The Blogger Genius Podcast

Today, I have my friend, Monica Froese from Redefining Mom on the show. She will be sharing all things promoted pins and how to make promoted pins work for you. We talk about not only why it might make sense to pay for Pinterest Promoted Pins, but we break it down and share how Monica promotes her course using Pinterest and Facebook advertising. Why Advertise On Pinterest? Monica believes that advertising serves very different purposes from one social media platform to another. The first thing to keep in mind when you're thinking about Pinterest ads, aka Promoted Pins, is whether or not your demographic is even on Pinterest. Pinterest is mostly women, mostly in the US, and mostly millennials. If your target audience is older men, you're probably not going to find them on Pinterest. It's important to understand the difference between Pinterest and social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram. When you open Facebook, you do not hope to be served an ad about wedding planning. But if you are actively wedding planning, you will most likely be served an ad about that, simply because their targeting and retargeting strategies are the best out there. With Pinterest, you come with a problem, and you're proactively searching for the solution. When you open your Pinterest app, you come in with a buyer's mindset. You have a problem, you want a solution, and you're ready to pay for it. Will Promoted Pins Increase Sales? It's important to note that an ad on any platform won't solve a broken system or a broken funnel. If your product isn't selling organically, ads are not going to fix that problem. It's important to make sure your product sells from the platform that you're going to be promoting on. If you can't get any sales from Pinterest organically, you should not dive into Pinterest ads. You need to prove your product organically and build a relationship with your audience before you just jump into Pinterest ads. If you have proven your product, then you can even sell it to a cold audience on Pinterest. How to Market to a Cold Audience A cold audience is one that has no familiarity with you or what you sell. They have not interacted with you in any way. A warm audience is someone who has seen you or your product somewhere online. They have had an interaction with you. Most marketers are going to tell you to only target a warm audience; that a warm audience is going to convert better into monetary returns. On Pinterest, people are looking for a solution to their problem, so if they see a solution to their problem, whether they know that person or not, they are more willing to buy the service. They are not looking for someone they know, they are looking for answers. Warming Up An Audience to Get Them to Buy The caveat to selling to cold audiences on Pinterest is that the higher priced your product, the less likely a cold audience will buy it. The solution to this problem is to warm up your audience. Help them get to know you. There are several ways to do this, but Monica shared her favorite strategy with us. Strategy to Sell to a Warm Audience Run an ad on Pinterest People click on your ad and go to a landing page on your site You offer a freebie on the landing page You now have their email address Send an email with one of your products at a reduced price Add that person to your automated email list Nurture that relationship and turn them into a warm audience Pinterest is e-commerce focused and mostly on lower-priced products. So, Monica focuses on funneling those types of products to her audience. And then, when she wants to nurture for a higher-priced product, she focuses on building her email list from Pinterest. How to Get Email Subscribers From Pinterest Keep in mind that Pinterest is content driven. Most bloggers drive their ads to a blog post where they ask people to sign up for their email list. Monica turned that strategy on its head by driving people to a landing page through her ads. And then she uses "tripwires" once they've signed up for her email list to get them to make a purchase. Tripwires are an easy way to get people to buy from you immediately by reducing the price of the product for a limited amount of time. Pinterest Ads for Pageviews - Does it Make Sense? The question isn't whether you should want to drive page views, it's why do you want to drive page views? You have to understand your strategy before you promote it. It's not about increasing your page views; it's about what you are doing with those page views? If you're being paid by a brand to promote them, it's worth it to spend some money promoting your pins, so you get more page views. Look at how much money you're generating, and make sure it makes sense to be putting money behind promoting pins. If you have a funnel that you know works, page views can be very helpful if your strategy is to get those people into your funnel. Dig into your analytics, to know whether what you're doing is working or not. Monica's Courses Monica's Pinterest Ads course, Pin Practical Promotions, is open for enrollment through June 10, 2019. If the course isn't open for enrollment when you check it out, Monica offers a free course called Pin Practical Ads which is a great way to get started on your journey with Pinterest Ads. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp Intro 5:23 Why Advertise On Pinterest? 10:20 Will Promoted Pins Increase Sales? 10:25 Marketing to a Cold Audience 18:17 Warming Up An Audience 27:15 Email Subscribers From Pinterest 35:16 Pinterest Ads for Page Views 40:58 Monica's Courses Read the podcast transcript HERE: TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE Pinterest users are ready to pay for a solution to their problem. You must prove your product is viable organically before promoting on Pinterest. If you are selling higher priced products, try getting people to sign up for your email list so you can warm them up to a purchase. Most users won't buy a higher priced product straight from your Pinterest ad. Before paying for ads to drive page views, know why you want more page views. More Blogger Genius Episodes You'll Like? #030: The Easiest Ways to Make Money as a Blogger with Monica Froese (Part 2) #029: How to Start a New Business When You're A New Mom with Monica Froese (Part 1) #019: How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith

Today I have Paula Rollo back on the show to talk about burnout. If you are an entrepreneur, burnout is part of everyday life. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to cope with entrepreneur burnout. We're going to share personal stories and tips to help you know how to think about burnout, how to live with burnout, and how to overcome burnout. We want you to know how to use burnout as a guide. What Causes Burnout as an Online Entrepreneur? One thing that causes burnout for me is when I work very hard on something and then don't see the results I want. I teach that we need to put ourselves out there, try new things, and that 95% of our ventures will fail, but even so, it is still demoralizing to me. It is hard to not begin thinking that everything you try is going to fail. It throws me into an irrational tailspin of imposter syndrome and thinking I am only a failure. We almost never take stock of our successes; we focus in on the failures. You have to focus on how far you've come because if you only focus on how far you have to go, you'll never get there. You'll always be falling short. Ways To Work Through Burnout There are a couple of things I do to try and get myself out of burnout: I remind myself that burnout is temporary. I will eventually come out of it. I try to get curious about something that may be causing my burnout and see if I can fix that situation I try to touch myself with kindness, even if it's hard, and I don't think I deserve it Burnout can be a good indication that you're doing too much. Take a look at different areas of your life that may be causing burnout, (I'm looking at you, social media!) and either hire help, or decide if you want to continue doing that thing, whatever it is. Taking A Break Burnout may mean that you need to take a break. You may need to step away for a time. The world will not stop turning if you take a break to recover. You might feel like you're letting everyone down if you take time off, but that is not the case. Doing the bare minimum can help you see what things are actually needed, and what things are unnecessary that you can stop doing altogether. Being Satisfied with B- Work I believe in doing B+ work, not A+, and when I am burned out, I allow myself to do B- work. I never say to go for A+ work because if you do that, you're setting yourself up for failure. No one can be perfect all the time. So strive for B+ work but be okay with whatever you can do. Allow yourself to let things go, to use the content you have, and to be proud of your work. Stepping Out of the Box When Paula was struggling with depression, she could not reach into her creative space to write blog posts about her children for her parenting blog. Instead, she sat down and wrote about her burnout. She wrote a five hundred word post about how she couldn't write words. Paula felt that she wasn't creative because she couldn't write about parenting. What she really needed to do was reach her creativity from a different angle. If you're feeling that you're not creative, go create in a way you might not normally do and see how that feels. Working With Burnout I love using the Pomodoro technique; if you go to tomato-timer.com, you will get a timer for twenty-five minutes. Tell yourself that you only have to work for twenty-five minutes and you will consider it a success. Then if you're feeling up to it, you can do it again. Another thing I do is set a small goal. Maybe the goal is to do one email for the day. Or pin one pin on Pinterest. When I accomplish that goal, I can congratulate myself on getting it done. I don't make myself do more and I try to feel that I'm a success! Listening To Your Burnout If you are experiencing a lot of burnout, there comes a time when you might want to listen to that. Your burnout might be showing you that you're going in the wrong direction. It might have been the right direction at one point, but maybe it's not anymore. If you've tried everything else... Getting back in touch with your creativity Finding new passions Taking a break ...and it's still not working, and you don't want to continue doing what you're doing, you need to do something new. If the reason you are doing your work is different than when you started, you need to find something else to do. Have you struggled with burnout? Tell me about it in the comments. I'd love to hear your ideas on how you overcome burnout, what causes you to experience burnout, and your best tips for getting through it without throwing your business out the window. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! Timestamp Intro 3:20 What Causes Burnout? 8:05 Ways To Work Through Burnout 14:17 Taking A Break 18:55 Being Satisfied with B- Work 20:07 Stepping Out of the Box 24:14 Working With Burnout 27:07 Listening To Your Burnout Read the podcast transcript HERE: TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE Burnout can be caused by working really hard at something and seeing little or no results, or by needing to move in a different direction in your business without seeing it. Focus on how far you've come, and not just how far you have to go because you'll never get there. When you're experiencing burnout, settle for putting out B- work instead of A+ work. The goal is to be kind to yourself. Your business is not going to die if you step away from social media for awhile. Find a hobby that you have no intentioned of monetizing but that gets your creative juices flowing again. *Btw, Netflix is not a hobby. Want More Blogger Genius Episodes About Burnout and Focus? #058: How to Overcome Burnout as an Entrepreneur with Jason Zook #066: How to Stay Focused as an Entrepreneur with Stephanie Uchima-Carney

If you're an online marketer, you know the importance of your email list. As they say, the money is in your email list. Our guest this week is Matt Molen, the founder of Personalized Paths. Matt is an email marketing expert. He's here to show us all the strategy you need to crush email marketing. We talk about not only how to grow your email list, but why you need to grow your email list. Then once you have a list, what to do to monetize it, and keep your community close. What Is Email Marketing? When we first began Catch My Party, we thought we would grow our audience and then monetize our site via ads. Over time that has become less lucrative. Bloggers have to figure out other ways to make money. Ads are only a piece of the money-making pie. Sophisticated bloggers have figured out that they shouldn't value growth merely for growth's sake. It's about being very intentional and selling to your audience, learning how to solve their problems. One of the best ways to do that is through email. Whether you're running a blog, an e-commerce business, or you're an influencer, what you're doing is solving someone's problem is what attracts them to you. Email is a great way to explain how you solve their problems. Brands are built by solving problems over and over again. Bloggers all know they need to grow their lists but sometimes they aren't sure what to do once they've grown it. Why Grow Your Email List? Google's latest update has hit many bloggers, as their position in Google search ranking has changed. That means that their blog traffic has also changed. Many people were dramatically affected by the recent Facebook and Instagram outage. This is another reminder that they are going to do what they want to do, and if they go down, they go down. It will impact you. Pinterest is constantly changing and evolving their algorithm. Our traffic has changed many times when Pinterest updates. The reason you need a list is to have as much control over your audience as you can. You own your blog, you own your website, and you own your email list. That is a great reason to grow your email list, number one. The second reason that many people tend to miss out on is that email is a fairly intimate form of marketing communication. If you do it right, you can create real engagement between yourself and your readers. When you sign up to someone's email list, you are inviting them into your inbox. You are inviting them to be your friend. The businesses that use email to build a relationship, to make friends; those are the ones that are going to have a brand. If you are able to make your audience feel known and solve their problems time and again, they are going to share you with others, and your list is going to grow. They are going to buy your products, and you're going to have a loyal audience. Email lists are a long game but ultimately, it's one that is worth the bill. Give To Get When you offer something generic like a free recipe in return for an email, you are not earning a loyal audience. People get what they want, and then they drift away. What you need to do is stop the viewer in their tracks. There are lots of types of lead magnets, like checklists, printables, and courses. Matt has developed his own lead magnet that helps you stand out, and keep your audience. It's called a Quick Start Guide. We know a few things about the person who lands on our page based on what they're searching for. We can assume a lot of things. You can then offer that person more content along those lines. Using your hook, you get them on your list and you fulfill that problem through 3-5 emails separated by a day. Every day for five days they're receiving a new "lesson" from you. You link your lessons back to your site, to your content, in each email. Those first five emails should all stay related to the original search topic. The power behind this is that you're answering their problems and you're giving them meaty content that helps them get to know you as a brand. Matt has a blog devoted to Disney cruises, and his Quick Start hook is, "What to Expect On Your First Cruise." The engagement starts to happen when we answer questions our audience hasn't even thought to ask yet. Following Up with Your Audience In your final email, you can say that you hope they've enjoyed your content and you are going to continue sending relevant material to their inbox to help them with that particular problem. Think through the most common journey that people face and deliver solutions and suggestions to your people. Start with something general that will catch as many people who cross your site as possible. Most bloggers send their most recent content, not focusing on their best content. All of your old content is buried to the person who crosses your site, thanks to Google. You want to get the best of your blog in front of your reader. Pick out the best of your content, and present it to your audience as if you know them. You know the content they are going to want to see next. Over the course of emails, use your content as a journey to build trust and friendship with your reader. Why You Want to Send Weekly Newsletters Matt describes a newsletter as a story of the person's week. No one cares about that stuff until you're at a level where they care about you so much they want to know those things. With newsletters, what problems can you solve right now? What is your audience thinking about right now? You probably have existing or new content that caters to that. Do not send an email unless you know what problem you're solving for your reader. Solving Problems for your Newsletter Readers After ten weeks of emails presenting his best content and solving problems, Matt does a mixture of automated emails and scheduled broadcasts. The rule is that if you're solving problems, it is not spam. The automated side is evergreen content. He builds it out as long as he can. Matt also has "broadcasts, "that are for very specific content important at the moment. He does a "forever series" email once per week, and if he can, a broadcast once per week. If you're solving their existing problems, they will come to you with new problems, and you will have new content to create. Is Consistency Key for Email? Consistency is important because it lets your reader know when to expect you. If you're sending a "forever series" on Tuesdays and a broadcast on Fridays, your audience gets used to getting your emails every Tuesday and Friday. You will maintain your subscribers if you are consistent. When you go outside of that and are sporadic, then they will not be used to hearing from you. Growing Traffic Through Email Be aggressive about growing your list, but also be aggressive about pruning your list. You do not need to carry dead weight on your subscriber list. The people who, over time, stop opening your emails, stop caring... it's time to stop sending them content. The number of subscribers is not your be-all, end-all. You want to keep the people who are opening your content. Every thirty days, Matt goes through his list and gets rid of any subscribers who haven't opened their email in thirty to ninety days. The reasons Matt does this is because it costs money to keep those subscribers and it impacts your deliverability. Matt looks to see how often someone has engaged with his content. If someone hasn't engaged in three to six months, they're off the list. Matt also wants unique clicks. He wants people clicking back to his site. Matt has a formula for all the emails he writes: State the problem you are solving Explain that you have the solution and why you have the solution Give a link back to your blog that has the solution It is a short and simple email. No one wants to read a long, wordy email. It seems so typical, but when you keep delivering on it, you are building a brand. When they keep ending up back on your site, they learn your face, your brand, your business. Matt's Favorite Email Services Matt likes to use Convert Kit for most of his clients. It has a balance of automated features and simplicity of use. I use Active Campaign for my email services. How To Start Sending Emails to Your List The first thing to do is to identify the biggest problem you can solve with your existing content. Take three to five pieces of content and lump them into a theme. With that "quick start" guide to answer that problem, you send people one email per day for five days. If you do it right, you will have a much more interested subscriber for what's coming next. If you're stuck, go look at your Google analytics and see which posts are doing the best. Contacting Matt Matt has three levels for working with bloggers. The first one is a free program of three videos. It's called Email Jump Start. If you are serious about getting your Email List changed, Matt has a course of 20+ video modules on what to do and how to do it. That is called Email On Autopilot. If you're more established and looking to get help with individual strategies, you can look on the website for consulting services at Personalized Paths. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP Intro 3:10 What Is Email Marketing? 5:16 Why Grow Your List? 8:02 Give To Get 15:36 Following Up with Your Audience 25:25 Weekly Newsletters 28:21 Solving Problems 32:15 Is Consistency Key? 34:14 Growing Traffic Through Email 37:36 Matt's Favorite Email Service Providers 38:49 How To Start 40:39 Contacting Matt Read the podcast transcript HERE: TOP 4 TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE You can't control social media algorithms, but you can control your email list because you own it. Use your email to explain how you can solve the reader's problems. Develop a lead magnet that creates a loyal audience and leaves them wanting more. Then direct them to your blog for more content related to their problem. Be consistent. Email your audience on the same day(s) every week so that they come to expect your emails and look forward to them. Want More Blogger Genius Episodes About Email Marketing? #020: Why Email Marketing is Exciting and Easy with Kate Doster (Part 1) #021: How To Set Up An Easy and Effective Email Sales Funnel with Kate Doster (Part 2)

Pinterest continues to make changes to their platform for the good of the user. The latest update is video. Yes, you can now upload video pins to Pinterest. Listen to this episode to learn how to get traffic from video on Pinterest. Today I'm talking about Pinterest and video with my guest, Kristen McDonnell. She has a very successful Youtube channel, Studio Knit, where she teaches people how to knit. Her Youtube channel has over 90K subscribers, and she has published over 300 videos. Kristin is sharing what she's discovered on Pinterest with video and how to succeed. Knitting A Business Together Kristin's background is in marketing and communications. One of her hobbies is knitting. In January of 2014, she started her YouTube channel to offer better quality videos to teach knitting. Kristin was working full time, and after a couple of months on YouTube, she was signed on by a company for her videos. How to Do Video on Pinterest While it seems like video on Pinterest has good reach, many people are not seeing people click through to their sites. That has not been Kristin's experience however. Kristin has been focusing on video with Pinterest since December and she has seen amazing results. Out of her top 20 pins that are driving traffic, 18 of them are videos. Why You Should Start Experimenting With Video on Pinterest Kristin makes her videos for herself on her own time. Pinterest's three goals this year are IPO, video, and creators. If Pinterest identifies video as a priority, it's something you want to take seriously as a marketer. Monetizing Her Knitting Business About 50% of Kristin's income is from her website ad revenue. She uses MediaVine as her ad network. At MediaVine, they are very interested in video. Kirstin can track her RPM, (revenue per thousand) on YouTube and her blog. The money she's making per view is higher from people watching videos on her blog versus from YouTube. It's another reason Kristin is pulling back from focusing solely on YouTube. She makes more money driving people to her site. YouTube ads, Facebook videos, Amazon affiliates are all sources of income for Kristin. Kristin also sells digital products, such as her knitting patterns. Getting Click Throughs Kristin is going through her video library and re-editing everything specifically for Pinterest. A lot of people are posting videos that were made for a different social media platform, but the vertical video is doing better for Kristin. Pinterest is clear that for the static videos, they want 2x3 size videos. Kristin has lots of horizontal and square videos, but she's putting in the work to give Pinterest what it wants. Kristin will use a video with a static photo under the video, showing the final product. The most popular tool for making videos is called Filmora. It is a good way to get started editing videos for Pinterest. Preferred Video Format on Pinterest Kristin doesn't just use a static image with a video underneath. One simple video you can make is using a static photo, and having it move around. You can add some text over it, and just have the photo moving for extra depth. Kristin's best-performing image begins with a static photo of a piece of knitting and ends with a short video of her hands knitting. Kristin's videos range from 15-30 seconds. They're just long enough to entice people to repin or click through to her site. Kristin has done longer videos, about three minutes with her talking, but for the most part she has short, silent video. You need a call to action in your videos to give people something to respond to. Adding Videos To Pinterest To add a video to Pinterest, you just download the file and upload it like you would with a picture. Videos cannot be scheduled through Tailwind as of right now. Pinterest does have a scheduler. You can schedule up to 30 videos, but it seems a bit glitchy after 25. Kristin uses an Excel spreadsheet to make sure her videos are going to the right boards at the right time intervals. When Kristin is scheduling videos, she pulls up the website, and once the video is on Pinterest, she can add the click through, just like with a photo pin. Find your video on your desktop, add the title and description, your keywords, and hashtags. Kristin puts out three to four videos a day. Most are old pins that she is pinning to a new board. Sharing Videos Elsewhere Kristin will take the vertical videos she created and put them on Facebook, where they are performing very well. You could also take those videos and share them onto your Instagram stories or IGTV, because they are both vertical views. Using MiloTree For Blog Growth MiloTree is one of the very first things that Kristin did when she began to be intentional about growing her blog. She has had it since the fall of 2016. Kristin immediately started using her MiloTree Pinterest pop-up, and then after YouTube was added, and she began using that. Last week after listening to a podcast episode about Instagram, Kristin went to MiloTree and also got our pop-up for Instagram to grow her followers. The newest popup is for Etsy. It takes people from your blog to your Etsy shop. Kristin is also just starting to use that one. Kristin only just began focusing on Pinterest about two years ago. When she started using tactics from the Simple Pin Podcast, her website exploded over a short period of time. Since then she has been able to quit her job and move to full-time entrepreneur. Because of the MiloTree app, Kristin went from 0 to around 80K new followers. Paying For Ads on Pinterest Kristin promotes her blog on Pinterest, but once they're on her site, they can see all the other avenues she has, and products she offers. Pinterest ads are interesting because even though you stop paying for them, they continue to promote your pins. Kristin has put some money into a video pin to see what happens, and she is getting good return on that investment. Before, it was a long term game, but now videos are giving returns so much faster because Pinterest is promoting them above all else. Riches Are In the Niches People want to do so much, but I want to encourage you to go deep on the one thing you are passionate about. Kristin is the perfect example of that. She found her sweet spot and has dedicated her focus to that. Pinterest has invited Kristin to Knit Con, which is an employee conference. Kristin is going to Pinterest to teach a knitting class at the conference. What Type of Online Entrepreneur is MiloTree Right For? Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more? Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by converting your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube. Sign up today! Install your MiloTree pop-ups on your site in under two minutes. Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE! TIMESTAMP Intro 2:21 Knitting A Business Together 10:45 Video for Pinterest 12:00 Process For Creating Videos 12:58 Monetizing On Knitting 17:53 Getting Click-Throughs 24:04 Video Format 28:45 Adding Videos to Pinterest 33:45 Sharing Videos Elsewhere 35:03 Using Milotree For Growth 40:40 Paying For Ads on Pinterest 43:42 Riches Are In the Niches Read the podcast transcript here: Want to learn more about how to use Pinterest to grow your business? Here are more podcast episodes we recommend: #065: How to Keep Your Pinterest Account Growing and Out of Trouble with Alisa Meredith #059: What You Need to Know NOW to Get More Traffic From Pinterest with Kate Ahl #053: Powerful and Easy Pinterest Tips from Pinterest Insider, Tori Tait #044: How To Get More Pinterest Traffic by Crushing the Pinterest Algorithm with Jennifer Priest #019: How to Get Started with Promoted Pins on Pinterest with Alisa Meredith #012: How to Expand Your Business Using Group Boards on Pinterest with Kim Vij #009: How to Grow Pinterest NOW with Kate Ahl

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