← Pin Talk - Pinterest Tips and Updates for Creators
Pin Talk - Pinterest Tips and Updates for Creators
S1E11 Creating Content Pinterest Users Love (Understanding User Intent)
00:44:47
Loading summary
Transcript121 lines
- [00:02]
A
Hey, welcome to pentalk, the Go to podcast for all things Pinterest for bloggers and content creators. I'm Tony Ho and with me is my co host, Carly Campbell. So what are you talking about today, Carly?
- [00:12]
B
We are going to talk about user intent on the platform and creating content that Pinterest users love and engage with.
- [00:20]
A
Yes. So before we hit record, we were talking about how this might be one of the most important episodes that we've recorded so far because so many people struggle with this concept of user intent and what that means for Pinterest specifically as a platform, especially when they come from other platforms like creating content for Google or sometimes Facebook, Instagram, et cetera. And just really understanding the difference in how you're approaching your content creation, your keyword research and selection and your pins, the designs, impacts, almost everything.
- [00:57]
B
Yeah. I like to identify what is the reason that a user comes to a platform. And I think that I've got a pretty good understanding of the different platforms, even though I don't, I don't really use Facebook to promote my content or X or Instagram to promote my content. I think I've got a good understanding of all of them. And understanding why people are at those platforms and not on Pinterest helps me to nail down Pinterest user intent even more, I think.
- [01:30]
A
Yeah, exactly. And understanding, if you go to Pinterest trends, you can see what people are mostly interested in the average Pinterest user. And then, I mean there, I wish there was, there were tools like the equivalent of Pinterest trends for Google. Google has Google Trends, but it just doesn't like spoon feed you keywords. You've got to actually like kind of start with the keyword. But you can look at other data tools that have search volume and keywords and usually it's around Google and things are just different because people are approaching, they're just in a different frame of mind, you could say. And as a content creator, sometimes that frame of mind carries over into Pinterest. When they move over to Pinterest, you were kind of sharing a quick story before we hit record about someone who they thought thought their account was shadow banned on Pinterest. But when you took a look at it, what were your thoughts?
- [02:25]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's a natural conclusion to come to, I think when you've been working hard, you know, you've been putting in the effort and you're not seeing any results, unfortunately. And not just in this single instance. In a lot of instances, when I look at the account, what I See, is just a lot of effort in the wrong direction. And I think a lot of people who struggle to get Pinterest traffic, it isn't that Pinterest doesn't like their account. It's that Pinterest users have no use for their content. And if the user has no use for your content, of course it's going to feel like you're shadowbanned.
- [03:05]
A
Right. So sometimes that's the case. Like there's something going on with your account that's weird. Which I think we've recorded an episode about that. There's just so many other factors here. But one of those factors is the content creator factor of, like, do they understand their users on the platform because they can reach the same exact person? I mean, there are so many people who are using Google, but they also use Facebook and they also use Pinterest, but they're using them for different reasons in a different context. And so it's just so important to understand the context in which they are engaging with your content, your topics on Pinterest. And sometimes they're not engaging at all.
- [03:47]
B
With that topic on Pinterest. Absolutely. Yeah.
- [03:49]
A
That's hard.
- [03:49]
B
Yeah. And I usually, like, you know, I just want to find a way to define what are people doing on each platform. So for myself, I believe that people go to Google to research and get answers to questions. I believe they go to Facebook to be entertained. I believe that some people go to X to be informed. I actually didn't have Instagram on my list. Why do people go to Instagram?
- [04:15]
A
I go to Instagram to see funny videos that I then send as a DM to my wife.
- [04:22]
B
So to be entertained. Is that entertainment? Yeah, yeah.
- [04:25]
A
And funny ones to show my daughter. It's just pure entertainment. Like, for me, that's my platform. I want to make sure I can laugh every day. Like, it's good for my mental health, you know, and guaranteed the laugh. If I pull up Instagram, honey, I'll.
- [04:39]
B
Have to try that. I don't. I don't do Instagram, but I could definitely use more laughing in my day, so maybe I'll do that. I do get sucked into to Twitter. Like, I'll. I go to Twitter to read about what's going on. I know that if something's happening, it'll be posted on there. Whether I agree with, like, the angle that it's posted from or not is always up in the air, but at least I know what's going on. So when I go to Pinterest, it's not in Any of those moods or intents. When I go to Pinterest, it is because I am planning something or want inspiration for something that I'm planning is. It's almost always in the same intent. I'm looking for an idea or an inspiration. And I think that we'll find that the vast majority of Pinterest users go to Pinterest with the intent of getting ideas or being inspired. I do think that there's a little bit of the entertainment factor, but unlike TikTok or Instagram or even Facebook, where they go to be entertained, to see something funny, I think when people go to Pinterest, they go to entertain themselves. And even then, the kind of content that that person will engage with will come back to being planning content, inspiration content, idea content. You know what I mean? It's less likely that they'll watch a funny video. That's something that you said you could do on Instagram, you could do on TikTok, you could do on Facebook. You're less likely to do that on Pinterest as you are to start saving ideas for your daughter's birthday or for my husband for Christmas or planning a future vacation, you're more likely to entertain yourself in the planning and ideation vein on Pinterest. And so even though people do go there because they're bored to be entertained, the entertainment still takes on a certain feel, I think.
- [06:38]
A
Yeah, it does. One of the things that I've recently been able to get some insight on is, like, some of the biggest keywords on Pinterest as a platform. Like the number one most searched for keyword, the number two number. I can see the full list now with pin clicks.
- [06:57]
B
That's so cool.
- [06:58]
A
And it can be very revealing. I don't know, maybe I can. I can reveal some right now.
- [07:03]
B
Yeah, I think you should.
- [07:04]
A
I wasn't planning on it.
- [07:05]
B
Tell us. Just a couple of them.
- [07:07]
A
Okay.
- [07:07]
B
Yeah.
- [07:08]
A
So I just went through pin clicks in the database we have behind the Scenes, where we're capturing the search volume for every interest out there. And I looked at the top 10, and here are five that made the top 10. This isn't a particular order, but they are in the top 10. So what this tells me is these are really popular topics and just want to help you understand intent and what people are coming to the platform for. Okay, here's one. I'm gonna start with this one. This one was really fascinating. I was not expecting this to be on the list, but it's hello Kitty. That's.
- [07:44]
B
That is fascinating. I don't know.
- [07:47]
A
Yeah. Would not have guessed I'd be in the top 10. Okay. This next one. This next one makes sense. It's outfit. Ideas.
- [07:56]
B
Ideas. They have the word ideas there. Okay.
- [07:58]
A
Yep. Another one is wallpaper aesthetic. Although the caveat to that is I think people are typing in wallpaper and then Pinterest is suggesting aesthetic and then they're just clicking on that.
- [08:08]
B
I agree with that. Yeah.
- [08:10]
A
Yeah. Then we have nails. Not surprising there. And then another one is wallpaper. IPhone wallpaper.
- [08:17]
B
So people are looking for backgrounds on their phone.
- [08:19]
A
Yeah.
- [08:19]
B
Mm. And that's great that we did this because it gives us an opportunity later when we talk about intent that's useful to you versus intent that's not useful to you. We can talk about that one because you couldn't pay me enough to go into the niche of iPhone wallpaper.
- [08:36]
A
Right.
- [08:37]
B
Like, just the terrible niche on Pinterest. We can talk about that because, you know, later we're going to talk about whether or not the intent is valuable to us as creators. And I think that that's a second important distillation of intent. The first one being, though, why is the user there? This list does. It did demonstrate, I think, that people are coming for ideas, since, you know, we saw nails and outfit ideas in the top, kind of the top 10 list. But also it demonstrates that Pinterest is a highly, highly visual platform. And so, again, like, people are coming for ideas, but when those ideas can be represented by an image, that's going to give you another leg up, just because that's how the platform works.
- [09:26]
A
Right. So one of the things I think I've said in the previous episodes is if I'm in a niche where wallpaper would make sense, but some people are searching for an iPhone wallpaper. I mean, say you're in the hello Kitty niche. I mean, I'm sure people are wanting hello Kitty wallpaper. Now, that's not going to send you a lot of clicks, but they can get a lot of saves and theory that. The theory I have is that those saves overall will boost your overall account average for saves. Right. So that could help. So there's a use case, if you have the extra time of covering some of these intents that send less traffic, but more saves, especially with a higher volume like that, it's just more people that you could reach.
- [10:10]
B
So I have that as a question a little bit later in this episode. Is there a benefit to making a lot of pins that lend themselves to saves only? So I think that that's, you know, like Inside the user intent discussion, I think that that's a good question. I see your logic. I think that you're not necessarily wrong. But I worry that because Pinterest loves those pins that don't get clicks so much, that even though I don't believe in cannibalism, really, I believe that Pinterest might cherry pick what they'll distribute from you and what they won't. I'd love to do a more thorough experiment on if targeting keywords and images that have less click through intent does boost the overall account, or if you are only ever going to get a certain percentage of pins in the feed and we can't afford to give too much of them up to low intent pins. I don't. I don't know. I've tried the experiment once. It was a failed experiment for me. I couldn't get my save pins to get saved. I tried it with quotes only.
- [11:18]
A
Okay.
- [11:18]
B
Yeah, yeah. But I just didn't get those in front of the right people to get enough saves to affect anything.
- [11:25]
A
Yeah.
- [11:26]
B
So to this day none of them show up in my top save pins, which is frustrating because they're the most savable pins. They're just not out there. But like, I'd like to do more experiments around that idea because the idea is solid that if you get more saves you should get more distribution. But I talked to lots of people where it doesn't play out and their users, they seem to just get into the feeds of users who just want to save their users who don't intend to click. I think it could be niche dependent.
- [11:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, maybe as we're talking about user intent and the different types of users who come to Pinterest, you can also break that down. The different types of users who are on Pinterest. Right. So do you have your clickers, do you have your savers and do you have the people who are kind of in between and people who won't save anything, they just want to browse. I'm sure there's.
- [12:17]
B
That's right.
- [12:17]
A
A spectrum to this. And that impacts, you know, the kind of content you're creating. At least it does for me because I want to target content people are going to click on.
- [12:28]
B
Yeah.
- [12:28]
A
To click to go to the site. Because at the end of the day, like that's how I'm making money. I need people to come to my sites from Pinterest. So that's where I'm going to put my effort.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah, me too. When time is a consideration, I guess that's. That's an important part of this, like the whole, I haven't made a ton of pins just for saves because time is always a consideration for me. And so I very heavily focus on pins where the intent is to click. But I feel like we have gotten a little bit ahead of ourselves. Uh, we were talking about the different platforms and I think one of the things that we've seen happen so much in the last year, we've talked about this a number of times, is that we get a lot of people that are coming from Google and they're making their way over to Pinterest after Google has been just so challenging to utilize as a traffic stream lately. And they're bringing a certain kind of content and it's Google content. And the intent of those Google users is very different from the intent of the Pinterest users. And to think that we can bring the same content that we had on Google and get it to perform well on Pinterest is often a mistake. So a lot of these accounts that I look at that, you know, people might think that they're shadow banned or Pinterest is just not for them really. It's just a user intent problem. And some of this content that we bring over from Google can even be adjusted, retitled or edited in some cases to be Pinterest friendly content.
- [13:58]
A
Do you think it's possible to be in a very Pinterest friendly niche where you had focused primarily on Google and like the long tail keywords, which is pretty popular, like for example, to be in fashion? Do you think that there's a good chance where there were a lot of bloggers, a lot of fashion bloggers who were doing really well with Google, that they have certain kind of fashion related content that would not do well on Pinterest?
- [14:25]
B
I don't know, because fashion is inherently visual, there's no way to separate the query from the picture really. Or not. Not a good way. And so I think that fashion maybe gets a free pass in this discussion, whereas any content where there's a query that could be answered by text does not get a free pass. Those are the niches where now we need to talk about these, you know, problems. Personal finance is a good one or is a good one in that it can be a hard one on Pinterest because there's no visual representation of the idea. Homesteading is one that I talk to a lot of people in.
- [14:59]
A
Okay.
- [15:00]
B
Because it can swing either way. You can visually represent a lot of the ideas with pictures and there's a lot of questions that are Just questions. So I have worked with multiple accounts that have had questions like that have done really well on Google, like can chickens eat tomatoes? You know, can I feed my goats moldy cheese? These things, these questions had done really well for them on Google. And then they come to Pinterest and there is some potential for homesteading subjects on Pinterest. Probably not as broad as we would like it to be. Or maybe, maybe it is broad, but it's going to take a little bit more time for Pinterest to reach the people that you want to reach just because it's a smaller audience than fashion or food or whatever. But you cannot translate can my chickens eat tomatoes Into a visual query intent. It's never going to be something you need a picture of.
- [16:02]
A
Yeah, right.
- [16:02]
B
And in fact, if you try to make a picture of it and you put a picture of a sick chicken up, that probably just get you in trouble with Pinterest because you can't have those kind of images on Pinterest. So it's like really messy there.
- [16:14]
A
Yep, makes sense.
- [16:16]
B
But fashion, I don't know. What do you think about the answer to your fashion question?
- [16:22]
A
Yeah, I'm not in that niche, so I don't know all the keywords there, but I would imagine there are some long tail keywords that maybe are more problem slash question oriented. Really long tail, you know, like how to fix something that it's like broken on your jacket or something.
- [16:43]
B
Okay, right.
- [16:44]
A
So like you, not only are they like covering your typical fashion stuff of like different trends for the season or whatever, but they're also doing the long tail of like people who have a problem. They're going to Google for a solution that's related to clothing. I've seen that. I've seen that with bloggers who will go broad like that but also go like really long tail to go out there.
- [17:05]
B
I think some of these might still be Pinterest content.
- [17:07]
A
Think so?
- [17:08]
B
Not if it's obscure, brand related. If it's like specific to a Louis Vuitton purse, that's too specific. But if you are being a little bit more broad than that. Like if it's like to how to fix a zipper on your expensive purse, that could still be Pinterest content. And I say that because I've got a blog post about getting mildew out of baby blankets that does fantastically.
- [17:34]
A
So are people going to Pinterest to search for that?
- [17:37]
B
No, I don't think so. That's the thing.
- [17:39]
A
Is it one of those things where maybe someone doesn't have that problem right now, but this is a common one. That'd be good to know.
- [17:46]
B
Yeah, probably solution for. I live in an extremely dry climate where mildew is not a problem, but in that season of your life where your babies are just throwing up every single time you feed them and you just leave the blankets in a pile for three days, then it becomes a problem, even in this climate. So I think it is probably a pretty big problem. It speaks to a lot of people. Yeah, you just get tired of throwing those away all the time. So then I just think like, okay, so if you're this fashion person blogger and you've got content that's specific, if the content can be made that it can speak to a broad enough audience, you don't need to try to find that one person that's looking for that one problem, then, then I think it can still work. I think that you will limit yourself too far when you make it brand specific. You know how to fix my Louis Vuitton purse? Now, it's a problem that really very few people have. Whereas, you know, recently we were in Florida and I had a purse along with me, and before the end of the trip, I just threw it away because I couldn't fix what was happening to it. And, like, I wouldn't have gone to Pinterest to search for that problem, but if I'd seen a pin that was giving me the answer, I might have engaged with it. Which is why it's so important to target the related annotations for something.
- [19:08]
A
You want to elaborate more on that?
- [19:10]
B
Sure. So Pinterest user intent is ideas and inspiration. They will search for some things. Pinterest will identify that this person is interested in this thing that they've searched for. So when you're talking about your fashion blogger, they've got other posts that are fashion specific. Right. And they might not be searching for this thing, this how to fix their purse zipper thing, but, like, they'll have engaged with other content that the same person would be interested in. And so if you've targeted the annotations that your most popular content, you know, has. Has gotten those people's attention, then Pinterest will feed them more of your content. I guess that way you can get a little bit around the whole query user intent issue. But it's very important that you come out of the gate with your good Pinterest user intent stuff so that your less good user Pinterest intent stuff stands a chance.
- [20:09]
A
Yeah.
- [20:10]
B
Does that make sense?
- [20:11]
A
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [20:12]
B
Okay.
- [20:12]
A
One of the things I'M curious about. I've never done this before. I'm going to do it right now in pin clicks. There are certain keywords coming from my Google SEO background. They're like the who, what, when, where, why, how kind of keywords that we would use and to target to find some great long tail keywords. Okay, so I'm curious to put in the word why and see if people are asking why because that's like a natural question, right, where they use the word why to see what kind of search volume there is. So okay, I'm curious to see like if they're going to Pinterest to perform searches like Google. Here's one. Why do I feel crazy? That only has 1212 searches a month. So there's 12 people on there that feel like they're going crazy.
- [21:03]
B
Good, I'm glad that's not a broadly searched term.
- [21:07]
A
Yeah, there's a lot of, I believe I'm seeing is the lyrics. This is really interesting. Or quotes like their lyrics of songs. Right. Or they're.
- [21:18]
B
Yeah, okay, but quotes. Even though at first glance inside your mind, you might not equate quotes with being a visual thing on Pinterest, quotes are extremely visual. People will look for the quote just to have the graphic of it. They'll make the quotes backgrounds on their phones or they'll print them and put them into cards are making or scrapbooks they're making or whatever. So quotes are a visual entity on Pinterest and I could see that people would search for them that way. Plus also, if the quotes have that as a title and people have engaged with it enough, it'll populate in the dropdown after people put in certain words. Okay, so there'd be reasons, I think, why we might see quotes there.
- [22:04]
A
Here's a good one. If you're in the fashion niche, 13 reasons why outfits. So like, I think that was a movie and people are looking for the outfits that were featured in a movie.
- [22:13]
B
Oh, fascinating. Interesting.
- [22:16]
A
Yeah. Right now, honestly, I'm not really seeing a lot of like, why is my hair not growing? Okay, 253 searches a month, but you compare that to Google, I bet there's like thousands.
- [22:29]
B
Oh, I, yes, I would say so. I, I think that people go to Google when they're looking, when the answer is a simple answer, and particularly in that situation, the answer is not going to be visual. They're not coming to Pinterest for that. Even if they're not thinking to themselves like, the answer's not visual. So I'm not going To Pinterest. You don't have to think through that train of thought to instinctively do it. Anybody who's used Pinterest and has used Google knows that Google is where you go for a text based answer. And so people go to Google for those questions.
- [23:05]
A
Now, do you think that particular topic could do well though, if you've already covered it? Because you did it for Google, but you're not really getting traffic anymore from Google. You're focusing on Pinterest. Why is my hair not growing? Do you think that could do well in the home feed?
- [23:19]
B
That's a great question that I think is more complex than we want it to be because Pinterest isn't going to broadly target all the users with the word like everybody had. Or I mean, a lot of people have hair. I would say 90% of people maybe have hair. And the users on Pinterest. Hair is like a huge niche on Pinterest. People save hairstyle ideas all the time. And you'd think that you're building relationship there when you're doing that broadly enough to get some of those other things that aren't good Pinterest queries exposed. But I don't know if you are, because Pinterest separates hair interests by like type of hair. So within the hair niche you can be very specific. Like Pinterest will know if you are saving black hairstyles or like fair blonde, thin hairstyles. They'll know. And your account will probably not be able to broadly target both of them unless your really large account. And so I would suggest that in that niche, that kind of blog post might not get enough engagement just because you have to try so hard to find these words that are going to be able to put it in front of everybody instead of just the people who are engaging with. Does that make sense? And I'm curious what you think about that.
- [24:48]
A
Yeah, I think it just depends on the niche. Right. But going back to how broadly does this impact your audience that you're already reaching. Right. Is this a really common problem that they have? Yeah, I've done that. I've got some pins that have done well. Targeting problems.
- [25:09]
B
Okay.
- [25:09]
A
That probably don't get a lot of searches on the platform, but it really depends on how widespread that problem is. And does that problem make sense on the platform? Okay, so let's find another. A little example. We kind of found one here. You want to talk about it?
- [25:26]
B
Yeah. So if we search the word how in pinks as opposed to why, we could see that there wasn't really Great words that have visual intent, or even a lot of words that are really researchy being searched on Pinterest when it comes to why. But when we searched how we got a ton of massive volume keywords that could be represented visually and could potentially lead to a click. Like how to draw Eyes has a search volume of 772,668. And I mean, that's. That is a massive how to draw hair, how to draw a face, how to wear. And there's not even anything after how to wear. And I'm guessing that's because there's so many options for how to wear that people like start searching it and don't even get past that. How to tie a bow.
- [26:17]
A
Okay, so for some of these, the answer can be directly in the pen.
- [26:23]
B
It can be, yeah.
- [26:24]
A
Which then that's up to you as a content creator, if you want to go after those. I mean, you can answer a lot of these that you've rattled off with the video.
- [26:32]
B
Yes.
- [26:33]
A
But then there I know bloggers who are in some of these niches and so they've got like a blog post with step by step, here's how to do it. It's visual, some of them have videos, but then they kind of break it down visually like just with pictures. So. And then some of them are really simple that you could just, in the picture alone, they can kind of satisfy that query and that idea. What are your thoughts on that?
- [26:56]
B
An older version of Pinterest strategies used how to draw a nose in our user intent video training in the course, because it's a. It's the perfect example of a niche where if you don't give a good reason to click, then the user intent can go either way. The intent of the user is to learn how to draw a nose. And if you give them what they need right on the front of the pin without requiring a click, then you've kind of missed the boat as a creator, I think. On the other hand, if there's already 50 pins there that teach them how to draw a perfect nose, I don't know why they're going to click through yours anyway. They're just going to engage with the others. So that, that's a line to walk. I do think that in any of these niches that kind of walk the line between, you know, is this a clickable niche or a not clickable niche? As far as user intent goes, a lot of it comes down to what you will do with, with the content, the way you'll present it to the Reader.
- [27:53]
A
Right, that makes sense. And how you present it or if you choose to do it, at least for me, I'm looking at what are other creators doing? Right. Like to your point, if you do a search on Pinterest for that and you see nothing but videos ranking at the top, how is that then going to keep you from perhaps just doing a static pin and linking to a blog post or would you still go after it? And for those, because you have people who have different learning modalities. Some people like the videos, some people like the text with like pictures. So they can kind of take their time.
- [28:32]
B
Because Pinterest user intent is completely different than Google user intent. I don't let search results like that dictate my approach because the Pinterest user isn't going to Pinterest and just searching and engaging with the first PIN that's there. I want to build relationship between my PIN and the first ranking pins. And then when they save that first ranking pin, I want Pinterest to serve them up my PIN right after, you know, within the next couple scrolls. And so if I went to Pinterest and I saw that other creators had gone the video route or the I'll give you all the information on the pin route and I believed that there was enough value in the click through for me. I would still create the PIN to inspire the click through. And then, I mean, probably not in the most saturated niches that have 570 videos that are all saying the same thing, but in all the other ones I would do it.
- [29:35]
A
Yeah. And if you can find that unique angle that no one else is doing and yours is not a video, then there's an advantage there for you. They have to click through.
- [29:46]
B
Well, I think, especially in the case of video, I think there's a huge advantage because like Pinterest sets a certain percentage of the feed to video and a certain percentage of the feed to ads and a certain percentage of the feeds to. Well now it's all just like, maybe that's not true as of 2025, because now it. A PIN is a pin is a pin, if you believe that. But like I think that for the user who engages with video, they'll get a lot more video. For the user that doesn't engage with video, they, they'll get less video. And so video might be what the other creators are seeing on the ranking page, it might be what they're doing, but that doesn't mean that's what people are engaging with necessarily in their feeds.
- [30:28]
A
Yeah, that's a Fair point. Do you think that's true for products? If they find that there are certain users who engage with product pins more, well then they will show them more product pins in the search results.
- [30:39]
B
Absolutely.
- [30:40]
A
For the topic. And same thing with their home feed.
- [30:43]
B
Absolutely.
- [30:43]
A
That's something else as a consideration. Understanding user intent. So according to Pinterest, there's a high user intent for products searches and product ideas on the platform that people are coming to. Right. So they are want and who knows if this is just propaganda or if it's actually true, but they want people at the very least to come to Pinterest to get ideas of products of purchase. So instead of going to Amazon and typing in some product category, in this case searching for really specific products, I don't think people are doing that as much on Pinterest. Right. They're looking for ideas. They don't know the specific products, but they're maybe searching for a category of a product. And Pinterest is saying lots of people are coming to us and searching for a category of product because they're trying to get an idea of what kind of product to get instead of looking on Amazon or Google Shopping.
- [31:38]
B
I mean, I think that it's possible that there is a subset of people of users that have a, a big shopping intent on Pinterest, but I don't believe that Pinterest is considering all their users when they say that like across the board are the majority of people shopping on Pinterest. I don't believe they are.
- [32:02]
A
Yeah, I think it would require a really good experience for them. I think the most frustrating thing that can happen for a user searching for product ideas on Pinterest is that they find one that they like, they click on it and one, it's like an AI post. Right. It's not a real product. That's frustrating. Or two, it's linking to a product that's no longer available. Yeah, that's frustrating. And so me personally, I will go to a platform where I know it's going to show me results of products that are available for me to purchase.
- [32:39]
B
Absolutely. As a Canadian, I would never shop on Pinterest ever because I believe that 90% of the things wouldn't be feasible to have shipped here.
- [32:47]
A
Yeah. The argument for that would be there are times where I going back to Instagram, I will see products in my Instagram feed sometimes. Usually they're ads. And the first thing I will do is I will go to Amazon to see if it exists on Amazon.
- [33:03]
B
Me too.
- [33:04]
A
Maybe some people will do that. They go to Pinterest for ideas and inspiration. And if it leads to a pin that they actually can't get the product, maybe they will do like a search on Amazon to see if they can find something similar. But you know, think about like home decor. They're looking for, you know, lamp ideas. Right. They're doing a little makeover of their office. They want to find a cool lamp. Maybe they'll go to Pinterest first. Because I would agree in the sense that Pinterest would show a wider range and some unique products and ideas because it's pulling in from all different sources of different, like independent online stores, Amazon, Etsy, Target, et cetera. Right. So you kind of get a wider range of searches and then from there you can kind of narrow it down. I avoid targeting products altogether. Not in a niche, but I mean, I think a lot of niches can be product oriented. Yeah, I just choose not to get into that because unless you're selling it directly, then it's just really hard. So that's. I pay close attention to, like the search results. Like when I'm doing keyword research, I'm paying attention to the pins that are ranking. And if a lot of them are product oriented, if the guided search filter bubbles is like all product oriented, I move on. I don't really go after those.
- [34:24]
B
Okay. And you know what? Honestly, I would too, because the fact of the matter is that, because I believe that the Pinterest user intent is ideas and inspiration and because. Because that's the way that I see it. I mean, maybe people do buy things on Pinterest after they discover them, but they still go there with the intent that they're in the discovery mode and they need to discover first. And I believe that most people are collecting ideas and inspiration and that there's more money for us to make. I mean, unless you are selling literally, like maybe wedding dresses, like 10, $20,000 wedding dresses, where you're making a thousand dollars a sale and even that, like, who's paying, who's paying 10% commission on a wedding dress? Like, I don't, I bet to nobody. So, I mean, unless you're selling something where you're making that much money per sale that you can get away with five or six sales a month, that's enough. In all other cases, like, okay, you're selling face products and you're making $2.50 or $3 for sale. I mean, the sheer volume that you are going to need of people who have gone through the ideas and inspiration process already and have been converted to buyers is just not there to make a full time income. And so for that reason, I like to focus on the broadest subject possible because I'm going to catch the most people in their idea and inspiration intent phase. So I would never target products on Pinterest because there's just not enough in it for me. I don't think so.
- [36:14]
A
What about product reviews?
- [36:15]
B
No reviews. I like to say that Pinterest is a place that reviews goes to die. Not just product reviews. I also see in travel a lot. I'll see location specific reviews, reviews for a day trip from Cancun or review for a restaurant in Miami. No, people may go to Pinterest and they may be planning their Miami vacation and Pinterest may be feeding them pins about Miami. But I'm not doing research on specific restaurants. Maybe something like the 50 most mind blowing restaurants in Miami. Maybe. But even then, I think you're asking these who, what, where, why questions. Especially in travel, it's real important to say like who is this person with? Are they there with kids? Because if they're there with kids, they're not going to the same restaurants as the people without kids. Are they there on a budget weekend? Because if they're there on a budget weekend, they're not going to the same restaurants as the people who are there on their once in a lifetime, you know, flash vacation. And so you have to answer these questions on the pin, I think. And by doing that, you do reduce your pile of people that are interested, which is okay to a certain point. But. But no reviews specifically for single products or single locations or singular experiences. They're very no on Pinterest.
- [37:41]
A
As far as performing well. As far as performing well, they're still great to include. Cause if you create a roundup of ideas of like restaurants, right? And then you can do an individual review.
- [37:53]
B
Now it's different.
- [37:54]
A
Users love that. And it's great for ad revenue, right? Revenue.
- [37:57]
B
If you've got the top, you know, the top 12 day trips from Cancun and you've been on every one of those and you have a blog post about every one of those, now you're converting those people into people who are going on those trips. You know, the small percentage of your readers that you need to convert to actually make money, that blog post will do that. You will get the click first that you need to get and you won't get the click. If your pin. If you are planning a vacation to Cancun and your pin is like, you know, the best swim with Dolphins in Cancun versus right next to somebody else's. Pin the 12 best day trips for families from Cancun or 12 unforgettable day trips from families from. That one's going to get clicked every time over this one. Okay, maybe 99 times out of a hundred you get one click, but that one's gonna get clicked because that's the stage of planning that people are at. And then you can lead them to the next thing, the next step, but you gotta get them before you can lead them. And so you need to meet them at their intent, which is not researching day trips with dolphins, it's planning their vacation from the planning stage.
- [39:09]
A
Eventually, if they choose that idea of a day trip swim with dolphins, do you still think there's potential there to capture traffic from people who have landed on that idea?
- [39:21]
B
Like if they engage with your roundup post, will they come back and engage with your, with your more niche post? Yeah, yeah. But again, I think the volume of people is gonna be so small. I mean, but, but if that is paying you, you know, if you're selling $300 day trips and you're making $50 every time you sell one, maybe it's still going to be worthwhile. So it's a question again about the value of the end user that you're converting. And there's very many niches where. I have a ton of posts about postpartum. They do great, those postpartum women. They buy things. Everything they buy pays me 17 cents. So that's too bad. Yeah, like, I mean, you can't, you just can't pay Your bills with $200Amazon checks every month. And if you are only selling products that net you $0.17 per sale, it takes a really long time to make enough money. And so travel, you know, we've used travel example over and over here. Travel is one of those niches where people do spend significant money. Maybe, you know, in that case, maybe there is some benefit. And weddings, that's another niche that we kind of use as an example. And that's another niche. Niche where people do spend significant money. I think if you're talking about fashion and beauty, I mean, there are some people who spend significant money on this, but it's not like travel and weddings where you'll drop $10,000 on a dress or $15,000 on a week at Disney. Like it's. We're not talking about the same kind of money.
- [40:54]
A
That makes sense. So again, it's kind of niche dependent. Always.
- [40:59]
B
It's always.
- [41:02]
A
So That's a caveat there. Well, I think we've kind of covered it all. Yeah. Looking at the notes here, I think so. Yeah. Maybe we're going to like beat this one to death here. But we'll continue to probably talk about intent over upcoming episodes because it's so important and it's something that we see a lot of people miss the mark on. And one of my biggest recommendations for better understanding intent is something we're going to talk about in the next episode. And that's just part of the strategy of really understanding the platform and immersing yourself in the platform. And over time you'll develop an intuition. And of course, if you can be in different niches as well, that's helpful as you can like test different things. But also just being a Pinterest user and really getting to know the platform can go a long ways in developing that intuition of knowing what topics to cover, which ones to avoid. You seem to have that knack, and I just attribute that to just a lot of time and experience of being in the platform, but also visibility and having conversations with other Pinterest creators. It's like again, another great reason to get into a Pinterest community.
- [42:18]
B
Absolutely.
- [42:19]
A
I'm in several and I run my own and there are people in all sorts of different niches and they'll talk about the niche that they're in. They might not reveal their specific site, but it's fascinating to see what's working for them, what isn't working, what's different. So there's a lot that I'm learning just by being in community of different types of Pinterest creators.
- [42:37]
B
Absolutely. And you know, now that you said this, I feel like I have to add, you said, you know, be experimenting with the kinds of content that you're doing. And. And I want to add one thing that I see happen in my community all the time is people have two kinds of content. They'll have their Google content and they'll have their Pinterest content and they'll be frustrated that they've put this amount of effort in and they're getting this amount of results. And it's really important to remember that if you are going to try to pin some Google intent content, content that we talked about it earlier, like, why is my hair not growing? Okay, well, I've got other content that's doing well that could speak to that user. I'm going to pin this. I'm going to see if it does well. And you do that over and over and over again. And you feel like you've put in this much effort. But you need to remember that you really can't count those ones that aren't good Pinterest user intent. You really can't count them towards your effort the same way. So don't let yourself get tricked into thinking like I have a hundred posts on Pinterest and I've pinned 99 of them and only 5 of them are doing well. And that's not fair. I must be shadowbanned. Here we come back to this. Well, no, because you've got 50 good Pinterest posts and 50 Google posts, and let's make sure we look at it through that lens, because maybe you haven't put in you feel like it's a hundred posts of effort, but Pinterest doesn't see it that way. So you just reminded me that I wanted to mention that when you said experimenting. Experimenting is great, but moderate your expectations for those experiments.
- [44:09]
A
That's good advice there. Well, if you have more questions about understanding user intent when it comes to Pinterest that we haven't answered here in this episode, I'd love to hear it. Feel free to reach out to us in one of our communities. Or you can send us an email@pintalkpodcastmail.com hey, thanks for listening to this episode of Pentalk. Head over to pentalkpodcast.com to get the show notes and the resources mentioned. And hey, if you like this episode and want to hear more from us, please rate and review our show. Thanks.