The Blogger Genius Podcast

SEO, otherwise known as "search engine optimization" (how Google finds your blog), is a constant buzzword in online business. If you don’t have good SEO, people won’t find your blog as easily. Google won’t send people to your website. And your blog won’t grow as quickly as it could with some great SEO strategies. If you’re struggling with SEO, I think you’re going to love today’s show! Today, my guest is Jeff Hawley. He is an SEO expert. Jeff works with publishers, bloggers, and creators to find successful SEO strategies. Today we talk about how to explode your traffic using simple SEO tips.  In this episode, you will learn that SEO is more of an art form than a numbers game. If you’re trying to grow your organic traffic from Google, this episode is for you. Jeff's Accidental Entrepreneurship Without a clear plan, Jeff began to study digital marketing, knowing that having an online presence is important to any business in today’s world. Jeff was drawn to SEO because he likes working to gain traffic organically rather than always paying for it. Jeff started with a small company that didn’t have a big online presence. He used that time to learn different strategies and what worked. For the past two years, Jeff has been working more with blogger and influencers. Most Common SEO Mistakes Bloggers Make Jeff likes to work with bloggers who haven’t begun to work on their SEO because “they haven’t screwed it up yet.” They have focused on putting out good content, growing their traffic, and perfecting their niche. It’s easy to go in and then fix the SEO part of the equation. Google is very smart, and it cannot be tricked like it could in the past. The more authentic you are, the better for SEO. If you have a large library of content, it is not dead content in your archives. It is content you can take out and refresh. You Can’t Trick Google Being able to trick Google is still relative today; there are ways you can play the system. The reason Jeff does not invest in that is that it is a continuous hustle. Google always figures it out. Jeff got into SEO because he wanted to build organic momentum. With organic traffic, once it gains momentum, it drives itself. If you’re gaming the system, you’re going to be working until you're caught, then having to figure out the next tactic. Smart Keyword Usage You also don’t want to stuff your post up with keywords. Google is smart enough to know the content of your post. You can use keywords where it is natural and easy to read. Google is becoming more like a human, where it can understand what phrases mean even if it isn’t the same keyword over and over. It is better to have content that makes sense and is better for the reader’s experience, than an overkill of keywords. How to Create Good Content For Google Content that is thorough and offers a good user experience is what Google is looking for. We do not read websites the way we read a book, word for word. We are in a scanning era. We glance through the headings, bullet points, and then maybe go back later and read the whole thing. When a user goes to Google, they have a question, they have a problem they want solved. Google wants to serve up an answer. When we create content, we need to make sure it’s something that can answer a user’s question fully and any other questions that may pop up in the topic. You can write a post about a topic, and then link to other posts you have that can answer questions about the original post so that you are the full answer needed by the user. On our site, Catch My Party, the posts about girl baby showers do really well, so I have written posts to cover every single aspect of a girl baby shower. Google knows that I am the authority on girl baby showers and will direct users to my site. It is not a mathematical equation. You have to know your audience and know whether you should branch out, keep it simple, link to someone else, or build your own content. You get to decide what is right for you. How Long Should My Blog Posts Be? There is no rule that says long posts are better than short posts or vice versa. It depends on the subject and the searcher. Thorough content is proving to be more SEO successful than shorter content, but that is not a universal rule. You need to be aware of how your content looks. You want it to be a very user-friendly experience, especially in this age of phone scrolling. One example would be photos in a food blog. You need to make sure the photos you’re posting are there to help your audience, and not just there because you like them, or they're pretty.  The more photos you have that are the same, the more likely your audience is to just skim quickly through them. Utilizing Old Content A lot of content is evergreen and can be used over again. You can update old content and breath life into it. It shows that you are invested in your content and it is still relevant. If you are constantly updating, your entire site will be moving forward together. No old content will be left years behind and lose relevance. Every week, I post three posts. One is new content, one is our favorite party from that week on our site, and one is an old blog post I have updated. It saves time because it’s easier to update an old post than create an original one. It has also given us a fresh perspective on our old content. Know that if you go back and look at your old content, you may notice how bad it is, but don’t stress. Update it and give it a new lease on life. Working On Other Platforms Even if you are nailing it in Google, you need to work on your other platforms of marketing as well. Jeff primarily focuses on Google, because the other platforms tend to follow, but he knows that he should work on others as well. Pinterest is a completely separate entity. It operates on a different level. Content that works well on Pinterest also tends to work well on Google. In the end, traffic from Google is more valuable from an advertiser's perspective than traffic from social networks. Your ads are worth more if someone comes to your page through Google versus Facebook. Quick Tips For Keywords SEMrush is an expensive platform, but it’s helpful because of the sheer keyword volume. And you can always just use Google itself to find relevant keywords for your posts. You can just type in searches and see what comes up. You can get inspiration from the results that pop up, but Google has a helpful feature where you can also see related searches. You can use a browser extension called keywordseverywhere. It is good if you have keywords in mind already, but not good for inspiration. The keyword tool that Jeff likes is called Answer The Public. It helps get into the mind of users and know exactly what they’re looking for. Contacting Jeff You can find Jeff at hashtagjeff.com. You will be able to see the course he offers and read more about him.   Jeff also has audits that help with the technical side so you can focus on the fun part. It will help you know the right direction to go with your own SEO. What Type of Online Business Owner is MiloTree Right For? Are you in the middle stages (advance beginner and above) of growing your blog? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let MiloTree help you get to that next level by helping you grow your email list and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Utilizing Old Content A lot of content is evergreen and can be used over again. You can update old content and breath life into it. It shows that you are invested in your content and it is still relevant. If you are constantly updating, your entire site will be moving forward together. No old content will be left years behind and lose relevance. Every week, I post three posts. One is new content, one is our favorite party from that week on our site, and one is an old blog post I have updated. It saves time because it’s easier to update an old post than create an original one. It has also given us a fresh perspective on our old content. Know that if you go back and look at your old content, you may notice how bad it is, but don’t stress. Update it and give it a new lease on life. Working On Other Platforms Even if you are nailing it in Google, you need to work on your other platforms of marketing as well. Jeff primarily focuses on Google, because the other platforms tend to follow, but he knows that he should work on others as well. Pinterest is a completely separate entity. It operates on a different level. Content that works well on Pinterest also tends to work well on Google. In the end, traffic from Google is more valuable from an advertiser's perspective than traffic from social networks. Your ads are worth more if someone comes to your page through Google versus Facebook. Quick Tips For Keywords SEMrush is an expensive platform, but it’s helpful because of the sheer keyword volume. And you can always just use Google itself to find relevant keywords for your posts. You can just type in searches and see what comes up. You can get inspiration from the results that pop up, but Google has a helpful feature where you can also see related searches. You can use a browser extension called keywordseverywhere. It is good if you have keywords in mind already, but not good for inspiration. The keyword tool that Jeff likes is called Answer The Public. It helps get into the mind of users and know exactly what they’re looking for. Contacting Jeff You can find Jeff at hashtagjeff.com. You will be able to see the course he offers and read more about him.   Jeff also has audits that help with the technical side so you can focus on the fun part. It will help you know the right direction to go with your own SEO. What Type of Online Business Owner is MiloTree Right For? Are you in the middle stages (advance beginner and above) of growing your blog? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let MiloTree help you get to that next level by helping you grow your email list and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Utilizing Old Content A lot of content is evergreen and can be used over again. You can update old content and breath life into it. It shows that you are invested in your content and it is still relevant. If you are constantly updating, your entire site will be moving forward together. No old content will be left years behind and lose relevance. Every week, I post three posts. One is new content, one is our favorite party from that week on our site, and one is an old blog post I have updated. It saves time because it’s easier to update an old post than create an original one. It has also given us a fresh perspective on our old content. Know that if you go back and look at your old content, you may notice how bad it is, but don’t stress. Update it and give it a new lease on life. Working On Other Platforms Even if you are nailing it in Google, you need to work on your other platforms of marketing as well. Jeff primarily focuses on Google, because the other platforms tend to follow, but he knows that he should work on others as well. Pinterest is a completely separate entity. It operates on a different level. Content that works well on Pinterest also tends to work well on Google. In the end, traffic from Google is more valuable from an advertiser's perspective than traffic from social networks. Your ads are worth more if someone comes to your page through Google versus Facebook. Quick Tips For Keywords SEMrush is an expensive platform, but it’s helpful because of the sheer keyword volume. And you can always just use Google itself to find relevant keywords for your posts. You can just type in searches and see what comes up. You can get inspiration from the results that pop up, but Google has a helpful feature where you can also see related searches. You can use a browser extension called keywordseverywhere. It is good if you have keywords in mind already, but not good for inspiration. The keyword tool that Jeff likes is called Answer The Public. It helps get into the mind of users and know exactly what they’re looking for. Contacting Jeff You can find Jeff at hashtagjeff.com. You will be able to see the course he offers and read more about him.   Jeff also has audits that help with the technical side so you can focus on the fun part. It will help you know the right direction to go with your own SEO. TIMESTAMP Intro  1:30 Accidental Entrepreneurship  4:26 SEO Mistakes Bloggers Make  7:11 You Can’t Trick Google 10:15 Smart Keyword Usage 13:25 Creating Good Content For Google 19:40 How Long Should My Blog Posts Be? 27:11 Utilizing Old Content 33:22 Working On Other Platforms 36:50 Quick Tips For Keywords 41:16 Contacting Jeff   Read the podcast transcript here.  

As bloggers, our number one need is traffic. We all know it, and yet sometimes, we try to talk ourselves out of it. We think we can grow our blogs and our businesses and not worry about traffic. And that’s not true. If you want to increase your blog income, you have to increase your traffic first. Here are 6 easy hacks to get more traffic to your blog Today, I’ve got my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo, back on the show, and we are talking about increasing your blog traffic. SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, and MiloTree are all great ways to grow your traffic. You’ll notice I didn’t mention Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. While social media can still provide traffic, the game has changed dramatically in the last couple of years. When the social media platforms first started, there were many hacks and tricks you could use to gain lots of traffic. Today, those platforms have tightened up so much, you have to truly provide good content to gain that traffic. Google doesn’t run on keywords alone anymore either. Today, Google actually reads your content and serves up only the best content to its audience, not just the most keyword-heavy posts. Easy strategies to get your content found So, if social media isn’t the way to get your blog in front of new readers, what are the best ways to do that now? There are several strategies you can use to get more eyes on your content: Answer actual questions that people are asking You want to be the authoritative voice in your niche Master your niche In order to be an authority, you have to figure out what it is about your content that your audience is connecting with Look at your analytics See which posts get the most engagement After you've done this: Build up your content Create blog posts on this topic and related topics Link your posts internally on your blog Google will see those links and serve up that content when someone has a question about your expertise. Create a page on your site where you have all your posts organized in a useful way Create long-form content Google likes longer content so aim for 1,500 3,000 words per post Know who your perfect audience is MiloTree’s perfect audience is people who already have traffic and want to convert that traffic. That’s who I want to go after because I can actually help them. I am very intentional in my blog posts and podcast episodes so that my target audience knows it is for them and is going to help them. You want to strategically go after the audience that will benefit from you. If you know your audience, then you will know the things they will be interested in. You do not want to go after every audience possible. You want to go after a specific person you know is interested in your topic. Growing your traffic through Pinterest To grow your traffic through Pinterest - Search Pinterest for popular pins and create content that is similar or on similar topics Use keywords in your title, your board descriptions, your pin descriptions, and on your pins Use relevant hashtags -- 2-3 per pin description Just being active on Pinterest is not enough anymore. You have to be intentional. Why you need to be intentional and focused in your business If you think you cannot be creative in your niche, then you can experiment outside that, but I would suggest you find new ways to be creative inside it. While you do have the ability to do what you want, you have to be consistent if you expect to grow your business. You certainly don't have the same level of freedom that bloggers had several years ago. If you are an influencer as a business, you do not have the freedom to just do what you want. You can always start a little side project to play with, but you should not let it affect your business. The audience I am looking to help is business people. Even if they have no experience with making money on a blog, that is their first and foremost desire. If you have a creative idea, and you don’t care about making money with it, go for it. But do not sink your business to follow a creative idea that will not make you money. It isn’t all fun and games. Sometimes you have to sit down and look at the numbers, you have to think about the business side of it. How to get traffic from newsletters I know a food blogger who sends out three recipes a week to her email list. Her RSS feed is what drives the majority of her traffic because she has a very loyal audience. At the end of the day, you’re paying for your email service. Email services aren’t cheap, so you have to balance what you’re making on ads versus what you’re spending to send them. You need to make sure you can make money from those emails and not just get traffic. If you’re planning on selling a product, then your email list is essential. Your subscribers are your biggest opportunity for making money through selling. On MiloTree, I put together a post about growing your Instagram followers. I give this valuable information away to people who are willing to give me their email address.  What Type of Business Owner is MiloTree Right For? Now that I’m getting more intentional with my own blog and business, I’m not just going to be going after people who just want to grow their Instagram followers, but people who already think of themselves as a business --people who can see that MiloTree is a great way to help them grow their business. Are you in the middle stages of growing your blog? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let MiloTree help you get to that next level. Sign up today! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP  7:04 Strategies To Get Your Content Found 17:57 Know Who Your Perfect Audience Is 24:02 Growing Your Traffic Through Pinterest 29:34 Being Intentional and Focused 35:29 Traffic and Newsletters Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

As an entrepreneur, do you find yourself chasing every new idea you hear about, to the detriment of your current business? As an entrepreneur, do you struggle with shiny object syndrome? It’s so easy to get distracted by new ideas, new systems, new products, etc. But for most of us, what we need to do is focus on what we’re doing right now. Consistency is Key to Building a Business If you need some ideas on how to stay focused as an entrepreneur rather than being the distracted squirrel, you’re going to love today’s show.   My guest in this episode is Stephanie Uchima-Carney. Stephanie helps entrepreneurs prioritize, decide what’s best for their business, and remain intentional about staying focused. How Stephanie Found Her True Passion Stephanie comes from a background of math and physics. She transitioned to management consulting when she realized she was better with people than numbers. Stephanie graduated during the great economic crash of 2009. So basically, no jobs anywhere. Stephanie grew up in an entrepreneurial family and always knew she wanted to do her own thing. She launched an event planning company because it’s something she’s always enjoyed. Stephanie noticed through her work that a lot of people struggled with the business half of their business. So, she began a side coaching business to help people, and ended up finding her true passion. After Stephanie had her first child, she decided to back away from event planning, and follow her true passion for helping creatives and entrepreneurs build their business on a solid foundation. What is Shiny Object Syndrome? When it comes to trouble with focusing, Stephanie says that "shiny object syndrome" is the biggest obstacle that most entrepreneurs face. Shiny object syndrome is where entrepreneurs see all the things they could do and they want to do all of it as soon as possible. So they end up with a list of 15 possible things they could do, and they end up completely stressed out because they can’t focus on any of them, and they have no idea what to do. Entrepreneurs think they have to do all the things in order to have a successful business when in reality, they need to choose a few things and focus on those. Finding What Works for You as an Entrepreneur Stephanie has three categories that she looks at when she is helping entrepreneurs focus their business: Mindset Intentional Action People The way to start figuring these things out is to discover why you are in your business and what you want from it. Obviously, your end goal is to make money. You cannot be in business if you’re not making money. Stephanie sets the money aside for a moment to focus on other aspects. Her priority when working with entrepreneurs is to make sure that whatever is making money in your business is what you actually want to continue doing. She does this by helping her client make a list of everything they’re doing in their business currently, including how often they post on social media, what products they sell, and what their income is per product. Stephanie not only helps entrepreneurs focus on the important things, but she helps them follow through on those things. Helping Entrepreneurs Follow Through One of the first things Stephanie recommends doing is figuring out which things in your business you hate to do. Do you despise doing your taxes? Do you hate posting to social media? Do you dislike taking time to pin to Pinterest? Take some or all of those things and outsource them. You can use your time more wisely if you’re not caught up slogging through things that are very hard for you. Figure out what your zone of genius is. Know what you’re good at and what you love doing. Stephanie’s first step is to help entrepreneurs decide where they want to be. After they have a goal in mind, they can backtrack to baby steps that can be taken to achieve that goal. Pick one project to work on at a time that can move you closer to your overall end goal. Knowing When To Fold Stephanie says to keep chasing your ideas and testing them if you believe it’s what you’re market wants. Let’s say you have a flop. You create a course and only five people show up when you were hoping for a hundred. Stephanie helps her clients troubleshoot each step and see what went wrong. First, was the concept what your audience wanted? Ask questions, get feedback from your audience about how you can make it better for them. You want to test, adjust, and look at the data. Rinse and repeat. A lot of creatives think they can just package something prettily and sell it, but that doesn’t work. Stephanie starts from the very beginning and analyzes the past data because if you don’t, you’re going to be building a business on a bad foundation. How To Find Your Sweet Spot Stephanie always starts with your people. Talk to people. There is never a bad time to get feedback from your audience. Talk to people you would like to sell to, the audience you would like to have, and see what they say and get a feel for what the market wants. Then, you do mindset work. You need to know yourself and know what you want to do. If you want to create a course, do that. If you want to make beautiful handmade jewelry, do that. And then comes alignment. You want to align what you want to do with what the market wants. Dealing With FOMO Just because everyone else is doing something, it doesn’t mean you have to do it. You do not need to compare yourself, and you do not need to judge. Everyone’s journey is different, and there are different ways to reach success. It is good to be aware of what’s out there, but understand what you’re good at and what you want to invest in. Know yourself. Know that what you bring to the world is going to be different from everyone else and be okay with that. Tools To Stay Focused If you’re looking for a great product management software, Stephanie strongly advises that you check out Asana. Stephanie loves to use Asana to keep her thoughts organized. She can brain dump all her ideas and thoughts to be sorted out and prioritized. Google Drive is a tool that everyone has access to. It’s simple, easy to use, and very accessible, even on your phone. If you are a Post-It notes person like me, you might love Trello. Managing Time As An Entrepreneur Stephanie is a self-confessed procrastinator but she is good at staying organized in the time she has. She implements themed day and time blocks. Every day, she has a theme she needs to incorporate. For example, Monday is her client work day. She doesn’t have to spend eight hours on client work, but she does one thing related to that. It doesn’t mean she won’t do other things on that day, but it does mean that every day she will be sure to do something related to her theme. With 2 kids under age 4, when Stephanie gets a larger block of time to work, she uses it to batch tasks. For example, on the day we recorded this episode, she had a 4-hour block of time to work. So, she decided to batch any and all audio work as well as content creation, since she already had everything set up. If you’re a mom at home with younger children, you know that you can’t schedule every hour of your day. It just doesn’t work that way. Setting a theme for each day so that you know what to do when that 30 minutes of free time arises will get you further in your business than if you did nothing. Helping Your Brain to Focus Entrepreneurs, in general, and moms, in particular, tend to do a lot of task switching. We like to call it multi-tasking but it can be detrimental to our focus. It takes the brain a certain amount of time to focus when it is constantly being asked to switch tasks. I like to use a tool called the Pomodoro method. The Pomodoro method uses 30-minute time increments; 25 minutes to work and a 5-minute break. When you force yourself to only focus on one task at a time, you will be much more productive than if you are constantly juggling tasks. If you find yourself not accomplishing your goals or getting the work done, perhaps you need to follow some of Stephanie’s tips to get your mind focused. Comment below and share your tips on being more productive in your business and how you know what to focus on and when to let something go. If you’re trying to grow your traffic and business and you’re not using MiloTree, you’re missing out.  We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. Head over to MiloTree to find out how our pop-ups can help you! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP  2:17 How Stephanie Found Her True Passion  6:10 Shiny Object Syndrome  7:36 Finding What Works for You 12:56 Helping Entrepreneurs Follow Through 21:48 Knowing When To Fold 25:50 How To Find Your Sweet Spot 28:16 Dealing With FOMO 31:19 Tools To Stay Focused 33:42 Managing Time As An Entrepreneur Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

For most bloggers, Pinterest is one of the top tools in our arsenal for getting traffic to our blogs. So it's important to know how keep your Pinterest account safe so you don't jeopardize that traffic stream. The main question is how can we be active on the platform by staying within Pinterest's good graces, and not be accused of spamming and risk getting our account banned? In today’s episode, I have my good friend Alisa Meredith here to talk about Pinterest and how to remain in good standing on the platform. Alisa is a Pinterest consultant, strategist, and the content marketing manager at Tailwind (affiliate link). Defining Spam on Pinterest and How To Avoid It One of the reasons people are concerned about getting their account marked as spam is that that can cause their account to be suspended. Pinterest has shared on its website five different behaviors that can be interpreted as spam and get you in trouble on the platform:   Porn Violence Self-harm Hate speech Misinformation If you take someone’s image off of Pinterest and you link it to your own content, you will get flagged for that. You could also be sharing stolen pins without knowing it, so be sure to click through the link to see where it leads. This prevents you from accidentally contributing to this problem of stolen pins, which is super prevalent right now. Tailwind tribes are a good way to share content from people you know so you don't have to worry about bad links. Just remember that any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way, but if you’re in a tribe of people you know and trust, then it’s helpful to not have to click through on every link. Pinterest is monitoring what they call “unnaturally high-volume behaviors.” This includes: Commenting on too many things in quick succession Following too many pinners in a short period of time Saving too many pins from one website too quickly Sharing the same pin to the same board over and over Any of these behaviors can result in your account being suspended. Pinterest is looking for behaviors that a normal pinner wouldn’t engage in. HELPFUL TIP: Use common sense rather than looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. If you had a friend watching you pin over your shoulder, would they think you were being spammy? If not, you are probably okay. HELPFUL TIP:  Look at your recent pins option for your cover photo and if it’s too repetitive, you need to change your strategy. How Many Pins Should You Pin Per Day? The most important numbers are the ones you test yourself. The problem is when people think they have to pin fifty pins a day and they just pin anything. Some people are spending more time on that than creating their own content to pin. There is nothing wrong with sharing other people’s content, but the biggest benefit to using Pinterest is sharing more of your own content. The best practice for bloggers using Pinterest is to always be creating new pins. In the past, Pinterest stated that you could change the description or hashtags for an added distribution benefit but that has changed now. Now that the descriptions are being cropped, those aren’t showing for the end user. Pinterest users see images, so you need to make new pins rather than changing the description on an old pin. To Make More Pinterest Content, Take More Photos Quantity is key here. You have to be creating more content on a regular basis. When you write that blog post, take more photos. Use different angles, use different lighting, anything to make it different. You do not want to stack your blog post with photos that all look similar. That is a pain for your readers who are looking at your site on mobile. Save some of those photos to use for pins by using a plug-in that allows you to hide those photos within the post. Create images with text on them because Pinterest reads text on images. Pinterest wants the experience to be fresh and new every time someone logs on or searches for something. If you are making new content for the user, it makes a great experience for them. If Your Account Has Been Flagged If you have been flagged as a spam account, there is something you can do. You can email Pinterest. Go to the "Help" page and there is an option to say that you have been suspended and you want it to be reviewed. If you haven’t done anything to actually be suspended, Pinterest has no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts. They will reinstate you if there was a mistake. Videos On Pinterest Pinterest is really pushing video right now. They would like to see that take off. Alisa has found that her videos received a lot more impressions than her static pins immediately, but got few click-throughs and the impressions dropped off fairly quickly. You need to create videos that tease people into wanting to click through to see more. You may see tons of views at first but not a whole lot of click-throughs unless your video leads them to want to see more of what you’re offering. New Ads for Pinterest - Conversion Ads Conversion ads are something you can use only if you can set up your event tracking. It will allow you to say, “An email sign-up is worth three dollars to me. Go out and get me email sign-ups for three dollars." Pinterest will go out and get them for three dollars. They have it set up so you can say, “I only want it to count within one day of a click. No talking about impressions or engagements, I just want to know that within one day of clicking through my ad, they became a new email sign-up." You pay per impression. So because of that, you have to go all-in on it. It can take a while for Pinterest to figure it out. They recommend you waiting several weeks for them to figure out how it best works for you. Another recommendation is to set it up so there are three conversions for a day’s budget. If I want to sell sign-ups for three dollars apiece, then I need to have nine dollars set aside so they have room to figure it out. They are trying to optimize those three dollars per conversion. You’re paying for impressions, while they figure out how to get conversions. It’s working better right now for E-commerce, but anyone can use it for email sign-ups. One of Alisa’s favorite features on Pinterest Ads is "Act Alike Audiences." If you find that your email list converts really well to customers, but after a while, you exhaust that audience, you can try to create fresh ways to hook your audience, or just gain a new audience. You can use "Act Alike" to get a fresh audience. Alisa says that if you compare what you’re paying to target people on Facebook with what you’ll pay to target them on Pinterest, you will likely come out ahead on Pinterest. For retargeting, you’re going to come out far ahead on Pinterest. FYI - Pinterest is the only platform that we use here at MiloTree for advertising. Before you can worry about advertising, you need traffic. And her at MiloTree, that’s our specialty. We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. And right now, you can get your first 30 days completely free! If you're trying to grow your Pinterest traffic and you're not using MiloTree, you’re missing out.  We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. Head over to MiloTree to find out how our pop-ups can help you! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! For most bloggers, Pinterest is one of the top tools in our arsenal for getting traffic to our blogs. So it's important to know how keep your Pinterest account safe so you don't jeopardize that traffic stream. The main question is how can we be active on the platform by staying within Pinterest's good graces, and not be accused of spamming and risk getting our account banned? In today’s episode, I have my good friend Alisa Meredith here to talk about Pinterest and how to remain in good standing on the platform. Alisa is a Pinterest consultant, strategist, and the content marketing manager at Tailwind (affiliate link). Defining Spam on Pinterest and How To Avoid It One of the reasons people are concerned about getting their account marked as spam is that that can cause their account to be suspended. Pinterest has shared on its website five different behaviors that can be interpreted as spam and get you in trouble on the platform:   Porn Violence Self-harm Hate speech Misinformation If you take someone’s image off of Pinterest and you link it to your own content, you will get flagged for that. You could also be sharing stolen pins without knowing it, so be sure to click through the link to see where it leads. This prevents you from accidentally contributing to this problem of stolen pins, which is super prevalent right now. Tailwind tribes are a good way to share content from people you know so you don't have to worry about bad links. Just remember that any tool is subject to people who want to use it in a bad way, but if you’re in a tribe of people you know and trust, then it’s helpful to not have to click through on every link. Pinterest is monitoring what they call “unnaturally high-volume behaviors.” This includes: Commenting on too many things in quick succession Following too many pinners in a short period of time Saving too many pins from one website too quickly Sharing the same pin to the same board over and over Any of these behaviors can result in your account being suspended. Pinterest is looking for behaviors that a normal pinner wouldn’t engage in. HELPFUL TIP: Use common sense rather than looking for some kind of hard and fast rule. If you had a friend watching you pin over your shoulder, would they think you were being spammy? If not, you are probably okay. HELPFUL TIP:  Look at your recent pins option for your cover photo and if it’s too repetitive, you need to change your strategy. How Many Pins Should You Pin Per Day? The most important numbers are the ones you test yourself. The problem is when people think they have to pin fifty pins a day and they just pin anything. Some people are spending more time on that than creating their own content to pin. There is nothing wrong with sharing other people’s content, but the biggest benefit to using Pinterest is sharing more of your own content. The best practice for bloggers using Pinterest is to always be creating new pins. In the past, Pinterest stated that you could change the description or hashtags for an added distribution benefit but that has changed now. Now that the descriptions are being cropped, those aren’t showing for the end user. Pinterest users see images, so you need to make new pins rather than changing the description on an old pin. To Make More Pinterest Content, Take More Photos Quantity is key here. You have to be creating more content on a regular basis. When you write that blog post, take more photos. Use different angles, use different lighting, anything to make it different. You do not want to stack your blog post with photos that all look similar. That is a pain for your readers who are looking at your site on mobile. Save some of those photos to use for pins by using a plug-in that allows you to hide those photos within the post. Create images with text on them because Pinterest reads text on images. Pinterest wants the experience to be fresh and new every time someone logs on or searches for something. If you are making new content for the user, it makes a great experience for them. If Your Account Has Been Flagged If you have been flagged as a spam account, there is something you can do. You can email Pinterest. Go to the "Help" page and there is an option to say that you have been suspended and you want it to be reviewed. If you haven’t done anything to actually be suspended, Pinterest has no interest in shutting down legitimate accounts. They will reinstate you if there was a mistake. Videos On Pinterest Pinterest is really pushing video right now. They would like to see that take off. Alisa has found that her videos received a lot more impressions than her static pins immediately, but got few click-throughs and the impressions dropped off fairly quickly. You need to create videos that tease people into wanting to click through to see more. You may see tons of views at first but not a whole lot of click-throughs unless your video leads them to want to see more of what you’re offering. New Ads for Pinterest - Conversion Ads Conversion ads are something you can use only if you can set up your event tracking. It will allow you to say, “An email sign-up is worth three dollars to me. Go out and get me email sign-ups for three dollars." Pinterest will go out and get them for three dollars. They have it set up so you can say, “I only want it to count within one day of a click. No talking about impressions or engagements, I just want to know that within one day of clicking through my ad, they became a new email sign-up." You pay per impression. So because of that, you have to go all-in on it. It can take a while for Pinterest to figure it out. They recommend you waiting several weeks for them to figure out how it best works for you. Another recommendation is to set it up so there are three conversions for a day’s budget. If I want to sell sign-ups for three dollars apiece, then I need to have nine dollars set aside so they have room to figure it out. They are trying to optimize those three dollars per conversion. You’re paying for impressions, while they figure out how to get conversions. It’s working better right now for E-commerce, but anyone can use it for email sign-ups. One of Alisa’s favorite features on Pinterest Ads is "Act Alike Audiences." If you find that your email list converts really well to customers, but after a while, you exhaust that audience, you can try to create fresh ways to hook your audience, or just gain a new audience. You can use "Act Alike" to get a fresh audience. Alisa says that if you compare what you’re paying to target people on Facebook with what you’ll pay to target them on Pinterest, you will likely come out ahead on Pinterest. For retargeting, you’re going to come out far ahead on Pinterest. FYI - Pinterest is the only platform that we use here at MiloTree for advertising. Before you can worry about advertising, you need traffic. And her at MiloTree, that’s our specialty. We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. And right now, you can get your first 30 days completely free! If you're trying to grow your Pinterest traffic and you're not using MiloTree, you’re missing out.  We help you grow your traffic organically through our specialized pop-ups. Head over to MiloTree to find out how our pop-ups can help you! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

My guest this week is Crystal Paine, founder of MoneySavingMom, host of the Crystal Paine Show podcast, and a New York Times bestselling author. Over the past ten years, Crystal has built her blog into a 7-figure business. In this episode, Crystal shares how she grew a wildly successful business by serving her audience, especially using Instagram and Facebook. From Blog to 7-Figure Business When Crystal and her husband got married 16 years ago, they set an audacious goal. They planned to get him through law school completely debt-free. He would then work as an attorney and she would raise their children. Soon after they started this journey, Crystal found out that she was expecting. They were excited about their growing family but Crystal soon had to quit her job due to severe morning sickness. They had been dependent on her income to help while her husband was in law school and now it was gone. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, Crystal used that time in bed to research ways to make money online. Back in 2004, the way to research things online was through Yahoo! Groups. So Crystal did just that. She began asking questions of those people in the groups who were making money online how they were doing it. And then she started trying things like setting up websites and learning about affiliate marketing. In the process of these experiments, Crystal discovered blogging. The advice at the time was to add a blog to your website to increase your SEO for Google search. So she started a blog. Back in 2004, there were no courses or books on how to blog. You had to figure it out as you went along.   Crystal made a lot of mistakes on that first blog but she loved blogging and knew that this was an avenue she wanted to pursue. Soon, she began hearing people talk about making money blogging. And since her blog was still, in her eyes, just a big experiment, and since she was getting fairly decent traffic to that blog, she decided to experiment with monetizing it. Crystal noticed that anytime she blogged about saving money, she got a lot of traffic to those posts. And within a year, the blog she had begun as an experiment, Money Saving Mom, was bringing in a full-time income. Crystal’s husband worked as a lawyer for several years but in 2014, he left law to work full-time in the business. Creating Multiple Income Streams Crystal obviously began making money with her blog in the first year of blogging and grew it quickly. She has grown that simple blog into a 7-figure business over the years. Her early income was mostly from affiliates but that has since turned into multiple income streams. If you want to be successful you need to have many income streams. Blogging still accounts for 50-60% of Crystal’s income. This is earned through affiliates and sponsored posts. She also has blogging courses, several books, and a paid Mastermind group for bloggers. Encouraging Women Through Social Media When I started following Crystal, one of the things I noticed right away was how she uses social media to connect with her audience. Crystal is passionate about making women feel seen and valued in a world where social media is taking over face-to-face interaction. Even as the owner of a 7-figure business, and with all of the work that it entails, she still tries to answer all of her own DM’s, comments, and emails. The amazing thing about her social media skills is that when Crystal first began blogging, there was no social media. Bloggers had their blog posts with a comments section and their email subscribers. That was it as far as connecting with your audience. When Facebook came on the scene, Crystal’s husband told her that she needed to start a Facebook page for her blog. At the time, nobody was doing this. She was hesitant but eventually created a business page and it grew her audience on her website over the next four years in a huge way. If you want to be successful as a blogger, you need to constantly be looking for ways to grow and evolve, because the internet is a constantly changing medium. Crystal uses Instagram Live and videos almost daily. She finds it the best way to build relationships and trust with her audience. If you aren’t using Instagram Live and Stories, you are failing to use every resource available to reach your audience. Is Facebook Dead as a Traffic Driver? For some time, Facebook was giving Crystal’s page so many new pageviews that her page was growing by the thousands per week. The algorithms changed, but Facebook is still a very strong traffic stream for Crystal. A lot of bloggers feel like Facebook has died as far as sending traffic. Not Crystal. Again, she experiments with what she shares, how often she posts and Facebook is still driving traffic to Money Saving Mom every single day. What’s working for her right now, at the time of this recording, is recording an Instagram Live, saving it, and then rerunning that video on Facebook as a Live video. She then pins that video to the top of her Facebook page and she gets significantly more views than if she did a Facebook Live. She can also put it on IGTV to get more viewers. One IG Live enables her to reach thousands of viewers with just 1 video. Using Instagram Live for Her Business Crystal does an Instagram Live four or times a week. The length of her Lives depends on the topic she’s discussing but as a general rule, they are between 6-15 minutes. *You can only upload a video to IGTV over ten minutes long if you have over 10,000 followers. Remember that most people are going to be watching your video on replay, so don’t wait for viewers to pop up before you start. In the first 5 seconds of being live, go ahead and tell the viewers what you’re going to be talking about. This is your “hook,” what gets people to stick around to watch. Do not sit there and hem and haw around, waiting for someone to jump on and watch you live. You waste precious time and people will not stick around for even 45 seconds if you don’t get started immediately. The “gold” in live video is in the replay so always be thinking about your replay audience when doing live video. Monetizing Instagram Stories Crystal has 2 accounts on Facebook - Money Saving Mom and Your Blogging Mentor. The content she shares on these accounts is completely focused on the topic at hand; saving money and growing a profitable blog. Instagram Stories, on the other hand, is the one place Crystal feels free to post whatever content she wants. She views her Instagram Stories as her personal account and she shares any aspect of her life she feels like sharing. That may be a promotion she’s running, personal rants, stories about her husband and children, etc. Crystal makes several Stories every day. She begins to feel like a friend to the viewer, just by sharing her life. She also monetizes them, making thousands of dollars a month from her stories. Crystal made a point here that I thought was huge - “People are following bloggers, not blogs. They’re following influencers, not accounts.” It’s something we often miss, but people want to build relationships. When you have a relationship with someone -- when you build trust with them -- they will follow you wherever you take them. Every day in her Stories, Crystal is pointing people to something.    She does affiliate sales but she doesn’t make it seem like advertising. She is talking about something she loves and the sales tend to follow that. Why Do Instagram Live Videos? Crystal likes to use Instagram Live to dive deeper into a topic than she could using Instagram Stories. One of her favorite things to do in her Lives is answer questions from her audience. Because she has shared so transparently about her struggles with anxiety and insecurity, she frequently shares on those two topics. She also shares tons of money saving tips and her grocery hauls. These are admittedly two completely different topics, but Crystal has still managed to niche it down for herself. Some people will be interested in one topic and some in another, but since they like her and trust her, they continue to follow her. One reason Crystal puts her videos onto IGTV is that Instagram is rewarding users who put content out on IGTV. If you put it up on IGTV, they will show it on the Discover page more often than any other content you create. Sincerely Helping Your Audience While Monetizing Crystal is able to do what she feels led to do: help women along their own journeys. And in the midst of doing that, she is able to support herself and her family. There is no conflict of interest in making money while helping people. Many women feel that monetizing is a dirty word. But you can be sincere about the products you love and make money doing it. Crystal has a piece of advice for women in business- “Make an income so you can make an impact.” She runs a large organization in South Africa because it’s something she’s very passionate about. Because she is able to bring in an income by helping people, she is able to help others who need it. Building Personal Relationships on Social Media There is a movement these days from having mass social media followings to more personal relationships. This is why the direct message is huge right now. So many people ignore this, thinking they need to chase big numbers. The one-on-one is where you really build your businesses. People are hungry for smaller private groups. You want people to feel that they’re a part of something, that they’re being seen, and that they’re known. Opportunities for Blog Coaching from Crystal A few years ago Crystal began Your Blogging Mentor to help bloggers make a part-time to full-time income from their blogs. She also has a number of beginner courses on how to set up a blog and do it successfully. Everything you need to know about starting a blog can be found at her site Your Blogging University. After receiving countless requests for one-on-one coaching, Crystal tried it and ended up falling in love with smaller group settings where there were just a few hundred people. A few months ago, she launched Your Blogging Mastermind and it will be open to the public in a few weeks. People can submit their work and receive critiques from Crystal and other members. Crystal is also working on a course called Monetizing Your Blog to help beginners know exactly how to start a blog and monetize it. *Hint - It starts with knowing what you’re good at and what you’re passionate about.   You can find Crystal on Instagram at - https://www.instagram.com/themoneysavingmom/                          https://www.instagram.com/yourbloggingmentor/ Your Blogging Mentor - https://yourbloggingmentor.com/ If you want to use Instagram to grow your business and you’re not using Milotree, you’re missing out. Sign up now! MiloTree takes less than two minutes to add to your blog. Let your followers begin! Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!

There seems to be a lot of confusion over how to use Instagram for your blog. Instagram doesn’t tend to lend itself to driving traffic so what’s the point of using it? The key to Instagram is engagement. In this episode, we share how to boost your engagement on Instagram so you can unlock all the platform's potential. My guest today, Paula Rollo, MiloTree’s Community Manager and she also heads up the MiloTree affiliate program. Be sure to join if you haven’t already! Paula and I are talking about the importance of engagement -- the secret sauce of mastering Instagram. We look at Instagram from different perspectives and how you can use Instagram for your business. Why Who You Follow on Instagram Matters Facebook owns Instagram and they have made it increasingly difficult for users to gain followers. But believe it or not, there is a purpose behind this. Instagram’s algorithms have gotten incredibly granular and intelligent. Their goal is to serve up the most engaging content that they can. They want to serve you the content that you want to see so you will stay on the platform longer. Why Engagement is king on Instagram. If you are a content creator on Instagram, you need to be thinking about your audience. It’s not about your overall general follower count, it’s about engaged followers. Instagram is tracking everything you do on their platform. For example, it’s not just who’s following you, it’s also who you’re following. If you are a food blogger, you want to be following not just food bloggers, but also an audience that is interested in food blogging. Why You Need Two Instagram Accounts If it’s important who you follow, does that mean you shouldn’t follow your Great-aunt Sally and your cousin, Lucy, and your sister and her sister-in-law, etc.? In a word, yes. At MiloTree, we strongly recommend having 2 Instagram accounts: a personal account and a business account. I know it may be confusing to think about having 2 accounts so let me explain the reasoning behind it If you are a lifestyle blogger using your personal account for your blog, you don’t want to be following hobby accounts like Harry Potter or Disney or cats, even if those things are outside interests of yours. You want to follow the types of people who are interested in your business or blog. Remember - who you follow is a signal to Instagram of what type of content you create. The muddier your signals, the harder it is for Instagram to figure out who you are as a content creator. So, create a personal account and a business account and then go follow Harry Potter on your personal account. Creating the Content Your Followers Want to Engage With On Instagram, you need to figure out what types of content your audience prefers. Maybe you took a trip to Disney World and your Instagram followers are highly engaged with those posts. I’d be booking another trip to Disney or somewhere comparable. Your followers are speaking to you loud and clear through their engagement with the travel content.   We absolutely must be intentional in creating content for Instagram and give our audience more of what they love. Milotree fits perfectly into this strategy. For bloggers who already have traffic, you can use the MiloTree pop-up for Instagram which takes your blog visitors and turns them into Instagram followers. The reason this is so valuable is that you’re capturing people who are already on your site, who already like your content, and you can convert these people to Instagram followers. Chances are that these will be your most-engaged Instagram followers. You want your followers to be engaging with your content to signal to the algorithm that it’s good content. They know which followers are engaged in your post, so they will show your content to other similar audiences, especially in Instagram’s Explore tab. Another tip for increasing the odds of getting shown to new audiences is to go through and get rid of your least-engaged followers. Why would you delete followers? Because Instagram is tracking you and they know that you have a lot of followers but not much engagement. This makes them question the validity of your content. Ways To Create An Engaged Audience The first step in building an engaged Instagram audience is to be an engaged Instagram user. The “follow/follow back” method is no longer a recommended way to gain an engaged audience. You need to be making more direct connections. There are a couple of ways to interact. Leave a comment. You could just put an emoji, but you want to be more intentional than that. Tell them why you connect with their post or answer a question they ask. Respond to what they shared in their post. DM them. Direct messaging, or DM’ing, is what it’s all about now. If you really connect with something they’ve shared or you want to develop a relationship with them...or perhaps it’s a brand that you want to work with...getting into their DM box is the best way to build that authentic relationship. DM’ing is the secret sauce of Instagram today. Getting On Instagram’s Explore Page Ultimately, you want to end up on Instagram’s Explore tab. The way I ended up in the explore tab was by putting geo locations in my posts. You can even put geo locations in your Instagram stories. If you have a local business, definitely be geo-tagging, and also hashtagging your post with your location. Let’s say you make beautiful cupcakes. They may not end up on the explore page because the food niche is very saturated. Niching down to your location can open up more possibilities for you. When you think of Instagram in a more narrow way, you’re going to have more success. Why Are You on Instagram? Why are you even on Instagram? Are you there because everyone else is? That’s not a great reason to do anything in business. On a platform like Instagram, where the ROI can be a bit trickier to measure, you can’t invest the amount of time you’ll need to be consistent just because you have FOMO.   One of the best reasons to be an active and consistent user on Instagram is that brands want you to be there. And they are no longer just looking at your follower number. They’re looking at your engagement. Why You Don’t Need the Swipe-Up Feature on Instagram to be Successful If you don’t have the swipe-up feature, it sounds awesome, right? It’s not the end-all, be-all. It doesn’t drive that much traffic. It interrupts the scrolling which is the primary experience of Instagram. Think about your own behavior. How often are you swiping up? I think there are other strategies that are better than the swipe up so don’t wait to hit 10K followers before starting to share your business account on Instagram. A  few reasons you might want to set up an Instagram account and get busy building an engaged audience are - Working with brands. Brands want you on Instagram and they want to see you actively engaging your audience. Brands used to only care about the number of followers you had, but now everyone is much more interested in how engaged your followers are. Selling products. You can sell your own products on Instagram or sell products that you are an affiliate for. If you’re a beauty blogger, you can sell beauty products. Lifestyle bloggers can sell anything that goes along with their blog content. Linking to your site. At MiloTree, we use a tool called Link In Profile. This allows you to put a link to every single post on your blog that the user can click through to be taken directly to that specific post on your blog. This is one way to drive traffic on Instagram. How to Market Products on Instagram If you sell products, you can post in your feed or on stories about that product. If you sell courses, even if you don’t have a swipe up, Instagram is a great way to sell those courses. Marketing on Instagram begins with posting beautiful pictures of your products in your feed. You then follow those posts up with stories where you show the behind the scenes of your business. This “behind the scenes” content that you share in your stories allows you to show your authentic personality to your audience and gives them an opportunity to really feel like they know you. Brands want to see you sharing your authentic self on Instagram. This builds an engaged audience who knows, likes, and trusts you and will make purchases that you suggest.   You can also use your DM box to build these relationships. If you offer products for sale, show the products in your feed, and then in your stories, tell your followers to DM you if they’ve tried the product or if they have a question about it. Or offer them a freebie and tell them to DM you for it. Once you have someone in your DM box, you can then build on that conversation. This is the way to create your loyal followers, your true raving fans. Making the Most of Instagram Stories Instagram stories are so popular because they’ve brought back the “Insta”, in “Instagram”. Whereas now the algorithm decides what posts you see, you can always choose to watch the Insta stories that you want to and they are always real-time posts. Stories help to flesh you out as an influencer or a publisher or as a brand. People want to feel like they are your personal friend, and know how you did what you say you do. You may post a photo to your feed of a product you are promoting for sponsored work but your audience doesn't know if you really use it unless they see you using it in your stories. Recap on Boosting Engagement on Instagram Instagram is the platform to be on, but know why you’re doing it. There has to be a better reason than just the fact that everyone else is on it. Think about what you want to get out of it. How do you want to use it to grow your business? Be conscious of what you engage with on Instagram. Take notes. If you engage with something in particular, use that same type of content in your own account. Be intentional about who you follow. Be intentional about who you reach out to. Install Milotree right now. You want our Instagram pop-up on your blog because it’s a sure way to grow engaged followers. It only takes two minutes to download it onto your site and you have thirty days to see what it can do for you, completely free. If Instagram is your jam and you’re not using Milotree, you’re missing out on a really powerful tool that can grow your engaged, most valuable followers. MiloTree takes less than two minutes to set up on your blog. Let the followers begin! Head to Milotree.com to get started. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp 1:21 Why Who You Follow Matters 6:23 Why You Need Two Instagram Accounts 8:20 Creating the Content Your Followers Want 13:25 Ways To Create An Engaged Audience 20:24 Getting On The Explore Page 22:24 Why Are You on Instagram? 26:35 Why You Don’t Need Swipe-Up 30:55 How to Market Products on Instagram 35:17 Making the Most of Instagram Stories 45:00 Recap   Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

If you are looking to make serious money as an Instagram influencer, this is the episode for you. Today my guest is Maria Koutsogianni from the blog, Food By Maria. She is a food stylist, recipe creator, and photographer. But more than all of that, she is an Instagram influencer. She has over 170K followers and she has been incredibly successful in building a business off of IG. She shares about her staff, expanding her reach to other platforms, and much more. A Journey Into Food Blogging Maria was working as an accountant in the UK, but she was miserable. She knew she wanted to do something else but it wasn’t until she was diagnosed with IBS after struggling with an eating disorder for 6 years (and she was thrown into a world of food rules and lists of do’s and don’ts), that Maria decided to take things in her own hands. She created an Instagram account called Food By Maria to document for herself what she was eating. Soon, family and friends started to follow the account and the rest is history. Maria was not a professional photographer, she was inconsistent, and wondered at her lack of followers. She didn’t want to go back to accounting; she wanted to make this her career. Once she had a real camera and dedicated herself to the account, her following grew in leaps and bounds. Instagram was much different back in 2015-2017. People who liked your food would repost it and other food bloggers would post it as well. The algorithm was different in the early days; it’s much more difficult to grow an account these days as quickly as Maria did. When Maria launched her first site, it was lacking things like SEO, she wasn’t creating the right recipes, she wasn’t talking to her audience. Maria learned by experience, continuously exploring photography, and learning that she could hire things out. Building an Online Business Team Her videographer will come to wherever they are shooting for the day and video the recipes that Maria is creating for that session. As of right now, Maria has several team members. Raquelle is her marketing representative and helps with collaborations. Allisa helps with some blog posts, Maria’s Pinterest account, and maintaining the overall aesthetic of the accounts. Vivian is an intern who does comments on Instagram. Eli does videography, as Maria mentioned. The team in New York consists of Barrow, they are the website developers. Kaitlyn is the designer from Pebble Creative. Chloe is a friend who comes over occasionally to help with food. There are photographers who will help me if I need my hands in a shot. Creating Diversified Streams of Income as a Food Blogger Maria makes an income from advertising brands on Instagram, but she hopes to move toward a more passive income, including more cookbook sales, more app sales and generating more revenue from the blog itself through ads or e-book sales. Ultimately, Instagram cannot be the sole income forever because Instagram is continuously changing. The goal for Food By Maria is to figure out which avenue is best for revenue and move from there. Food Collaborations on Instagram Brands find Maria through her Instagram or the contact feature on her blog. A client will reach out and give Maria an idea of what they are looking for. Maria’s team then sends over a file of examples and videos and the negotiation begins. The process is the same if Maria reaches out to a brand first. Maria will send a direct message to the brand. She tells them why she wants to work with them, what she has to offer, and she asks for an appropriate email in marketing if the company is interested in discussing further. Maria says, "People will refer you if you make really good content and help them. The more you create, the more your name gets spread around." Promoting Brands on Instagram As we said earlier, Maria has 170k followers on Instagram. Clients will look at her photography, her follower count, and price range. If they are selling their product for a certain amount, it goes on Instagram. Some higher-end products go on the blog as well to get more views. Pinterest is always included because Maria puts all of her recipes on the site to gain more traction for herself. Lately, Maria has been working with some of the brands she loves the most on a long-term basis. She has prices set for twelve months, six months, and three months. Becoming An Influencer Maria did not start out as a photographer. She learned how to create her beautiful content through trial and error, learning from those who inspired her, watching YouTube videos, and lots of experimenting. Maria says that following people that inspire you is very important, because if they are growing and changing then you should want to grow and change as well. The only thing that is permanent is change. Now that Maria is an influencer herself, she doesn’t focus on the number of her followers. Maria likes to focus on what she’s passionate about which is creating beautiful content. Maria wants to show people that anyone can do what she has done on the platform. Some people are in chapter 20 of their career, and some people are in chapter 1. You have to start and trust that you can get to chapter 20 just like the person who is currently in chapter 20 did. Being Open About the Past Maria tries to find a way to share about her past with eating disorders almost every day, in a very down-to-earth way. She wants to encourage others that they too can push past the things they’re struggling with. Even if you aren’t struggling with an eating disorder specifically, Maria knows how it feels to be in the lowest place and have to work through that. Maria wants to inspire others to do whatever they want or need to. Starting a business, leaving an unhealthy relationship, overcoming a disorder, anything you want to do. She doesn’t speak specifically about her eating disorder every day, but she does show people every day that change is possible, and they can come through the other side, better. Working Instagram as a Business Maria posts on Instagram anywhere from once or twice a day. She has one to three blog posts a week depending on paid collaborations versus the free content she has. Maria does stories on Instagram every day, usually the length depending on how much she wants to talk. Maria says that if you’re engaged in your stories, people are going to be engaged in your feed. Maria thinks stories are more important because they are an opportunity to show your true colors. The feed on Maria’s account is put together, edited, and matches her aesthetic. But in her stories, its a mix of, “Oh this girl has acne scars.” “She’s not wearing makeup.” Stories are like the behind-the-scenes of the account. Inspiration For New Recipes Maria likes to get feedback from her audience about new recipes or look at her analytics to see which recipes are doing well on her blog. She is known for her savory comfort food, so she likes to create new recipes along that line. She goes to Pinterest for photography ideas or specific clients will want specific products advertised and she works with that. There is a lot of thinking that goes into what ingredients go well together, what looks good together, what your audience wants to see, etc. Maria knows that when she skips a step in the decision process, the end result won’t be as good. You have to work through the process even if it seems pointless, in order to have good content, keep getting customers, and reach your audience successfully. Just Starting Out on Facebook Maria has never gotten into Facebook, but she knows it is important to her brand. It’s something she would like to start exploring midyear. They will be relaunching the website and Maria would like to create a community on Facebook to go along with that. There are different audiences, different ways to share, and Maria can share different styles on content on Facebook. Time Scheduling Maria is on Instagram every day for around three hours. Maria sees Instagram as her job, the platform she is working on. She isn’t on Instagram for three hours every day just scrolling her feed. Because it is her work, and one of her largest revenue streams, Maria has to spend at least that time on Instagram making that happen. Growing Your Instagram Followers with MiloTree Maria uses MiloTree to grow her followers, but she also has an assistant, Vivien, who does a lot of interacting on Instagram. Instagram is a platform built for communication. When your account grows, it’s harder to interact with people you aren’t already following, but that’s vital for new people to see your content and grow your page. Vivien does a good job for Maria, but according to Instagram, if you want a large account to really do well, you need to do that sort of engaging for a couple of hours every day. If you’re looking for more Instagram followers like Maria, MiloTree can help you do it faster and more easily than you are doing it now. But it can’t help you unless you take the first step and add it to your site today. Head over to MiloTree.com. Sign up now and receive your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Maria’s Advice for Other Food Bloggers Maria says that you need to make sure that you’re using professional photography gear, like a good camera. That makes a huge difference. People eat with their eyes. You want it to look beautiful and well put together. Second, if you’re starting to earn money and you can, you need to hire people who can help you. There are about two things you are amazing at, and you will need someone else to do the things they are great at for you. You need to focus on what you love to do and what you’re good at. If you would like to get in touch with Maria, you can email Raquelle at hello@foodbymaria.com. You can find her Instagram or even more content on her blog. She also has a cookbook, Mindful Vegan Meals, for more recipes and to get a feel for the food she creates. Timestamp 1:08 A Journey To Food Blogging 6:55 Buiding a Team 9:17 Creating Diversified Streams of Income 10:40 Food Collaborations on Instagram 16:14 Promoting Brands   22:42 Becoming An Influencer   29:19 Being Open About the Past 30:47 Scheduling Content 34:44 Inspiration For New Recipes 37:41 Facebook 38: 52 Time scheduling 40:10 Growing Your Followers 43:02 Maria’s Advice Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

If you’re curious about diverse income streams, our guest expert this week, Lars Hundley, is perfect for you. He has an e-commerce business called Clean Air Gardening. He not only sells gardening products on his website, but also on Amazon. He's an e-commerce expert! We’re going to discuss different avenues for selling online and what’s going on with Amazon today. He also has two blogs. One is Gardening Channel and the other is Road Bike Rider. Lars has over 1 million followers on his gardening Facebook page and he is going to tell us how he thinks about Facebook, how he thinks about growing his businesses, the multiple income streams he has, and what it’s like to be an Amazon seller today. Using MiloTree to Grow Facebook and Pinterest Lars has been using Milotree on his Gardening Channel for about two years now. He started using it in the beginning to grow his Facebook audience. Lars has 1.4 million followers, but when he started with Milotree it was closer to a million. But now Facebook doesn’t have as wide a reach as it used to, so Lars now uses MiloTree to promote his Pinterest page instead. His Pinterest followers have grown as well, since using MiloTree. If you’re looking for more followers, subscribers, and sales like Lars, MiloTree can help you do it faster and more easily than you are doing it now. But it can’t help you unless you take the first step and add it to your site today. Head over to MiloTree.com. Sign up now and receive your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Using Pinterest as a Man For a long time, Lars believed that men didn’t use Pinterest and that it was purely a female thing. He decided he was going to try it anyway. Lars bought a cycling website a few years back and built a Pinterest account for it. He created pins and posted them, and started to get regular traffic. Lars was surprised to find that men do in fact use Pinterest. When he visited Google analytics on the cycling site, it’s around 50% men. Because most businesses aren’t going to be active on Pinterest when they are targeting men, Lars has the advantage of an unknown audience. Beginnings of an Online Business Lars has been making a living online since 1998. The first two years he also had a day job, but since 2000, he’s been completely self-employed. His day job is in e-commerce with Clean Air Gardening, that sells eco-friendly garden equipment. All Lars sold was push-style lawn mowers for the first two or three years. People would find his site through online search engines. At the time, he couldn’t accept credit cards and he had to ship things UPS and COD. He had the mowers stored in his apartment, and when he got an order, he would drive to the UPS depot and send them COD. He would receive the check two weeks later. That’s a scary sounding business model, isn’t it? Selling on Amazon Lars sells things on Amazon, but his two businesses also compete with Amazon. To compete with Amazon, you either need a product that only you have access to, or you need to have strong customer support. More than half of all product searches begin on Amazon. Half of all searches are never going to find you because the buyer goes straight to Amazon, types in a product, and is led to a product that Amazon sells. For a long time, Lars refused to have anything to do with Amazon, and he made sure that none of his exclusive products were listed on the site. But after a financial crisis, his sales dropped off. He had products that weren’t being sold. One of Lars’s employees decided to list all of the extra products they had on Amazon to try and sell them, rather than scrap them. Within two years, they had sold $500K worth of inventory. That was when Lars decided he could work with Amazon. It is risky to be on just one platform and have all your eggs in that basket. You need to have a site that you own so you can leverage it to build a business. Lars has to sell his products on Amazon for the same price they are listed on his website. But for the most part, it is cheaper to sell on Amazon than pay to acquire an audience and customers for your site through ads on social media accounts, etc. Getting Attention on Pinterest If you are looking for free traffic today, Pinterest and Google are the places to go. Lars started his cycling Pinterest account less than a year ago. Now he gets several hundred visits per day from that Pinterest account. Pinterest can work very well, and as long as you have the basic concepts of SEO, it’s very similar to SEO in Google. Lars focuses on a keyword rich description and a straightforward title. He makes his pin graphic more social media friendly and to contain a call to action. Growing a Facebook Following Facebook was really big for a time, but it no longer works for businesses like it once did. Lars says he remembers thinking that surely his reach with Facebook had to go away because it was just too easy. At first, Lars made a page called Vegetable Gardening and a page called Composting because those were the topics for his target audience. When pages were first invented, people liked pages because of the topics they were interested in. Lars created the pages, posted a few times, and then forgot about them. About four years ago, Lars glanced at his page, Vegetable Gardening, and it had around 80K followers. Lars thought the numbers were fake, that it must have been bots. So, he posted a link about gardening to see what would happen and it got a lot of engagement. Because so many people were engaging with it, Facebook was recommending it. His account grew hugely over a short period of time. A couple of years ago, when they changed all the rules, his page doesn’t get as much engagement as it used to. Why Selling Products on Facebook Didn’t Work People go to social media because they want to socialize, they do not want products being pushed on them. Facebook also throttles anything product related because they want people to use Facebook ads. For those reasons, Lars did not try to promote his business on Facebook. The same thing was true of his informational site. People would go there to learn, not buy products. Lars learned that he made more money selling ads on Gardening Channel than he did selling his own products. He made it into an advertising site and now it’s a separate revenue stream for him. Managing Multiple Businesses With 2 websites, an e-commerce business, and a warehouse filled with products, how does Lars Lars manage to stay on top of it all? He actually uses it to his advantage that he has so much he can flip back and forth between. It works with his personality. All of the most successful people in life learn how to grab onto one thing and focus relentlessly on it but Lars would rather be semi-successful at a lot of things and be happy. He manages with the help of several employees, including his wife. Lars does more of the running of the business, not the shipping and handling. He spends the majority of his time writing content for his sites but is very adamant that he is not a workaholic. He’s home by 5:00 every day. Traffic and Audience Interaction When Lars started his gardening channel, he wasn’t making a profit, but he kept pressing forward and using different platforms until he had built an audience that was buying his products. With Gardening Channel, Lars doesn’t even have his name on the site because he is not a certified Master Gardener. He manages it like a curator rather than a personal face on the site. Whereas with the cycling site, Lars feels confident to put his name on that. Moving Forward in Business Lars wants to continue to sell more exclusives on Amazon. That’s why you have to work in other areas so you aren’t in trouble if Amazon changes and suddenly you aren’t important anymore. Amazon is just like any platform, where you are basically a sharecropper. Most Important Tool Lars doesn’t use a lot of tools; he likes to do everything directly on the site himself. He does use Canva to make his Pinterest pins. It’s better to try over and over and be mediocre than to never do it and always fail. You have to learn to be embarrassed if you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur. How To Contact Lars You can find Lars on Facebook, Pinterest, or you can go directly to Gardening Channel. If you are a cyclist, you can go to roadbikerider.com.   Podcast Timestamp 3:10 Using Milotree to grow Facebook and Pinterest 6:00 Using Pinterest as a man 10:20 Beginnings of an online business 14:09 Selling on Amazon 25:24 Getting attention on Pinterest 28:12 Growing a Facebook following 33:00 Why selling products on FB didn’t work 36:34 Managing multiple businesses 42:07  EBooks 44:06 Traffic and audience interaction 50:08 Opportunities in business 55:25 Moving forward in business 56:33 Most Important Tool Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

As business owners, we are all looking to make a profit from our businesses. If you’re going to spend hours, days, months, and even years trying to grow a business, you have to find a way to make it profitable. One of the best ways to make your business more profitable is to scale it. Scaling your business simply means that you find ways to make it grow. You produce more by outsourcing tasks that don’t make money, so that you, as the business owner, can focus on those tasks that increase profits. This week, MiloTree community manager and my friend, Paula Rollo, and I are going to be discussing how to find ways to make money in your business. In particular, we will talk about how to find product-market fit. Product-market fit is when you find something that connects with your audience that they’re willing to pay for. What Does It Mean to Scale Your Business? Scaling is a word that entrepreneurs use a lot, but it is rarely clearly defined. For the purposes of this conversation, we are going to define it as that moment in your business when you find product-market fit. Product-market fit simply means that what you are offering connects with your audience and they are willing to pay for it. The majority of your time is probably spent trying to find your product-market fit and testing to see if it works. When Should I Start Scaling my Business? You have a product but you don’t know whether to start scaling your business. What do you do? You test your hypothesis. Let’s say you’ve written an ebook and you want to see if it resonates with anyone. You could put up a landing page for your book, put a buy button on the landing page, and see if people click. If people are willing to buy it, then you know you have a good product. It’s important to make sure that you’re not just getting signals that your idea is working but that you’re getting real information to confirm that people want it. This means you don’t do anything just because your mom likes it. No matter what, you want to be sure that the signal is strong enough for you to start investing money and time confidently. Don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to find your product-market fit. The Planning Stage of Scaling Your Business So you’re ready to start scaling. What are your next steps? Write down your goals. Remember, if you don’t have a destination in mind, you’ll end up nowhere every time. Write down what you hope to accomplish. Do you want to sell a certain amount of books and become a full-time writer? Write it down. Write down your hypothesis. What do you think will happen when you test your product? Get started. You can build a website for super cheap these days, so get something up and start testing. Get feedback. Your customers should be your co-creators. The more input they have, the more successful you will be. Create solutions. As your audience tells you their problems, create solutions for them. These are the products they want from you. Finding Flexibility in Your Business When we started Catch My Party, we were sure we understood teen girls. I mean, come on. I had been a teen girl! We thought teen girls would love to share photos of their parties. We hired developers and did it very cheaply as a side hustle. And when we opened, we had no audience. It turns out that teen girls weren’t interested in a site where they could load their party pictures.  It looked like the business was a disaster. Luckily, moms with Etsy shops started using the site. We had to be flexible and realize that our intended audience wasn’t the right audience. We had an audience; it just wasn’t the audience we thought we had built the site for. We had to learn a lesson about being flexible. You can always shut your audience down, but how will your business profit from that? You need to be able to be flexible about how others might take your ideas and your vision and use that to help themselves. Planning For Change in Your Business   When you scale a business, you are preparing for change. Maybe you will change an ebook into a webinar and sell a course during that webinar to increase your revenue. Maybe you will take a piece of free content and expand on it to create something totally new that you can sell. The best steps when planning for change: Plan in 6-month increments Hold your plan loosely Have a long-term vision/goal Know your audience and their needs Remain flexible Remember... The only thing that is consistent is change. If you have carefully cultivated your audience, if you know them, then you can continue to pinpoint ways to help them solve problems in new ways. As you grow and change, your business will also grow and change. Find an audience that will grow and change with you. Qualifications for Scaling Your Business Product-market fit is important because even if you don’t know who’s showing up for your product, but you see that your bank account is growing, you can still begin to scale your business. But if your product is not engaging your target audience, you shouldn’t assume that more of that same audience will show up for what you’re offering. I would use either the fact that your traffic is growing or people are paying for your product as evidence that you can begin to scale. Even if someone tells you how amazing they think your product is, if they won’t back it with money, then it is not a product market fit. Pick Up the Phone I have been using short phone calls to people who use MiloTree to get ideas for what solutions will and won’t work for other issues my audience is facing. We tend to have our own preconceived notions about things, but that doesn’t mean we are right, especially if our ideas aren’t working to build our business. People are happy to help you. If you call someone and ask if they’re willing to look at something for you, most of the time they will say yes. Testing Your Product Many people will suggest you give your product away for free to get feedback. I do not recommend this when testing for product-market fit. The reason I don’t suggest it is that people typically don’t commit to anything if they haven’t paid something for it. What you can do though is offer it for a steeply discounted price. Ask your buyers for feedback; what they liked, what was helpful to them, and what they would like to see changed. Again, this makes your audience feel like they are co-creating the product with you and they will be more invested in it. Are You Ready to Get Started? Let’s sum up the process of scaling your business. Connect first - figure out what problem you are solving Test the product - find out if your solution works for your audience Scale - hire a VA or someone who can take on parts of your business so that you can focus on product creation Build - if you put $2 into a Facebook ad, you should be earning $3 back This takes time, patience, and money. You may lose money at the beginning of your scaling process. But be patient. As long as you are following the steps of writing down your goals, getting feedback, testing, and solving problems, you should just keep plugging away. Knowing How Long To Experiment A lot of knowing how long to keep going is just a feel for how it’s going or how long you can stomach it. One thing I have learned is that if we get early traction, that’s a signal that it could work. It is so important to know your audience. If you know them well, you will know fairly early on based on the feedback you receive whether or not they love your product. Check Your Assumptions When you are working on something new, be sure you don’t have assumptions about how your audience will react. Once you’ve been past the testing stage and have gotten some feedback, your product will likely be a completely different product than what you started with. Remember how we talked about being flexible? Be willing to change your ideas and how you do things based on the feedback you get from your audience. Don’t assume that scaling is going to be easy or require no effort. Scaling is a process. If your ideas don’t work right off the bat, you are not alone. Everyone who has managed to build a successful business has had to go through the learning stages. If you have any questions, please email me because I would love to hear if you are currently scaling your business and how it’s going for you! We’d love to take your questions and address them in a future episode. You can email me at jillian@milotree.com.   Timestamp of Episode 1:05 What Does It Mean to Scale Your Business? 2:48 When Should I Start Scaling 6:20 The Planning Stage of Scaling Your Business 8:06 Finding Flexibility in Your Business 13:33 Planning For Change 19:12 Qualifications for Scaling 21:25 Pick up the Phone 27:35 Testing Your Product 32:02 Are You Ready to Get Started? 34:00 Knowing How Long To Experiment 37:57 Check Your Assumptions If you’re looking for more followers, subscribers, and sales, MiloTree can help you do it faster and more easily than you are doing it now. But it can’t help you unless you take the first step and add it to your site today. Head over to MiloTree.com. Sign up now and receive your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Get Full Podcast Transcript Here

In this post, we're delving into what you need to know NOW to get more traffic from Pinterest. What's Working Now with All of Pinterest's New Updates Pinterest comes out with updates and changes like any social media platform, such as Facebook or Instagram. The difference is that success on remains virtually the same even with changes because the foundation is never updated. If you are following good Pinterest strategies, such as… Using Pinterest as a search engine Focusing on your SEO Correcting problems ...you should remain untouched by these changes. Pinterest always values good content. Be sure you are always adding valuable content to your boards and you will be good to go. If you use Pinterest for your business, then you have likely heard of our guest this week, Kate Ahl. Kate Ahl is the founder and owner of Simple Pin Media, a Pinterest management company. If you want to follow Kate and get to know more about her, check out her podcast and her Facebook group. This is her third time coming on our show and she keeps all of us up-to-date on all things Pinterest. Plus, she is one of the kindest people I know and I am delighted to have her on again. The Purpose of Pinterest People use Pinterest to plan for the future. If someone wants to ideas, they go to Pinterest first. Pinterest informs our decisions and gives us inspiration, and then we can take action when we are ready. Pinterest introduces us to companies and websites that offer what we’re looking for. Using Tailwind's SmartLoop Have you heard of SmartLoop? It’s the newest feature from Tailwind, the Pinterest scheduler. Tailwind is a Pinterest approved pin scheduler and it’s really important to us because we use it to schedule all of our pins. Smart Loop is a feature used to set your pins to go out to particular boards on a particular schedule. Instead of manually scheduling which pins go out, to which boards and on what days, you just put the pins you would like to be dropped continually into your boards, and Smart Loop will do it on repeat. This is helpful, especially if you have large amounts of content because everything will be pinned, without you worrying about forgetting something. You can then focus on putting your new content out using the more traditional side of Tailwind. Pinterest Lifted the Maximum Pins Allowed Since Pinterest began, they had a maximum number of 200,000 pins per account. 200,000 pins may seem like a lot, but for bloggers who have been on the platform for years and who release new content on a regular basis, it was all too easy to hit this threshold. Pinterest recently lifted the 200,000 pin threshold. Before they made this change, bloggers and entrepreneurs had to plan out how many pins to put out over a certain length of time in order to know when they hit the max allowed. How to Evaluate Your Pins Don’t just do a pin dump for your Smart Loop cycle; be sure you evaluate the pins that you’re adding. Organize and revisit to make sure your content is still fresh and adds value. Focus on what happens after people click away from Pinterest and visit your website. Make sure each pin takes the pinner to the right place on your site and that it’s still worth keeping in your loop. Clean up your pins as you go. Everything you do on Pinterest should be with the goal to make it a good experience for your followers. Gaining Followers with Tailwind's SmartLoop I want to share a secret tip with you guys. Back in the day, when we had to stay under the maximum cap, we were pinning around sixty pins a day. Now that we’ve put these Smart Loops into play, we are pinning one hundred pins a day, and our traffic has gone up. Pinterest does change, so I am appreciating this boost right now while acknowledging that someday it may not work in our favor. However, since it is working in our favor right now, we will continue to take advantage of it. How to Set Up SmartLoops You can use your Smart Loops to repeat once a year or you can also set loops to keep going repeatedly. It’s a nice feature that lets you customize the release of your loops. You will be able to get more followers by repinning high-quality pins, as well as posting new pins as you release new content. How to Grow Your Pinterest Followers Make sure that you use something like Milotree to grow your followers using Pinterest rules. Milotree will post your newest pins for you, and if they are high quality, and you have people interacting with them, it will signal to Pinterest to show that pin to more people. Pinterest wants: High-quality pins Relevant pins Fresh pins Why SmartLoop Does Not Spam Your Pinterest Boards There is some concern over whether your account will be marked spam if you use a system like Smart Loops, but in reality, this is not a problem. Kate has been in touch with Pinterest and they have confirmed that using Smart Loop will not get you marked as spam. What you do need to think about though is making sure you have a good user experience. You don’t want to be putting out the same pin three times a day with low quality. You do not want viewers to look at your profile and see the same pin one hundred times. But if you are peppering the same pin every once in a while onto different boards, that’s totally fine. Be very intentional about your keywords and descriptions because Pinterest is using them to decide what to show to viewers based on what they search. Video on Pinterest Video was first rolled out for big companies to promote themselves. But now anyone can upload a video naturally. Kate’s best video tips: Less than a minute in length 1:1 ratio  (square) Catchy enough to make them visit your site Keywords in your descriptions Upload pins to relevant boards On the Pinterest app, we’re seeing that videos pop up closer to the top during a search. The videos that take up the entire width of your phone screen are paid for. You can only get those with a promoted pin campaign. How to Use Hashtags on Pinterest The key to hashtags is relevance. Pinterest is using hashtags as another type of search term. Be specific and intentional on how you use them. Do not use hashtags to replace keywords, but put your hashtags at the end as a bonus. As marketers, we see Pinterest through a different lens. We see it as a way to market our products and hook our readers. But our users are on the platform solely because they find it helpful. Sticking with one or two hashtags will help more than ten. You can take it slow and test different hashtags to see which works best for you. Pinterest has said to not go back and update your hashtags. It will not help in any way because they’re using a chronological format. Using Pinterest Like Your Friends Ask people in your life who are not marketers how they use Pinterest and you’ll learn a lot about user behavior. Even when I go onto Pinterest looking for ideas, to me it’s a totally different platform than what I use when I’m working on my business. I use secret boards to keep my personal boards and my business boards disconnected from each other. It’s kind of like I have two personalities on there. Commenting On Pins Pins with lots of comments are going to rank higher, and that’s something we can think about as pinners. Pinterest encourages you to comment on things, but we don’t think about that all the time as marketers. When people are commenting on your pins, you should respond and maybe direct them to your website for more content like the pins they’re commenting and posting pictures on. As Kate commented on more pins, she began to notice that she was getting followers from the genre of those pins. People feel more inclined to follow you if they feel some kind of connection. Pinterest Communities It is very labor intensive for a business owner to entice people to leave a platform like Facebook that is already community centered and join a community on Pinterest which has much more of a loner vibe. It’s also a lot of work to manage communities in two different places. For those reasons and others, Kate has decided not to use the communities feature on Pinterest. Pinterest throws out new ideas all the time to see if people will hop into it and enjoy using it. Just because I am not seeing the benefits of communities, it doesn’t mean my audience isn’t. Remember, Pinterest is there to serve the user, not the marketer. When Pinterest tries new features, it’s because they are trying to find ways they can become more valuable to the user and how they can keep them on their platform longer. Kate’s Course Kate created a course for SmartLoop called Tailwind Smart Loop Simplified. One of Tailwind’s priorities is providing value to its customers. They want to be sure they aren’t wasting their customers’ time. Kate created a course that hit three pain points: How to set up Smart Loop How to use it properly How to use it most effectively The course is set up so that people can be up and running confidently in about an hour and a half. They go into all the information you need to know about the different types of loops and how you can use them. Connect with Kate You can go to simplepinmedia.com to find Kate’s podcast and newsletter.  Guest Suggestions If you like our blog, or if you have any recommendations for guests we should have on the show, please reach out to me at jillian@milotree.com. And be sure to comment below and tell me your favorite Pinterest strategy! I love hearing from you.   If you’re looking for more followers, subscribers, and sales, MiloTree can help you do it faster and more easily than you are doing it now. But it can’t help you unless you take the first step and add it to your site today. Head over to MiloTree.com. Sign up now and receive your first 30 days free. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Interview Timestamps  0:58 Pinterest Strategies for Changing Features    3:35 The Purpose of Pinterest  5:38 Using Smart Loop  7:05 Lifting the Maximum Pins Threshold  9:52 Evaluate Your Pins 11:08 Gaining Followers with Smart Loop   13:07 Setting Loops 14:15 Growing your Followers 18:00 Smart Loop Is Not Spam 20:45 Video on Pinterest 24:04 How to Use Hashtags on Pinterest 29:02 Using Pinterest like Your Friends 31:00 Commenting On Pins 33:47 Pinterest Communities 37:20 Kate’s Course Get Full Podcast Transcript Here * Post may contain affiliate links. If you click and make a purchase, I might receive a small commission at no cost to you.*