend not doing that? Yes, you can and you actually you should if that's the only sight that you're using, because then you can still get those analytics, so you do what you can link and verify. So when we're looking at boards, you want to make sure that your boards are classified correctly, that they fit into pinterest categories, so if you're going overboard and hit edit board, you're gonna see a couple things you want the name and again, we want that name to be descriptive, right, fashion and style, simple as it gets, and then you can use your description to expand on that you don't have to get crazy with the description, I usually put in a few key words in a sentence issued form so here's the thing pinterest likes keywords. They don't like keywords stuffing, so use things that make it at least sort of sound like a sentence it's not like I said street style runway dress, clothes, kama kama runway and everything in between that's something a person might say right? But then the most important thing is that you put it in a category because if you don't put it in a category, it doesn't come up in pinterest category feeds so you're gonna want to go in and it's a little bit of a pain but you're going to check your boards and you're going to make sure that they're all categorized and you want to use the categories a that are most appropriate but also that are more popular if you're stuck so fashion boards are easy women's fashion men's fashion and I think there's ah baby and kids or there's a kid's right? So that was a pretty easy one I know something like, you know, if you have a board that's maybe a little bit more home focused or architectural focus you might feel like your stuff because do I put it under you find a good board for that? Do I put it under home to core or do I put it on their architecture? So this is a case where I'm actually gonna put this in your home to court and not architecture because the home decor category is more popular on pinterest if you have I know this is boring, you know, but if you wanted to name your board home decor and said was categories under home decor, then are you better in searches yes yeah interest likes redundancy okay they really dio so right women's fashion borden women's fashion they like home decor boarding home to court they like ah holiday boarding holidays they like they like redundancy and so that it's absolutely okay to do that. The other thing is when people brow's home decor they don't see board names anyway they see individual pins so when I go into a category for looking up interest here I'm gonna click on that little icon and just so you know your pinterest on your computer may look slightly different than mine pinterest is constantly testing different iterations so if you go into pinterest and it looks midge different it's because you're in a different test group than I am they're constantly trying things out but so if you go in here into um home decor you don't see boards you see you know actual pins anyway so and and because of the test group I'm in I actually see related interests across the top when I click on categories you may not see this pinterest does everything a little bit differently there so if you want to create a new board there's a couple ways to do it you could always do it from within your profile right? You can go in, you can hit create board and you can give it all that information that we just talked about this once you add two group boards be very careful with group boards, I actually don't recommend them, because what happens is people choose to follow you, and then suddenly all this content comes up from someone they don't recognize and that's that's an unfollowed q it's, one of the very few unfelt, like, if I see some stuff come up from someone that I didn't intentionally follow because they're in a group board, I will on follow that board. So if somebody follows me and I have a group board on my thing, if they're following all, they're gonna see that's yeah, that's horrible. So if you have a group board, which means multiple people can pin to it and someone is following tiffany and tiffany and I have a group board together, they'll see pins for me to that board as well, even though they might not be following me now, if tiffany and I have a very similar aesthetic and we've talked about what we want to pin, it could work, right? But what happens is you might hear some advice, like joined group board, because you'll grow your following better. I know what you're going to do is make your followers that you worked really hard to build really angry because suddenly they're flooded with stuff from other people, so I would just stay away from the group board thing. But you can create your board and then go in the other way that you can actually create a board, and I don't recommend this because I like to be a little bit more strategic, but if you're trying to pin something, you do have the option to create aboard here. The problem with doing it this way is that it doesn't give you that category, so then you have to go back in and manually add the category or else your your boards are missing out, so I would just go ahead and make sure, you know, if you're going to create a board, go on your profile, hit that ad button, do it intentionally and strategically. So let's actually take a look at a couple of our boards. Actually, I'm gonna jump over to sarah so sarah, right now and while we're kind of looking at yours, I know question that's probably coming up is how many boards should you have? The answer is that it doesn't actually matter as long as you have that ten to fifteen keyboards to focus on, I would probably try to stay under one hundred, but the reality is that most people are only debate pay attention, those first, maybe twenty at the most, so if you only have twenty boards, that's okay? So sara let's talk about what boards you have so thinking about those three areas boards you can put your products on boards that your customers might be interested in and then seasonally appropriate boards if it makes sense what it's a different board ideas that you think you could use for me so let's start with the first one boards that you could put your products on where would you put your products? Um well obviously uh accessories I could do a fashion one um I could do you know japanese related ones um I suppose that could extend a travel oh I've got like my colors I do sometimes put my products upon red okay, just just be careful with those color boards because they don't actually categorize what well and people typically aren't searching for that so you can maybe have one but what if instead of just being aboard about red it was bored about like fiery passion and so instead of just about the color red it was about fire and passion and anything that sort of fit in that area that could be a little bit stronger but again that's not a term that people are probably searching for so you want to keep those unlimited? What about transformation? Is that too abstract? I wouldn't search for that I would probably just put something like inspiration or to inspire or something like that that's the word that people are looking four people are looking for inspiration and in your inspiration word you could talk about something that helps you through transformation, but you want to kind of stick to those things that people are looking for, you know, the other thing that you could think about in yours so you could certainly dio a style board or a fashion board or in accessories board and I probably would death I would do in accessories board, but you could think about style boards that are specific to your audience, so you know that you have a lot of women who are kind of going through life transitions so you won't be like style over forty or you might say something like there's actually a pretty decent amount of using the phrase advanced style of dance styles from a book that ari cohen wrote uh and that's style for women who are older but advance style is a term that people know of and are looking for it and if you want in here actually has their search for, you know, like whatever google analytics it for popular terms. So we're going to come back to this in a minute, but I'm going to give you guys a little sneak peek here, so you'll notice when I searched advanced style and I happen to know this is the term give me a han of other search ideas, right aging gracefully so that means that people are looking for that seems pretty on brand for you right now if you had a board that was called aging gracefully stephen come in here and use this you search is a way to find out rita right there all right, so let's take a look at that gives you atleast a few board ideas to start all right, so let's take a look uh tiffany for a second so tiffany, you've got what do you think you could shift for you you've got some seasonal boards happening but they don't super feel on brand teo to me. Yeah, yeah there's a lot of randomness actually, I don't like crafty uh that's probably not something that your audience is looking for. I'm not crafty I in the word craft maybe it's s o so like design I don't know I would switch that board. Yeah, I mean, this is something that's looking pretty home focused. It kind of is it could almost go into home decor what I would actually call this d I y home decor. Okay that's a category that people are actually looking for and just so you guys know what I'm saying like I know people are looking for this I know people are looking for this it's because I spend some time hanging out on pinterest I don't spend hours but one year on the site you need to pay attention to what's going on so that's something right that you could shift to d I y home decor because the idea is we don't want to delete old boards I don't want you guys don't delete boards don't believe boards like that way right I don't want you to delete boards because when you delete boards you lose followers and even if you only have twenty followers you worked you did something to get those twenty people but if those for those twenty people are only following that board and you delete it poof they're gone forever right so we want to rename and maybe re categorize instead of deleting so I mean we were talking before I was thinking well I should rearrange my boards you know takes yet pins teo create new boards but then that would mess that up the only way that I would delete aboard is it I were kathy so cathy has I have believe it simply a beautiful veterans board that has four pins and then we strolled down I saw it somewhere wait where was that there was another like where if you go up a little bit there like pregnancy yeah right yeah but what I'm actually looking for is not that what I'm actually looking for is if you scroll down she's not better ideas board so you have two bedroom wars right now plus you kids better so in your case, I would delete one of those two bedroom boards because you don't need to for the same thing, and you're not there's no way to reframe one of them because you already have that, but unless you're duplicating boards, I wouldn't delete, so could she just moved all of them into all those pins so she can repent all four pins from here into that other board. But what happens when she deletes this is if anyone's following this sports specifically, she loses those followers aboard of four pens. You're probably not going to lose that many people, so that's. Okay, so the other thing that you could do with your boards is that you can actually, if you want to keep track of things that you like me, find myself here. That's what secret boards air for? So it used to be that with pinterest, you could on ly have three secret boards, which made it a little bit more challenging. But now you can have as many secret boards is you want, which means if you have things that are off brand or things that you want to remember, they can go on to your secret boards so you could see, actually, when pincher starting, let you have three, I had one for presence, because all of my family followed each other on pinterest and I had to keep their present ideas secret. I had just a big board that I dumped into called resource is and remembering, and then I was actually using it's a track media outreach ideas, you know, things that I wouldn't necessarily post for my audience because they're reference to my business. Now you could have as many as you want, so things that are going to be, you know, not focused on your customers, things like business resource is what you're going to be of interest to my peers and yes, I know that I'm here and I'm teaching you, and I do actually have customers that are my peers, but I made the very strategic decision on pinterest that I wasn't using it to promote my sight designing an mba, I'm using it to promote the meghan almond brand. So that's, why? If you look here, things like business resource is and pinterest resources air down there, I use it as a place I'm designing a new collection, I want to keep that secret for a little bit. Well, I'm working on that that's a good place for a secret board. And then you can see, you know, I usually guess how nerdy it is actually really like harry potter, but that's so off brand. So I made a secret board, right? So you can still use pinterest to indulge in those personal things, but just keep him to the secret boards, and then the other thing that you really want to dio is figure out what your highest priority boards are. So if you're looking, if you're following along in the workbook, you know, I asked you to list boards that you can post your products, too. We're on page four and boards that we would be of interest to your ideal customers, any place that those two things overlap it's, both a place you can put your products and it's of interest to your ideal customer. Those are your strongest boards, those of the boards where you really want to focus your energy. So what I want you guys to do is actually, if we can switch back tio the slides and to give you guys a little bit of homework as we head forward. And first of all is that I want you to brainstorm board ideas for things that really hit those two categories, so things you can pin your products to things that appealed to your ideal customer. And you can create three board ideas you can create a lot of board ideas, actually, but what I also want you to do is I want you to figure out what your highest priority boards are so that you know what, you're going to focus on pinning to one more thing that I do want to show you guys, you know, we looked at board and we talked about how maybe what's showing up on tiffany is there, we're trying upon kathy's don't quite maybe reflect the brand you can edit the image on this board, and so you can see when I have our over, it gives me that option to change cover, and now I can actually scroll through, and I can change if you want to drag an image around. So while you're playing with boards, some what some of you may find is that the board is that you have rok, you might just need to change the title, change an image, make it match your your brand a little bit more. So those are things that you could do for your homework. Tio is, you know, especially work on those first two rows of your pinterest account look at those first two boards, make sure they hit places you can put your product and things that are of interest to your customer, make sure those cover images matched your brand
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Ronna
Megan is a gifted teacher and fantastic presenter. I have enjoyed several of her courses on Creative Live and as always, great content and great style in every lesson. I have learned so much more about Pinterest, strategic pinning and having a long term marketing plan. Since taking this course, I have implemented a content pinning strategy resulting in a huge increase in views + new customers to my Etsy shop. Thanks Megan!
JenVazquezPhotography
SOOOooooo worth the purchase -- I am so amazed that one little one day class could help me so much. I'm just overwhelmed with information. Fortunately, she includes information and workbooks to help you step by step. My analytics show that 80% of referrals to my website are from Pinterest, thank goodness for this course to help me with all that new business!
Mirka Laine-Pietila
This was my first Creative Live course ever and I found it totally worth the price. Megan is very knowledgeable and professional, plus her way of speaking and telling is very pleasant, which I think, is also very important when following classes like this. I´m not on Pinterest yet, but her class gave me the encouragement to join and make the best of it. Thumbs up, absolutely!