The Ultimate Blog Podcast - Boost Your Pinterest Strategy with PinClicks

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

In this episode of The Ultimate Blog Podcast, we’re welcoming Tony Hill, creator of the Pinterest keyword research tool and rank tracking tool, PinClicks. Tony shares his journey as a seasoned tech entrepreneur and how he got into Pinterest-based traffic strategies. Tune in to hear what exactly PinClicks is and how it can help boost your Pinterest strategy (even if you’re a new blogger and you don’t know where to start). This is a great episode to get reinvigorated about your blogging business and drive more traffic to your blog!🔗Check out the show notes for this episode

Hey Ultimate Blog Podcast listeners, are you ready to take your blog to the next level? We've got something special for you. Introducing Redefine Success, your blogging checklist. This free guide is waiting for you to change your blogging game. Whether you're a newbie or you're looking to refine your strategy, this will help you navigate every step with confidence. You're going to get a comprehensive list of muscles and podcast episodes that we believe are foundational for your success based on our top four tips to grow a successful blog delivered right to your inbox. If you have ever wondered if you are focusing on the right thing, this is your answer. Head over to theultimateblogpodcast.com slash success to download it now. Redefine Success, your blogging checklist is completely free

and was created just for you. You can start today and turn your blogging dreams into reality. That's TheUltimateBlogPodcast.com slash success. It's time to redefine success and make your blog shine. Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki.

And I'm Jennifer Draper. Our episodes dive deep into how to monetize your blog, sharing unique insights and practical tips. We bring you in-depth interviews with successful bloggers and experts who offer valuable, actionable advice. Our mission is to educate, support, inspire, and empower you in your blogging business. Welcome to The Ultimate Blog Podcast. A few weeks ago, I was going through my email and I got an email from Kate All over at Simple Pin and she had somebody on her podcast that I immediately called Jennifer and said, we have

to have this guy on our podcast to talk about this. And so he is here today. Tony Hill is who I am talking about and he is the creator of Pin Clicks. Welcome to the podcast, Tony. Yeah, thanks for having me. So glad I manifested this and we're sitting down having this conversation today. Cause when I opened Kate's email and saw that you have created a Pinterest keyword tool, I was like, this is interesting.

And I want people to hear more about this, especially in the day and age when Google feels a little shaky and everybody's kind of trying to figure out what their new game plan is, especially going into a brand new year. So we are going to dive into pin clicks. But first and foremost, I would love for you just to tell people a little bit about who you are and kind of your journey as a content creator.

Yeah. So, you know, if you were to ask my wife, what does your husband do? She has a really hard time explaining it to people. And so I just say, like, I'm a tech entrepreneur. I've been working online and working for myself for, gosh, almost 20 years now and started off building websites and I was able to make money from them from the Google AdSense program. Actually, my senior year in high school, I created a site and every day after school, I would go on to my site and I would click on ads and I was making like 20 bucks a day from just clicking on myself and you could kind of get away with that for a couple of months.

Yeah. And then I got shut down. But it kind of covered. I was in between jobs. And so it was great. Yeah. So I no longer click on ads. Got rid of that. Got rid of that habit. Yep. But at that point, I just continued to build more and more sites. And then there were like ad networks that started to come into play beyond just Google AdSense. And so you can make a lot more money with those networks. And so that's kind of been my journey. Like overall, I've had my ups and downs. I've been hit by so many Google updates over the years. I mean, that's kind of my background and better bread and butter here is just doing SEO. And I just love the challenge. It was really easy to do it

back in 2003, four or five, on how to get anything to rank in Google fairly highly and pretty quickly. So I just continued to do that. And then yeah, Google would roll out updates like the Penguin and Panda. And I would see traffic go down and then I would figure out what do I need to do, what I need to change to get things back up. So I would figure it out and then I would get hit by another update. And I'm sure some people can identify with the helpful content update that came out what? September 2023. And a lot of my sites got crushed by that, just like so many other bloggers and smaller

publishers. So I've just been spending more time focusing on my Pinterest traffic ever since then. So I've kind of said, see you Google. And I still get traffic from Google, but I don't care as much. I'm not trying as hard. What I'm hoping is that ironically, I stopped doing SEO and really optimizing my text for all my blog posts. And then maybe one day because of that, Google will like, like me again, you know, and bring back a lot of my traffic because I don't have the thumb print of doing SEO.

So that's, yeah, these days spending more of my time on Pinterest, trying to figure out how to drive more and more traffic there. I honestly just kind of stumbled into it. I realized several years ago, this was like 2019, 2020, that I've got some sites that are like very Pinterest friendly, but I never really paid much attention to it because Google was just sending the line share of all my traffic, but the summer, spring and summer of 2020 was pretty rough for everyone who was making money online.

And so I just decided, okay, if I'm not going to get any traffic right now, what can I do with my time and focus a little bit more on Pinterest, try to figure out, okay, what's working, what's not working, what can I test? And, and so honestly, like the first thing I did was like, why don't we just pen more and see what happens this every day? Like, I think we were doing maybe five pens a day, but then we ramped it up to 20, 30, 40, and then just that alone just skyrocketed my traffic. So from there, like I just kind of went down this Pinterest rabbit hole of just trying to figure out, okay, what else can I do?

I mean, that was a big, easy, you know, strategy change is pen more. And that doesn't always work for every type of account, but I did for mine. So yeah, that's why I moved on to some other things. And so what led me to creating pin clicks, because I imagine people are wondering like, why do you need a keyword research tool for Pinterest when they provide a really great one? Like Pinterest trends is a great free tool. I just can't believe they still offer it. Every day is a blessing that we have this tool, in my opinion, because Google has their own version of Google Trends, but you have to start the search on your own. Whereas Pinterest is just going to spoon feed you keywords. They're going to just select your category

that's closest to your site, and they're going to show you these keywords that are trending. And so I don't know, I'm always afraid like one day they're going to take it away from us, but who knows? So that's a great tool. It's great for many niches or types of blogs, but not every niche. Actually, I know of several niches that get a lot of chocolate from Pinterest, but they have maybe three or four keywords that will actually show up on Pinterest trends. So it's not, it's not like the one and only tool, the best tool to use for it. It's a great one to start off with, but there becomes a point where you just kind of maximize all those keywords, what you're going to be targeting. And so I've got, I've run a forum, got a community and someone posted a link to a Pinterest keyword research tool

that they said they were using and that's been really helpful for them. So this was I think late last year, early this year. And I checked out the tool and honestly it was just really frustrating from the very beginning because I had to download it to my computer and I haven't had to do that for a long time to use a tool. And so it was just clunky. Once I finally got it downloaded, it was just clunky to use. I don't know. I just had a hard time and it was hard to train my VAs.

I've got a team of VAs that helped me with my sites and running my Pinterest accounts and getting them trained on it was a challenge. And so, yeah, I was like, man, this is rough but we're gonna deal with it and try to make it work. But I don't know, after a couple of months, I got tired of it. I was like, you know what? I think I can make something better. And I wanted to get back into software. So I had previously software company. I ran it for almost 10 years. And it was a, it was more a passion project. I would say it was, it was more a passion project I would say it was it was

it made money I don't know if I really took much of a profit from it to be honest but I sold it actually right around the helpful content update so that was it was nice to have another you know another so some additional income coming in from that at that time so anyways I just wanted to get back into software. And so I was like, this is a great opportunity where this is a different opportunity where I can eat my own dog food, that expression of being able to use your own tool, basically, whereas like my last software product I created, I did not use it. And so there was just a natural disconnect you have with the software when you don't use it every day, but your customers do. You're really trying to understand your customers

and how they use it. And it just requires a lot of work, a lot of research, a lot of conversations. Whereas I was like, well, if I build my own Pinterest tool, like I'm gonna use it every day. I'm gonna train my team on using it and I'll release it out into the public. And if people buy it, great.

If not, great, because I'm going to use it myself anyways. And so it's not a complete waste of time and money to build it. And so that's ultimately what led me to do it. And it's been super fun. Like I just geek out on this and just seen so much opportunity with it. I don't know if anyone's listening who like has a lot of Google SEO background, but if you do and you were serious about it, there were several tools I'm sure you use to track your rankings, do keyword research for Google, like Semrash, Ahrefs are two really big ones for that. And so I was using those tools all the time, but there's really nothing

for Pinterest. And so that's my goal. That's what I'm headed towards is building a really robust tool that's kind of like the SEO version of those, but for Pinterest. I love the journey that you've been on and just how your attitude is like, hey, these things are going to change. We just kind of have to weather the storm. We adapt, we adjust. And I think that people who are out there just looking for solutions to problems tend to be like the people that we want to connect with because like you said,

you're in this, you're practicing it every day. And so you're seeing how people are using it, you're going to use it. And you're going to create something that makes sense in terms of being beneficial to specifically bloggers who are trying to grow traffic to their site. And so did you say you currently still have several websites that you're running and testing? I would assume you have like different niches that these sites are in as well? Yeah, there are several that I'm running and in different niches, yeah.

So it's been interesting to see how these different accounts respond. I've got theories that, you know, Pinterest will treat some niches differently than others. So I'm seeing that. But yeah, it's given me some, using PinkLix, one of the things that I really love about it, that's been really insightful is there's a rank tracker.

So just like with Google, it was important and it was kind of interesting and helpful to track your rankings to see where you're at. Did you create a new blog post and you're targeting a keyword and you wanna know at what point will it rank number one or does it show up in the first page, right? And so with Pinterest it? Not a lot of people like thought about it that way. They didn't really check their rankings They would target a keyword but they would you know create the pins and then just move on to the next blog post

The next keyword and never really look back to see, oh, my ranking for that. Now, I will say that there's a portion of traffic you'll get from Pinterest search, for sure, but a lot of the traffic will come from the home beat. And so versus Google, where like at the end of the day, there's just the search engine and that top spot, that's what you're aiming for. And that's what's going to send you all the traffic. So that's where Pinterest is a little bit different in that it's a search engine, but it's also like an inspirational feed.

So there's a little bit less weight on search for Pinterest. And I think that's one of the reasons why there's never been a tool out there to track your rankings in Pinterest. And there's just honestly like more, you could say traditional SEOs that are coming over to Pinterest right now because they've been hit by the helpful content update and they're not doing well with Google.

And so they're pivoting and they're moving to other platforms. And so I guess I've been lumped into that group of SEOs coming over to Pinterest. Again, I've been on Pinterest for a long time, but I haven't really dedicated a lot of time to really understanding it. And so it's just been insightful to see the ranking changes over time and to see what kind of pens really stick and hold on to those top three positions versus in some niches,es. I mean, it's like constantly showing new brand new pens. And so just trying to, I'm getting more visibility into that. And so that's been inside. Well, I'm trying to honestly still figure out like, what am I going to do with some of this information? Okay. I rank number one or okay. I rank, you know, number 10 for the, for a keyword.

What do I do if I'm ranking number 10? Do I go back in and I edit my pin title and description and see if I can adjust the keywords? Will that bump me up? That's the kind of stuff I'm currently testing. There really hasn't been a tool available to be able to test something like that at scale. So that's something I'm pretty excited about. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. What I appreciate is you seem very calm about it in regards to like, this happened and so I'm going to shift and I'm going to figure it out. There's not something out there and so I'm going to create it. I think that that's what a lot of creators and bloggers, when we have that attitude towards this, I find it can really be helpful

because otherwise we can just stay stuck. I mean, you could have just stayed stuck in the helpful update from Google and you could have just stayed there and you could have lost everything that you've worked so hard to earn. And instead it's kind of like, okay, let me go back to the drawing board.

Let me see what I can do different and what can I create that not only benefits me, but it benefits everyone. And I think that that is, well, thank you first and foremost for having that idea to do that and to help because I think that that's something in the blogging industry that is so powerful is that we work together and that we truly want others to succeed. And when we can figure something out, then we want to share that with people. We want to say, hey, I've tried this.

And what I think is different about what you're doing is that you have several niche sites. And so you, like you said, are eating your own dog food and you actually are seeing it in real time. It's not that you're just like putting this out there for bloggers to use, but like you're in it daily to get a true understanding, is this helpful? Or how can I make it better? How can I make this function, you know, in a better way for bloggers? So I just am really fascinated by this idea because many bloggers are proficient, you know, with keyword research tools, whether no matter what they use, but having this new one on the market, I think is an exciting way we're gonna we're gonna go with that attitude. This is an exciting way to get reinvigorated about your blogging business and how you can

use Pinterest to drive more traffic, especially you know, heading into a new year. So kind of like with that with that idea, will you tell people exactly what pin clicks is? Is this a website that they use? Like you said, it's not something that you download on their computer. So what is pin clicks exactly? Yeah, so it's a Pinterest keyword research tool and a rank tracking tool. And so we've come in and I think what makes this different say than like Pinterest Trends, because I get people asking me, you know, what's different about Pen Clicks versus Pinterest Trends. I always say like Pinterest Trends is a great place to start and especially targeting search.

So Pinterest Trends is showing you what people are searching for in the platform. But if you recall, I also talked about the Home Feed. And that's more of the inspirational side of things where people will come to Pinterest in a couple of different modes. One, they're going to come in like they've got an agenda. There's something that they want to be inspired by, get an idea for.

Maybe they're looking to do some sort of like makeover for their kids' bedroom. And so they're going to go to the search immediately and, you know, type in kids bedroom ideas versus someone who just comes on to Pinterest and maybe they just have some time to kill or they're bored and they just don't have anything in particular in mind. So they're going to go straight to the home feed and they're just going to start scrolling to see what is new and is going to catch their eye. And so the Pinterest Trends is great for targeting those who have an agenda and they want to search for something because they're going to show you a lot of these really popular

keywords. But that's kind of it. Whereas like Pen Clicks is going to take you to that next step beyond search. So that's where we help with targeting the home feed. Targeting the home feed can be a little tricky and it's hard because it's almost like a black box. You just don't know what's showing up in front of users. I mean, it's unique to every person when they log into their feed. But one of the things that Pinterest does is they will tag pins. So every time you create a pin or any sort of user creates a pin, they

tag it with different keywords based on they analyze the image, they analyze the text on the pen, even the website that the pen may link to. And they're going to try to tag it with a handful of keywords to reflect what is this pen about. And then they use those keywords to then try to match up these pins with users, because they also tag users with, okay, what are the different topics that this user is interested in? And so Pinterest has this huge database of like 11 million, what they call interests.

So if you think about the name Pinterest, take out the P, it's interests, and that's what the whole platform is all about. It's like, what are you interested in? We want to show you the things that you're interested in. And so they've got this huge database of all of these different interests, and they're trying to match new pins, interesting pins that are tagged with different interests that match the same interests as the user. And so that's a great place to target the home feed. And so as a user. And so that's a great place to target the home bead.

And so there was one day I was browsing around Pinterest and I stumbled on this huge database that they have of these 11 million interests. You can find a lot of them on your own. And this is what I was doing. If you go to Google and you type in site colon Pinterest dot com slash ideas and then put in any keyword after that. And then it's going to show you all of these idea pages that Pinterest has auto generated. But each idea page is based on one of the official

interests that's in their database. And so they haven't created an idea page for all of them and Google hasn't, or they have actually, but Google hasn't indexed all of them. And so they haven't created an idea page for all of them. And Google hasn't, or they have actually, but Google hasn't indexed all of them. And so it's a limited search. But I found all of them and quickly downloaded them. It was a whole process. There's 11 million of them because I don't know if they'll read, if they'll like, I don't know if it was a mistake on their end that I was able to find all these anyways. So I quickly downloaded them and I was like, we gotta get this into PinClick.

So let's make this whole database searchable. Like for the first time, we can actually find out all of these different interest keywords that's in their database and that they're using to try to match up your pins with users. And so we did that and we made it an interest explored tool inside PinClicks and it's a great tool again to use for targeting the home feed, but also getting more topic ideas. So Pinterest trends

is very limited and all the topics it's going to show you, it's going to show you like the top 80% or do you say 20% of popular keywords or the keywords that are on the platform. But if you want to get to the bottom 80%, which can still drive a lot of traffic, you've got to do more keyword research beyond just Pinterest trends. And that's where this interest explore tool has been really valuable for me and for other creators

to identify what are these other official topics that Pinterest knows about. Because you're kind of wasting your time if you're creating pins that are not connecting with users, they're not targeting topics that they're interested in. And so this is another way to kind of validate the topics that you're writing about. Do they relate in some way to an official interest? Because if they don't, they're not going to be seen by people, most likely. So yeah, we've got that entire database searchable. It's a great way to, yeah, find additional keywords to target or like, what are some

subtopics I can cover in a blog post that I can create additional pins about. And that's where that can be helpful. Another cool tool that we use a lot is the keyword research tool. So when you go to Pinterest and you use their search tool, just like Google, they've got a dropdown of search suggestions once you start typing. And so you see a dropdown search suggestions. And it helps guide the user to go a little bit deeper or in a slightly different direction with that topic.

And it's great to target as content creators. And we're trying to get traffic from Pinterest. And it's great to target as content creators and we're trying to get traffic from Pinterest and it's great to target those keywords and make sure that you're creating pins around those. But the problem with doing it that way is you're very limited. So say you type in kids bedroom ideas, maybe you're like looking,

you want some different ideas beyond that. And so when you start typing that in kids bedroom ideas, you will see search drop-down suggestions. You can take that a little bit further such as pink bedroom idea, for example. Well, that's the letter P. Maybe there might be another letter that you can use besides pink. That's where pink starts with P, but maybe blue is popular.

If you type in kids bedroom ideas in the letter B, it might populate with that suggestion, you know, blue bedroom ideas. And then you can do like the letter C and maybe that will populate with cute kids bedroom ideas. And so you can kind of go down the alphabet. So you type in your main keyword that you're trying to target, like kids bedroom bedroom ideas and just put a word before after that in the search box and it's going to show you suggestions that have that word that starts with that letter that you're using anyways, you can run that like A through Z.

And it's going to give you lots of ideas of additional keywords you can target with your pens. But it's very time consuming to do that. I mean, that could take like a whole hour. Um, whereas pen clicks like does it automatically for you within seconds. We'll just search Pinterest for you for that keyword you're targeting. And we're going to, we're going to append the letter a next to it, uh, at the end. And then also at the beginning. And we're going to see how the search suggestions changed based on adding that additional letter, we're going to pull those in and then we're going to do

that for letter B and all the way through Z. Yeah, so it's been a great way to just quickly get a ton more ideas. And again, it's up to you on, you know, do you create a brand new blog post for every single keyword you come across? Or in many cases, it's no, you can create one big blog post,

but you can create lots of pens for it that are targeting different, you know, these different variations of the keyword. Yeah. So it's been helpful. Are you a blogger who is interested in growing your Pinterest traffic without spending hours on the platform every week? Tailwind is the perfect tool to make Pinterest work for you seamlessly. With Tailwind, you can create and batch your content in advance, so you can not only stay consistent, but you can also save yourself hours of work every single week. Tailwind's smart scheduling tool helps you post at optimal times to reach your audience as well,

so you don't have to scramble to share your content anymore. If you are ready to create a better system for Pinterest, Tailwind is your answer. You'll have everything you need to grow your audience, schedule pins with ease, and optimize your strategy so you can stay focused on your growing blog business. Visit the link in our show notes to sign up for Tailwind today and simplify your Pinterest strategy. Hey, Ultimate Blog Podcast listeners. Do you want to boost your Pinterest traffic and rank higher in Pinterest search?

Let us introduce you to PinClicks. PinClicks is the ultimate Pinterest research and keyword tracking tool that is designed for creators just like you. It gives you important insights into high-performing pins, shows you keyword suggestions and it even tracks your Pinterest rankings. Whether your goal is to grow your audience or optimize your content, Pin Clicks will help you dominate your niche with data-driven strategies. Want to learn more? Visit the show notes to learn more about Pin Clicks today.

I think that's important that you just said that. You can create different pins for one blog post, you should be. So that's probably just, you know, Jennifer and I have kind of gotten out of this recommendation for anything in regards to Pinterest. Like I said, we bring on the experts to talk about Pinterest. So we stay up to date with all the blogging stuff, but then we allow the experts to share about Pinterest. But one of, I think, the foundations when you're writing a blog post is every blog post

needs to have a minimum of one pinnable image in there. That way, when you publish that blog post, somebody can immediately be pinning over on Pinterest and that does your work for you. Let the users pin your content too. So I'm glad that you brought that up. Let's use this idea of setting up a kid's bedroom, set up a kid's bedroom, whatever. This is why you guys are really glad I don't have a home decor blog. From there, that might be the blog post, but Tony, what you're saying is your pin can have different text on each pin,

as long as it meets the user intent, right? So when they click on that, they need to get the title of the blog post. It doesn't have to match the pin title, is that correct? Right, it doesn't. So it doesn't need to match. Therefore, think about how you digest content. We all digest it so differently.

Somebody might wanna click on something that is, you know, like a cute bedroom. Somebody might want to click on something that is, you know, like a cute bedroom. Somebody might want a kid's bedroom. It all kind of might mean the same thing, but it can get them differently into that pen. And so keeping that in mind, I think is important with how we can expand what we're talking about not only within the blog post, but how can we get different people like you're saying to click on different images that are more attractive to them because we're not all attracted to the same thing. And just because we've done a research, you

know, audit, whatever we want to call it these days, whether you're using a keyword research tool, whether you're going strictly on Pinterest, but like, so you have this idea of what the blog post is about. Knowing that that's, I think, sometimes where the creativity needs to come in next is now how do I get somebody to click on this? Like in a different way, whether it be in my email list, on Pinterest, maybe it's sharing over on social media. And so getting a little bit more creative with that because we all are very bombarded with images and content right now. So how can we get ours to stand out?

And I think that using a tool like Pin Clicks kind of takes some of that guesswork out of it for us and allows us to, you know, plug it in. Let me generate some ideas. And what I find when you use a tool similar to this or not similar, but just any kind of tool that can kind of help you with this, I think that it kind of helps your creative juices to flow

because it's bringing up ideas for you that then, like you said earlier, you can either create a brand new blog post or you can keep it with the same one, but I think it just can add to that creativity that that we have to as content creators. Yeah. Cause sometimes you run across key words here that you just didn't realize people were searching for. So for example, one of the things that Pinterest does is they will track this. They've said publicly that they,

they can track the vibe that you have, like that you prefer. And that was the word that they use, vibe. I also know they track which colors that you like. So it's something to keep in mind. Yeah, so for example, I mean, you're creating, so we're talking about this like kids bedroom idea. I bet you that if you were to search kids bedroom idea and you put in the letter M before that or after,

you'll find like one of the options will be like minimalist the kids bedroom idea and you put in the letter M before that or after, you'll find like one of the options will be like minimalist kids bedroom idea. Right? Cause that's like a vibe. That's a style. Like someone likes minimalist aesthetics. Right? And so that's just something that maybe someone hadn't thought about as far as targeting their content and creating pins around is the different vibes, the different colors. Right? So some people may prefer like more white or maybe like muted colors versus like vibrant colors versus like purple or pink. So another good reason to create more pens is to target the different demographics based

on their vibe, their colors that they prefer. But you're pointing them back to the same content. It's just you're creating different doorways basically to bring people into that content. Yeah. So you're using this tool, you're generating these ideas and you're obviously really wanting to connect with the ideas that align with the content that you're creating, that you feel confident creating, that you are good at creating. But then is there anything within the tool that will give you a little bit more guidance? Like hey, this is a good keyword or you might be able to rank for this keyword.

Is there any additional guidance that the tool provides? Yeah, that's a good question. So there's a popular scheduling tool for Pinterest that has come out with a new keyword tool where like you plug in your blog post URL or even just your homepage. And then what's happening is behind the scenes, they're searching Pinterest trends to find keywords that would be a good fit for your site or for that blog post that you might not be targeting. It's not super accurate, but it was a really interesting idea in that, okay, give me some fresh ideas, help me search. It kind of helps eliminate having to do a bunch of searching and Pinterest trends. I've got a whole process, maybe a 27 process for my VA is to go in once a month into Pinterest trends to identify brand new keywords

that we haven't targeted yet. So this tool I'm talking about, it's made by Tailwind, I'll mention them. It's kind of, it's an inspiring tool, it's free, go check it out. But it was inspiring for me, like, okay, how can we take Pen Clicks to another level, being able to start almost spoon feeding you keyword ideas? Cause right now it requires you to know where to start. Just like with, unlike Pinterest trends, like you can just go there, maybe check the interest box that's most related to your niche and it just gives you keywords.

So one of the, what we're gonna go in that direction, one of the things that we've launched here is I'm talking about the, you know, Pinterest search and the dropdowns that are so G suggested keyword searches, right? And one of the things that we're going to be doing now is you can track, you can follow a keyword.

So say you're in the home decor niche and you know, you've got a, you've liked to write content on, you know, bedroom ideas, right? Bedroom decor. And so you can track the keyword, you know, bedroom ideas with pin clicks. And what we're going to do is like once a week, we're going to go to Pinterest and we're going to run all those letters A through Z of like A and the bedroom ideas, B bedroom ideas. And we're going to look and see the search suggestions that populate. And if there's anything new there that pops up, we're going to notify you about it

because they will go in and they will, those will change over time, I believe. I don't know, no one's tracking this. We're going to be like one of the first tools to ever track this. But I'd imagine those search suggestions change over time as interests change over time or like the season changes, you know? And so now like we can start giving you new ideas of things you can target. But you got to start with the keyword. You got to know, OK, I like to write

about this particular topic. So you just put that into Ten Clicks, and then we'll start tracking that for you, giving you more ideas. But I like what Tailwind has built. I've got ideas of how I could build it, build something a little bit better. So maybe that's going to be on the roadmap pretty soon.

Yeah, I think that that's good news for any blogger because I think that especially as a new blogger when you get started, I think the fear is always am I going to run out of content ideas? And I think now more than ever we have lots of ways that we can generate new content ideas and and knowing too that like not every single blog post needs to have everything about said keyword. You know, you can have cornerstone content or anchor content that then you can bring them back to and that helps. It has helped with Google.

I assume it helps with Pinterest as well. But just, you know, when they really learn like what exactly your site is about, that also provides some data that they need. So if somebody is looking for a bedroom decor or whatever, it's going to start to read your site better and better. And so by having some of those things generated, those ideas generated, that's just going to strengthen your blog too. So you know, coming at that from a couple different ways,

I think is important to note as a blogger and how it can serve us. Yeah, for sure. And I really enjoyed using ChatGBT for even that process. So I like to do something called mashups, where you take two known topics or interests in the Pinterest platform, and you combine them together in a unique way. So say you're already reaching people in the Pinterest platform, and you combine them together in a unique way. So say you're already reaching people in the home decor niche, but maybe there's like kind of a shoulder niche of, you know, like maybe on the exterior of the home, right? So maybe there's like garden, flower beds or whatever. And so there might be an interesting way that you can take two ideas and have AI,

mash them together to create something new. It's really easy to do that. I tested it with like recipes. It's a great niche to do that with. And yeah, just to ask ChatDB, like give it a recipe or give it an initial idea and then have it, like ask it to create like a brand new idea that's never existed combined.

Like give it a list of topics. Like maybe just give it a list of all the topics you'd like to cover on your blog and see what it can do with coming up with something unique, mashing it up. Yeah, cause that way, cause that's the other thing with the platform is you just don't want to rehash what everyone else is doing. You know, you can guess it's good to target keywords,

but also understand that there's gonna be a lot of other people targeting those keywords. And novelty is a huge component of the platform. And so you want to be able to create a unique angle with your pens as much as you can to like catch people's attention. And so that's where I like to leverage AI for helping me. It's a great way to like brainstorm. I love using that tool, but you just need to know how to prompt it well to get something unique out of it. So once you figure that out, then just kind of keep running through all your different blog posts and pins because

I recognize a lot of people have a hard time. They've created some pins for their blog posts and they move on to the next one. But right now with the platform, it's really favoring fresh pins. And so it's good to have a process in place to continue to go back, create new pens for existing blog posts. And so being able to leverage some sort of keyword tool for that, as well as AI to help you come up with some fresh ideas and fresh images, even putting new text on top of a pen can go a long ways as well. One of the things that I noticed that a lot of bloggers don't do for Pinterest that are in, say, the information niche. We mentioned home decor. It's very visual, very Pinterest friendly, but there's a lot of people who are doing really well

on Pinterest. But the primary modality of their content is text. They're going to read it. So say, take relationship advice or providing tips. Say you're doing a kid's bedroom makeover. Maybe it's 10 tips or 10 things you need to know before you makeover your kid's bedroom. Right? And so that's more of information. It's not visual inspiration. It's more information.

And so each of those tips are great pens to create. Like every tip, put it into its own pen. I would still put like the blog post title on that pen and I would say like tip two of 10. But also put that pen image that you've created, put it in your actual blog post. Like that's the key thing that I'm seeing a lot of information-based bloggers miss out on with Pinterest is they're not putting, they're not creating custom images to put in their actual blog posts for the readers to pin. Because they go through those tips and they might like tip number three and seven and they want to bookmark those for later. Well, you're not giving them an opportunity to easily do that because you're not providing a simple graphic

for them to pin directly on your blog posts. That's kind of a good idea to work harder, not work harder, work smarter, not harder. Because you need images in your blog post, and then you want those images to be pinned in a way that's going to come back and serve you later, and serve the user for that matter. It's kind of a good idea.

Yeah. Yeah. So you take every part of a blog post, you want to think about what could be bookmarked from this? What kind of information, whether it's visual or text, is there a component of this that someone would want to save this idea or concept for later? And if you can't think of anything, just give your blog post text to ChatGBT and ask it,

you know, and we might be able to tell you. Yeah, I love it because, you know, anybody listening today can be like, I don't have to feel overwhelmed at this moment. I don't have to go out and create 20 new blog posts to be able to, you know, up my Pinterest strategy and put a little more investment and time into Pinterest. I can take what I already have.

I can use this tool. I can see, you know, can I target some keywords a little more specifically on Pinterest for content that I've already created and start working on bringing some more traffic to my site, to things that I already have. I think it's just a fantastic opportunity and a great time for bloggers. We talk about like kind of trying to maintain some positivity, you know, when things are getting hard, when people are feeling discouraged. And I think that everybody could take this as a great opportunity to find that creativity.

Use this tool, use ChatGPT in the ways that you've described, bring them together and come up with some ideas to repurpose the content that you already have. Yeah, you know, one of the things that I've been thinking about is I've been hit by Google updates for a long time over the years.

And I've kept going. And that's what you were talking about earlier, Amy. I've been wondering what makes me different from a lot of other people who I know have been hit by the health content update. And they're struggling to turn things around. They're kind of stuck in some ways. And for me, I'm the provider for my family. My wife doesn't work. And so

we are relying on me to make money. And so I've got family support. And so it's a huge motivation for me. I know I've been connecting with a lot of bloggers, especially from pen clicks and having lots of conversations. And I recognize a lot of the Pinterest community and blogging community are part-time, like this is a part-time thing for them or they're just getting started. But when it's a part-time thing and it's, or maybe it's full-time, but they still have a spouse or significant other that they are also relying on their income to provide. And I'm just thinking that I think

that's just an element for me and my motivation of I've got to figure this out because otherwise, like we're not going to have money coming in and we can't pay for things. And so there's nothing more motivating than that. And so I think that's just my encouragement for other people who maybe this is just part-time income for you, not relying on it. Find that deeper motivation, whatever that may be. I think we can all kind of search within a little bit more to figure out what really is motivating us. I don't know, maybe it's like that next Disney cruise that you really want to take your kids

on and being able to save up for that from this part-time blog that you have. That's great. Just keep that in mind. Plan something in the head. Put it if you need to create a vision board or whatever. But using that as a huge source of inspiration, but also what will happen if I don't accomplish this and thinking that through. I don't know.

So that's my advice of why I think why I've been able to weather a lot of these updates and figure it out just because I just felt like I had no choice in the matter. I wanted to survive. Yeah. I hope what people heard there too is that you have survived it. Like you've been doing this for 20 years and you've survived every single one. And so that's, I want that to be a key takeaway from this episode two is that, you know, the only way to fail is to totally give up and, you know, shut the laptop for the last time and say, I'm done doing this. But I do, I do know that there's usually a way around whatever it is that we're going through, whether we're talking about business or life or whatever,

you know, but there's generally a way through and we might have some like really dark valleys. And I think there are a lot of people who have had those quite honestly in the last year or more, you know, that their business has taken a turn and it might not be doing what it used to. But just knowing that we are in a day and age that we have resources that are coming to light that weren't created before because of what we're going through or what we've been through. And so leaning into those and Pin Clicks being one of them.

And so if you want to try Pin Clicks, I would just encourage you to check it out. And Tony, can you tell people how they can get signed up for pin clicks and start using this tool to reinvigorate their blogging business? Yeah, for sure. So pin clicks.com head over there. There's a five day free trial to a full featured trial. You can try all the tools that we have there. One of the one of the tools I haven't mentioned, I was mentioned real quick is the top pins tool. So you can put in any keyword and it's going to show you all the top ranking pins and we're going to show you the number of saves they have, which is a metric that Pinterest has stopped showing visually to the public. But we've figured out how to get it from the backend. So we'll show you that and how recent a pin is. So those are important

factors to understand. Pay pay attention to the pins that have a lot of saves. There's something special about them. And so I'm not saying copy them exactly, but pay attention to aesthetics. That was something we talked about earlier, like the pen title and the description, the blog post topic. Is there a unique angle they're approaching it with? Just paying attention to those details. That's a really helpful tool. That it's going to be the first thing you actually come to when you create an account and log in. So you won't miss it. Thank you so much, Tony, for coming today. We will put links in the show notes so you can check out pin clicks and we would love to hear if you start utilizing this tool.

I'm sure Tony would too, but and how it's working for you. So if you, if you start using pin clicks, feel free to email us, let us know how that's working for you. So if you start using PinClicks, feel free to email us, let us know how that's working for you. And I will be excited to hear how it's gonna help your blog grow. So thanks for being here today, Tony. Yeah, thanks for having me. It was fun.

Thanks for listening to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about building your blog, visit theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash newsletter to get signed up for our email newsletter. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to share it with a friend, subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts. Thanks for watching!