Social Media

  • How I Cracked the Pinterest Code

    I’ve had Pinterest since the early days, when you needed an invite to create an account. I’ve had boards for everything: Trim Healthy Mama, handmade leather goods, capsule wardrobes, and nail art. When I dug into the blogging and direct sales world, I found that Pinterest was a common source of traffic for most bloggers, which made me realize: I needed to figure out how to crack the Pinterest code. Here’s how I went from 13,000 views a month to 1.3 million views a month in 8 months.

    Screenshot of my monthly Pinterest views, taken December 30th, 2018.

    I Signed Up for Tailwind

    My Pinterest habits tend to be fairly bad – or at least, for someone who wanted to use Pinterest to promote my work. Before I created my Pinterest strategy, I’d be laying in bed before I slept, marathon pinning a ton of pins in the one particular thing I was interested in that day….for example, if I was thinking about food and meal planning, I’d pin a ton of recipes. Or if I was dreaming of leather goods, I’d pin a bunch of purses and fantastic shoes. Anyone who followed me would wake up to a flood of single-topic pins in their feed.

    I mean, that’s not BAD on Pinterest….but the thing is, it’s not strategic for a business owner or blogger. It’s important to pin a lot of content, consistently. However, my schedule is more limited. I couldn’t spend all that time browsing Pinterest and manually pinning.

    Enter Tailwind, my Pinterest lifesaver. Every week, I spend a few hours scheduling out content for the entire week, and I let it go automagically. The only thing I have to worry about is making sure that I have scheduled the week, and I’m golden. Now, I will say that I still lay in bed before I fall asleep pinning random things….but now I do that on a secret board, so my followers don’t get inundated with one topic.

    The thing is, Tailwind isn’t 100% intuitive, BUT there are courses out there to help you learn it well. I took a Tailwind bootcamp from SaundersSays that is the prototype for her Totally Tailwind course, and I learned SO MUCH. This investment in learning how to use tools effectively has helped me be consistent and strategic.

    Want a free month to try Tailwind out? Click HERE to try it out for one month for FREE, and get your pins working for you!

    I Started Pinning on Pinterest Consistently

    A huge part of using Tailwind was that I began pinning more consistently. Most bloggers would say that you need to be pinning around xx pins per day. However, the thought of that was incredibly intimidating. Rather than starting with that amount of pins per day, I decided to start with 15 pins per day.

    Here’s how it worked:

    • 15 pins per day for 2 weeks
    • 20 pins per day for 2 weeks
    • 25 pins per day for 2 weeks

    And so on….you get the idea. That meant that I could get used to finding quality content and build up the discipline of pinning consistently. Rather than starting with my desired end goal and burning out quickly, I was able to slowly build the discipline.

    Now, I pin about 30 times a day, and have a growth trajectory. I incorporate more and more of my own content as I am sharing the content of others, leading to more traffic on my blog.

    I Started Pinning Strategically

    Like most people who use Pinterest, I pinned what I liked. I pinned recipes, travel photos, and hand-crafted leather goods (I am a sucker for well-made leather items – I can’t help it). If you followed me, you’d find that my feed would be an explosion of interests: a barrage of pins about Tieks; an onslaught of Trim Healthy Mama recipes, and then, a pile of pins about leather conditioner.

    Worse, however, was when I’d write a new blog post and create pins. I’d pin it all at once, to every applicable board, instead of spacing it out. A flood of a single pin would hit my feed, creating an aesthetic attack.

    My pins now hit a very particular ideal client:

    • someone interested in a passive-income business
    • busy woman with health and balance in mind
    • entrepreneurs who want to find exceptional resources
    • women who like feeling put together with a minimalist or capsule wardrobe
    • those who like pretty, easy to apply nail polish

    I catch followers who find any of those items interesting, but now my pins are more focused and balanced around these topics.

    Now, I should add a disclaimer here, because let’s be real, Pinterest reach can be a vanity number. It simply means that someone, somewhere, SAW that your pin existed. It’s not a number that shows interaction; clicks, saves, or conversions. HOWEVER, creating more content has definitely led to an increase of my personal site traffic, and Pinterest is the number one source of traffic to my website. The more that I create and share, the more clicks and visits that I get to my site.

    So tell me – how has Pinterest impacted your site? Have you seen your traffic increase?

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  • Why I Turned off Social Media Notifications

    A few weeks ago, I turned off social media notifications on my phone. Push notifications on my phone were constantly dinging,  pulling me away from what I was working on in that moment. The reality was, I knew that something had to change in order for me to be able to accomplish more. I turned off social media notifications, and I’m never going back.

    I Now Have a Clear Home Screen on My Phone

    Notifications don’t necessarily bother me: the constant stream of red dots doesn’t give me the anxiety that it does some people. However, each one of those red dots is a call to see what is going on. Red things are meant to draw your attention: stop signs are red; stop lights are red. They are meant to stop you from what you are doing and make you pay attention.

    A clear home screen doesn’t stop me from doing what I picked up my phone to do. Notifications distract me.

    I No Longer am Interrupted by Notifications

    It’s hard to concentrate when constantly interrupted. Many people pride themselves on being master multi-taskers, but I have found that I personally perform better when I am able to complete the tasks uninterrupted. Because I work a part time job, and balance blogging and my direct sales company (Color Street), I must use my time wisely and effectively.

    Studies show that the brain completes tasks more effectively when able to focus on a single task. The two sides of the brain are able to work together in harmony, and get more done. In fact, it gets done better.

    I Become the Master of My Time

    Clearing those red dots becomes a game. Every time I opened my phone, those notifications were a pull to look at the apps with the notification. In fact, the higher the red number, the more likely I was to click on that app first. That changed my productivity habits, because instead of going to post in my VIP group, I would go to clear the notifications.

    Now, I go to apps when I specifically need to go to the app. I go specifically to the place where I need to be, and get the things that I need to get done accomplished. This lends a focus to my work that I have desperately needed.

    How are you working to help increase your productivity? Do you have your notifications still on, or have you taken the plunge to turn them off?

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  • 30 Days of Social Media Post Prompts

    Coming up with a social media plan can be a time consuming part of blogging. This is why finding prompts for your social media channels is super helpful. My favorite form of social media prompts comes in the form of one-word prompts, as they are not restrictive. It’s easy to use them as inspiration for Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Here’s three ways to use these 30 days of social media post prompts.

    Use Post Prompts to Plan Instagram Images

    This is probably the easiest way to use one-word post prompts. The one word prompts can help inspire imagery that elicits the thoughts or emotions in the prompts. For example:

    • Joy – a happy looking picture of you, when you felt joy
    • B&W – well, this is pretty simple – a black and white photo you like!
    • Vintage – find a vintage item you love and snap a pic!

    Reading those, you see what I mean – these simply serve as prompts to help you look for things. This is particularly helpful when you feel totally lost on what to post.

    Use Post Prompts to Plan Instagram Captions

    Ohhhh, captions. Those can be a challenge. Some folks opt for inspirational quotes. Some just share their thoughts from the photos they are posting. Others share their feelings. Having prompts helps you to find captions with intentionality. It can also help you find new hashtags outside of your usual ones to help grow your following – make sure to use Tailwind’s hashtag planner to find new hashtags to help you find and use the best ones for your posts.

    Social Media Post Prompts Provide Community

    Many of those who use social media post prompts are part of a community that uses the same hashtag. It helps them find each other, and be inspired by others who are using the same prompts. Social media is all about community, and gathering around common things - so finding a good set of social media prompts helps a lot with continuing to develop relationships. Grab the image with the prompts here, and save it to Pinterest for future use! social media post prompts