The Pinterest Strategy You Need for 2025 with Heather Farris

Summary

The Mindful Marketing Podcast: A Comprehensive Summary of “The Pinterest Strategy You Need for 2025” with Heather Farris

Released on March 18, 2025

Hosts:

• Andréa Jones – Mindful Marketing Strategist
• Guest: Heather Farris – Pinterest Strategy Expert

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1. Introduction to Pinterest in 2025

Andréa Jones opens the episode by expressing excitement about delving deep into Pinterest strategies with guest Heather Farris. Emphasizing a shift from platforms like Instagram, Andréa positions Pinterest as a less stressful and more authentic alternative for marketers.

Andréa Jones [00:00]:

“If you are Pinterest Curious Pinterest interested, this episode is for you because we're going all the way in on Pinterest strategies.”

2. The Relevance of Pinterest Today

Heather Farris underscores Pinterest’s unique position in the social media landscape. Unlike the ever-changing algorithms and politically charged content of platforms like Meta, Pinterest offers a serene and stable environment for content marketing.

Heather Farris [01:53]:

“It is not one of those apps where you have to get dressed and do your makeup and your hair in order to film content... It's just like cozy and it’s a lot less stressful.”

3. Ideal Businesses for Pinterest

Farris elaborates on the types of businesses that can thrive on Pinterest. While traditional categories like home decor, fashion, and food are prominent, Pinterest’s evolving search capabilities now accommodate a broader range of niches, including B2B sectors.

Heather Farris [02:57]:

“There’s space for service providers, coaches, course creators... even B2B businesses because Pinterest is a search engine.”

4. Understanding Pinterest’s Search-Based Nature

A core differentiator of Pinterest is its search functionality. Unlike purely social platforms, Pinterest acts as a hybrid between social media and a search engine, allowing for detailed indexing of images, videos, and text.

Heather Farris [05:15]:

“Everything search is like index based on what's in the image, the actual image. They can read the image and index even the images in it...”

5. Content Longevity on Pinterest

Pins on Pinterest have a much longer lifespan compared to posts on other social media platforms. Farris shares analytical insights demonstrating that top-performing pins can remain relevant and drive traffic years after they are initially posted.

Heather Farris [10:41]:

“Years. And I keep using this phrase 'park your content' because it will serve for years.”

6. Enhancing Conversion Rates with Pinterest Traffic

Addressing concerns about Pinterest traffic not converting as effectively, Farris emphasizes the importance of aligning Pinterest strategies with various stages of the buyer's journey. By directing traffic to conversion-friendly pages like lead magnets, products, and service pages, businesses can improve their conversion rates.

Heather Farris [25:45]:

“We need to be creating content across the buyer journey. We can’t just create content for the awareness phase...”

7. Leveraging AI for Pinterest Strategy

AI plays a dual role on Pinterest. While AI-generated images may not resonate well with users, AI tools can significantly enhance workflow and strategy development. Farris discusses utilizing AI bots and tools like ChatGPT to streamline Pinterest marketing efforts.

Heather Farris [28:49]:

“AI when it comes to workflows and writing copy and generating ideas for your Pinterest strategy is a different story.”

8. Essential Tools for Pinterest Marketing

Farris highlights crucial tools that facilitate Pinterest marketing, notably Canva and Tailwind. She discusses how these platforms aid in pin creation, scheduling, and optimizing content for maximum reach and engagement.

Heather Farris [31:50]:

“My favorite tool when it comes to tools for Pinterest, there’s two Canva and Tailwind.”

9. The Future Outlook for Pinterest

Pinterest is evolving with a strong emphasis on content creators and e-commerce. Under new leadership focused on integrating shopping experiences and supporting long-form content, Pinterest aims to enhance its value for both creators and consumers without becoming overly intrusive.

Heather Farris [33:45]:

“The future is bright for content creators... they are bringing back the ability for people’s blogs to be seen.”

10. Resources and Getting Started

Heather Farris offers a free Pinterest strategy guide, updated annually, which includes comprehensive resources on creating pins, scheduling, analytics, and overall strategy implementation. This guide is designed to help both newcomers and seasoned marketers harness Pinterest’s full potential.

Heather Farris [36:47]:

“There’s a wealth of free resources inside for like, videos on how to create Pinterest pins, videos on how to schedule those Pinterest pins, how to read analytics...”

Conclusion

Andréa Jones wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to access Heather Farris’s Pinterest strategy guide available at onlinedrea.com349. She also promotes upcoming events in the Mindful Marketing Lab, including content collaboration sessions and expert guest appearances.

Andréa Jones [38:17]:

“Thank you so much, Heather. This has been fantastic... y’all grab this... get the Pinterest strategy guide if you’re Pinterest curious.”

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This episode provides a thorough exploration of Pinterest’s evolving role in digital marketing. From understanding its search-based mechanics to leveraging AI and essential tools, Andreá Jones and Heather Farris offer actionable insights for marketers aiming to maximize their Pinterest strategies in 2025 and beyond.

Transcript

[Andrea Jones]

If you are Pinterest Curious Pinterest interested, this episode is for you because we're going all the way in on Pinterest strategies. And I know you are because some of y'all are tired of, like, what Instagram's doing with our feelings. So I'm excited to talk to Heather Farris in this episode today. But first, if you're new, hi. Hello. My name is Andrea Jones. I'm a mindful marketing strategist and my goal is to help you connect more so that we can grow together and ditch all of that scrap scrolling. Before we get into the episode, though, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their Magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it. My resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. All right, I'm excited to talk Pinterest. Heather Farris, welcome to the show.

[Heather Farris]

Jones. Thank you for having me.

[Andrea Jones]

I'm excited because it's been a hot minute since we've had someone talk about Pinterest. I am a Pinterest peruser. I use it a lot for my personal life, especially my recipes, but I don't necessarily use it a lot for business. So I'm excited to just kind of pick your brain about all things Pinterest today.

[Heather Farris]

Let's do that.

[Andrea Jones]

Tell me why. Why should we even think about Pinterest in 2025? What's the deal?

[Heather Farris]

It is that girl that is not stressful. Like the changing algorithms that happen on meta platforms or the politically centered content on all of the social media apps that you might be trying to build a wall around and get away from. It is not one of those apps where you have to get dressed and do your makeup and your hair in order to film content because you have to show up today. It's one of those platforms that you can quite literally just park your content on behind the scenes while you have your favorite TV show on and you've just made like a hot tea and you've got your blanket across your lap and you're just cool and cozy. That's quite literally how I feel about the platform. It's just like cozy and it's like a lot less stressful.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. And I think we all could use with a lot less stress in our lives. But are there like certain types of businesses that work better for Pinterest than others? Or tell me about like who should be thinking about Pinterest.

[Heather Farris]

There are, there are definitely businesses that it works better for than others. And I really just think it depends on how you frame the platform for your business. Like what is your goal for the platform? Because some people's goals for certain platforms are different. Um, there's 24 established categories on Pinterest and the ones that are in like the far reaches of the bell curve, like sports and vehicles and even in some cases like animals, those are definitely, they have a lot less people interested in those niches scrolling on the platform for those things. But you see businesses like, I mean even if you're an influencer and you're doing affiliate marketing for your income or brand partnerships, Pinterest can still be a really good platform for you. Service providers, coaches, course creators. There's still a space for those people and they're. The searches for those things are actually becoming greater and greater. Even my business has seen a lot of growth on Pinterest in the last several years because Pinterest marketing itself in search term and search volume has risen. So Even if you're B2B, there's space for you now businesses because this was your question that do better home decor, fashion, food, jewelry, party planning, weddings, beauty, like the, the big, the big, big ones. Those are obviously what Pinterest is really known for. But there's still space for a lot of folks over on Pinterest because it's a search engine. At the end of the day, people are going there to search for things like how to feed an elderly cat. You would be surprised the amount of people that are actually looking for that or you know, what's the best pet bed for an outdoor cat or something like that. Something odd and kind of on the, the outer reaches of the, the bell curve as I mentioned earlier. So does that answer your question?

[Andrea Jones]

It does. And you actually bring up my next question which is Pinterest is search based. So I know for me specifically, I tend to Search for specific things like toddler hairstyles or like recipes or like how to dress my postpartum belly. Like, like very specific things. So, so Pinterest is a lot different than some of the other, like, social first platforms. Tell me more about the search element of Pinterest.

[Heather Farris]

So we do have two sides of our algorithm. We do very much have that engagement side of what you're kind of used to with Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. We also have that search side. So everything search is like index based on what's in the image, the actual image. They can read the image and index even the images in it, the video in it, the text on the image can get indexed and then the pin title, pin descriptions, the words that you put on the pin with the pin are also indexed. So think about it the same way that you are writing blog posts or filming podcast episodes and then putting those on your website, Google is then indexing that content to be served when someone searches for it. Then based on engagement factors, based on, you know, how much search volume there are for those things, you're going to start getting served in those search queries and your pins will start getting placed. Now we have something on Google that we don't have on Pinterest. We have keyword cannibalization on our websites. You don't want to use the same exact keyword on every single page for every single blog post because Google's not going to know what to actually rank if you do that. We don't have that with Pinterest. So if you have a separate, a set of topics that you cover all the time and you want to use the same keywords consistently, you can do that. And you're actually more likely to rank in the long term because you've got more pins that Pinterest can rank for you and you have more capability for people to click on those pins. More clicks, the more engagement, the higher up in search those things will drive, ultimately resulting in you ranking towards the top of the search, if not at the top.

[Andrea Jones]

I know, okay, I have, I have a bunch of follow up questions.

[Heather Farris]

I can see your brain turning, so I wanted to pause.

[Andrea Jones]

So, okay, when I was heavy into my Pinterest game, I was blogging a lot and I would take my blog posts and I would create, you know, like five to seven different graphics in Canva and then like pin them and pin them to a bunch of boards and even had a bunch of group boards. Tell me about, like, what about that strategy is outdated? Do we have to have blogs like Give me the update.

[Heather Farris]

So if you want long term evergreen content that Pinterest can serve for years, then a place on your website where they can send that traffic is going to be the best. Now, Pinners are accustomed to reading blogs because that's what we have trained them to do since day one, is read blogs. The original big Pinterest accounts for business were, you know, the, the big food bloggers that we see now that have like food network shows, but a lot of them have like cookbooks and food shows and things like that. So they were the originals. They were blogging. And then we have trained now Pinterest users to click on blog posts. People on Pinterest want to know more. They're not like Instagram or Facebook users where they're looking for like quick entertainment or like short loops. They're looking for long term because they are searching for things. Oftentimes they are in a different mindset than a Instagram scroller. So if I'm going there and I'm looking for toddler hairstyles, I'm probably looking at different things. I'm looking at what kind of like little bobbies and like pins and think, what hair products am I going to need for these hairstyles? Do I have them? Am I going to need to make a Walmart list? Because now I got to go to the store. Like, all of that is taking place in the mind of a Pinterest searcher. Whereas if we are scrolling, we see something cute and we're like, oh, I might have that. Let me look at that again later. Let me save this on Instagram. I'm never going to go back and look at it again. So Pinners are totally different in that mindset. So as you are using Pinterest and you are using those keywords, I would say yes, you should definitely have a blog. Because long term evergreen, we are seeing pins that are two, three years old actually driving the most traffic for the average account.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, yeah. So does it have to be a blog too? What about like podcasts or videos? Like, I'm seeing some other styles of long form content on Pinterest, but I'm not sure, like, are people actually enjoying them or not?

[Heather Farris]

Yeah, so the most obvious way to share long form content is in the form of a blog post. Even podcasters have the ability to do that with show notes. So if you have a long form show note with your podcast player embedded in it, you can drive traffic to that with Pinterest. And then as a YouTuber myself, that's my primary mode of long form content. I embed my long form videos in blog posts and then I make a blog post that goes with it. So much like your show notes, I'm writing a blog for my YouTube video and I'm sharing those on Pinterest. So it's all kind of going to that same place. And then within that I'm optimizing it for products. I'm putting paid products with nose, I'm putting free lead magnets in those so people have the ability to kind of start where they're at and go take the next step that's best for them.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, I love that. And I, I love the embedded YouTube video in the blog post too. I started doing this with a lot of my content as well because we have honestly we of content so it's like just another way to distribute it, which I love. The other thing that you mentioned too about Pinterest is how long the pins last. Talk to me more about like the Pinterest lifespan versus like some of the other social platforms.

[Heather Farris]

Years. And I keep using this phrase park your content because it's quite literally like you can park your content and it will serve for years. So just like for kicks and giggles, really quickly while I talk to you about this. So I have a client, she's a teacher client and she is based in Australia primarily. And I'm just going to open up her analytics really quickly and tell you the age of the pins in her last 30 days because I have a feeling some of them are old. When I did this about six months ago, they were four to five years old. Her top pins. So her very top pin I pinned in 2022. January, that's three years. And then her fourth one, August 2022. And then we have a 2023, 2023 to 2022. So the age of her I have a November 10, 2021. And this is right when we started working together, I pinned that one. So the age of the top pins in her last 30 days are a mix between brand new 2024-25 and old. So it spans years. I have experienced this with my own websites. I've experienced this across client accounts. I've experienced this within student accounts as well. So because of that search capability, it really all comes back to that. It's not just the, you know, momentum behind a trending song. And that's the only reason why your video is getting hits right now. As soon as that fizzles out, it's gone.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. And I think this is where Some of the like frustration comes with the kind of short form platforms and, and not to those listening. Nothing against this, against them completely. Y'all know I love them. I love them for what they are. They do that. They do what they need to do. Especially from like the connectivity and community piece.

[Heather Farris]

Yes.

[Andrea Jones]

And sometimes it can be very frustrating to feel like you're chasing the trends or the memes or the algorithm changes and you've got to change your strategy. So with that in mind, I would love to talk more about. Okay, so we're sitting down to start pinning. What are some of the things we should think about so that we do have that pin that has legs and three years from now we're looking back. Thank goodness I pinned that.

[Heather Farris]

Yeah. So one of the things I want you to think about and actually do, depending on your niche, you're going to see more in this tool than others. So I want you to use the Pinterest Trends tool. Now, Pinterest trends are not the same as Instagram or Facebook or TikTok trends. They're just not. Pinterest trends are more relevant to like Google Trends. These are search trends over time that have happened and then there's a certain like timeline on those of when they're popular and when they're not as popular. So I want you to use the Trends tool. It's trends.pinterest.com and I want you to go there. And depending on what's in your reel or in your blog post that you want to put over on Pinterest, I want you to search for that. So let's just say it's Winter Skincare, because I was just making pens for a client for that. I want you to search in the Trends tool, Winter Skincare, and I want you to open up that trend. I know it's trend because I was just looking at it. I want you to open that up. It's going to open in another window and underneath it is, underneath this graph, it's going to show you a bunch of related trends and I want you to parse through those. Click on them. It's going to continue giving you more related search terms and I want you to start using those terms in the pin that you're going to make and put on your profile. I also want you to use the most popular one out of all of those as your board name. And then you need to create a board description and then you need to write a pin title and pin description and you're going to use those relevant search terms in those Places. That's what's going to give this pin legs for years to come.

[Andrea Jones]

This is fascinating. I love that we're using the data too. I'm a big fan of the data and I feel like sometimes when we're starting from the blank page, we can just like, oh, I think this is what people want. But no, like we're actually looking at what people are searching for. Okay, so then what are we pinning with. With, with this? Like, now that we've got our search terms, now that we've, you know, got our board, we've got our description, what is it that we' pinning?

[Heather Farris]

Okay, so let's take that winter skincare example again because it's just really relevant for a client of mine right now. She can create an Instagram reel that is whatever style she wants. She could do a face to camera how to. She could do an explainer. She could do a video showcasing all of her skincare products. It could be informational or product based. You're going to take that piece of content and you're going to upload it into the Create tab on Pinterest. You're going to use all of those relevant search terms and pin it to the most appropriate board. So whether it's information or whether it's product, there's someone on Pinterest searching for it and we are going to optimize it to then be served to them when they're searching for it.

[Andrea Jones]

Okay, we just dove into video, which was my next question, because a fun fact. My sister used to send me pins that were like TikTok videos. And I was like, I've already seen this. But she doesn't, she's not on TikTok at all. Like, she doesn't, like, the app will never download it, but she watches videos on Pinterest and it was like mind blow. And if y'all have been listening to podcasts, you've heard this before, but like mind blown, because that, that is not my inclination on Pinterest. But micro video is on Pinterest. It used to be called idea pins, but they're just called pins now. Right. Tell me more about the video element of Pinterest.

[Heather Farris]

Oh, my gosh, Listen, we have had video on Pinterest since before TikTok came online. Like, we have had it for so long. We just have never, like, it's never been, you know, that thing that we have done. So people have always done video on Pinterest. As far back as I can remember, it's just changed and morphed over the Years we've gotten, we had short videos to start, then we got longer videos. Now we have like four seconds up to like five minutes roundabout. I don't see people really posting five minute videos anymore. But yes, we've had an evolution. We had video pins, then we had idea pins, now we just have, we just have pins. They just called them pins. And you can do them in image or video format. And if you are a short form video creator, Pinterest is a really great way for you to repurpose that content, especially if you're doing it on Instagram, because we do have this native Instagram integration now where it will just pull your content over for you. There's a little bit of work you need to do. After that happens, we can talk about it, but it will get you about 75% of the way there. Now you can do video that is informational or product based. Either way works and it really just depends on how you want it to work for you. So if you want it to just build engagement on your profile and grow followers and things like that, you don't need to do anything with it. Let's say if it's an Instagram reel getting pulled over to Pinterest, you could just let it go to your profile, let it build engagement and drive back to Instagram if people click on it. Or if you want it to drive traffic to your website. And you. Let's say it's winter skincare and you have a skincare line or a blog post that could match that reel, you can change the link on it after it hits Pinterest and drive traffic to your website instead. So there's so many like little options to the strategy that you could use. And Pinterest is a great place to actually create video. And this is actually a warning for all the parents in the room, any moms, any dads listening. If you have teenagers, just like what Andrea said, her sister uses Pinterest and watches TikTok videos. Your kids are seeing things that you didn't maybe realize that they were seeing. So put some parental controls on there because I, I'm a mom of a teenager and I've just realized in like the last year and a half, her having Pinterest that that was happening. So I actually created a teen account for her and locked down the parental settings. So yes, people are sharing their TikTok videos over there. It has been happening for a long time and that's good. You should not only use it for your business, but you should also be aware for your Family.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, yeah, that is very good to know. And I think the more we are aware of how Pinterest works, the better that we can make it work for us, kids included. So I'm curious about like Pinterest's algorithm because mention that, you know, they've got the trends, it's search based, but it also has like a home feed, like when you first open it, you know, when you log into the app, whatever it serves up content to you. How, how is that algorithm, how does that work? How do we make sure we're, we're, you know, showing up in people's home feed, that sort of thing?

[Heather Farris]

It's an engagement based algorithm. So your home feed, your related feed are engagement based based on things you're engaging with on the platform. You're going to see those things in your home feed. So we need to be creating content that is click worthy and that people are willing to save to their boards. Not just things that are cute or, you know, quotes and things like that, because those just, we don't see those work as well. You want to create things that are interesting, that are curiosity driven, that are click worthy. And if you can do that and if you can generate saves, then you are going to be showing up in people's home feeds because that is engagement based. First. The more you engage with someone's content, the more pins you will see from them. So one tiny engagement with like one pin, you're probably going to see maybe one or two pins in your home feed from that person. If you follow them and then you start engaging with their content all the time, you're going to see a lot more of their content. So I follow one of my clients because one of my clients is in the business space and her content is really relevant for my profile. So I actually want to see her content engage with it because when I see it engage with it, I want to be able to save it so my followers can see her content too. So I see a lot, every time on my home feed I log in, there's probably seven or eight different pins that are recent of hers that I've pinned for her in my own feed. So the more touches, the more you're going to see and the more you save, definitely the more you're going to see. Now here's the caveat. You don't need to follow someone to see their content, you just have to engage with it.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, I think a lot of platforms are going this direction where like followers don't really matter and it, they never really have On Pinterest, it's all about like impressions and saves. So with that in mind, like, how much content are we talking here? Because my first thought is like, okay, so I come. And again, I used to be big on Pinterest. I used to be a fashion blogger. So like Pinterest was my thing like ten plus years ago. Right. And back then you used to like pin. I think that they were like pin 20 times a day. Yeah. You know, go to all the group boards and like now I think about, I'm like, that sounds exhausting. Like I literally don't have time for that. So, you know, how frequently are we creating content for Pinterest and what does that look like?

[Heather Farris]

For the last three years, three solid years within my agency, you know, side of my business, with my clients, I have been pinning one thing per day pretty consistently. Now I have some clients that we pin three to five things a day for them. It just depends on A, how much they pay me because that's going to vary based on how many hours I can give them and B, how much content they create. Because if you don't create a lot of content, there's not a lot of things I can do for you on the platform. But it's a minimum of one pin a day is what we do. And that's what I suggest. 30 things a month. I think you can sit down in a couple of hours, parse through your content, check Pinterest trends for keywords, make some pins, publish them through the native scheduler tool. You've done all of this probably by just paying for a Canva subscription because you don't need to pay for a scheduler right away. Because Pinterest has a scheduler. Right. Built into their platform. They're actually adding more features lately like product tagging within the scheduler, where if you are a product seller, you can actually tag your products in your image or video pins while you're scheduling them. And you, you don't get this capability through third party tools. You only get that through the native integration. Right. On Pinterest. So you don't even need to pay for Scheduler right away or at all if you don't want to.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. Okay. So once a day feels manageable, especially if we batch create some of those pins. And I do have question about pin. What's the word? I'm. Uniqueness. There was like some drama a couple years ago about like pinning the same. Like let's say you designed an image in Canva and you pin the same thing to like a Bunch of different boards versus creating unique pins. What's the update on that?

[Heather Farris]

So this actually dates back to 2018. I went to a, an in person Pinterest conference. It was the first one I'd ever visited. And during that conference they unveiled what they were calling. They kind of started at that point talking about fresh pins and they unveiled what they were calling pin stats. So each individual pin and if it's the same exact image going to the same URL, then those, all of those stats are actually lumped into one pin in your analytics. So it'll, there'll be like a little check mark next to it and it says like all variations of this pin or there's some language along those lines. I prefer you create unique individual pins and schedule those and repurpose the description, maybe change up the title a little bit, but have five unique pins instead of pinning the same pin five times. Because you're spreading your wings a lot further. If you're using five different keywords and five different titles, but maybe the same description with the same five keywords for all five, that is totally fine to do. And you're probably going to see more reach that way than if you were to do one pin. And Pinterest sees it as the same exact image. If they're not serving it to an like, if people aren't engaging with it right away and they're not serving it, but only in search, you're going to see less reach.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Now, this may be a little bit of a controversial question, but one of the, one of the challenges that I've always had with Pinterest is that it will send a ton of traffic. Don't get me wrong, I've always had ton of traffic, but that traffic doesn't necessarily convert as much as other platforms. What's the update on that? Because I feel like Pinterest users are so much earlier in their buyer's journey. They're usually planning, they're plotting, they're scheming. Whereas someone who searches for something on Google maybe a little bit farther along, or someone who clicks something on Instagram may have like the relationship element there. So what are we seeing now as far as like traffic from Pinterest and how is that converting and what should, what expectation should we have on that traffic?

[Heather Farris]

That's a really great question and one I actually haven't gotten from anyone in a long time or if at all. So I actually still see a very similar component to what you're talking about for not Only students, but for clients. And it's really, it all comes back to how we create our content and how conversion friendly the content is. So if you are making list posts, for example, and it's one of those annoying ones, and let's just be clear, I hate list posts that are food. I do not want to go to a blog post that's 75 recipes for chicken. Okay, don't I want five recipes or one? So it just depends on how you're optimizing that content for, for conversion. So if you are doing like list posts, for example, you're probably not going to see those do as well on the website for conversion as well as maybe on Pinterest. They're getting lots of saves because they're really idea focused. So we really need to be creating content across the buyer journey. We can't just create content for the awareness phase. We also have to be creating content for the consideration and the purchase face. This is something that I do for all my clients. I drive, I drive pins, and I often refer to it as content, but I drive pins to blog posts, to lead magnets, to products, all of them, not just to content. So I think where a lot of people are coming when it comes to this question is they're just really accustomed. Earlier on in the conversation you said, are we still driving traffic to blogs? They're only sending traffic to blogs. But if it's not a legal page on your website and you want it to get traffic, you should be making pins to it. So it could be a portfolio page, it can be a service page, it can be your podcast page, landing page for products, those limited time offers that you have, wait list pages, guest podcast episodes, I draw, I make pins for all of these appearances that I do, YouTube videos, anything and everything you can make pins for. Now I want people to send traffic to their best conversion tool. So for me, that is YouTube videos. But I don't want to send traffic to YouTube. I wanted to send traffic to heatherfarris.com so that's what I do. I put the blog on my website with the YouTube video in the blog and I drive traffic to that. And then I know if they watch that YouTube video, I'm more likely to get a membership member that's going to subscribe or someone join my email list because I do my best conversions in video. So think about that aspect too.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I love this. This reminds me of. So one of my, one of my best converting things is my free course. And so I feel like if I were to jump back into the Pinterest train again. It would make a lot more sense to like, drive people to that versus some of the other things. Okay, interesting. What about AI? So I feel like AI is like the elephant in the room where, you know, we, we know it can help us, but we're also like, a little scared of it taking over the world. So what is the Pinterest AI update?

[Heather Farris]

Okay, so there's a couple different things inside of this conversation. Number one, a lot of people are annoyed and upset by the amount of AI images on Pinterest. People just don't want to see them, they don't want to engage with them. They're unrealistic and I'm right along with them. I personally hate them. But AI when it comes to workflows and writing copy and generating ideas for your Pinterest strategy is a different story. And that's where I come in. I actually created an AI bot for Pinterest strategy and I trained it on my Pinterest strategy and then you train it on your business when you get it. So you fill out this, like, about my biz worksheet and then it can take all of that information, learn about you, take all of the Pinterest strategy I've put into it, and help you along. So every time I onboard a new client, I set up a new project in my chatgpt. I take all my bot training and train the bot, I take all their business training and train the bot. So it's individual to each client. But then if someone's just using a Pinterest bot, they can just use the Pinterest bot. And we use this to create, let's say, a new, a new use case for this. I'm actually super excited about Canva templates, right? Let's say we have a mini infographic, Pinterest Canva template. It's got three fields, and each field has a header and a sub header, and there's three of those. So you tell the bot exactly what fields are on the pin and then you feed it the piece of content that you want it to create an infographic for, and it will do it. And you take the content and you just plug it into the fields and it's doing it for your content, it's taking the content from your content and it's making the infographic for you. And then you just plug it into the template, right? So you can have it write pin titles, you can have it write pin descriptions, you can have it give you a list of boards that you need to make. I just did a Black Friday launch and I did a three hour sprint day with about 15 different people and we used the bot to create the Pinterest strategy based on everything I just told you and it literally spit out like a list of 20 different boards and these people are like, whoa. Yes. I think I like all of these except for maybe these two. So when we're talking about AI from the standpoint of like workflow and getting ahead generating ideas. Yes. When we're talking about AI from a graphic standpoint, you're probably going to have a little bit of pushback from users on the platform.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, I feel like that's just general consensus right now. Is like AI for images or video? No. Like hard. No, we don't like it for the most part, but as like a tool to help us research and like organize and come up with new ideas and like spins on things. Love it here for it. I love that, I love that. It helps with the infographic too. Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay, what other tools are we using to help us with Pinterest? We talked about ChatGPT and the AI bots, but what else can we use?

[Heather Farris]

So if you are looking for a third party scheduler, Pinterest has their partner tools like Tailwind, Planoly, Canva. If you're looking for just an API approved tool, there's tons of them now like Metricool and others. Among others. My favorite tool when it comes to tools for Pinterest, there's two Canva and Tailwind. If I'm using a third party scheduler, Tailwind recently released the capability to automatically import your blogs for you into like your workflow on canvas so you can like add them back into your queue of like schedule pins if you want to. They have their native integrated creation tool like Pin Creation Tool, which they are doing a lot of improvements on these days. I still prefer the control over on Canva. They also have an AI tool built inside of their scheduler as well which can help you do titles descriptions. I actually use it to generate my Shopify listings, then edit the description slightly in the title and then all I have to do at that point is just upload my images to my Shopify store and I'm done. So there's so much that a tool like Tailwind can do for you, but you really don't need a lot of tools when you get started with Pinterest. You just need Pinterest. The three methods of searching for keywords on Pinterest, by the way, are the search bar, the trends, Tool and the ads manager just on Pinterest. There's not a third party tool for keyword research and then a scheduler. So you could go the free route on Pinterest or you could go the paid route with like a tool like Tailwind, Buffer, Plainly or even Canva. You can, you can even schedule your pins using canva.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah, I'm a Canva fan girl, so I love that one. I used to use Tailwind a lot too back in the day when I was on Pinterest a lot, so I love that. I love it. Okay, so what's, what's the future of Pinterest? You know, there's a lot of drama with like TikTok being banned and meta banned.

[Heather Farris]

Is it not banned? We don't know.

[Andrea Jones]

We don't know. So how does Pinterest like fit into all the social media drama?

[Heather Farris]

So Pinterest has seen the writing on the wall with this for a while. So the original kind of proposed TikTok ban came in 2020. We saw within a couple of years of that happening. A lot of. We obviously saw the birth of reels in 2020. And then we saw going from 2021 to 2022, Pinterest brought heavily pushed idea pins and we're bringing creators on the platform. They introduced their first inclusion fund like where they brought creators in and they were teaching them how to create content and things like that. It's been about four years ago since they've done that. So they've seen the writing on the wall for a long time. They've been courting creators for a long time. They continue to do so with pins now just being pins, not idea pins. You can do static, you can do video, you can do collages. They're actually, last year they started piloting a program with just me. It was just. Just me. The Pinterest education like educator program. So they're looking for vetted Pinterest educators to come and properly teach on their platform. So they are looking to get more reach. They introduced the Create feature or the create kind of education side of their business. It's called create pinterest.com where they're actually teaching people how to create content on Pinterest. So the future is bright for content creators and something I haven't even mentioned yet, which is E Commerce. About two years ago we got a new CEO. The original CEO and co founder of the platform departed after a long, long time, over a decade and a new CEO came in and he was a former chief executive of E Commerce at Google. So his goal is to really bring shopping more native, more on platform. And we've seen that growth and rise in that. So we're going to see more shopping, we're going to see more long form content really starting to take hold. And by long form content, I mean they're bringing back the ability for people's blogs to be seen. They are showcasing more video that is like podcast esque. But they also want to make it a place that is kind of centered to their mission of we don't want to keep people on the platform. We want to show you things that you can do and go do in your life. So really keeping that mission center focus helps people to kind of create that Pinterest strategy for themselves of like getting in front of their ideal users while not capturing their complete attention constantly.

[Andrea Jones]

Yeah. So different from the other platforms, which is all about like, let's serve you more ads and keep you in our app specifically. So different. I love that. Okay, so for those who are listening, who are like, yes, I'm here for it. I'm ready to start my Pinterest strategy. I know you have a free Pinterest strategy guide. Tell us what we can expect when we get it.

[Heather Farris]

Yeah, so I update this every year. It actually needs. I need to go update the links in it for my 2025 update. So every single year I publish a new video. Pinterest 2025. What I would tell my friends just published that a few weeks ago. With that comes an update to the Pinterest strategy guide. New updates on workflow, new updates on Pinterest strategy, what's new, what's out, what's in. There's a wealth of free resources inside for like, videos on how to create Pinterest pins, videos on how to schedule those Pinterest pins, how to read analytics. I go through all the pillars of a Pinterest strategy and I talk to you about, you know, why each is important, how to implement them into your business. I give you that workflow, I give you other free resources inside. A lot of them are just YouTube videos because I'm, I just, I'm a sharer. So what I put on my YouTube channel is probably what I'm teaching inside my membership. Yeah. And that's it. Like, you could literally download this, get started on Pinterest and not pay for anything for a while and still see some results.

[Andrea Jones]

Yes. Okay, y'all grab this. I'm gonna put it in the show notes. This is gonna be onlinedrea.com349 and you'll find all of Heather's amazing links there, but definitely get the Pinterest strategy guide if you're Pinterest curious. Pinterest interested, restarting, starting again. Starting for the first time. You gotta get this guide. Thank you so much, Heather. This has been fantastic.

[Heather Farris]

Andrea, thank you so much for having me.

[Andrea Jones]

Yay. I am excited for y'all to, like, get started in Pinterest. And thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Coming up this week in the Mindful Marketing Lab, I do have our content collab session, which is happening Thursday, March 20, y'all. If you need all of the ideas, if you need to brainstorm content ideas, if you need someone to just take a look at your accounts so that you can go, am I doing this right? Come to this session. It is for you. We also have a special guest expert next week, Wednesday, March 26, Cara Lada is coming to teach us how to play in our marketing and in our business. It's going to be so much fun, but you gotta be in the Mindful Marketing Lab to get all that goodness. Go to onlinedre.comlab to check it out. I will be back at you soon with another podcast episode next Tuesday. I'll see you then. Bye for now.