Everything You Need To Know About Using Pinterest As A Business With Jeff Sieh

Key Takeaways Covered In The Podcast

Try not to worry too much about what you’re pinning. Pinterest is about pinning what you like and if you want to Pin a cupcake recipe, Pin it! Whilst a niche is important, you want to give your audience what they need. That’s why they’re following you!

Pinterest is a visual search engine. You don’t go to engage with people, but rather to discover and dream.

Males is currently fastest growing demographic on Pinterest, so don’t rule it out if your business is geared towards men. Ultimately, a user’s feed will be geared towards them.

Although it may seem as though you need to create a pretty picture for Pinterest, often this isn’t the case. Yes, as a visual search engine it is important, it’s not the be all and end all.

If you have a product that you think is hard to market on Twitter, reconsider the content that you’re writing. There is an opportunity for everyone, just some may have to work harder.

If you’re using Pinterest for business reasons, you need to upgrade your account to a business account in order to comply with the terms of service. A business account will give you more features, lots of stats and use of promoted pins.

When designing your Pins remember that a high percentage of viewers will be viewing your Pins on mobile. If you can’t read the text or see the image clearly, the likelihood is they can’t either.

Although you can use large amounts of hashtags, it’s best to stick to 4-7 per post so you don’t take up your description space.

To draw more people to click through to your website, consider the different ways in which you can design your pins. Different images, text and quotes will attract different people so it’s important you’re creating 3-4 pins per piece of content.

Use other networks to push people towards your Pinterest account using ‘Pin it for later’ buttons.

The one thing you need to remember above all else…

Although people believe Pinterest is a lot of hard work and something they don’t have time to do, often it’s just adding in one more step to your process.

Highlights You Simply Can’t Miss

• Introducing Jeff – 06:59
• Pinterest As A Discovery Engine - 14:20
• Pinterest For Men – 16:00
• Using Rich Pins – 21:20
• Using A Business Account – 24:20
• How To Ensure Your Pins Are Noticed – 28:12
• Using Group Boards 32:57
• Finding The Time Use Pinterest 39:40

Links to Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode

• Episode 49
• Tailwind
• Manly Pinterest Tips
• Jeff Sieh Instagram
• Jeff Sieh Pinterest
• Social Warfare Plugin

Transcript below

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. So lovely to have you here. Now before we dive into this week’s episode, I want to just talk a little bit about the podcast and how so excited I have been over the last few weeks seeing all the new downloads that I’ve been getting on it. I can’t tell you literally okay a wake up a morning, one of the very first things I do is I go on to Libsyn which is who I host my podcast with and I look at the downloads. Every morning without fail. My husband travels and I screenshot them and send them to him. Honestly we get so excited at the downloads and I am loving seeing everyone that’s downloading. I’m loving receiving messages and dm’s and emails. It’s so amazing to think that I sit here in my office on my own, wittering away to myself and then you guys are out there listening. I couldn’t be more thankful. I honestly I am over the moon. I love doing this. I love helping and teaching and it’s one of my most favorite things in that I was talking about it just this morning because I was talking about a talk I’ve got coming up and how I really like to do practical talks because I like people to go away with something that they can physically then do in their business. So for me the podcast is just the best platform because every single week I get to come in here, tell you something that could change the way you do something in your business.

And of course even better it might help you sell more or promote more or get more customers or more people on your email list. Which for me is just awesome. So it’s so so good to hear from so many of you. Now, if you are listening to the podcast and your new please come and say hello to me or if you’re not new and you haven’t said hello then please come as they hello to me, please come and find me now you will most often find me on Instagram and Twitter but I am everywhere. Please come over and say hi. Tell me what you think. And also if you haven’t done a review on iTunes then I would be so very grateful if you did.

It was just really lovely to hear the amazing reviews I get on there. And again it helps get the podcast out there even more so and the bigger the podcast gets the better guests I can bring. So it really is such a wonderful thing to see it growing and honestly it makes my heart sing. I get so genuinely excited and so very very grateful.

So thank you anyway enough of me going on about how grateful I am but I am by the way in case you hadn’t realized. I have got a really good episode for you today and it’s why I interviewed a little while back actually. So I have to go back and re listen to the episodes so I remembered the things we discussed because sometimes they when I do it long time in advance it can blur into other things.

Anyway if you remember back in episode 49 about sort of six episodes ago I interviewed Alisa and she talked about Pinterest and it blew my mind. I honestly promise you if you listen to that one you would have heard I mean I thought I knew about Pinterest until I listened to that. Also I suddenly realized what have I been doing. I should totally be on it and be making it work hard for my business. Now I am still that’s still on the list of things to do sometimes you just get super busy but I promise it is on my list and as soon as I’ve started doing it, I’ll let you know. However I also interviewed the very lovely Jeff Sieh.

Jeff is a visual marketing consultant specializing in Pinterest, Instagram and video. He is also the owner and creative director at his Design Inc. Where he has worked to help clients market themselves in the best way possible using a variety of mediums over 16 years. He is also a head beard at Manly Pinterest tips where he is the creator and host of the Manly Pinterest Tips Show. Gosh that’s hard to say. Jeff is also on the social team at Social Media Examiner and manages that Pinterest and Instagram as well as appearing in and producing much of their live video content. What was so good to have Jeff on talking about Pinterest was often it’s seen as a very female led platform with only really women that go on there and you can only really market things to women and for women. And it was great to get him on to talk about his take on it and what he thought about it. And also after the episode that we did with Lisa on episode 49 I’ll link up to that in the show notes. It was great that she gave us a really good foundation of what Pinterest was. And Jeff takes us a little bit more deep diving into a few other aspects of it.

So for instance we talk about the types of things that you want to post. We also discuss rich pins and he kind of blew my mind with the technology that’s available now that basically you can create a pin and that pin is connected with the product on your shop and therefore when people click on the pin they can check right there and then really seamlessly which I just think is an amazing tool. Also if you change the price on your website it changes the price on the pin which again if you’ve got a product that are selling online. I just think that’s a really amazing thing to be able to do. We go into lots of other details about how to use Pinterest as well and why it’s good for your business. So this is definitely another must listen. If you enjoyed the other Pinterest episode you’re definitely going to love this one. And also if you’re sat there thinking you know what Teresa, Pinterest isn’t for me and my business please give it a go because I promise you just listening to this will I hope open you up to another possibility.

Now you know I am a massive advocate of not trying to do too much and I only do things if I can do them really well. So therefore I know Pinterest is super important and I am going to do it. We’re just trying to work out a way in which me mean the team can do it within our current sort of set up and with ease. But actually for some of you out there Pinterest could work way better for you than maybe even Facebook or Twitter or you know lo and behold Instagram and you know I’m a massive fan of Instagram so just take a listen because you could be missing out on a platform that actually could work super well for your business anyway enough of me. Here’s the interview with Jeff.

So I’m so excited today to welcome Jeff Sieh to the podcast. Welcome Jeff.

Well thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Great, so thank you. I had a small intro to Pinterest and on the podcast already we’ve had a small introduction to Pinterest and I know that I just have a million other questions. I’m very excited to find out more because it’s like I thought I knew about Pinterest and then I realized I know nothing. And I feel really embarrassed about the fact that I don’t know anything to do with Pinterest so I am really excited about finding out more and how we can use it. But before we get onto that it would be great if you could share with my audience who you are, what you do and how you got what you do now.

Yeah. When he was Jeff Sieh and I’m I live in a place called Longview Texas so I’ll try. I don’t think you’ll hear any like Southern stuff because I grew up in Kansas. We’re kind of.. Like okay with the accent but yeah. So I started I’ve had for almost 16 years, I started in web development for a company and then got into started my own company and was doing that and then I say I said well I better do this. I keep telling my customers to get in to social media. So I better start doing it. So I wrote a.. I started a blog. I started writing a blog in one of them the blogs it was called Manly Pinterest Tips number one because I was I was listening driving back from a road trip and I was listening to Social Media Examiner Mike Stelzner’s podcast we had this lady on named Cynthia Sanchez and she had this website called Oh So Pinteresting. And she talked about how Pinterest drove so much traffic to her blog and I’m like “Man I just started a new blog I should do this.” Yeah. So I started using pinterest and it really started to work for me. And so I wrote this blog post called Manly Pinterest Tips Number One and it was about creating a secret board on Pinterest with my daughter and we were able to share you know stuff she wanted to craft you want to do and recipes or whatever. And it was a great way for us to do that kind of online together. And I wrote this blog post and it really took off and about that time Google Hangouts was really taking off so the live video shows and for other guys somebody said “Hey you guys you need to do a a show on Pinterest. And so we decided this Manly Pinterest podcasts. I had four other guys and they all had huge followings compared to what I was at but they think for some reason went to the show with me and we started doing this and we were able to interview people like Geico Saki. We got to interview like the producer of Pretty Woman. So it just kind of blew up. And so I continue to write content content and do the shows and then eventually I decided to launch my own podcast called Manly Pinterest Tips Podcast and then took off on my own and I started doing live shows that led to me being asked to speak for Social Media Examiner on their digital conference when they used to have what was called The Summit and then they had they asked that I guess I did OK and they asked me to come speak at their their conference and about that same time they asked me “Hey will you run our Pinterest account for us?” And I went, “Sure”. And so that led to my my gig at Social Media Examiner and doing Manly Pinterest Tips the website and it just kind of blew up from there so I can trace everything back to using Pinterest. Everything has occurred, this happened in these last four or five years.

Can all be traced back to..

It’s all thanks to Pinterest. Thank you, Pinterest Yeah. So what was it. I guess when you first look because from what you were saying you decided you had to use social media or do more in social media but what was it then that kind of pulled Pinterest out for you? Was it just the traffic source or or did you like it?

One it was easy. And also I knew when I first started I couldn’t compete with a J Bear... Already all those had there was niche stuff in there and at that time it was still Pinterest still and it still does a little bit that it’s only a network for women. And I thought oh this would be funny. Mainly Pinterest tips do some humor with it and and so I said I said I could I could kind of this could be my niche. I could go in here and do this and imposes. For me it was really easy to do. The traffic was huge specially for a new blog. Seeing that that comes in and people don’t understand. I just I can’t. It’s hard for me to fathom if you have a blog or especially if you have a product, Why not use Pinterest? Because it drives so much traffic and for example Social Media Examiner. This the the largest driver of social traffic is from pinterest. That’s in front of Twitter, Linked In, Facebo even though the biggest driver of traffic back to our articles on our site is Pinterest.

That is amazing if you think men because one thing one of the reasons I’m so excited to have you on and talk about Pinterest is because I know that that’s where my social media knowledge falls down at that point, Pinterest. Now I am on Pinterest and I was actually very excited because I’ve got to 2,000 followers which I’m quite excited.. But the thing was as I’ve discovered now going on this journey starting to find out about it is the people that followed me they followed me because I share or I was sharing at the time dinner party because I like it in the party and I like tables nice. That’s a really proper girly franchise. So of course I’ve got all these followers that follow me for that not necessarily what I want to do

That’s the cool thing about Pinterest. So you have people following your entire account. They just say I love whatever she does I’m going to follow her. Then you have people who follow specific boards. So if you look at what I’m pinning, I pin stuff because my brand can be pretty broad so I paint a pin Manly foods you know wood carving stuff that I really like and people follow me for that but I also paint a lot of social media content and a lot of my content falls underneath there. So you have all sorts and I really... when I first started another one of my mentors and she really kind of took me under her wing to help me with this was Peg Fitzpatrick and you watch her account as well. She’ll pin cupcake recipes she has one that comes out every year because the holiday times where she just gets tons of traffic on it because has to do with a recipe and that kind of thing. But it you know people follow or just because they they like her her her style and I I tend to kind of move away from some of the hardcore you know pinners is I don’t think you really need a niche down and like if your business is a flower shop I don’t think all you have to do is pin flower arrangements. Yeah because you want to give your content. It’s just like any other social media platform. If you want to give your audience what they need you want to be helpful. That’s why they’re following you. And so take that flower shop example you don’t just have to pin your own bouquets you could pin other people who’ve written articles about how to do you know a table arrangement, how to you know how do you give flowers for a funeral whatever. And so all that content serves your audience. And I think that’s what people kind of get confused about on Pinterest is that it’s not just your own content all the time, it’s what you’re doing to serve your audience.

Yeah. So tell me them or let me know what you think. Why do you think when I speak to lots of clients and lots of people around in their businesses that need social media.

Pinterest Isn’t even on the radar. And in fact I can happily tell you that there’s only one client ever we’ve done pins for. It’s not even on the radar. I don’t hear many people talking about it in terms of specialism is on social media. Why do you think that is? Do you think they just don’t know it? Or do you think...

I think so and also Pinterest and they’ve even said this the founders even said this that they don’t consider it a social platform yeah they consider it a search engine and it really is. It’s a discovery engine you go there to plan for stuff you really don’t. I mean you can talk to people inside of pins and say you know make comments and things but it’s mostly where people go to discover and dream. And so it’s a search engine. It’s a visual search engine. And the other thing I think that people struggle with especially like bloggers and content creators is it is if you’re writing a blog it’s hard enough to get that you know horizontal blog image and Pinterest is really those tall vertical pins and it’s one more step and I think people struggle with visual creating visual content and so that’s just one more thing that I don’t want I take the time to use. Make one for Pinterest because I just don’t. And so they forget about it which is really to their detriment because it really does drive so much traffic.

Yeah and so the other thing I want to pick from from what you’ve said already is the fact that obviously you’re a man just in case no one’s like that. And obviously that is the one thing that’s interesting because. Am I or am I..I’m Not sure whether I’m right or wrong saying this but the concept the perception is that it’s female that it’s like that. And I remember some time ago when I did that it was a lot of females that use it.

So is that still the case? Do you see there’s an opportunity for a more male side of it?

Yes. Males are the fastest growing demographic on Pinterest in fact a couple years ago they even said that there’s more people on Pinterest than all of GQ and Sports Illustrated subscribers combined. So they’re on there. They may just be lurking. Now in the United States it does trim a trend higher for women but in other countries where it’s opened up or pictures opened up in other countries it’s more of an even I think the UK is actually a little bit more even than the states is. So there’s no reason for if you even I’ve seen some in fact I’ve discovered some great brands on Pinterest like there is a carnivore club which does a meat of the Month Club which is huge and they...