B (3:36)

While you were telling us about John, I would be so curious to ask him. You mentioned ad revenue specifically. And as somebody who has been teaching Pinterest in the space for a really long time, there was a really, a long period of time where people would say to me, but Pinterest doesn't pay as good as Google. The RPMs on Pinterest aren't as good as they are on Google. And I could, I mean, I could still search up a hundred threads in my Facebook group where people said, pinterest not worth your time because the RPMs aren't as good. Well, in 2025, and certainly throughout 2024, I think that we saw a big shift. Advertisers started paying a lot more for Pinterest traffic than they have ever paid before. I don't see any threads anymore where people talk about how Google pays more than Pinterest. And so for people like John who have shifted to Pinterest or who are considering a shift to Pinterest, that shift doesn't have to come with the fear that advertisers might not pay as much for your site on Pinterest as they did on Google because we're seeing massive RPMs for Pinterest traffic, or at least I am. And I've talked to people who are. Do you see that too?

A (4:48)

Yeah, I saw for sure in 2024. A lot of people reporting and showing screenshots of their RPMs by traffic source. And yeah, seeing Pinterest bring in a lot more. I see that myself. One theory I have is that it has something to do with Pinterest continuing to lean more into E commerce.

B (5:09)

Okay.

A (5:10)

How that's all related, I don't know. There's some like underlying technology of tracking and whatnot that, you know, Pinterest has its own built in browser on the app and so there's all sorts of tracking they can do and all sorts of cool solutions they can provide advertisers. And maybe there's some data that's being passed and they're kind of getting around like this cookie gate that's been happening of like browsers dropping cookies, like the Safari browser no longer using cookies. Right. So it makes it really difficult for advertisers to track. Well now Pinterest has, they have their own browser and so they can do their own tracking. That's my theory.

B (5:44)

That is such a cool theory. And I just need to point out that for all of us that kind of hear, hmm, Pinterest is, you know, doing this big E Comm push and we think about it negatively. That's a pretty positive, positive result potentially of their push towards E Comm that is going to affect us positively. When you explain it like that, I've never thought about it that way. So I mean, if you need a silver lining for Pinterest shifting towards E Com, I mean, if they're going to pay me double for every visit, I mean, I realize Pinterest is not paying me, but if my viewers are worth double over what they were worth before, even if E. Com does eat into my traffic a little bit, do I really care? As long as income goes up, right.

A (6:33)

Making up for it with higher RPMs or something.

B (6:35)

That's a really exciting potential shift for 2025.

A (6:39)

Yeah, for sure. One other thing I'm excited about is some changes that we saw Pinterest make kind of towards the end of 2024 and that was they're showing the search volume for all of their interests or idea pages, which is amazing to see. And I'm still wrapping my brain how I'm going to shift my strategy on that. Right now we're still pulling in all that search volume data into pin clicks and so it'll be really cool to be able to start doing some keyword research and interest research and filtering and sorting by volume. So that's exciting versus like the old way of trying to estimate how much search traffic one keyword or topic would get. You would have to like look at Pinterest ads and that doesn't seem very accurate in my testing. And then any other tool that you see that has Pinterest search volume, usually they're getting it based on Google search volume. You just can't compare. That's why I never included in pin clicks. It's just comparing apples and oranges, in my opinion. So that's something that's super exciting. Another thing that they're adding that's blogger friendly, I would say, is their Pinterest trends predict the future. Have you seen this?

B (7:52)

Yes, yes I have. And I do think that, you know, the Pinterest trends predicts the future thing. I mean, obviously they're probably trying to lead us as creators a little bit down a certain path, but, but it's also, you know, if they're telling us that that's the content that we should be creating, that that's the content that they're going to give distribution to, then that's positive for creators and it's kind of demonstrating that Pinterest is still viewing creators in a positive light. I think if they're willing to share more information with us, they know that we see the search volume that they put on there. So yeah, yeah, if they're gonna continue to like see creators as a useful part of their ecosystem, that is very promising.

A (8:37)

Yep. Because I would imagine that they want fresh ideas, fresh pins for their users. And so if they can find ways to give us content creators helpful data points and ways of knowing. All right, if I'm going to create some new pins, what should I focus on next? Well, here's some high search volume keywords and topics people are certainly searching for. And it probably will be a way for some of these searches, people will search them repeatedly. And so Pinterest would definitely want us to create lots of new ideas around that.

B (9:09)

Yeah, yeah. I actually, for the first time ever on a brand new site utilizing Pinterest trends kind of from, from the top of my keyword research starting place the top of my funnel. I've never done that before and it's gone really well.

A (9:23)

So that's crazy.

B (9:25)

Yeah, I know, I know. Cause I, you, you have always used Pinterest threads and obviously for good reason. Because, because you know, I'm seeing it work really well. But speaking of the new site that I used Pinterest trends to do some research for, I have been really excited about how fast we are seeing the potential for new sites to take off on Pinterest in 2025, usually we see the barrier to entry get higher and higher. The more creators are on a platform, the more established the platform is. And yet that does not seem to be the case on Pinterest. Going into 2025, you can get a site going pretty quickly.

A (10:05)

Yeah. And I'd imagine that is on one hand, very inspiring for a lot of people who are just getting started. But also on the other hand, there are people who are well established on Pinterest and they're seeing maybe their traffic has kind of flatlined or maybe it's gone down a little bit. And so it's gotta be frustrating to see these new sites take off really quickly. And hey, like, who's holding you back from starting another site? Oh, no one.

B (10:32)

I feel like I could speak to that. I know, I mean, I totally. So I do, I do have a new site that has taken off really quickly. I also have an old established site that it does fine. It does just fine on Pinterest. But the more time that goes on, the more of a slog it feels, particularly in light of how fast I've seen this new site grow. And in the past few months, I've just had to be honest with myself and say, okay, what have I learned about over the process of this new account that I need to be applying to my old account or considering around my old account? And so, I mean, you're right, there's nothing stopping us from starting new sites. I also believe that in 2025, established accounts should be able to apply some new, relevant 2025 strategies and see growth on their old established accounts, maybe for the first time in a long time.

A (11:28)

Yeah, I like to test new ideas to a degree. And I've got a friend, He's a popular YouTuber, he's doing a lot of videos these days on Pinterest. And I call him my gorilla friend for various reasons. But he likes to test the boundaries. He sees himself as the crash test dummy. And he does stuff that I just wouldn't touch with a site that I am making money from. But I am just fascinated watching him because he's just testing things I would never test. And it's interesting to see some of the results that he's getting from it. So I will often seed him ideas. I'm like, hey, test this, test that, and then he'll run with it. And then he's showing what he's doing. And so it's interesting to watch him do that and then take some of his learnings. And see what would make sense to apply to my own sites.

B (12:18)

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I'm so thrilled that he is willing to try some of these things because, I mean, he's doing this, I imagine, largely with sites that aren't his bread and butter. And unfortunately, the sites that I would want to test these things on, they are, like, you know, pretty important to my bottom line. And so it's really scary to do those. Those things. I'm glad that he's doing them, and hopefully we can all learn as he learned.

A (12:46)

Yeah. So those are some things that we're super excited about for 2025. Now, let's talk about some changes to our strategy in 2025. And in the notes here, I have it in all uppercase and underlined our strategy, because I just wanted to make that note. Like, we're not saying this should be your strategy. We're talking about some changes to Carly and Tony's strategy for 2025. And if some of these ideas seem really interesting to you, feel free to try it if it makes sense. If not, that's okay.

B (13:17)

Yeah, that's a great note. And I mean, just further to what I said before, I think that, you know, none of the changes that I'm making to the strategies that I'm using, and I think this is probably true for you, too. None of these have been things that I just like, lightly, one day I was just like, I better do it this way in 2025. These changes that I'm incorporating this year are the result of literally hours of conversation with you, opening my mind to new ideas that you have presented to me through your course. That. I mean, let's be honest, when I took your course for the first time, I thought, like, well, this guy's got some ideas that are very different than my ideas. And. But opening my mind to some of the ideas inside your course has really helped me to formulate my strategy for 2025. And I didn't just take those suggestions and go run with them now. I've tested them and how they work within the things that I do on Pinterest pretty extensively now at this point. And so, yeah, I mean, listen to the suggestions that we're going to make. Consider them inside your own ability and niche. Always considering everything through the scope of your niche on Pinterest.

A (14:32)

Good advice. Yeah. So, Carly, you started a new site in the last quarter or two of 2024, and it's, like, been crushing it. And all the way, like, through Thanksgiving and Christmas has started to take off because we're recording this towards the end of 2024. Very much leaning in heavily into seasonality with this new site. Is that going to be a big part of your strategy for next year for 2025?

B (14:59)

Yeah. All throughout, I would say all throughout 2024 and even going back into 2023, we have seen the shuffles between seasonal periods on the platform have a broader and broader reach. Meaning that in 2016 or 2017, if you were pinning on pregnancy or postpartum, and I've said this a hundred times over the course of teaching Pinterest, if you were pinning on postpartum, seasonality didn't affect you. Because if you have a baby on Christmas Eve, you are going to read about having a baby on Christmas Eve. Seasonality does not affect you. That's not the case anymore. Not because there aren't still people engaging with these evergreen subjects every day, but because Pinterest has made the discovery of the evergreen subjects less important on their platform. So right now, when someone comes to Pinterest on Christmas Day, it's more important for Pinterest that they discover things in trend seasonally. And so they just put those things in people's face a little bit more. They dial back the evergreen things in these periods of, of high seasonality. And so there will always be a baseline of evergreen traffic. But your baseline instead of, instead of just flowing really steady through the seasonal things, I'm finding that the baseline of seasonal things is pushed down during the season and you feel the effects of it of the season more than you used to. So leaning really hard into every big season, I'm still struggling to find a reason to lean really hard into like New Year's Eve because I don't want to spend a thousand dollars creating content that literally only has a six day season to me is just meh, maybe one post or two posts if I think they have potential. But I'm not gonna really create a lot. So if the season's big enough to justify my investment, even a three week, four week season, that's enough, I think, for me to justify my investment, then I am really leaning hard into seasonality. And I'm also considering ways that I can make my evergreen content seasonal and reuse that same content. Double dip with it, basically.

A (17:18)

Yeah. I don't know if we've had this conversation privately about Pinterest suppressing evergreen pens, because this is something I was talking about in my community just recently, something I've noticed and I don't recall us having this conversation.

B (17:31)

I don't Think we have. I actually was saying it and then feeling like, oh, no, I'm doing that thing where I talk about things that we haven't planned.

A (17:37)

Oh, no, I'm glad you brought it up because I pretty much said the exact same thing. Like, I'm noticing a suppression of more evergreen topics than usual.

B (17:46)

I haven't used the word suppression because to me, that kind of feels intentional or, like, I don't necessarily think it's intentional. I think it's like, oh, it's like the side effect of Pinterest doing what's better for Pinterest. I mean, I guess we could describe that as suppression, I guess, but, like, it still has the potential for resurgence afterwards, I guess, is what I think.

A (18:08)

Yeah. Okay.

B (18:09)

Yeah. Is that what you're seeing?

A (18:10)

Yeah. And there's a lot of people. Yeah, there's a lot of people posting online just saying, hey, I've had a big drop in traffic these last few months since 2024. What's going on? I'm like, yeah, unless you're, like, covering Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff and you're in one of those top, top niches, like, it's. It's probably going to be a big drop in traffic. And that's okay. Like, that's.

B (18:32)

And that's okay. Yeah.

A (18:33)

Mm. And. But it's hard. It's hard when you come from Google traffic, where it's a little more steady all year long. I mean, depending on the niche. Like, obviously if you're in gardening, like, you're gonna see a drop pretty much across most platforms. But I would say in my experience, Google's less volatile in terms of seeing big drops in searches, like, towards the end of the year, like, what I've seen compared to what I've seen here with Pinterest, it's crazy.

B (18:59)

Well, I love so much that we are tracking on the same page with the things that we think. I also, I think, though, it is important that we. That we understand that because Pinterest feeds off of its own. Like, I interact with this Christmas pin. Okay. Now Pinterest shows me another Christmas pin because it feeds off of itself that way. If the drop was this big this year, and this is what I feel like we've been seeing for the last couple years, the drop's this big this year. Next year the drop is this big, and next year, the drop is this big because it's feeding off of itself in that vertical. I don't. Like I said, I don't think it's something they're doing intentionally. Really. It only takes a tiny push to get people going in that direction where they want it to go. There was a time on Pinterest when it was like Google that steady where we didn't see these giant seasonal drops. And I think that's one of the reasons people have been so concerned about them this year, is because they might have been on Pinterest for six, seven, eight years, and they don't remember this happening in the past. And that's because I. I think it didn't happen like this in the past. And it's one of the reasons I'm not gonna fight with it. I'm just gonna embrace seasonality in 2025.

A (20:16)

Yeah. And that's what I've seen some bloggers do. I've seen some bloggers. They will get into. They'll start covering different topics that are very much on point for the season outside of their normal topics that they cover, because they're seeing. Yeah, like, you know, it's like Christmas nails or something. Maybe they've got, like a relationship advice blog. But I'm starting to see them go into these other big niches, especially ones that do really well, really popular during the holiday season. So it's a. It's a strategy that works for people who can pull off all that additional kind of content and they're benefiting from it as a way to, like, make up for that big loss in traffic, which is. It can be really hard if you're making a lot of your revenue from ads. Like Q4. Ad revenue is so amazing for so many bloggers, and it really stinks when our traffic drops significantly from Pinterest during that.

B (21:10)

Yeah, yeah. Last year, in December, my blog made, oh, math is real hard for me four times. So 400% more in December than it made in June or July.

A (21:27)

Jeez.

B (21:28)

So it's. It is a real. But we published seasonal content, and when I say seasonal content, I mean quarter four seasonal content. We published that from, I think, July to October. So we had three months dedicated July, August, September, four months dedicated to publishing seasonal content. Last year, we noticed that it was the seasonal content published towards the beginning of that kind of, like, part of our schedule. The July stuff that took off and did really well. At Christmas, it felt like the stuff published towards the tail end of October went out too late. And this is another thing that is kind of shifting for me in 2025. And it's been. It's been a very, like, active learning experience because last year I was still doing it that way, and it was still working this year. Based on what I've seen in the last six months going into 2025, I'm adjusting my schedule. Instead of publishing and pinning things six to eight months out, I'm looking at that two to three months out window now. Things that I published on my new site 8 to 12 weeks out did really well. Versus, versus. Things that I published one to two weeks out, that was not enough time on a new account for it to pick up and do well. So I think it does still need to be a little bit further out than that. So I'm going with eight to 12 weeks. I also published seasonal stuff on my main site six to eight months out. I am seeing some of that pick up now. But last year the six to eight months out stuff had already picked up at this time, whereas now I'm just seeing it pick up now. I don't know if there was as much benefit to publishing it as far out as I did. And partly I think that's due to the fact that it's all Christmas stuff, no Thanksgiving stuff. And there was more room for Thanksgiving.

A (23:19)

Stuff up till now, which is like, what, December 2nd at the time of this recording. So, like, that's what now is.

B (23:26)

Yeah, it's December 2nd. Did I miss out on a lot of traffic this year on my main site by putting all my effort into Christmas stuff six months out? Instead of just doing, you know, some Christmas like we're already doing, we're doing evergreen stuff again this period for the last few years, we do evergreen things. That evergreen stuff could have been published in June and it might be doing well in January had I done that. So that's a change for me in 2025. I'm moving closer to the holiday with my content.

A (24:01)

So are you also going to do. You know, you mentioned you might do a couple of things like on New Year's, but what about these other holidays, like Valentine's Day, Easter? Like, are you leaning hard into those as much as you did with like, Thanksgiving and Christmas?

B (24:16)

So I think that's niche dependent. I think it's niche dependent. I also think that in every niche we should be asking ourselves, okay, what kind of content can I create that can do well at this time of year now? I mean, in travel, maybe you're gonna have to work hard to get a lot of Easter content, or maybe not, because maybe there's a lot of, like, pilgrimages that happen at Easter. I don't know. I don't know. That's the kind of thing that you have to ask in your niche? For the niche that I'm in, I have identified Valentine's and Easter content that we are working on. I won't be putting the same investment into Valentine's and Easter as I put into quarter four because the RPMs are lower then and it'll take longer to get my investment back. But there's still some consideration, you know, like if I did 50 blog posts for quarter four, I might be going for 10 for Valentine's and Easter. Okay, what about you? How do you approach that?

A (25:17)

In the niches that I'm in, I spent less time targeting all the different holidays and seasons. I did more on the season side of things versus the holiday side of things. But I'm going all in on finding that holiday angle. Are you with everything? Yeah. Let's just throw a Christmas version of this out there and see what it does. So I'm testing that out more in 2025. I want to get those pens out like yeah, I guess, but maybe a little bit closer than what you were doing. So like within, like within eight weeks on that. And for newer accounts that I'm starting, I'll start earlier. I'll probably go with your, like your 12 week.

B (25:58)

I do think there is something to be said. Yeah. Between new accounts and old accounts. Old accounts that already have established reach certainly can see pins pinned in the one week period before the holiday pick up and do well. That's, you know, it has been the case that way for a long time. When I say my new account, I mean it's really new. We haven't reached the three month mark yet. And so I wasn't disappointed with the Thanksgiving pins that we were still getting out like one week before Thanksgiving that didn't do well but didn't have high expectations for those ones.

A (26:32)

Okay. Do you think there's a chance next year for em?

B (26:34)

I do, yeah. Because I'm still seeing on. On my main old established account, I'm still seeing traffic. Now on things we published last year. I tend to find that the, you know, you'll get the sort of massive blip up in traffic either the first year you publish something or the second year that you publish something and then every year following that it'll be a tiny bit less. But you could still be talking about five, six years of meaningful traffic for that one article that you've published, Right?

A (27:09)

Yeah. Especially for the evergreen stuff.

B (27:11)

Well, no, even for the seasonal stuff too.

A (27:13)

Well, meaning like evergreen content you could say, versus like trend oriented stuff. Like. So I think we talked about this before like, like fashion, you know, that's more trend oriented, Right, Sure. Home decor. And so it's harder to get a longer lifespan from those pins.

B (27:30)

Yep. I absolutely understand what you're saying. I don't routinely publish trends that die. And so I forget that that works that way, but it makes sense.

A (27:40)

Yeah, yeah, I know. And that's, that's one of the things that's different about the kind of topics that we're covering and what's great about when we come together and have these conversations.

B (27:48)

Absolutely.

A (27:49)

It changes our strategy and approach a little bit.

B (27:52)

Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, another thing that I'm doing in 2025 that is different than anything before is I'm using pin clicks, which is the keyword research tool that you have developed. And you know, sometimes when I think about this, it still makes me laugh because I emailed you this week and I said, hey, there's this thing that I'd really like to see in Pink clicks. Can you put it there? And you said like, yeah, I can put it. I can add that to pink clicks. It's still kind of crazy to me that I have had this dream of this keyword research tool for so long and then now you've just made it and it's just here. Exactly how I always wanted it to be.

A (28:32)

Yeah. It's been my plan all along. Build the tool that Carly would use. It's worked out nicely. But, you know, the more that I, I built it, the more ideas that I'm generating for it. Like, you know, I've been creating content for Pinterest for a long time, but I'm just, I've got a new set of eyes with the platform based on all the things that I'm building with the tool. So, yeah, for sure. I'm leaning more into some of the tools that we have now and some of the ones that we're launching in 2025, like, we're tracking all sorts of things with the search results and we're tracking volume, as I mentioned, and I'm curious to see if I start targeting higher volume topics only, what will that do now? I'd imagine, you know, there's going to be more competition there, but it depends on the niche. Right. If it's one of those niches that's like more trend oriented and Pinterest and users love to see fresh ideas then even if there is a lot of competition, that's okay because it's not that zero sum game that I've talked about, like with Google, where it's like this, you know, number one ranking and that's it. Like you're not going to get much traffic outside of that. It's like Pinterest and their search and even the home feed is like constantly rotating through different pins and new ones. So finding ways to leverage pin clicks to do more of that. I'm excited about showing more like shopping results within the tool to understand. Well, the feature you asked for is to show if a pen is if it's a repin or not. Right. To understand if the pin that you see ranking in picture search logged out is from the original account owner or is it from someone who repinned it. So that would be interesting. And I'm gonna like also I've got big plans to do all sorts of like big data analysis to find some really interesting trends that we were seeing on a micro and macro level and publish those as like reports for the community to read. See what kind of interesting insights we can get and just leveraging all that pin clicks data that we're capturing.

B (30:36)

Yeah, I can't wait. Wait for that.

A (30:38)

Yeah, it will be. Hopefully it's eye opening. I don't know, I mean there's no one's ever really done any sort of reports like these. We'll find out.

B (30:46)

You know what I really want to see? I want to stop talking about those zero volume search keywords or low volume keywords. We will find ones in there where we'll be like, but that's a great keyword. It might be zero volume, but it's a great keyword. And then I want to target those ones really hard with boards that nobody else has created and articles that nobody else has created. And I want to see if that search volume is based on people actually typing those words into Pinterest or if a lot of it is that Pinterest has guided people to that search. And if we create the things that nobody else has created and they are fitting inside of the greater trend that we can see is doing well, then will Pinterest start to guide people to those words that we are targeting and it will just funnel off the traffic inside those searches. And I, I believe that's how it works because I've seen Pinterest create interest pages around my words that didn't exist before and then have had those go on to become wildly popular pins on Pinterest. But I've never been able to see the data and watch it happen. And so pin clicks is gonna allow us to do that, right?

A (32:10)

Yep. Yeah, you'll be able to watch your Ranking changes.

B (32:14)

Yeah.

A (32:15)

You know, it's an interesting idea. It makes sense where if you can. This was a whole strategy with Google. Like there are people out there who target the 0 search volume keywords super long tail and they would get traffic for it. I never really did that. I don't know how it works, but it works for a lot of people.

B (32:33)

I think you have to have the intuition and I know you would. I'm not saying everybody would. You have to have the intuition for. Is this a word that people are actually interested in and would search it if they thought to. Right. There's a lot of things that are zero volume because nobody cares and you can't target those things.

A (32:51)

Yeah, right, right, right. That makes sense. Yeah. So I mean, if it's like a certain kind of recipe that someone is searching for, it's very specific, but it's connected to a broader one of like healthy meals. But I guess like a couple hundred searches a month maybe or less. But you can tie it to that broader search. And no one else has created this recipe before because they're not bothering to target it. Yeah. You can see that there's a big advantage not only doing well in search for that broader keyword, but also then in the home feed if it does well in search.

B (33:25)

Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's something that pin clicks is going to allow us to be able to and then maybe it's a terrible strategy that'll never work and pinclicks will be able to help us identify if that's true or not.

A (33:35)

Another one that I want, I'm anxious to launch for pin clicks is we talked about this privately and that is Pinterest is showing a score for how like product oriented a keyword is a search result is. Remember that email conversation we had about that?

B (33:52)

I hadn't thought about it again until you said it now, but yeah, yeah.

A (33:55)

So I want to integrate that into pin click. So as you're doing your keyword research, we'll tell you how, you know, e commerce or product oriented that keyword is. And like Pinterest literally has a score that I can pull and show you and if it's high enough score meaning it's very product oriented, as a content creator, I would probably avoid.

B (34:20)

Avoid them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if you have no potential for ranking there without a product, then your time is going to be better spent elsewhere.

A (34:29)

Yeah. And so a lot of content creators saw a drop in traffic in 2024 because of that shift. That interest has continued to make of showing More product oriented pins that used to show more content oriented pins. So you gotta watch out for that this year.

B (34:44)

Yes. Most of the things we talked about for 2025 are really positive changes. This is one that, I mean, I guess if you're able to give us that information from pin clicks, maybe it won't feel like such a negative because it'll just be a difference rather than something that we feel like we're fighting against. Yeah, yeah.

A (35:03)

Now it's just gonna shift your direction towards another keyword that's more, you know, content creator friendly.

B (35:09)

For sure.

A (35:10)

Yeah. Okay. So another thing I wrote down here for my strategy for 2025 is targeting more site level, like category topics. So for a long time with Google, my background with Google SEO and getting traffic from there is the category pages. At least in my experience they ranked okay in Google. But I would never dare create a blog post that would also overlap with a category, like a top level category. Right.

B (35:43)

Oh, I didn't understand that thing that you were saying when you explained this before.

A (35:47)

Now you understand where I'm coming from.

B (35:49)

I do understand.

A (35:51)

All right, so like got a home decor blog or let's say recipe. So if you have a recipe blog and like one of your top level categories is like dinner recipes. So with my background with Google SEO, I would just have that dinner recipes category and put up anything dinner recipe related into that category and that's it. But now like I'm going to create a listicle post of dinner recipes.

B (36:13)

Ah.

A (36:14)

Even though I have the category page as well. And I will continue to recreate different listicles for dinner recipes. Yeah, it's like a complete shift in how I'm seeing my content creation process and what I can go after.

B (36:29)

Know that was against the Google rules.

A (36:31)

Yeah, it is.

B (36:33)

That's really funny.

A (36:34)

So do more of that because a lot of times those site level categories are, they're broad and so they're. They're also going to get a lot of searches. Sure. And so yeah, there's some big search volume keywords that I have really avoided creating pins for all this time.

B (36:52)

Interesting.

A (36:53)

And now I'm creating pins for em. Yeah.

B (36:55)

Okay. And and yet some of those broadest, highest volume words, I would say you've avoided creating pins for them. And yet I would think like, oh well, no, you should create 150 pins over time. You should create multiple URLs. Targeting those things over time. Can't. Can't have enough.

A (37:17)

Yeah, that's right. So yeah, doing that and just retargeting all those big popular topics and maybe do some targeting with some of the smaller long tail like and there's one big niche that I'm in. It's got like, I want to say a million long tail keywords, maybe not that much. I could probably look it up in pin clicks and it's like where do we start with? We're starting with ones that have related interests associated with them. So I'm using the interest Explorer tool to target for the long tail, target these interests. And I'm targeting ones that have related interests because that tells us, okay, Pinterest kind of understands what this is about and understands that this topic is related to that topic. And so because they're connected, our theory was they might get more distribution. And so I'm looking at stuff like that and then now search volume like that's going to be helpful and interesting to look and see and to see if. Yeah, if targeting like it's going to help me basically filter down this list of a million possible keywords I could go after because that's a lot of keywords. So prioritizing and knowing where to prioritize and that would. It's been a double edged sword with pin clicks in that we're getting exposed to more keywords on the platform that we can target. It's great. It's like, okay, how do you prioritize?

B (38:32)

I would also just suggest for the average person listening who already has a Pinterest account, like prioritize what has performed well for you in the past. If you have topics that have done really well, knowing that Pinterest distributes by relationship, do more of what has performed well in the past.

A (38:54)

Yeah, that's a good advice right there. Another thing that I am not going to be doing more of that has been working well for me and that is I'm not going to create quite as many boards. Well, I'm kind of running into the issue where you have a limitation how many boards you can create. Right. So I've been doing some board pruning and I'm going to now I'm making space for new types of boards that are influenced by your strategy, kind of combined with my strategy. So I have a team of VAs who help me with my Pinterest process. And so they're going in, I've given them some tutorials on what to do and look for and they're going in and they're pruning boards and we're getting rid of some pens like pens that complete duds like yeah, it's Been five years and they had like, literally zero impressions. Zero.

B (39:46)

I'm very excited to hear how it goes for you about that because I'm. I'm doing similar, but not to the extent you did. You deleted 30 boards already, right?

A (39:55)

Yeah, at least.

B (39:56)

At least. Okay. That's a big number. But I'm on the same page as you. I think it's. Right. It's funny to me to hear you say in 2025 you're gonna use slightly fewer boards, and that's because of conversations with me. Because of course, like on the flip side of that, in 2025, I'm gonna use more boards, and that's directly because of conversations with you. And so.

A (40:16)

I know, Right.

B (40:17)

So here, I think we should refer people back to that boards episode that we did. What episode was that?

A (40:22)

Oh, I don't know. We can check. We'll link it up.

B (40:25)

Okay. Yeah, we'll link it. Because the boards thing, it's certainly not as simple as just saying, make less boards or make more boards. It's a whole conversation that we have had and there seems to be maybe a good middle ground that both of us are working towards this year.

A (40:43)

Yeah. And so with that, I'm creating more URLs. So I'm working on. It's a balance. Right. So I typically create a lot of pens. And so what I've done is I do mainly listicle content. And so I'm making my listicles smaller from the beginning when I first publish a listicle. But I'm publishing more variety of these listicles. Right. So instead of two blog posts a day with like 25 post pens that I'm creating for it, because there's 25 items in my listicle, I'm creating, you know, like four posts a day with fewer, like 10 or 15 listicle items. And then whichever one, like, catches on more, we'll go and add more ideas to that listicle.

B (41:31)

Yeah, I absolutely love it. And I've actually done a similar thing this year. We have moved forward with, for example, if you think that you need the number 40 in a listicle to be competitive on Pinterest, we will still make our pins that say 40. We will still put 20 of our own ideas in. And then if I don't have my next my own 20 other ideas to make the 40, we will link out to third party ideas, knowing that if that post becomes popular on Pinterest and there's more potential for me in that vertical, you know, whatever the list post was, then we will add the next 20 later. Our own 20 later. And so. So just reducing the time investment in pieces of content, which is. Sounds exactly like, you know what you're doing. I think that's going to be big in 2025, because what I am seeing going into 2025 is that for me, more URLs than what I was introducing before is necessary now. You are already introducing way more URLs than I was and you are still feeling like more URLs is better, is that right?

A (42:46)

Yeah. I mean, look how many new URLs you introduced to the platform with your new site that's taken off.

B (42:52)

Yeah, it's about. Well, we've been pinning for about 75, 80 days, and we did at least one per day, except for about 10 days where I dropped the ball. And during the first two weeks I introduced at least two a day. So we're probably over a hundred URLs in 80 days. And. And that's been great. I believe that similar results could have been achieved with one a day or with, you know, a little bit less than one a day. So I don't know that one a day is necessary. I also believe that greater results could have been achieved with double. That's currently kind of where my mindset is on this.

A (43:41)

Yeah. Which we've talked about. That can be a little overwhelming for some content creators.

B (43:47)

Absolutely. It was overwhelming for me when I started thinking about it, but I needed to challenge myself to, well, to overcome the limitations that I created in my own mind for these things. And that was really good. And that. That's. I'll blame you for that also. Thank you for that. I don't want to give anybody the impression that if they can't do more, they're doomed to failure, but it's really liberating to be in a place where if you can say to yourself, okay, I can do more, then that can just allow you faster success. So we're still seeing Pinterest accounts grow by posting one URL a week over the course of eight months. And then at eight months, those accounts just start to take off. But now I'm believing that that is not so much a function of time passing as it is to finally getting to enough URLs to have made a difference.

A (44:46)

Yeah, that's a big shift. Yeah, that's a big shift.

B (44:48)

Yeah, it's been a big shift for me in my mind.

A (44:51)

So there, you know, there are ways to go about creating more URLs. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to. If you want to double the number of URLs, doesn't mean you have to double, like the amount of content you're creating. Like, you can always leverage your existing content. You have some great training on how to do that. There's AI for those who are leveraging AI as a tool to help with the content creation process. There's low cost outsourcing that you could help with. Providing the content, creating the content. So there are options out there and sometimes you just have to, like, roll up your sleeves and do a little bit more work for a period of time and doing some, like, calculations on what's worth, like leaning in and creating more content around during the year. In other parts of the year, you can kind of slow down a little bit if you need to. You know what I mean? Doesn't mean you have to like go crazy all year long increasing your content velocity. So there's also that.

B (45:52)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if, if I had to focus on, you know, just creating content, sometimes I would just choose my biggest holidays in my niche and I would just make content around those and accept the drops in between. Like, you know, going back to what we said before, it's. It's a change to go from having steady traffic all the time and then all of a sudden learning to live with these drops. It's actually been a really liberating change. Also another liberating change because on this new site that I'm working on, I've gone really hard on seasonal traffic and I knew before the drop even happened that there would be a bit of a drop after Thanksgiving. And knowing that it was going to happen and knowing that the Christmas content is already ready and waiting there in the wings and I can already see it starting to climb just took all the stress out of the job.

A (46:44)

Yeah. Now what are you going to do for New Year's or I guess maybe the day after Christmas? Are you just going to, like, log out of Pinterest and not look at your analytics for the next month?

B (46:55)

Well, we have been building out evergreen content the whole time that we have been building out our seasonal content. And so even though there's a drop after Thanksgiving, the drop wasn't to zero. The evergreen content has, you know, it's retained some, some traffic and that will continue to build because the evergreen content, you know, it'll continue. Actually, we already published some, some January and February seasonal content and we have a little bit more coming. But yeah, I'm, I'm expecting lower traffic through January and I'm not gonna be sad about it when it happens, because it's part of my strategy now.

A (47:34)

Right, yeah, yeah. I thought it was super clever how you used evergreen content for the holiday stuff and you get to benefit from the evergreen stuff all throughout the year.

B (47:44)

Yeah, yeah, it's been fun. It's been really fun.

A (47:48)

All right, so let's move on to the last part here. And that's our predictions for changes to the platform in 2025. So 2024 had a lot of changes, and there are those years where every once in a while Pinterest will just come out with some big changes. Do you think 2025 is going to be one of those years?

B (48:09)

I think we're going to see more of the same. But just like, you know, for example, we felt the seasonal shuffles bigger this year than we have felt them in the past. I think they're going to continue to get bigger than what we have already seen them, partly because there's more competition coming to the platform all the time. And, you know, then we have this conversation and people hear, okay, we gotta make more seasonal content. Well, that's just gonna speed the seasonal content fire. The fire is just gonna be bigger every season that goes by. So I do think that we will see more of that in 2025. And I also think that Pinterest is not done performing their own experiments. I mean, as far as their push towards shopping goes, which has been ongoing for years and years and years, it's still ongoing. And they'll continue to perform their own experiments to determine where they can increase their revenue around shopping.

A (49:06)

Yeah, they had some weird ones for 2024, like when they took away the visit button or the read it button, like completely took it away. It was nuts.

B (49:17)

Yeah, I did just in passing read, someone somewhere had commented that Pinterest had replied to them when they asked them about the missing read a button. And one of the Pinterest help people had said that sometimes they're removing that visit button in relationship to link quality, which that is literally the only place I've ever heard this. So there's no real basis for it other than that. But it did make me think, well, then if we increase our time on page and our link quality goes up, then we will not necessarily be a victim of this experiment. And that makes sense. If you owned Pinterest and people were bouncing off of a site repeatedly, would you really want to send people to that site?

A (50:05)

Right. No. Nope. And the question is, how long will it take for Pinterest to recognize that? I think that window will Continue to get shorter and shorter. Like, I know someone who started a newer site and it's doing really well right now, but their time on page is really bad. And I know that, like, for that niche, I know the niche, it should be higher. And I think at some point Pinterest is going to have enough data and they're going to like refresh some data in their algorithm and it may suppress their pins from it because it's not a great engagement.

B (50:43)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that that is entirely possible.

A (50:48)

Yeah. So that time window might speed up. Right now it might be a lag of say like three to six months, but for 2025 they could shorten that window. Yeah, we'll see.

B (50:58)

Interesting.

A (50:59)

Yeah. I really hope Pinterest doesn't make a big shift like Google has made with relying so much on AI for their algorithms that even Google has admitted they can't explain why a website is ranking number one. They can't actually tell you, like looking at the data. They used to be able to do that, but now they can't. Like, it's in the hands of an AI and it's kind of gotten a little loose and out of control in some ways where they're not ranking sites, the AI is not ranking sites and they don't understand why. They believe those sites should be ranking very highly, but they're not. And they can't figure it out and they can't control it.

B (51:40)

It's so like this is my lived experience because recently we were on vacation and we were like looking for places to eat in certain locations and we would do Google searches and we'd get nothing but like reviews from 2011 or whatever. And then like the places don't even exist anymore. And it was really, really frustrating. And I found myself trying to remember how we learned things and did stuff before Google. And I, I can't imagine that the people at Pinterest are looking at Google right now going, we gotta do more of what they're doing, because I'm sure that that's not good for a revenue.

A (52:22)

Yeah, no, Google is not getting great press for their search engine right now. So hopefully Pinterest will not be taking any cues from them. Yeah, right now, I mean, Pinterest is benefiting from it because they have a high authority domain and site and so they're ranking pretty high on Google these days. Interesting. And I pointed out to you, before we started recording, there is one page I found that's ranking number three for a huge keyword and it's a board that's ranking and the last time it was updated was five years ago and it's got all the pins on it.

B (52:55)

Old, outdated information. That Google's ranking.

A (52:57)

Yes, I know. And it's in a trend niche. So like all of the pins are outdated. I bet when people come to this page they're just like, what in the world? Why, why am I seeing all these pins? They look so old and they bounce back. But that little dial that the AI algorithm has on the authority of the Pinterest website and overall they probably have a really good engagement rate on the site that some of these lower performing pages are sneaking up in the top of the rankings where they should not be. And Google recognizes that. They just don't know how to fix it.

B (53:33)

Wow. Boy. But if you have identified that you have a board ranking on Google right now, then I would think like make sure that you are putting your best foot forward on that board. Because if your board's ranking and you have the ability to add new content to that board right now, that's a money train. So make sure you're taking some time to. If you have a lot of, especially a lot of traffic coming into an old pin and you can't determine why, maybe take some time and check could this traffic be coming from Google? You know, could it be up? Poor choice on Google's part. And then take some time and update that board.

A (54:18)

Yeah, good idea. Yeah, just take that keyword search Google, see what pops up. So one of the other things I'm predicting for Pinterest is more organic placement for E commerce pins. I'm starting to see them test out special slots like on search results for E commerce. Anything like E commerce related. It's like a, its own guided search. It's like an additional guided search specifically for these shoppable pens and E commerce pens. And so that's just on the search search results. Yeah, I did not put that out too.

B (54:56)

Right. Because then there'd be a place for. Am I understanding this correctly? There'd be a place for informational based content for those people who want it. Right alongside a place to shop for the people who want it.

A (55:07)

Yeah, hopefully that'd be cool if they divide it up like that. Yeah.

B (55:11)

Is that how you're seeing it right now? I haven't seen this what you're talking about.

A (55:14)

I think in the examples that I saw they were all like E commerce pins. Yeah. And E commerce. Yeah, like a visual guided search with like pictures and everything interesting and not the colored filter bubbles. So I'm Seeing them test that out and I don't know if it performs well for them. I see them rolling that out. There's search right there. And then of course there's other areas in the platform that they could do that on, like the related pin section, they could do it on the home feed. They can really expand guided search for E Com, so just be on the lookout for that.

B (55:48)

And I would avoid targeting those keywords.

A (55:52)

Yeah. And that's where pink, like I want to be able to like show you that at least for search inside pink clicks to again help you avoid those. If you're not doing ecom, that would be very cool. Yeah.

B (56:03)

All right, what else do you see happening for 2025?

A (56:07)

Yeah, so they've been rolling out AI tools for their ads. Right. So and then also for like their large scale E commerce clients where you can like basically do a product placement in a pen and you can have them like do the pen design using AI.

B (56:28)

Okay. Yeah.

A (56:30)

Okay. So they're doing that for E Comm. They've got collage pens that they're providing for regular users. And at some point, I don't know, I see them launching some like AI generation for regular users to generate like a unique idea for a pen like based on existing pens. So interesting. That could come in like the tail end of 2025, but they've done a lot of announcements around E comm and less about their platform experience for regular users. And so with all these companies, CTAC companies these days coming out with cool AI tools, I think they're going to jump on that bandwagon and they're really going to be promoting some AI tools for regular users.

B (57:14)

Interesting. I wonder if those will really affect us because I think it'll be the people, whoever these people are, who use Pinterest visually, like and only visually, the people who already didn't care about what might be on the other side of the pin that use those. Because the people who are using it to find information on the other side of the pin, they'll still want to do that, I think.

A (57:41)

Yeah. So it's kind of like with Google AI overviews, it's going to use AI to generate kind of like a longer answer. Right. And then it has links to the sources that it used for it, you know, so Pinterest could lean into something like that. Of course, if it hurts creators to a point, I think they'll dial that, that back a bit. But I wouldn't put it past them to test out some of these things.

B (58:07)

That'Ll be Interesting to see.

A (58:09)

Yeah.

B (58:09)

Conversations like this used to give me a lot of trepidation. They don't bother me as much anymore.

A (58:14)

Why is that?

B (58:15)

I think because after eight years of saying like, this is it, this is a year that Pinterest turns off the traffic tab and then having that never happen. As long as you were willing to adjust your strategy, I still believe that one day it could happen. Just like, you know, we've seen other platforms and traffic for creators, I believe it could happen. I believe that as long as we're willing to be flexible that it's unlikely to happen immediately. Pinterest is like, we've talked about this before. They're like a giant ship. They have investors, they can't. They do not have the luxury of flipping a button and changing their entire business model right now. And right now a large portion of their business model is still creator supplied content that people interact with that Pinterest uses to learn about the people that they are having on their platform. And I'm just. Does not worry me the way that it used to.

A (59:21)

Well, that's good.

B (59:23)

Yeah, it's a nice, it's a nice feeling.

A (59:27)

One of the things I put on here that, well, we kind of talked about this earlier and that's a faster shift from one season to the next. Before we started recording, I was complaining about how if you go right now, if you're logged out of Pinterest and you go to this is December 2nd and if you're logged out and you go to like the Explorer tool, you'll see in the top navigation they still have Thanksgiving as a link and it's like, what? And I see them do that all the time. Like Halloween, the same thing. It was like a week before you finally started to see Halloween stuff drop out. But I don't understand why it takes so long. I'm hoping they'll have that figured out in 2025.

B (60:05)

Yeah, because it would help us recover more quickly when the season ends. Because the drop between Halloween and I don't, I didn't actually have any Halloween content, but I was still seasonally affected by the shuffle after Halloween because those seasonal shuffles affect everybody. Like we were talking about earlier, the drop between Halloween and Thanksgiving, it took about a full week for my account to recover and, and the account was even newer at that point, so. So it didn't have as far to drop. I expect that this drop between Thanksgiving and Christmas will take a full week to recover. But if Pinterest was suggesting people, you know, go visit this Christmas content versus this Thanksgiving content, which they're not interested in. So they're not clicking it. Cause Thanksgiving's over.

A (60:51)

So.

B (60:52)

So if they were suggesting relevant things to them, our recovery would be quicker and it would make more sense for the platform. So it would be really great if we saw that happen in 2025.

A (61:01)

Yeah, for sure. And hopefully they'll continue to alongside that, just provide more tools for us content creators. I can't think of anything in particular they might start showing, but I don't know, maybe they'll bring back more emphasis on followers. And we talked about this in a previous episode. Yeah, that's what I would do. I hope to see it in 2025. That as you can, especially your follower rate. Like how quickly, like if, if a hundred people get introduced to your pin, how likely of those a hundred people are to start following you. And if you've got a really high follow rate, especially for a new account, then it's going to start showing know more of your pins faster. So I hope they ramp that up a little bit more.

B (61:47)

One thing that we have never talked about, I guess I've never brought it up because it's always been kind of irrelevant to me because I currently view Pinterest through the lens of followers don't matter that much. But if this was to change, one thing that, that I noticed on my new account is that they show for every pin. They show you how many profile visits that pin has brought to your account. That's a relatively new piece of information, but it does sort of suggest emphasis on what you're saying, that maybe followers could have more value in the future than they have now. And so just further to that, I think that I would like to say, and I've found myself saying a lot lately in conversation with people, if you're listening to us talk and you're thinking, oh, maybe a new account would benefit me, like, go ahead and start a new account. But you don't have to delete your old account that has all your old followers on it. Because if Pinterest suddenly one day says like, oh, no followers, super important, there's nothing to stop you from popping back over that old account that has 150,000 followers versus this new one that only has three. Just, I mean, there's no rule that says. There's a rule that says you can't have your URL claimed on both at the same time time. There's no rule that says you can't just leave that account sitting there, hold on to those followers. You could even Start a group board on the new account, add the old account to it, and pin in front of those followers in the future if you wanted to.

A (63:21)

Oh, my goodness, Carly, you're giving away too much.

B (63:24)

Okay? It's a big secret.

A (63:25)

Don't do that. It's all right. Yeah. So the last thing I have down here that is showing which pins are generated by AI. So, yeah, I've got some really compelling evidence that Pinterest has already started to do this in their tracking. They can't track every AI generated pin, but there are certain AI generation tools that have, like in the metadata of the image that they add in there that basically it was generated with AI. And so if that metadata is on the image and you upload it to Pinterest, Pinterest is reading that. And then now they're starting to store behind the scenes about that pin that it was generated by an AI. And they're even in some cases, I've seen them test labeling the pen that was AI generated. So that might be rolled out more broadly this year.

B (64:25)

I imagine we have different feelings about how that might affect our businesses, but I have personally been hoping this would happen for a really long time.

A (64:34)

Yeah, I know, I know.

B (64:36)

Sorry. I know. I'm. I believe as a human that it's fair if humans are looking at AI and they know that it's AI generated. I just think it's. I think it's fair that we share that information.

A (64:54)

Yeah, I can see that for sure.

B (64:57)

I realize that it will affect the platform in a number of ways. We will see that either people don't care that this niche is AI and they will keep engaging with it and then like will follow like, and there will be, you know, a broader distribution of AI there or we'll see that in some niches people don't like AI and they won't engage with it and like will follow like. I don't actually think that Pinterest themselves are going to take a stand on AI. I think that it will be user directed about what kind of pins surface on Pinterest. And I think that, like, I think that's okay.

A (65:37)

Yeah. And so if you want to learn more about Carly's thoughts and my thoughts on AI on the platform, that was, I don't remember what episode number. It was like two. It was pretty early on. Yeah.

B (65:50)

Episode two. Yeah.

A (65:51)

Yeah. But just know the caveat to that is we recorded that before I saw this AI labeling on the platform.

B (65:59)

So with that caveat, I mean, not to put you on the spot, but If Pinterest labels AI broadly, do you think that that will cause you to adjust your strategy with AI, or would it at least cause you to rethink your use of AI, or will you need to wait and see how it shakes out with the users?

A (66:20)

Yeah, it's not adjusting anything for my strategy because I already take out all that metadata, so none of my pins are being labeled. And so yeah, that's really easy to do. Just don't directly export out of your AI generation tool and directly upload it to Pinterest. Take it to like Photoshop or Canva or something first and then do an export. Yeah, and that's how you get around it. So I'm not worried about it, but we'll see how it shakes out. I think I had mentioned in that episode, like we should make this a yearly episode of let's Talk about AI on the Platform. So I'm sure we're talking about again.

B (66:55)

Yeah, because it is going to change so much so fast. Yearly might not even be enough.

A (67:02)

Yeah, that's true. Cool. Well, that wraps up our list here. Hey, if there's any prediction you have for the platform 2025, we'd love to hear about it. You can send us an email@pentalkpodcastmail.com or post it in one of our communities if you're in a community. And thanks for listening and we hope that you have a very fruitful year in 2025 with Pinterest. 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.