Building a Steady Stream of Potential Customers through SEO and Pinterest with Kara Duncan [Marketing with Intention Series]

Marketing takes up a lot of your time and for businesses that are planning to be around for a while, finding sustainable strategies that generate passive traffic and run on longevity is key for long-term success. For many of us, search engine optimization and Pinterest seem to feel like a lot of work, yet the long-term impacts of the efforts on those two platforms is unmatched. In today’s episode, Kara Duncan joins us to share the value of blogging and pinning your content to Pinterest, along with a few tips to getting the most out of your content as a business!

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Guest Bio:

Kara Duncan is the writer behind The Kara Report, a content marketing agency serving women-owned service based businesses. She specializes in website copywriting, along with offering done-for-you marketing services to get your business found in a sustainable search-driven way using Pinterest and Blogging. She’s worked with both six and seven figure businesses across a variety of industries from wedding pros, course creators, fashion designers, and more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by DIY Template Shop! Grab the exact email, form, and workflow templates that I include inside the CRM Blueprint Course. Steal my templates and customize them to match your brand and process. Use the code PODCAST for 10% off.

Here are the highlights…

00:22 – Meet Kara Duncan: Copywriter and Blogger Extraordinaire

01:20 – The Journey to Blogging and Pinterest Marketing

03:07 – The Power of Blogging for Business

05:02 – Instagram vs. Blogging: The Long-Term Benefits

10:21 – Boosting Your Blog’s Visibility and SEO

17:53 – Introduction to Pinterest Marketing

20:22 – Leveraging UTM Codes for Better Tracking

20:35 – The Importance of Fresh Content on Pinterest

21:39 – Outsourcing Instagram Management

22:36 – Updating Content for Accuracy

26:35 – Effective Pinterest Strategies

34:00 – Balancing Blogging and Pinterest Efforts

Mentioned in this Episode

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Connect with Kara

Website: thekarareport.com

Instagram: instagram.com/thekarareport

Podcast: thekarareport.com/podcast

Review the Transcript:

Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives Podcast. You are listening to episode number two in the Marketing with Intention series. And it’s because so many of us Think that Instagram is specifically what marketing is. And so you guys will figure out in this series, there is no one talking about Instagram, like no one, especially today’s guest.

So today I have Cara Duncan of The Cara Report. She is an awesome copywriter. She also has her own podcast. So if you’re looking for a little inspiration with your marketing, it’s a good podcast to listen to. But in addition to all that, Kara is my blog writer. And so I know that she has a lot of good things to say, mostly because I pay her to do these things for me.

Kara, hello, and welcome to the podcast. Yes,

Kara: I’m so excited to be here because I love listening to your podcast, so it’s so fun to be on the other side.

Colie: yes, yes. All right. So last week we chatted with Taylor and she told us all about strategic marketing in your business, how not to market by accident. And so, because you know for a fact that I am putting so much of my marketing energy currently into blogging, I was like, Oh my gosh, Kara has to come on and talk about all things blogging and Pinterest.

Yes, guys, she is a two for one. We are going to talk about both of these today. The care first to start me out, like what gave you the push to blog and pin for your own business? And then what made you do it for others? Cause I mean, you do it so well, but I mean, everybody’s got an origin story. What’s yours.

Kara: Yeah. Oh, it’s such a, like a fun typical, like not a straight line journey. Actually, I started my like OG moment was like, I started a blog when I was planning my destination wedding. ’cause I was like, oh, there’s no information on planning destination weddings at the time. So then that blog turned into a destination wedding planning business for other people.

And then during. Like COVID, I obviously business for destination weddings was a little slow. And so I was like, okay, what can I do? You know, like looking at it and I’m like, you know, what works really well for me that I always get asked about is like how I get clients for my destination wedding business, which was almost exclusively blogging and Pinterest, which honestly was a wake up call.

Because if you asked me where I was spending the most time, it was Instagram. And I was like, Oh, there’s really something here with this blogging and Pinterest. So basically, yeah, since 2020, I’ve been doing it for other people and it has just been so fun. Yeah. Working with other business owners is the best.

Colie: Oh my gosh. So that’s so interesting because I didn’t really know. So you were doing like more B to C and now you do B to B. Oh my gosh. We could go off on like a whole tangent on that. Okay, so how long have you been offering blogging and Pinterest marketing B2B?

Kara: Four years. Yeah. Just over four years.

Colie: As your client, I know what happens.

I hire you, you end up making a fabulous blogging plan where you have sent it to me. But I’m really interested, like, how is it that you go about choosing topics for your clients? Because I will admit, it isn’t that you haven’t picked any topics yet where I was like, uh, hell no, that is not for me. As you know, there were a few that you sent me and I’m like, no, I’ve already got a blog post.

It’s really similar to that. Or I’ve got this podcast episode that I’ve already recorded. And so that doesn’t need to be like an original research blog post, but in general, like, how is it that you come up with ideas for your clients?

Kara: Yeah, so I always think one of the things people struggle with with the marketing is you kind of have two types of marketers, even if they’re business owners. It’s like you have the creative type and then you have the data type, right? I’m more the data type. I feel like I struggle to have a creative idea in my body.

So that’s also another reason why I love blogging and Pinterest is like, it is 100 percent me. keywords. Like I’m looking at like what is going to rank on Google, what is, you know, related to content that you already have. And I’ll just like go down those rabbit holes, find like keywords that I think will be best, and then kind of create a topic around that really solid starting point.

So, and you, Colie, are like a good example because you have a ton of content already. Right. So I feel like for anyone like listening, that is just kind of like dabbling their toes. It’s really easy to find the first 30 keywords. Like it really is. And then as you go, it’s not that it gets harder. It’s just sometimes you then have to get a little more creative or how do you combine topics or collaborate with people or stuff like that.

But really like if you’re just looking at keyword, um, And you could use something free like Uber Suggest or something paid like SEMrush or Ahrefs. And yeah, just start with keywords and just go rabbit holing from there.

Colie: Okay, I feel like we have to bring up Instagram. Not that you and I want to focus on Instagram marketing, but I do feel like there is a significant portion of creatives in particular that are like, no, like Instagram is where it’s at. Like I love conversing with my people and maybe we’ll talk about threats.

But I wanna focus on Instagram right now. What would you say to someone that’s like, okay, but I’m, you know, I’m marketing on Instagram. Why do I need to blog? Like, I feel like we need to have a conversation about the benefits of blogging so that more people will be like, oh, that’s why I should blog.

Kara: Yeah, for sure. So, so many reasons. And yeah, it’s kind of like, I kind of like think about blogging as like investing in the stock market where like everyone kind of knows they should do it, but not everyone is making it a priority for many reasons, right? So, The reason I think people are so attracted to Instagram is it is like such a quick win kind of platform.

Even if you’re not getting like the ROI you used to from your Instagram marketing, you’re still getting the likes and the conversations. And it really makes you feel good. And like you’re moving the needle in your business, right? Versus blogging, where let’s be honest, you’re like sitting in a room by yourself.

You’re hitting publish. You don’t even know if anyone’s going to read it in the near future. So The reason that blogging is so important is one is so much longer lasting than Instagram. So like I have blog posts from like two, three, four years ago, they’re still on page one, still ranking very well, still bringing in new clients.

So that’s like, if you’re going to focus on creating content, Why not invest in something that is going to have that longevity versus like some people have like 1000 Instagram posts that they posted over 5 years. And it’s kind of like, I don’t want to say useless now because you can always repurpose it, but like, it’s done a majority of what it’s ever going to do for you.

And so that’s the 1st reason is just the longevity is so much. Stronger on blogs. And then the other reason is that it really compounds. So like, like I was saying with a thousand Instagram posts, let’s say you have that. It’s really hard to like, I don’t know, make lemonade, lemonade out of that. But like with blogs, every single time you blog, you have a new chance to rank for your keyword and not just one.

One keyword, but sometimes multiple keywords. So like if you blog once a week for the next year, you have 52 blog posts at the end of the year. So even if then 2025 is crazy and you slow down, like you still have 52 that are potentially working for you.

Colie: Yeah. I mean, with SEO, your blog posts continue to work for you. next year, the year after and so forth. But you actually said something that was really interesting that I’ve never really thought about. So in terms of Instagram, it is very visible. Like you, you in one way are building a community. You’re often having a conversation with the people who are actually interacting with your content.

Like they’re posting, they’re liking, you can like them. If it’s someone that’s never posted on anything before, I don’t know about anybody else. But the first thing that I do is click on your name. And go look and see what else you’ve done. I mean, Sarah, my virtual assistant. If she is listening to me, I actually said way back.

And I think episode 25, that’s why I hired her. She randomly like followed me on Instagram. And I think she posted on like one of my posts and I was like, Oh, she’s a virtual assistant. So I clicked on her name. And then I went to her Instagram and I was like, Oh, and then I think I went to her, like I clicked on her website from the link in bio.

And then when I got there, one of my photography friends was like one of her first, um, testimonials. And I was like, Oh, I’m immediately in my

Kara: she’s the one. Yeah.

Colie: Yes. What does Sarah do for you? Can you, can you give me the download? I mean, but so that is a very like specific rabbit hole that I went down, but I am also one of those people that takes action.

I mean, I saw something on Instagram. I went to the website. Hello, everyone needs a website. I didn’t read any blog posts that she had, but maybe I would have if I hadn’t seen Carolyn. So, you know, front and center on her homepage. But if you think about blogging, I feel like blogging has so much more data that you can actually track versus Instagram.

So on your blog post, I mean, you could have different links. that take them to the contact page. You know, you’re using your, your links to your UTMs that come after. And then you would actually know like, Oh, this person specifically came from this blog post. Like, I think it’s much easier to specifically attach an ROI.

to a blog post. If you’re doing the right things versus Instagram, where you don’t really know which one of your posts it was that like caught their eye and they came to your website or they DM you. Now, the only way that you could actually do that would be like with many chat automations. Cause hello, if they DM you a word and it’s a word that you’ve only used on like one post.

Hello. That’s where they found you. But I just, I’ve never really thought about the instant gratification that you get from Instagram versus a blog post. But then that blog post, it works so much harder for you. And I think some people are like, Oh, but you know, I’m doing all this blogging and I’m not getting anything.

Yeah. You got to wait at least. Well, actually you are the expert, so I’m not going to give my opinion. Hey Cara, how long does it normally take for someone to see a return on investment for a single blog post? So if I wrote one today, like you gave me one last night and I have not published it yet, but if I published it today, Like how long does it start to, how long is it going to take until that blog post starts to get some traction?

And also, what are the things that we should look out for that may help it get traction earlier?

Kara: Yeah, definitely. So it’s, it’s one of those things that’s hard to say. So on average, it takes 90 days for a blog post to get

Colie: I was going to say three months.

Kara: Oh, did you? Yes. However, if Google trusts your website, like if you’re being consistent and putting out like weekly blog posts and stuff, Google scans your website a lot sooner.

It gets ranked a lot faster versus if you have like this one singular amazing blog post, Google might find it at 90 days, but it’s not shooting you straight to the top because it doesn’t like trust your website. the blog post or the source yet. So it is kind of one of those things, but yeah, on average, when somebody is like looking to make blogging a strategy, I always tell them like six to 12 months of consistency, which I know feels like forever,

Colie: So long.

Kara: so fast though.

Like it really does. I feel like, cause you’ve been in business a long time, right? It’s like a year feels like nothing now. When I started my business, it felt like forever.

Colie: Yeah. Well, I will say I have a lot more SEO juice on my photography website, even though I have not updated anything on that website in at least four years, like, like pre pandemic, like nothing, no switching of the images, no switching of no writing new blog posts, nothing. And the funny thing was, you know, we work together.

I go, I’m looking at the analytics now to see how my blog posts are doing. And when I look at referrals, My photography website is still referring the most people to my new systems website. And I think that’s absolutely bananas. But I also think that it’s just a true testament to how well all of that work that I put into that photography website is still doing to bring me leads.

Because of course, the one thing that I did, okay, I guess that’s a lie. I have updated in four years, but only one particular page and that’s the Dubsado page that Dubsado page on my photography website. I changed it. So that instead of people booking Dubsado services off of that, it’s basically foot. Well, 1 page is forwarding you to my new website.

Another 1. It’s just every time they click a link. It takes you from the photography website to the version. That’s on my systems website. But, I mean, it’s. That is still like a good chunk of my traffic every single month, which I just think is bananas. But if someone doesn’t want to wait six to 12 months, Cara, and they don’t want to just pray to the Google gods to crawl my website and find me, what are some things that we can do to kind of help that along?

Kara: Yeah, for sure. So always, so getting more backlinks, which that’s like more of a, I don’t know, it can be hard to get backlinks. When you’re looking at like other websites quoting you, but you can always create black backlinks on Pinterest. Even if you’re not using Pinterest as like a Pinterest marketing strategy, having links to your website from Pinterest will automatically boost your kind of authority of your website.

And then also just like heading to Google search console and submitting your blog post. is a key. Yeah, exactly. Cause then you’re like telling Google like, hello, I have a new blog post, come find it. And it’s also a good way. Then you can kind of check back like a week or so later and sometimes like you’ll get data there where Google will be like, I found this, but I didn’t index it.

That’s typically a sign that you need to make some updates and like add more value. Quote unquote. Because it’s like, okay, Google found this. Google’s not interested. Not so harsh, but like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like this is okay, but it’s not necessarily what we want or whatever. And you can add value in so many ways.

Like it doesn’t necessarily mean more and more text. It can be like Adding more resources, like if you’re writing a blog post about Dubsado and you’re like linking at the end of your blog post to more Dubsado posts, or it can be something like updating your images, or it can be something like just submitting it again and trying again.

If you’re like, no, this, this is my best work. Try again. Um, but it’s just so helpful to know, like, or if Google hasn’t discovered yet, like, is there some sort of tech problem that needs to be addressed?

Colie: I mean, that’s so interesting. Cause number one, I’ve never had something that was rejected. And so I’m going to be looking for that now. I will say one of the things that I discovered that was like a whole section of my pages, and it’s not really related to blogs, but a whole section of my pages, most of my shop pages were not indexed and it was I had asked Google not to index them.

Like I was using a template and it must’ve been that like, I was using my Black Friday one. Which I didn’t want it to index. And then I duplicated it and made it something else and didn’t realize that I had that checked. So, Hey, everybody, if you’re a show it user and you ever check that box that says, ask Google not to index, make sure that every time you duplicate or you write something new, that you have taken that off because learn from my mistakes guys.

But. One of the blog posts that you wrote for me last month, I believe it was when, cause usually for you, like I’m in there, I’m reviewing it. If I make a change, I do. But then when I hit publish, I’m immediately going to console and just putting it in. And then every once in a while, when I’m doing that, I’m like, Oh, I should check to see if my last few podcast episode show notes were automatically indexed.

And a majority of the time they are like, so, and that, that’s, that’s, The last one that I checked, it had only been like two days and it was already indexed. So I was like, yes, Google is indexing my shit fast. This is awesome.

Kara: Google knows that you’re updating your content regularly, which is such a good sign.

Colie: Yay me. Okay. I didn’t realize that, but it’s awesome. I mean, cause right now I am technically blogging about twice a week. It’s the podcast show notes and then either something that you’ve done or something that I’ve let me, let me Doing quotes whipped up because I mean that air table blog post that I did recently.

It wasn’t really me whipping it up, but I’m very proud of that blog post. It’s

Kara: Oh, it’s so good.

Colie: So you mentioned Pinterest. So now I feel like we should kind of switch gears. We’ve talked about blogging. We’ve talked about the benefits going on to Pinterest because Pinterest is something that I 100 percent know that I need to do now that I am really trying to do my system stuff.

But I think one of the things that stopped me in the past. As a photographer, I will say this, you have to make sure that someone’s local to you, or it doesn’t matter how many hits you’re getting unless you’re a traveling photographer. And I was a traveling photographer. So that part didn’t bother me, but my most viral pins are fresh, 40 eights. And so I don’t, I almost don’t care how much you pay me. I am not going to fly to you at the drop of a hat when you’ve had a baby to get into the hospital before you check out. Like that’s just not a thing. So I was just like, as a photographer, like pinning just never really made sense to me because I was getting all sorts of Pinterest traffic from those pins, but everyone was immediately bouncing.

because I’m not located anywhere near them. So that’s like my little, my little tale of why Colie doesn’t really do a lot in Pinterest. But Kara, I’m going to kind of ask you the same question I asked you for blogging. Like, why should we care about Pinterest marketing? And what does it give us that perhaps, Instagram, I know I said that word again, Instagram or blogging doesn’t give us.

Kara: Yeah. So Pinterest is kind of like, it’s such a unique platform in that it is very top of funnel. So like before you start Pinterest, you need to make sure your website is set up to convert in some way. So like you said, if you’re converting Fresh 48 sessions. It’s a little tricky, but I always find like this is like where we always have to like check our vanity, right?

Because so many times people are like, I want to grow my Pinterest. I want 100, 000, a million monthly impressions, whatever. And especially like with local businesses, it’s so hard. Like you just have to get comfortable seeing smaller numbers. And being like, but those are the people that I want, and that can be so challenging.

And then the other thing to remember is that pins show up on Google. One, your boards will show up on Google if people are searching for stuff. And two, they’ll show up literally in the image tab on Google. So sometimes people If you have a solid Pinterest strategy, sometimes people are finding you on Pinterest, but they’re not attributing Pinterest to like the source of how they found you, so it can be tricky to track.

Like you kind of mentioned earlier, UTM codes can help with that if you’re like trying to track where people are finding

Colie: you can put UTMs on Pinterest. I did not know that.

Kara: yeah, you sure can. So that’s a good idea. And then just keeping in mind. One, you have to have fresh content, whether that’s like blog posts or podcast show notes, or like new products being added to your shop or something.

Pinterest doesn’t want you to just like keep pinning to the same link over and over again. And Pinterest traffic doesn’t like that either. They want to like binge your content and like have something there to consume. And then you as a business owner need to realize that they are brand new cold traffic and you need to like get their email address.

Or if you’re not great at email marketing, I always like to include like a come find me on Instagram. Like if you’re great at nurturing people on Instagram, even though, you know, we talked about how Instagram is like for growth, but Instagram is a great nurture technique. Like if you are an extrovert, especially, and you love having your conversations on Instagram, having something to like help you drive cold, fresh eyes onto a platform that you like, that’s already working for you is a great idea.

It’s also like. easier to outsource because it’s not your personality. Outsourcing Instagram is hard.

Colie: Mm hmm. I agree. I mean, I find it difficult. Like, I’ve never really considered myself to be a picky designer, right? But when someone does something, I’m like, instantly, I’m like, no, I wouldn’t have done that. And it’s not even like, It’s not even like I can explain it. Does that make sense? Cause like every time it’s like this one tiny thing that’s different and I’m like, I can’t, I don’t know.

So yes, I’m

Kara: And if it feels like wrong, it can’t be on Instagram. Like people have like a little bit more like on Pinterest. Like I didn’t love every graphic, but like who cares? Cause nobody’s binging somebody’s like Pinterest feed, right? It’s like, okay, we tried different designs. Maybe like some, maybe you don’t, but like.

The point is to get people to the website where it can be a perfectly branded experience, et cetera, versus like Instagram. You’re like, Oh no, that one piece of content will bother me forever. Cause like, I wouldn’t have said it like that or designed it like that.

Colie: I mean, girl, there is something to say. I think I’ve realized something about myself. I like content that I can update my podcast. If I’ve recorded an episode and I, there’s a little bit in there. Like, for example, one thing that has been really difficult is in so many episodes, I’m talking about how my CRM blueprint course is just for Dubsado users or just for photographers.

And so I’m like, if this is a podcast episode that I’m actively sending people to, because the rest of it was great, I might want to go back into script. edit the part out where I say it’s just for photographers and then update the podcast. And then anybody going forward that gets the new podcast episode, like the link is the same, the description could be the same, or I could change it.

But like I have updated that episode to where no one going forward will mistake it for only being for photographers. Same thing with blogging. And I’ve told you this, and I don’t know if anybody else agrees with me, but half the time I tell Karen, no, I don’t, I don’t even care. We hit publish. And if there’s something that I want to change later, I will change it and then I will just resubmit it to console, to Google, because there are things that I am going to want to change.

For example, you know, our HoneyBook versus Dubsado blog post that was so amazing that you wrote. I already had to update it because in there we said that Dubsado’s mobile app was in beta and it released last week. So I already had to go and update it to say, no, this is no, I mean, it’s still not as feature rich as HoneyBooks, but it is now not in beta.

Anybody can get it from the app store. I mean, that was already, and it took me like five seconds to update it. And then I resubmitted it to Google console, even though I really don’t think that I had to, because I didn’t change all of it, but I didn’t want like that one bit about the app being in beta to be the thing that like Google latched onto because.

You know, remember we don’t get to control what Google latches onto in a blog post. Like it gets to decide what it thinks is most important, but I just love content that I can go back and update. And on Instagram, you can update a caption. You can’t swap out images on YouTube. You can’t swap out the video like you can on Vimeo.

If anybody’s listening, I would really like to be able to swap, swap out YouTube videos. Like that would be on my Christmas list,

Kara: Yeah, the fact that you can do it on podcast episodes is like great.

Colie: It’s so fantastic. I mean, just think about it. If it’s an episode where you now have a new perspective and it was like a short, because I used to do short 10 minute episodes and I wanted to just re, you know, re record so that it was updated for my current feelings.

If something has really changed, I love just being able to swap that audio file and go on about my business.

Kara: Yeah, and I also think to hop on what you were saying with updating stuff for anyone like listening that’s like struggling with Perfectionism or anything like that It’s so nice to be able to like put blog posts out into the world and like you said update them later But also just not spend eight hours on every single one See which ones rank and start performing and then update those ones and like put your effort there Like actually to your point about Pinterest.

I had a real go Go viral about like five wedding packages under 5, 000 for my wedding business. And it’s like, it was bringing me a bunch of American traffic. I’m in Canada. I can only work with Canadians and that I don’t do it anymore. Obviously I have a team that handles it, but it was like, I have this blog post that’s getting a ton of traffic.

So I like whipped up a little ebook for like 17 started selling it and like, I’m not getting rich on it or anything, but it’s like a few hundred bucks a month. Like it was well worth my time to like Do it once three years ago. Do you know what I mean? Be like, this blog post is doing well. It’s doing well on Google and Pinterest.

I’m going to like focus on just updating that one to see like how I can kind of get whatever I can out of it. Versus like if I tried to make every single blog post perfectly, I don’t know, like not that you want to put out garbage, but I just mean like put it out and then as things do well, look at how you can make them even better.

Colie: Yes. Okay. I’m going to ask you a few really specific Pinterest questions. These are like questions that I’ve had in my brain, and I just know if I have the question someone else does.

Kara: Yeah.

Colie: I feel like Pinterest, like a couple of years ago, just exploded. They tried to be more like Instagram or YouTube and the YouTube shorts.

Like now you can do the videos, you can do the idea pins, and you can do regular pins. If someone is coming into Pinterest for like the first time, they’re a baby person, you know, well, not a baby person. If someone is coming to Pinterest for the first time and they are brand new to Pinterest marketing, what kind of pin should they focus on?

Or is it really the best strategy to kind of diversify and get different kinds like you would on Instagram?

Kara: Yeah. So Pinterest has made a bunch of changes. They have a new CEO. That’s kind of like, I feel like simplifying it because it was getting to like trying to compete with the other platforms and it really is its own thing. So they got rid of idea pins or story pins. And now it’s really just like standard pins or video pins.

And here’s what I would say about that video pins. Similarly to Reels, they might get seen more, but they rarely get clicked on. So like, I might post like one or two video pins a week. Usually it’ll be a repurposed Reel of like, face to cam, usually. Because anything with music, the music’s gonna get taken down, so like, voiceovers don’t really work.

Be real, like, eh. Like, if you think about Pinterest users buyer behavior, They’re, they’re not really looking for that kind of content. So like definitely 95 percent of my effort is going toward static pins.

Colie: Okay.

Kara: Yeah. Which are easy. They’re the best. Really?

Colie: Now I’m going to follow up with the second question. The thing about static pins that I can never decide. So you write this amazing blog post and I don’t know if you noticed, but I created, well, my designer created, I told her what to do and she did it. Great. Delegation it basically had two columns and it was comparing and contrasting the different things for HoneyBook and Dubsado.

Now I went directly to the blog post and added that to the end. And then I pinned it directly from the blog post onto Pinterest versus going to Pinterest and like making a pin from scratch. Kara, does it matter which one you do?

Kara: No, no, it doesn’t matter. Yeah. Sometimes like people argue either way, but to me, it’s kind of like when people think Instagram prefers one thing or the other, like we’re just guessing. And really like I’ve had success with both.

Colie: Okay. So it is totally okay to like use the schedulers and make the pin. And as long as you’re putting in the appropriate URL to direct that traffic back to the blog post that the content is related to, it’s the same as if you go to the blog post, you hit pin and you send it to Pinterest.

Kara: Yeah, yeah, you bet. Easy.

Colie: Okay.

When it comes to marketing, I feel like we’ve already, we kind of said it, but I’m going to say it very bluntly. If you have the bandwidth, I’m pretty sure your recommendation is one blog post a week. Is that right?

Kara: Yeah, yeah,

Colie: Okay, let’s talk about Pinterest. It seems like that takes way more effort, Cara. How many pins do you recommend that people do each week? And then how many pins should people do from one piece of content, like a blog post?

Kara: Yeah, okay, let me do some math here. I’m like, I usually say like, anywhere, depending on how much content you have, it can be like 5 to 20 pins a day.

Colie: Oh!

Kara: just don’t want to Yeah, I know, I’m like, how much is that a week? But it can be like, When I think of a pin, it can be like one image to like three to four different boards.

So it’s not necessarily like you need to create 20 new graphics a day. You can kind of repurpose them.

that is usually what I would recommend just because Pinterest is always like blogging. It’s already slow. Like I say, six to 12 months of consistency. So if you’re doing like one to two pins a week, it’s just going to be very, very slow to see results for you. and yeah, I just don’t want that for you.

That’s basically it. So I will try to on average do five and usually about five.

Colie: okay. So if you’re telling me to pin five different pieces of content from one specific, um, blog post, do I blog all five of those in one week or should I spread it out? Like, what’s your, what’s your, what’s your idea on like a publishing calendar cadence, if you will, from one blog post?

Kara: Sure. So like without making it too complicated, I would say you want to pin like, let’s say have five and I’m just going to pin like one Monday, one Tuesday, one Wednesday, et cetera. And then the next week I would pin the same pins to different boards. If that makes sense, and do that for like three or four weeks, depending how many relevant boards you have.

You don’t necessarily want it. It’s like one of those things where you don’t want it to seem too formulaic, but also we need systems for everything. So,

Colie: that’s super interesting. I have always just re pinned the same pin to a different board. Clearly, that sounds like that is not what I’m supposed to be doing. When you say, when you say pinning it to an, I’m, I’m assuming you mean re upload it as a different upload, or is it just that I’m taking it from one board and basically adding it to another board?

Kara: So in Tailwind, and I think Tailwind is the only one that you can do this, you would just pin to like multiple boards at once, and then you can like, it in essence turns that into let’s say four different pins. On other schedulers, I think you have to upload it manually.

Colie: Okay, well, I use metrical, so I can’t automatically send it to different board to different boards. Yeah, I was trying to make sure I was using the correct terminology, but what I could do is after I pinned it one time. I could then duplicate it and make it the exact same thing. And then I would just choose a different board.

And then for the next week, I would choose a different board. So I can do that manually. I mean, guys, if we’re talking about how long after you create the one pen, I think it would take me less than a week. It would take less than two minutes to get it duplicated and repinned and scheduled to different boards, in future weeks, it would take less than two minutes to like duplicate it five times.

We’re not talking about a lot of time and energy, but I have been mostly doing video pins. So now that Kara has given us her wisdom, you guys are probably going to see a lot more static pins from me. Um, in the future,

Kara: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, video pins are good for sometimes getting reach. It’s just most people are not listening to Pinterest like with volume. Right. So

Colie: we’ll have captions. Does that help?

Kara: Do you ever like sit and watch a video with just captions with your sound off?

Colie: Oh, I, sometimes I do if I’m somewhere that it’s inappropriate for me to be watching a video. I can’t really think of any, I mean, like, if I was at my kid’s school waiting for her, orchestra performance to start. You’re damn right I’m looking at it with some captions. Or, I mean, I, I think the listening audience will enjoy this one.

 My husband, like, if I get up in the middle of the night and I can’t go back to sleep, I am too lazy to get out of bed, so I will pick up my phone. I will turn the brightness all the way down to the lowest setting and I will just have it muted and I will be like scrolling through my reels. And yes, I am just reading the captions at that point.

But I’ve never done that on Pinterest. I just want to say good point. Good point.

Kara: Yeah. That’s funny.

Colie: right. So I think we’ve talked about like the intersection of blogging and Pinterest, but if someone was going to jump into both those markets at the same time, like what kind of time commitment are we talking about someone setting aside in order to start going on both platforms? And maybe we’re not talking about like full force.

Like, what if I just want to dip like one toe into the water and see what it’s like on both sides?

Kara: I would say like two hours, two to three hours a week, realistically.

Colie: And, I mean, how much energy, how much time and energy do you spend on Instagram, Cara?

Kara: Oh god, very little. I feel like I go through phases like other people, but like, Instagram is not a huge, you marketing channel for me, honestly. So it’s like, if I’m on there more, it’s just like, cause I have extra time and I’m, yeah, having like fun with it. But yeah,

Colie: So it’s not the marketing channel for you. That’s all right. Do you have any closing tips? Just, I mean, cause your, your brain is just so awesome and amazing for marketing. So do you have any tips for anyone about marketing with intention versus throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what stick? Like how can we all be more intentional with our marketing?

Kara: Yeah, I feel like kind of the whole topic of this episode was just like putting maybe not all your energy into things that don’t pay off right away, but like some of it, right? And like it will pay off and just like being mindful, I guess, of like your time spent on other platforms before you’re like, I don’t have time for another platform because chances are we all have time that we could scale back on other things that are like, you know, the feel good feel good platforms.

I’m like, I just want to like. I beg every single person to take blogging seriously because it makes such a difference. And like I said, if you can stick to it for like six, 12 months, I know it’s a long time. Uh, but once you see the momentum, you’re like, I’m never stopping this. And if I do stop this, I’ll still see the results.

So it’s like a really, a true win win. And I would also say if you’re like, I can’t give up those like quick win platforms right now because I do need clients, you know, immediately, and I’m not in a position to necessarily invest in the longterm. Starting with like just blogging and using that as like a cornerstone piece and then using the content that you create on your blog post to create reels and to pull carousels from is such a good way to like, reuse that energy,

Colie: I wish people could see my face when you said that because I was literally, guys, going to come up behind her and say, and listen, every single minute that you spend creating content for your blog, you are saying probably some pretty important shit that you could then take and reuse. Repurpose, Recycle, whichever word it is that’s the word of the day, you could totally take that and use it for Instagram Reels.

And we haven’t talked about email marketing, but I do have a conversation later in the series where I am really going hard on email marketing. And so. Just remember, whatever content you are creating for a channel, there is a way for you to either repurpose it or use that idea to create more content about that topic for another channel.

So nothing that you do is going to be in vain. I mean, I was already thinking to myself, Hey, any new static pins that I make, because Kara told me to, I’m going to be able to just reuse those on Instagram. I mean, you know, Especially in my stories, guys, you can reuse all of this. So I just personally, the purpose of me creating this series was to get you to be more strategic and more intentional on where you are spending your time in order to market your business and your services, Cara, Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.

It was amazing. And, you know, I will just, I love to chat with you. I love our little boxer chats. And so this was just a good opportunity to get you on my screen. So I could be like,

Kara: Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me. I can’t wait to tune into the whole series. I think it’s going to be so good.

Colie: it’s going to be so good. All right, everybody. And as Cara said, this is only episode two. In what is many more to come. So please make sure that if you have not subscribed to this podcast, that you do so now so that all of the future episodes in the marketing with intention series are downloaded directly on your podcast device of choice.

All right. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.