Kate Ahl: The jury is still out whether or not everybody should use video, but I think everybody should use the standard pin format. A hundred percent. Those have been the flagship pins since it started, they’ll continue on, and I just think if you really are mastering what is in that image, you’re really going to succeed over time.

Jade Boyd: Welcome to the podcast, Kate.

Kate Ahl: Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Jade Boyd: I am really excited about this conversation because I feel like there’s so much opportunity on Pinterest, but it’s definitely one of those platforms that is not top of mind when it comes to marketing strategies for business owners and is a little bit ambiguous, a little bit mysterious. And so I’m really excited to dig in with you today about what’s actually working in Pinterest marketing this year in 2024, cause just like every other platform. it’s changing. But I’ve also just valued learning from you for a long time from your podcast and it’s super fun to meet you in person, but for those of you who don’t know you, would you mind giving a little bit more information about who you are and what you do and honestly, like how you got started in Pinterest marketing in the first place?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, so I do Pinterest marketing. I sometimes think of myself as, it feels weird to say Pinterest expert, but I would say I’m also part like Pinterest historian and it’s been the only thing I’ve really studied and done in marketing. So if someone was to ask me about Instagram, I’d be like, I have no idea, I just know Pinterest. Right?

So I got into it back in 2013. I had been working for a friend who had a website with a frugal and deal blog, and she was leveraging Facebook, doing affiliate marketing, all of that. And that was right at the time we saw the first great social media change where a platform was turning off the organic traffic to turn on the optimization for ads so that they could essentially force you into buying traffic. And this was huge for creators at the time, because that was where their source was. It was really, nobody was using Instagram at the time, besides for personal, there wasn’t a lot of business happening, but Facebook, the business pages were so good. It was like, and literally overnight, just off.

And so that began this question of, okay, where can we go next? And even though Pinterest had, you know, come on the scene, probably three years earlier, people just saw it as a personal tool or they weren’t even using it yet. And so for them to leap from personal to business felt really big, a few people talking about it.

And so when that change happened on Facebook, we said, okay, how can we go to Pinterest? And we watched a business webinar and we thought, oh, this actually will drive traffic because the nature of the platform is you click on an image and then you go to a website and that’s still the same way it is today.

And so then, through a series of personal issues and things like that, my husband couldn’t get a job out of recession, she suggested that I start managing for people’s Pinterest pages. And I thought that’s the dumbest idea, nobody’s going to do it. Nobody even cares. And she was like, well, you are out of options, so you should try this.

So I did, I bought the domain Simple Pin Media and really with that idea in mind of making it simple for business owners, because I knew that they had so much on their plate because I had been working for one. And so I tried with three beta clients and they loved it. And they thought I’m going to tell my friends. And later that year, I realized I have a business about Pinterest. And then now 10 years later, I’ve grown that into lots of different things, but really see that main core of what I do as helping people unpack how to do Pinterest in a way that is simple for them in a way where they can really wrap their brains around it and go, yes, this is an option or no, this isn’t an option for me.

Jade Boyd: So, speaking about how much Pinterest has changed over the last few years, I oftentimes forget the very first time I signed up for a Pinterest account and how different it was and how different I thought about the platform to what it is today. So when we’re thinking about Pinterest today, what types of business owners should even be thinking about being on Pinterest?

Is it the kind of thing where certain niches or certain industries are going to perform a lot better, or business owners who have a certain amount of capacity to create content are in a better place to perform on Pinterest? Who’s like the ideal business owner for Pinterest or who should be thinking about investing in it the most?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. This is a great question because I think content creation is key for Pinterest. What we’ve seen in a lot of our data is that businesses that don’t have a content creation flow don’t do as well. And also I never suggest it for a local, I would say like medical usually isn’t good, hair salons aren’t always the best, but if you have an online component where you can use content to warm people up, or you sell online products, whether physical or digital, that is definitely the place for you to be. And there is this common understanding of there’s like the top five niches on Pinterest. It’s food, DIY, decor, fashion, and home. And those and weddings, actually, like you’re going to get the most traffic, but there’s these underlying ones that while they don’t get the same numbers, they might get a similar impact to where people in Pinterest are going and they’re searching for this particular topic and they’re finding it and they’re learning about you that way.

So I always tell people, think about it in the sense of, are you going to create content that warms people up to who you are and what you do kind of shows your expertise, that is key for Pinterest.

Jade Boyd: So what is like the minimum required time and content creation to actually do well on Pinterest. Because for any business owner thinking about like, oh man, this is another content channel, even if they do have that regular workflow and are consistently creating content, it’s a whole nother thing to repurpose it on another platform.

And so I feel like the first question going through a lot of business owners minds, other than, is this actually going to work for me? Is it a good fit for my niche? It’s like, how much time is this actually going to take me? What do I really need to do to succeed. So from your perspective, what do business owners really need to do to see results?

Because you can’t just like create a pin every other week and expect your business to change. Right? But what does that look like?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, I would say the first thing I kind of want to like ask this person is how much time they’re spending on Instagram or Tik Tok creating content. Because what I find is that people are already creating a lot of content and hours and hours of it, but they’re putting it on one platform. And what I think works for Pinterest the best is you have to pull that back and make your website the pillar of your content and then everything else flows out from there. And so for dealing with a business owner that says, okay, I have a podcast or I have a blog, or I have my website as the hub, then your workflow is really on that main circle part. It’s like a, a bicycle wheel it’s in that main center and that serves a lot of different areas.

So, if you have that in place and then you choose to add Pinterest, then what you’re adding is image creation and then double checking keywords to make sure that that is working. And what we find is that somebody who’s spending 12 hours a week on Instagram can spend at least four hours a week on Pinterest and sometimes get better results.

Four hours feels like a little bit much, but I do think that once you get into your groove, you can shorten it down, plus use a scheduling tool, things like that. But I think that’s where that time frustration comes into play and I get the pushback. But when I say how many hours are you spending on Instagram? It’s always so many more than you know what you really need to do.

Jade Boyd: So I love that you differentiated that the content hub has to be your website and not just necessarily all of the short form content. There has to be some higher strategy there, which ultimately boils down to your website, but also with Pinterest driving traffic, it does make a lot more sense to drive traffic to your website rather than to an Instagram post.

But do you repurpose for your clients? Speaking of like the repurposing workflow, other than creating original content or repurposing like blog posts and stuff like that, do you post Instagram or TikToks to Pinterest too, or do they not perform as well?

Kate Ahl: You know, we will sometimes, if we have, the best way is to do like raw edited is what we call it. So we’ll never just take it directly from Instagram and then post it on Pinterest because you have the music and then you have all these other things. But if they give us like a raw form of an edited video where it doesn’t have any captions or music to it, then we can upload it to Pinterest that way and use those native tools that Pinterest has, which every platform likes you to upload natively, right? Like they don’t want to have it, the watermark or repurposed, when it comes to video though, video is having a weird moment where it was working really, really well and then it’s really hit or miss right now. We have some clients who are like killing it with video and then others who video is tanking and maybe their standard image, just a static image is doing really well.

So I think that’s the thing where you have to try to see whether or not your users are engaging with video or they just like a standard pin image.

Jade Boyd: Why do you think that is that video works for some people and not others? Are there specific reasons where you think, especially for those clients that you’re thinking about? Mm

Kate Ahl: You know, I don’t know actually. I was at a conference last week and it was interesting, there were 50 creators in the room and one person was like, video’s crushing it for me and I’m using my face and someone’s like, video’s terrible for me, and I’m using my face. And then someone’s like, I’m doing hands and pan, and things like that.

So we can’t yet find a reason why, and I don’t know if it’s less, if it’s attached to the keyword value of whatever’s attached to that particular piece of content. Like if somebody sees it, that that’s not really what they’re looking for, or if in general I would say here’s a hypothesis I guess, is that Pinterest users never like to feel invaded. Like it’s their world. Whereas like when I go to Instagram, I’m going into tons of other people’s worlds. When I go to Pinterest, I’m in my world and I want it on my terms. I want to search what I want. I am not interested in your life. I’m interested in, does your content answer my question? And so if it doesn’t, if it’s a teaser, if it’s something I’m not interested in, then I’m going to scroll past it.

So I don’t know if for some of those people who are doing well with video, their hook is getting them in and people resonate with it versus other people who aren’t. Or it’s really an algorithmic thing that some of those aren’t shown in that particular keyword. So we’re not really able to find a solution right now. And it just felt like it’s happened in the last three months. It’s really strange. So the jury is still out whether or not everybody should use video, but I think everybody should use the standard pin format. A hundred percent. I think those will, those have been the flagship pins since it started, they’ll continue on, and I just think if you really are mastering what is in that image, you’re really going to succeed over time.

Jade Boyd: I think what you said just got to a really important point, which is true of any platform, really. The content that performs for one business owner is not going to perform for the next one for a variety of reasons. And so whether we’re talking about Pinterest or Instagram or blogging or podcasting, whatever we’re talking about, there is no formula for like this type of content is going to perform the best because it is so custom based on what industry you’re in and even your personality and what you’re good at. Obviously someone who’s a great speak to camera person on reels is going to perform better than somebody who feels really uncomfortable, right?

And so I think that’s important that you pointed that out. There’s so much blanket advice given on like, do A, B, and C when it comes to this platform. This is how I did it, so if you do it you’re going to be so successful, but it’s important to take that with a grain of salt and understand what works for your audience and your business might be a little bit different.

But I do want to go back to, you mentioned two types of pins, video pins and then static pins. Just for somebody who’s newer to Pinterest, would you give an overview of like, okay, when we’re talking about types of content for Pinterest, what are the categories?

Kate Ahl: The categories are video pin, standard pin and product pin and Pinterest is, they have been moving towards it, but it’s like a simplified pin format to where it will just all be called a pin, right? But it’s just how it’s displayed to the user. And so those are the three types that we have and videos fairly new, I think it was a 2018 compared to the other one, and Pinterest really wanted to push this because they wanted to keep people on the platform longer and video on Pinterest works well if it’s less than a minute. And it doesn’t always auto play into your feed and the sound will not be on. So you always have to have captions because the users are less likely to turn their sound on than like another platform, because again, they don’t want to like be invaded.

They just want to like. queue it up to see like, is this what I want? So the standard pin is really like billboard advertising because then you can actually put everything in that pin. Not too much, but you can put everything in that format that just kind of teases them out to where then they click to go to your website because that’s user behavior. So I think that’s discrepancies also with video pins is you can click to go to the website for sure, but you have to like watch it the whole time and then decide where it’s like a standard pin is qualified like much quicker for people.

Jade Boyd: So, not just looking at the types of pins, but just looking at themes between the types of content that are performing well on Pinterest right now and the types that aren’t, what are those themes? Like if we want to create good content for Pinterest, what are the things that we need to be thinking about?

Kate Ahl: Yeah, it all depends on the keywords that you’re targeting and the audience that you’re targeting. So I love that you brought up earlier that whole idea of like, what works for one might not work for the other. And I think that’s the same thing when it comes to the types of content that are resonating for people and what keyword you’re targeting.

So Pinterest functions on the same SEO type of model. So not only are they evaluating the algorithm is evaluating image, and what’s there, but they’re looking at the pin title and the pin description to say, who are we going to show this to? So Susie, we know she’s interested in spring fashion, we’re going to pull from anywhere that has anything that talks about spring women’s fashion, because we know she’s interested.

So that if Pinterest looks and they see, well, this is getting a lot of engagement, then we’re going to show that, and if Susie indicates that she’s interested, we’ll show more. So I would say types of content is always going to be evergreen. And then also seasonal, which I think you can take evergreen, like how to make a, sourdough bread, right? Sourdough breads have a moment for like four years running. If you can take that, you can how to reframe sourdough into a mother’s day brunch. Just by changing up the image and the keywords where it’s going on your website that doesn’t change, but how you’re playing to the algorithm on Pinterest, that changes up.

Jade Boyd: I feel like that’s true of other platforms too, right? I think it’s very specific on Pinterest and especially looking at like Pinterest trends and stuff like that. They have such great resources on what is trending in that season, but I do think again, this applies to so many other marketing channels other than Pinterest because content that is very in the moment is, I mean, kind of trendy because I mean, how long is spring trending before we’re all on to summer and then something else. But I think it’s a good strategy overall, especially knowing that Pinterest content is repurposed, hopefully

Kate Ahl: yeah, not to interrupt you, but you said something that actually like, can I, cause I was trying to frame up like, okay, the seasonal content component for like Instagram or Facebook. And I think where it differs is that there’s a longer runway when it comes to Pinterest, whereas, you know, we often say if we had to frame up all the social medias, like in a line, Pinterest would be back at this like three to six months in advance I’m planning for a particular event or party. And then I will go to Amazon or even Google or to that shop once I get close to the date and taking action, and then I will go to Instagram to post like about the event that’s happening. But Pinterest just has that longer runway than I think other platforms do.

Jade Boyd: Yeah, for sure. Don’t they say two years or is it different now?

Kate Ahl: Well in order to plan, I would say shelf life, yes. Anything a pin that you would pin couldn’t be year over year over year, but before an event it’s, I would say it’s up to three months and even Christmas, people are posting about Christmas, like in July. And so you can definitely, you know, back it up a little bit.

And it doesn’t mean you can’t post about the event close to the actual date. I would say it just means you want to be conscious of it. You know six weeks ish out from that particular date.

Jade Boyd: Gotcha. So once you are creating consistent content, how long do you think it takes for a business owner to start seeing consistent results on Pinterest? We were chatting a little bit before we hit play and just taking advantage of personal coaching for my own business here. I feel like I’ve been doing all the things and checking all the boxes, but Pinterest still isn’t doing what I want it to do in terms of driving traffic to my website.

And so in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, what is the thing that I’m missing? I’m sure like anything, there’s no like secret code, but what are your recommendations for, one how long to give it? Because everything takes time. How long do you give Pinterest before you are like, okay, this isn’t working? And two, when it’s not working, what are the top things that you look at?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Okay. So I’ll say if you’re a new account, it’s six to nine months before you, or even a year before you’re going to see any forward movement. So that’s that right there. If you are an established account, it now goes to looking at your year over year, quarter over quarter traffic, and it’s going to be dependent upon what your goals are.

So you said the phrase, like, it’s not doing what I want it to do. . So I think it’s really important for every business owner to outline that, to say, this is what I want from Pinterest. And these are the metrics that are going to show me if XYZ is working. So I’ll take me as an example. I’ve used Pinterest for 10 years and it has ebbed and flowed up and down, and we were getting like a thousand sessions a month from it. Right up until the end of this last year. And then January hit and it dropped to like 300 and we thought, what is happening? This is really, really strange. And so we took the mindset of getting pretty investigative to say, if Pinterest, we have the goal of driving traffic, growing our email list and gaining authority in this space. This loss down to 300 is difficult for us. And so what can we do to try to jog that up? And that came to create in a different type of image. Targeting new keywords, updating our board names to reflect newer keywords. Cause we hadn’t done that in a couple of years. We’ve kind of been riding on this, well it’s working, it’s giving us this range of what we want.

And then I think we got hit with this weird thing at the beginning of the year, which I will say number one is notoriously our lowest traffic time anyway, but we were able to spot that something was wrong. Because it was lower than the year before. And so now we’re going, okay, what are we going to test?

And what are we going to try. And obviously for me, because I’m a person who does Pinterest, I’m not going to give up on it. But if I was a business owner and I had to make a choice, I would look at all the traffic driving sources that I have. And I would ask myself out of those, where does Pinterest fit in the way of those numbers?

So if Google, YouTube, and Pinterest are there, which are our top three, is Pinterest staying level with at least the other socials that I have? Because I think a lot of people go into it and they say, Pinterest is low for me. It’s not working for me. But when we pull up the numbers, what we find is that it’s Google. Pinterest, and then the floor drops and it’s Instagram, Facebook, but they’re more likely without looking at the data to go, I’m going to lean into Instagram, or I’m going to lean into Tik Tok, cause I feel like it’s doing something.

So that’s what I would consult somebody to say, like, go back to the data, go back to your yearly reports and say, what is my measuring stick? And sometimes I think with even Google or with even Instagram, the goalpost moves and that’s what’s been hard over the last couple of years is that the number, the threshold was so high and we were going for this. And now with like helpful content updates and all these changes, our threshold it’s lowering and we see our traffic lowering with it too, and we go, oh, it’s not working, but maybe it’s the whole ecosystem that’s just changed overall. So that’s what I would do if I was in somebody’s shoes and trying to evaluate whether or not it’s working or not working.

Jade Boyd: So what I’m hearing is that I’m not missing anything. It’s just going back to basics and re optimizing and experimenting and continuing to audit your strategy as your business changes, as the platform changes, but digging into that a little bit further, two things you mentioned were updating keywords and also updating images. And I would love to know your best tips. Keywords is something like SEO that I think has a negative connotation for most business owners, especially creatives who are like, oh my gosh, that sounds so analytical and confusing.

So what are your best tips for keeping fresh keywords on Pinterest? And then we’ll go into the other question next.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. So I would say number one is don’t overcomplicate it. Like use the search bar on Pinterest. That’s it. Like it’s probably your best tool that you have. I find it less overwhelming than SEO. I was just in like a h refs and SEM rush and all those, and I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Like I’m out of here.

So when it comes to Pinterest, I would look at, okay, what are the things I know that my people would be searching if they’re trying to find my content. And I start there and then I would set a timer, spend an hour, look on Pinterest, look around at those keywords and see what else is out there. What is Pinterest showing to people? A quick tip too, is if you type something in and nothing populates underneath, there’s an excellent chance that either Pinterest is de ranking that particular keyword, or there’s just not a search volume for it. So you can double check that by going to trends, that’s their other tool that shows you when things are trending on Pinterest. So trends. pinterest. com. Now, here’s an interesting thing to note is that. It’s also helpful for you to know who you’re targeting. I love this example was so good from this last week. There was a woman who sells freezer meals without skipping a beat she goes, I have two audiences. I have Gen Z they’re either in college or they’re newly moved out. They want to know how they can save money on meals and do freezer meals. And they’re coming from Pinterest because Gen Z is using Pinterest. Or I have boomers that are either taking care of themselves or they’re taking care of their aging parents. And they want to find a way to make meals for their parents.

She’s like, I don’t have the millennials or Gen X in between, but I know these are the two. And I target my images based on those things. Maybe on Gen Z image it is, are you looking to save money while you’re in college on groceries? Or is it, how to stretch your budget living with your roommates or something like that?

She’s still getting them to the same destination, but she’s leveraging those keywords, both on the image and below to get a different type of audience. And I think that to me is genius of how you leverage keywords and images in a way that doesn’t feel super overwhelming, but you as a business owner are responsible to know who am I talking to?

And that makes it way easier from there.

Jade Boyd: So you got into this a little bit in what you just said, but specifically for people who have blogs or long form content, podcasts, YouTube channels. What are your best recommendations for getting more eyes on your long form content using Pinterest? I know it’s similar to other types of content, but specifically for content creators who want to drive traffic to their content.

What are the best types of pins to be creating?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. So I would say right off the bat, you can do two to three images or pins per blog post. So I’ll give you my workflow. So I create a podcast. I convert it into a blog post. That’s like for SEO, natural sounding kind of doesn’t, it’s not the transcript. Right? So then I take from there and I create two Pinterest images that have two different types of phrases on them.

And then I’m sharing that to Pinterest and I’m doing it in a way where I’m dripping it out to all the different boards that I have over a period of time so that I can, you know, hit the algorithm at different times. I think that first pin that you shared to Pinterest holds the most value.

So if I have a blog post, I just did a podcast about what is the funnel on Pinterest mean? I did it cause I didn’t know what Pinterest was talking about whenever they said funnel. So I wanted to do it for myself. So then I create a pin image. That’s like, are you confused by the Pinterest funnel? Or how to understand the Pinterest funnel.

It both goes to the same place of blog posts and podcasts. So they can see both, but I’m targeting them with different types of phrasing and keywords.

Jade Boyd: So is that all you’re doing three standard, or are you creating more content than that for the one

episode?

Kate Ahl: I’m doing just three. Yeah. And I’m letting it ride and I’m just kind of seeing what happens. And just recently, actually as a part of when we saw traffic go down, one of our big takeaways that we had to change up our images and we had to change up what that branding looked like a little bit, maybe what the phrases were gonna be.

So I have all this old content that’s living here, right? So I don’t need to create anything new. Now I can just create new images and pin to it and see if that drives a new type of traffic or any kind of new engagement, if you will, on Pinterest.

Jade Boyd: I feel like that advice is different. Definitely stands out from what I’ve been hearing from a lot of people who talk about Pinterest, who it almost seems like you need to, the more content, the more pins you create for each post, of course, the better they’re going to perform. So I’m curious to dig into why only three.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Okay. So in the, I’m going to go into my history, nerding out just a little bit, if that’s okay

Jade Boyd: Perfect. Love it

Kate Ahl: Okay. Back in 20, like late 2019, early 2020, Pinterest did a webinar with tailwind where they said this word fresh pin. And they said, we want you to create as many new images for, as you can like create new content. I also think the person at Pinterest was confused about how content creators work. And so when she said this, I think what she was trying to get at is more content. We want more content on the platform because the user repins a lot of things. So if you creator are funneling into this ecosystem, that’s good for you.

And that’s good for us. I think when she said it, she was saying one pin image, one blog post new, but how it came out was, oh, you mean we can create all these new images. And they will quote unquote, look like fresh pins. And then Pinterest will see it that way. And then they’ll show it to more people. And so we saw this wave of people that said, I’m going to stop creating content.

Cause blog posts are really hard. And then I’m just going to make as many images as I can and send them to see if I can drive as much. Right? And what we saw with those clients is that when they did that, their traffic went on a steep decline. Like it really did a whole lot of nothing, but the ones who also created newer images, maybe because they were targeting different audiences or they were targeting, times of year events, but they were also creating at least one new post a week.

They saw a steady increase, not at a hockey stick up into the right, but they were a healthy rate of growth. And so there became this kind of, you know, I guess the fervent thing of like, I wanna create so many fresh pins that still lives out there, but they’re missing the point of what I think Pinterest wants, which is we want new content to fuel the users on our platform.

So we do three, because that’s easy for us and we don’t want to do any more than that. And it gives us the opportunity to look at our analytics later and do easier testing. Like I don’t want to do anything that’s harder for me. So 25 images for each weekly blog post feels like overwhelming. And then some people get into that, like, well, I’m just going to move an image or I’m going to swap a line or I’m going to add an emoji or I’m going to do these things.

And it really is not getting to, like, you’re not getting the most bang for your buck. And I would want people to work smarter, not harder or longer. So let’s really get creative with these three and just see what we can do with them. Mm

Jade Boyd: So I love this obviously, cause this is The Business Minimalist Podcast, and I’m obsessed with finding those trends of where less can be better. And so this is the perfect example of that. But you mentioned like do three and then test and come back and then create new ones. When you need fresh images to drive traffic to that same content. So how often are you going back into your archives? Cause you have a lot of content and blog posts and podcasts now. Are you going back like after a year to create three more images or what does it look like for you to create more content to drive traffic to old posts?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. So only if we’re seeing that either something definitely fell flat or it did well, and we want to give it a secondary boost. So one of the posts that’s always done well for me, it took off in 2017. Was how to clean up Pinterest boards. And what we did was we created multiple spinoffs of content and podcasts like, okay, how to spring clean, how to create a system for a yearly audit of your Pinterest account.

We kind of spun it off from there, but this main one always does the best. And so then what we do is actually, right now is when it usually takes off, we’re going to create new images for it again, and we’re going to see, do those also rise in the rank of analytics? Like, do we see them rise up to the top within the last 30 days?

Cause in Pinterest analytics, you can look at that. And so that’s really the only time if we see something’s doing really well, and it maybe has an older image, we want to test it and see if that new image kind of takes off as well. Or we thought something would do really well and it didn’t. Okay. Let’s look in our analytics, over the last year. What do we want to try again? Let’s try a new image for that.

Jade Boyd: I mean, I know that your podcast is the Simple Pin Podcast, but I really do feel like throughout this conversation, you’ve just really simplified what it means to be on Pinterest for me. So I really, really appreciate that. And there have been so many good nuggets in this episode. I want to close on, you mentioned Pinterest is changing all the time, like any other platform. And I would love to know from an insider, someone who’s really aware of what’s happening with Pinterest behind the scenes. What changes do you anticipate happening on Pinterest in the next year?

Kate Ahl: Oh, that’s a good question. I would say I’ll start with what I don’t think will change and then I’ll go in from there. I think that the things that are true to the core of Pinterest is one, they run on a keyword algorithm two, they run on images and three, the nature of how they work is people click and they leave as much as Pinterest hates that, that’s just how it works. And when they introduced idea pins, you know, two years ago, and they didn’t have a link, they frustrated the main user base, right? They were like, this is the thing that I hate on Pinterest. And you just added that in, which is why they’ve now pulled back. So those three things won’t change.

I think the things that will change. I think it’s going to be what keywords or how do they keep Pinterest a positive place? How do they target Gen Z? I don’t think their pin formats are really changing. I think if any of the changes that we see will be how people are leveraging ads, what type of ads platforms they have, or, you know, models do they use?

I would say also. What keywords are going to be ranking high? Which ones are they going to demote, especially if you’re in the fashion space or the makeup space, I see in the clothing space, I think we see the most changes with body type and inclusivity and diversity. That’s where I see the most changes. But other than that, the only thing I, I think they might introduce that they’ve been hinting around about is an on platform checkout, but they’ve tried it in the past. So there’s a lot of shop integrations when it comes to like verified merchant, or you can see product pins are very good integrations if you’re a shop owner. I do think they’ve always wanted to be, have a point of sale on the platform, but again, whenever they’ve tried it, it’s just not worked, but their new CEO is from Google commerce, PayPal, venmo background. And so what you see him going towards is really honing in on this being the great originator of things you’re going to purchase.

And that’s a great informer Pinterest is. And so I think that, I’m really hoping their ads managers get better. That’s a, like, I don’t think that will change, but I really hope it does because I think their ads product is good, but their ads managers are more like ads salespeople. They’re, they’re just not good.

So I kind of really hope that they will help people see how to marry organic and paid together.

Jade Boyd: Well, that is a very hopeful prediction. Those all sound like great changes to me going in the right direction. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Would you be up for a bonus round?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Go forit!

Jade Boyd: Okay.

So I was just saying before we hit record that there’s a whole other side to your business where you teach people how to scale agencies and you’re an agency owner yourself. So you might have to come back and we’ll have an episode all about that. But for the bonus round, I would love to ask you some like business y questions. Productivity related questions, just to get a little insight behind the scenes into what it looks like for you to scale a business.

So the first question is what is your favorite productivity hack as a business owner?

Kate Ahl: Oh, timers. I’m a huge fan of turning everything off. Set a timer on my phone. It’s never more than 50 minutes, but I turn everything off. Go deep. That’s the best.

Jade Boyd: 50 minutes is a sweet spot for you?

Kate Ahl: Yeah. I would even say if it’s if it’s less or I have less time, I’ll do 20 minutes, but I find that if it’s like a bigger project where I know I’m going to be using a lot of creative energy, but I need to be productive with it, I tend to give myself a longer period of time and just completely put in my earbuds and then put on music that doesn’t have any words, set my timer and go for it.

Jade Boyd: I’ve been surprised by how many people have said that actually, because this is a common question that I ask, but timers are like the go to productivity hack for a lot of business owners.

The second one is what is your favorite business book to recommend?

Kate Ahl: I have loved, loved, loved the book, E Myth. Like it revolutionized the way I saw business. Somebody recommended it to me. I think it was year two in business and it just, I actually thought last week I need to It’s an excellent book.

Jade Boyd: I have not read it. It’s on my list. I think I have three hundred and something books on my to read list on Goodreads right now. So

Kate Ahl: Oh my gosh. It’s really good. And I, a bonus one. If you have a team, the book, The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni is excellent. We framed up a lot of our team growth on it. It’s just so, so good. And a quick and easy read.

Jade Boyd: I’ve never heard of that one before. I’ve heard of Patrick’s writing. what is his book that’s really popular?

Kate Ahl: Is it The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team?

Jade Boyd: Yes.

Kate Ahl: Yes. That one’s great. And he has a new one out, I think called The Motive. I haven’t read it yet, but I like his because they’re written in like a fiction model, and then they give the practical stuff at the end and it’s just like, you could power through this book, and I’m not a fast reader, in like two days.

Jade Boyd: Awesome. I’m also into audio books too right now. I feel like between the library and Spotify premium now has 15 hours free and audible credits. I’m like cranking through them this year. So good to know you’ve already given me four to add to my list. So let’s stop there. And then the last question is for those who want to get acquainted with, I mean, Pinterest and billion agency and all of the content that you have to share, where’s the best place to find you after the show?

Kate Ahl: simplepinmedia.Com would be the best.

Jade Boyd: Perfect. And all the links I’m sure are there and we can link the podcast. Like I said, it’s been a great resource for me. I have loved listening to it. There’s so much helpful information on there as well. So if you love this episode, definitely go check out her podcast because there’s so much more, but we’ll make sure all of that is linked in the show notes.

So thank you so much again, Kate, for being here. This was great.

Kate Ahl: Yeah. Thanks for having me.