The Ultimate Blog Podcast - Pinterest in 2025: Strategies for Growth & Success with Kate Ahl

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Pinterest is always evolving, and as we head into 2025, you have to stay ahead of the latest trends and strategies. In this episode of The Ultimate Blog Podcast, Jennifer and Amy sit down with Pinterest expert Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media to talk about everything you need to know about Pinterest in 2025. Tune in to hear what the most recent Pinterest data is telling us, how to better cater your Pins to your audience, and sustainable Pinterest strategies for success.🔗Check out the show notes for Episode 169 here!

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. This podcast is the podcast we wish we had when we started blogging. I'm Amy Reinicki. 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. Kate All is joining us today from Simple Pin Media. We love having Kate on. I think she's been on yearly since we've started the podcast. And we love having her on, I think she's been on yearly since we've started the podcast and we love having her on toward the beginning of the year to just kind of chat about Pinterest and what Pinterest looks like for this year. So welcome back to the Ultimate Blog Podcast, Kate. Thanks so much for having me.

I love talking with y'all as evidence of 30 minutes of chatting before this actual episode. It's a good thing we didn't have any other interview schedule today. Because we always love to have extra time to chat and learn and grow. And that's one of the things that we love about you so much, Kate, is just the willingness that you have to share your experience as a business owner and a creator, what's working, and just having those open and honest conversations, which is kind of what we're going to dive into today for the purpose of this episode talking about Pinterest. And Pinterest is ever-changing, always.

I feel like there's always something new to learn and something new to focus on in regards to Pinterest. So can you kind of just share today, like coming into 2025, what do you see as like the biggest change with Pinterest in this new year? You know, I would say the biggest change that I see is Pinterest understanding their true value in the market. And I think the changes have been really the result of them

either trying to capture a market share of TikTok or Instagram or wondering how they can change kind of the method and how their pinners engage with them. And I think for the first time actually in October they did a whole Pinterest presents for marketers and it felt like they were finally understanding, oh, the last two years things have been bumpy, but now we're going forward into who we are. We know that we inform shopping. We know that we inform searches. We know that people find great ideas here. We don't wanna be social media.

We don't want this to be a toxic place. And I really think that is a huge part of what we see in 2025 and beyond is them going, this is our stake in the sand, we are here on this land and we're gonna own it. And I love that for Pinterest because even though it has felt like things have been really up and down, I think they're going back to their roots of

we are a search and discovery platform to help people find great ideas that make their life more awesome. Yeah, yeah. I think it was the last, it was either the last episode you were on or the one before that, but you shared just the idea that Pinterest is for dreamers and doers. And I've reminded myself of that. I've told our members that within the roadmap.

I just think that's such a good way to think about Pinterest and who is coming on. And, you know, whether we're talking about blogging or Pinterest, I think you kind of nailed it there and you have to know who you're talking to. That is a really important piece of being successful as a creator is knowing who you're talking to and what problem you're trying to solve, what you bring to the table and how you can do that. So I love that you kind of just tied that all in. So thank you for that. You recently had Tailwind on your podcast and we each listened to that and they shared a report that they've released. And we kind of want to talk about a couple of things in specific with that report.

So I don't know if you want to give kind of a high level overview of that. And we will also link that particular episode as well in the show notes. It's analyzing 1 million pins and that's on the Simple Pin podcast. So what is the kind of the high notes from that study that somebody could take away from that? Yeah, I think number one, here's what stood out to me. It's 1 million pins. So that is a lot of data that was really calculated

and it took them hours and hours to pull this all together. And I'm a big believer that you don't wanna start with these anecdotal ideas of what's working for other people, but going with the data. And I think there's a couple of things that we learned for sure, instead of just kind of out in the clouds, right? One is the shelf life of a pin is 13 months on average. So what this tells us is that pins can

last a really, really long time, but you have to have the new with the old. It's this, you know, if you're going to invest in the platform and you're saying, I'm going to choose Pinterest. Well, that tells you, you need to do it for 13 months at a minimum, right? Because if you want your pins to take off, they have to be given that much time to do so. So that was really encouraging to hear that we tell people six to eight months,

it's actually probably even a little bit longer. And people tend to get fatigued with the platform and they jump ship at three months. Don't do that because then we know the shelf life is 13 months. The other thing I think was a big takeaway was that 1% of your pins drive the majority of your traffic, meaning not everything, in fact, most everything,

isn't going to take off. So this expectation of looking for virality or looking for this wave of traffic from every single thing that you create is really not a good benchmark, but that you're really looking for things that a lot of us who have been on Pinterest for a while, it's our old content.

And we wonder like, why is this still doing so well? Well, this confirmed that that's really how it works. That if there's a shelf life of 13 months and 1% drives the majority of the traffic, you're going to see that. Which means it doesn't mean that your new stuff is not going to take off, but it means that a lot of these groundwork, it's brick lane, is what you're doing with Pinterest. I think there was a lot of good information about colors that really actually kind of rocked my world a little bit because I use red, which is a very bright primary color.

And maybe I need to experiment with some different ways that I look at my images, maybe not being so closely held to my colors. There's four parts in total and there's only been two parts released so far. So we're really discussing what they learned in those two parts. And I think there are so many takeaways there

that can be applied to anybody who's doing Pinterest marketing to say, okay, I'm in it for the long haul. I need to interrogate my images and I need to really understand who I'm targeting. And that's really important to drill down to those things to create a really good strategy. So, going into 2025, and we're talking about who are we

targeting, who are the people that are on Pinterest? We talked about, you know, Pinterest finally realizing or kind of going back to their roots as a search engine tool, so to speak. Who are the people that are going to Pinterest to get information. What does that demographic look like and what types of things are they looking for? Video content, exciting content, information. Can you tell us a little bit about them so that as a content creator, we know a little bit about what to focus on? Yeah. So there's one place that I would love everybody to go and it's the 2025 Pinterest predicts. We'll get a link for the show notes. That is where Pinterest is predicting they're not yet trending ideas of what is going to take off and what's not going to take off in 25 different categories. Previous to this, Pinterest has been very clear on saying Gen Z is the fastest growing

demographic. At times it's been men are the fastest growing demographic. And finally, for the first time in this report, they're drilling down to say, okay, if it's Modoboho, which is the theme of this particular trend, they are highlighting that this is a big thing for Gen Z and boomers. And it was like, what? This is the first time they're pulling in other generations and then they'll have another Pinterest prediction where it is Gen Z and Gen X. So it feels like they're also embracing this multi-generational platform. And that's important because what we have experienced in talking with a lot of people

is they just have kind of this blanket understanding of a Pinterest user. They're just, maybe they're this or maybe they're that. But now they can kind of drill down and say, maybe I'm actually targeting people who are boomers and Gen Z. A great example is we were at a food event last May in Denver and we were looking at this person's like audience insights and analytics. And what she realized and actually clicked for her is that she had a lot of college students because she was doing meal plans to save money. So she had both college students and she had boomers that were searching. Well, she was kind of trying to target millennial moms. But when she finally put all those things together, she realized, oh, I can target college women or men who are searching for meal plans.

Like, okay, let's go there. So all that to say Pinterest might put out a lot of Gen Z stats, but it's important for you to understand that that might not be who you're targeting. You could be a Gen X or a boomer. But again, that 2025 Pinterest Predicts report is going to give you a lot of information about where Pinterest is going in the next year. And they give you keyword ideas in there, which is also really helpful. That if you're wondering what kind of content to create, go look at that first, because they're giving some percentages too, of what growth they've seen so far. So I think one of the things that we were talking about before we hit record, and I think that it flows in nicely at this point,

is like as a content creator, so we're going out, we're researching, we're kind of getting some ideas of what to be creating. We know we've got to be creating some, you know, fresh content on a regular basis. We got to be in this for the long term, but it's a lot of work. It's a lot to do.

When you go in and look at some of the recommendations, it talks about things like creating fresh pins, pinning to multiple boards, always redoing your pins for old content. And I think it can seem very overwhelming to somebody who's like a blogger, a content creator who's doing this solo. So from that perspective, do you still think it's worthwhile for bloggers and content creators to try to drive traffic from Pinterest and capture some of that?

And do we kind of need to be all in or what's the approach that we can take to be able to make this a manageable thing so that we're creating enough to make it so that it's worthwhile and we can compete but yet we're not spending every hour of our day creating Pinterest content? Mm-hmm. 100%. So I kind of like to turn that on its side a little bit, because I think what people feel is the fatigue of overall marketing of their business. And they're spending so much time on all the platforms that what we

find is that when they get to Pinterest, it already feels like they're fatigued because they've been doing reels on Instagram and they're commenting on Instagram. They're doing all these things. And I, what we find is that people that tend to have the most success and don't get fatigued is they're making an intentional decision to solely focus on one or two. So they're saying, I'm only going to focus right now on Pinterest and YouTube, and those might work together really well. Or I'm going to make a decision to only focus on

Instagram and Pinterest. I'm not going to worry about decision to only focus on Instagram and Pinterest. I'm not going to worry about Facebook or TikTok or any of those things. So actually, when we look at the numbers and we do a time comparison and a time audit, the time being spent on these other platforms is considerably higher than it is on Pinterest. And that when you think about it, Pinterest is adding like an extra step, right? So if you're already creating content, really all you need to do is be intentional about, are my keywords the same that I'm using in this blog post for SEO,

and have I been intentional with my Pinterest image? The scheduling and the adding and fresh pins thing, like those are tweaks that you can make over time, right? And you don't have to labor over those. But I just think that it's the last thing on our list sometimes. And we know it can be a traffic driver. We kind of hope if we throw something up, it's going to work. And then we kind of come back from it and we say, why is it not working? But then the people that we talked to who have said, I can't do Instagram. I don't have it in me. Or I don't want to do Facebook. I really just want to focus on Pinterest because it's working really well for me.

Those are the people who are not fatigued and have said, OK, I know these images work. I know this type of content works because they've investigated it. So I think that's where I like to help people start with. Why are you using it? Like what truly ask yourself, are you using it just because that your industry at a whole or I say Pinterest is great? That's not a good reason to use it. Right. Are you using it just because that your industry at a whole or I say Pinterest is great?

That's not a good reason to use it, right? Or have you said, I want to use it and invest in it over the next two years because I know it can be a traffic driver. I've heard it from lots of different people. I also know that it's perfect for my audience. They're already looking for XYZ and I know that I can already create content. So I'm going to add this extra element of it, and then I'm gonna see, okay, what's working,

what's not working at that point. So I do think it can be overwhelming. If we can shut out some of that, I think Pinterest will actually be your most efficient and most profitable platform that you have out there. I think that's good advice, and that's something that we recommend as well, is there are so many different places out there. I think that's good advice just to and that's something that we recommend as well is

there are so many different places that you can be promoting your content and unless you're going to hire help in a lot of different areas there's no way that you're going to be able to do it on your own and just pick those ones that make sense for you. I would say pick the ones that make sense for you and pick the ones that like you don't dread doing like we've never been on TikTok it's never been something that either one of us wanted to do. I think I've downloaded the app several different times. Like, should I do this? And like every time I'm like, I don't want to,

like I really don't want to. I'd rather spend my time somewhere else. If you feel that about a platform that you're on, I think every platform, you know, and Pinterest is not a social media platform, but it is a, it's a promotion platform. It is like a lot of them are, you know, we're promoting our content on all of these different platforms. And so if you feel that way towards something else that you're doing,

what Kate's saying is, why not try Pinterest in a different way? It's, you don't have to be so quote unquote on, I don't feel for Pinterest. You can batch your work, you can work ahead of time. And we're big fans of batching work. We think that that's how you can be much more efficient in your blogging business. And so you can definitely do that with Pinterest and block out that time to make it more efficient to where it's not like, well, I haven't had stories up in 48 hours

and now my engagement is going to tank and all of that. So how do you encourage a blogger who is like, all right, I'm going to give this a shot maybe or be just more intentional with their process of it to kind of batch it or basically create a system for how they're going to use Pinterest to promote their content that they're already creating? Yeah, I've actually gotten this question a lot lately and it's something I haven't done a ton of teaching on, but I need to clearly because it's being asked. One, I would say you always start with whatever your editorial calendar is and this is really how I'm going to walk you through

my process, right? So we do the podcast, which is turned into a blog post. And then from there, we create our pin images and our pin design. So I have it in a spreadsheet. I'm not, the air table makes me wanna poke my eyeballs out. I know it's amazing and people love it and it's so great, but I'm just going with a basic Google sheet, right? I'm going with my topic for the podcast, but then for my pin copy,

like what I'm actually putting on my Pinterest image, I am going to Pinterest and I'm seeing does that actually resonate? Are people actually searching it? Because I have been in the trap before where I'm like, well, I'm talking about like Pinterest marketing for e-commerce, let's just throw that on the pin image. But that's not actually what people are putting into the search bar. They might be saying, how do you sell your products on Pinterest? And that's drastically different copy or even key words that I can put on my Pinterest image that I'm not intentionally thinking about. So I think step number one is have an editorial calendar, have a plan.

It doesn't have to go out too far, a couple of weeks, couple of months or a quarter. And then search on Pinterest, do these match up. And then when you get to your Pinterest image, think about actually some of the things in the study were really helpful. You know, Google, I actually, we have this like new mini product that's coming out, it's a Pinner persona product, like how you can find your ideal person on Pinterest. One of the things is to figure out what are the colors that resonate. So if you're targeting millennials and you can Google what colors do millennials like and start there, or you can really drill down to that piece.

And then from there, you have now your Pinterest image, and then it gets into adding it to the platform. Now, this is where a lot of people get into the weeds and are like, oh, my gosh, am I doing this right? In fact, when people ask me first, like, how many pins do I do per day? You are starting with the wrong question, right? If you haven't done all of these things first. So, workflow basic is create the post, create the pin,

and then pin it to the board that is most relevant to that particular topic. So if I'm doing how to sell products on Pinterest and I have a board that's titled e-commerce on Pinterest, that's where I want it to go. Or even it might be how to sell on Pinterest is my board name. Because then that allows the algorithm to see all these things together to go, oh, this is e-commerce and selling on Pinterest. So anybody who's searching for that, I can now show it to them.

If you have other boards that are about e-commerce, next week you can pin it to another board. And the week after that, you can pin it to another board. You can definitely add these pins to the board over and over. You're not going to like break anything. But you can also create a new image. And that this is where we get into that thing of like fresh pin that we hear around. Tale and Study talks about this as well. The reason you want to do this, and I would say this is where you're getting like level two, right? Like level one is what I just described.

You master that workflow, you're just learning, right? That's your basic. Level two is I want to create a different type of image and I want to use different words because maybe somebody's going to engage with that that didn't engage with the first one because I want data. I want to know what worked and didn't work. And this is the element that I think for all of the platforms that you invest in, why I think that when you invest in too many, you're not actually getting any data because you're just plugging the machine. You're like, Instagram wants this, TikTok wants this, you know. But really when you stand

back and you're intentional about it and say, I'm going to try this new image with different colors, different words, and in six months I'm going to see which ones are doing good or not good. You're actually just investigating. Then you get better at your Pinterest marketing because then you're following the flow of what works and doesn't work. Instead of just throwing pins up there, coming back and saying nothing's working. Well do you know why? So those are kind of the workflows

that I like to give people to where you can get into the weeds, but really just basic is what I just talked about from post to pin. 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.

I feel like we always want a formula. So we want somebody just to say, Hey, here's what's worked for me. So just rinse, repeat and put it out there. But when it comes down to it, you really do have to try it, see what works for your audience, see what resonates with the people and put yourself in their shoes because you wanna create something that's going to be helpful to them. It's not just about, oh, okay, I'm gonna copy paste, slap it all up there, pen a bunch of stuff,

and it's gonna bring me all this traffic. I think you have to take it and use it from the perspective of, I'm going to reach people who need the content that I'm creating. So I'm going to do what I can to make it appealing and attractive to them so that it's catching their eye. And that kind of leads me to the next thing that I heard was that, you know, the indication to Pinterest on how well a pin is going to do can come in that first, you know, that first little bit of time after you've pinned it.

Pinterest is looking at are people interacting with it? Are people saving it? So are there things that, besides just testing out the different colors and things like that, are there things that we can do to encourage people to interact with our pins when we're pinning stuff so that we have a better chance of it, quote, going viral or getting traffic down the road. Yeah, I would say calling to action your outside audience is something like on an email list,

or if you were going to release a new post today, and then you could say something like, hey, here's a new post, I've seen people do this in their email right at the top. You can also pin this for later if you don't have time to read, you can do that as well. We know plenty of people who don't do that and they end up still getting pretty good with engagement. I would say another thing is to target the seasons, right? So be very intentional.

If you have any seasonal component to your marketing that you are looking at spring cleaning, Mother's Day, anything like that, because that's when you're gonna get the most engagement anyway. And Pinterest is looking for new content. So if you're creating it 30 to 45 days in advance of when that holiday is,

well then you're maximizing the opportunity to get engagement anyway, right? So that's one way to do it. And then people do like pin share threads or communities or things like that. We actually haven't noticed that to be super advantageous for people. So I would say probably your audience itself,

that's gonna be a good way. But again, there's a lot of people who don't even call to action and they find just by leveraging the events that are happening on Pinterest and the seasons and the trends, which trends.pinterest.com is a great place to go to see when things are trending. Not even if they're seasonal, but it could just be like work from home might be trending in January or it could be, you know, organizing your closets might be trending in January or it could be you know organizing your closets might be trending in August or something like that. So it doesn't always have to be this

particular holiday. I also want to share this too as well for anybody who has not jumped into Pinterest. If you are already marketing on another platform and you feel like that is already working for you, it's helpful for you actually to go to Pinterest and search your name and see if people are already saving what you're doing on other platforms. Here's an example, I met with somebody who does ramen recipes. They do have a website, but they do a lot on YouTube. So we opened up her, we opened up Pinterest and searched for her name and people were saving her stuff like crazy because she was doing shorts on YouTube and where do people want to save stuff? They save it to

Pinterest because they want to keep track of it. They're not filling up their bookmarks, right? So she was like, oh my gosh, it was, she was so cute. She's like, does somebody steal my pin? Does somebody take? I'm like, no, these are actual users who love your content, who are saving it to the platform for you. And so that natural engagement of people loving your stuff so much they want to save it for later, that is what gets the boost because it's really good. It's not to say everything has to be a 10 out of 10 because it won't be,

but at least aiming for connecting with your audience, that's your first win on Pinterest right there. So some of the things that you just said there are recommendations that have held true then. at least aiming for connecting with your audience, that's your first win on Pinterest right there. So some of the things that you just said, there are recommendations that have held true then. So you want people engaging with your pins by saving them and repinning them. And also when you're creating new content, like if it's a seasonal content, for instance, it does need to be created in that 30 to 45 day window ahead of time. And this is a question I feel like we get often. We're recording this at the time, like with Super Bowl week. And so it's going to, this is not going to go live till March,

but you know, we just had a call in our group. We had a member who asked, I really want to put out a post about Super Bowl recipes. And so it's not, we never want to hinder someone from like sharing a post, but we also say it's likely not going to do much this year, but it could do better, you know, next year around Super Bowl time. So is there a drawback? I guess this is where the question comes. Is there a drawback for let's use Super Bowl week of Monday of Super Bowl week you're going to create a post and you're going to share it on Pinterest? Is there a drawback for that taking 12 months then

to kind of gain juice or should somebody like that wait and maybe do it in December? Like keep the idea maybe start the draft in their WordPress dashboard and then just sit on it until December by chance and then launch it. What would be a recommendation there for a person who's asking for something right now? Like, hey, I think this, I want to write this right now. I know it's out of that 30 to 45 day window. Is it still worth it? Yeah. I would say always strike when the iron's hot, right? Because we are definitely idea people, we are burning through them like crazy, chances are you're not gonna do that in a year. So we tell people do it anyway,

because of what I said in the beginning, a 13 month shelf life of a pin, it's not gonna go anywhere, right? So it's not gonna die off, it could get picked up actually the next year, because it's been around. And one really creative thing that you can do with it is outside of you being like setting up

for a Super Bowl party, if it is like a Super Bowl list of appetizers, you can also create a new image for it that talks about how these are great summer appetizers or appetizers for a party in general that you can use your image to kind of play on it, but it's like evergreen content. So that's kind of a creative play. But I always tell people, if you have the inspiration,

go for it. You are not gonna, it's not gonna hurt you. You will benefit from it, but it's just not going to be what you wanted. And if you are marketing on those in-the-moment platforms like Instagram, then maybe right now you need to do it for that because you can get the play off of it. But just know your long-term platforms like Google and Pinterest, it might just take a while. That was our encouragement back.

I just wanted to get your take on it too. Yeah, I mean, I think we all know that when we are ready to write a post, we're ready to write a post. Yeah. Just do it. So true. It's so true. Okay. I think that's really helpful.

And something else I wanted to kind of ask, we've talked about kind of like the batching and the scheduling or things like that. We have recommended Tailwind for, I mean, back when I was Jennifer's virtual assistant, that's when we did it. So Jennifer's been doing it, you know, since before 2015. So Tailwind's been around for a long time. It's been something that we've each utilized in our own businesses for a long time. Is that still what you're recommending that people utilize when they want to have, you know,

create their own Pinterest strategy, batch their work, and maybe work ahead and get pins scheduled out for a couple weeks at a time? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we use it for almost all of our clients. I use it personally for simple pin. We have used, we've tried every other one. And what we found within our team is we're looking for how efficient is it? Does it give us enough data and does it have a good user experience? And for us kind of tailwind ticks all those boxes. Yeah, it does for us as well.

And I find it for the investment, like what you get and the amount of time that you save instead of feeling like you have to go to your blog every day and live pin. I can't imagine doing that. Nope. It's well worth the investment if you're wanting to have a strategy and

maybe start promoting more regularly on this platform. So that's definitely our recommendations as well. Something I want to ask too, in regards to Pinterest images and what we're using on our pens is in regards to stock images. I know this is kind of a, it can be kind of a sticky topic with photos, like on your blog posts and things like that. So what is the recommendation for like when you're creating a pin,

does it need to be an organic photo that you yourself have taken or are stock images okay to have on pins? Yeah, I think a third layer to this is how AI images factor into that because now stock images are pretty soon going to go by the wayside because you can essentially create your own, right? And so whether or not you took it with your own camera or you created it with AI, I think

is going to be the bigger issue in the future. So what I don't love about stock images is that they're readily available to everyone. And so if Pinterest is a visual search tool and five other people are using the same image, now you're not just competing on the keyword, you're competing with the same image. And what if they're using it for a different topic or it's just getting into the image search filter in a way that you don't want it to. So that's kind of like my caution there. And then so I would say your own images, especially as we go into AI, are going to serve you well. Now this can be done with, you know, your iPhone. It doesn't have to be, you know, crazy. Or you can

even buy images from some photographers. They will have flat lays that they will, you know, potentially sell to you that they just have, right? Like those are options too as well. The AI trick, and I think what we're going to be approaching over the next six months, is I don't think Pinterest has a problem with AI images. What they have a problem with is the amount of them that are flooding the platform, right? And the amount of which kind of turn and burn business owners who are just looking to make money are kind of overtaking the platform with content that's garbage.

So I think it's going to also be connected to what type of content are you creating? Are you creating helpful content for the platform? It's very similar to what we've seen with Google, right? And they're saying like, we don't want junk anymore. We want this actually to be helpful. But as evidence to them, you know, wiping good traffic out with their helpful content update, I think that's the needle that Pinterest is going to have to thread there is how do you identify helpful content? And I think how much people spend time on your site is a big deal, right? We kind of know it's always factored into it.

So it's not so much, I think, the stock images or no stock images. It's factoring in a lot of those other pieces into play. But you can use stock images like in Canva, but so can everybody else, right? I find that a lot of people who already struggle with images, and I have this problem myself, is I don't know which image to choose.

Like I'm not thinking through it correctly. I'm just kind of like pulling an image up. And you know, if you're in the financial space, you're always choosing a piggy bank, but everybody else is too, you know, but maybe they're talking about, you know, credit cards or travel hacking points. There's so many different ways that you can go.

So even if you're snapping a picture at your kitchen table or something like that, that right now, I think with AI with stock images is going to serve you the best. It feels like your images should offer some context as to what your content is about. And I think that can be tricky depending on your niche. You know, what am I going to take a picture of it? It's one thing if it's a recipe that you've completed or a craft that you've made. But I think if you're sharing, like you said, some finance tips or some health and wellness tips or some things like that, it can be really tricky

and probably a little bit overwhelming for bloggers to find and create images that do offer that context. And then, I guess the second piece of that would be, could you do like more words? Could you do inspirational quotes? Like, can you do other kinds of things in terms of creating pins too? Or does it have to just be an image? Yeah, absolutely. We see a lot of people who have an image in the background but

it has a white overlay and then some words. It has just a statement. You just don't want to do something that is like an infographic because what people will do is they'll just save that and they'll never visit your website for more. But yeah, we see a lot of people do that as well. It's maybe a computer in the background and then explains what it is. It's important that when you do pin copy, you use the exact words that people might be searching. It doesn't have to be the exact phrase all the time, but that you're actually adding in the keyword there. So that's just an important factor to consider. talk about. I think that's important with like you mentioned, Jennifer,

just other like recipe bloggers, food bloggers, like you're already you already have all those images, like you have all these images to choose from. But like I'm the health and wellness, for instance. And so I have used stock images, that's been a lot of what I've used in the past. So knowing that going forward, like that needs to change, and that needs to look a little different. And I'll give this recommendation. You know, we've talked to different people here on the podcast and the way that we do it is our own way too. There's lots of different

ways to source images. So you can sort of, we talked to one person who said, I just pick a day and I know that that day I'm shooting a bunch of different photos of myself. She uses her iPhone and she just has a list of the kind of images that she needs and gets a tripod out and lots of outfit changes, lots of things. So she does it all herself and that is totally doable. And that's essentially free to you. So that is one way that you can source these images. Another way and something that Jennifer and I have done also is hiring a brand photographer and having a really like

you're going to have to think through it. Don't just show up to the photo shoot and be like, take my picture like senior picture time. No, that's it's not time for senior picture pose like reliving our 18 year old days. It is like being really intentional with the images that you need. So what kinds of posts are you writing? What do you need that's coming up? And how can I repurpose them? It's been a while. We need to get ours updated, but we've used the last one for two and a half years and we are at a point these need to be updated because we're using the same images. But that can last you. It should last you maybe a year could last you two years if you're really

intentional about the kind of images that you're you're taking. And a lot of times and this is this is the tip with that. A lot of times, like if you hire a brand photographer, it tends to be a little less expensive in my experience here in Kansas City than like family photography. One, because we're adults and we know how to look at the camera and we know exactly what to do and we can like knock that out pretty quick. So that's one. But then you're not also using the high res images. You're getting the low res images because you only need them for web only. And so I feel like a lot of times photographers charge more for the low res images because you only need them for web only. And so I feel like a lot of times photographers charge more for the high res images and you don't need those

for the work that you're doing. So that's kind of our tips in regards to images. Because I know that that alone can be so overwhelming, not just with Pinterest images, but blog posts and everything. That can be a very overwhelming piece for people to like, you know you need images in your your blog post, you know, you need images in your pen images, but like, how do I get them? Well, and another tip that we have done multiple times is if we have PDFs that we give away as lead magnets, we print those out in color and we bring all those as well. And then we order things like push pins, really cute notebooks, and we bring in plants like little plants as well. And if I'm doing some photos, our team is doing photos, somebody's lining up on a white table,

those flat lays to where then she can just go down and go photo, photo, photo, photo, photo. And then if we need to crop them or change them or do anything, we have tons of flat lays now where there's space for the actual text. We can have or take pictures of a ton of other things. So the amount that you can get in a session with somebody who would doing brand photography, not just you, but all those flat lays, we now have probably four sessions worth to where we can keep going back and reusing a lot of those. And then even into the next one, we might bring some new stuff as well. But we order just some stuff off Amazon that is like our brand colors and bring it in. And sometimes they give us ideas for flat lays too. Yeah. I think that's helpful advice because I know that that could be a sticking point for a lot of people, a lot of people just having a place to source those images. Okay, so as we close out, is there any final thoughts that you would give as encouragement to any blogger, whether they are new, whether they're an established blogger, has been blogging

for years, like in regards to Pinterest, what would be your encouragement for 2025 for their Pinterest? I would say stop what you're doing and take a couple minutes, maybe 15, 20, 30, and really stand back and say, why am I intentionally using Pinterest? What goal do I want to get from it? And then I create my benchmark. So if it is, I want to get traffic

because I want to get ads monetized with one of the ads platforms. Okay. That's, that's I traffic. Okay. Think about how you can get the click then number two, if you are wanting to do, you know, email list growth, okay. What am I going to offer? That's going to continually lead them towards that path. And then how can I benchmark it? How can I track it? Like what makes sense? And when we do that part, I find that we are more successful and we check in with it every month. That's another thing I would tell people. And then we're not at the whim of everybody else, because any creator community is going to share what's working and not working, mostly what's working

for them. And either they're doing it because they want to share how awesome they are, or they're doing it because they probably want to sell something on the backside of it, or sometimes they are helpful. But wherever it is, interrogate that story and say, that might not be what is going to work for me. This person's in a totally different niche than me, this person's in a different space than me,

and their goal is not my goal, because I know my goal is to get traffic, or I know my goal is to grow my email list, and theirs is different. So I just find that that makes you a better content creator, a better business owner, a better Pinterest marketer, when you have that thing to stand on to say, okay, this is why I'm going to use it. And then I can have fun with it. And then I can

play around with it. And I can do all these tweaks to images. And then somebody can ask you someday, how is it going with Pinterest? And you can say, it's going really well. And they're probably gonna ask you 100 questions. And it's going to start with how many times do you pin per day. But you can say, I don't actually worry about that. I care about X, Y, Z. So stand in that place and be really confident about it. Great advice, Kate.

I always appreciate just your insight and the way that you approach Pinterest and the way that you approach business. I think it's inspiring. And thank you for sharing that with our community today. If you can please let them know how they can connect with you, that would be great. Yeah, simplepinmedia.com is where you can go. And like you said earlier, I have Simple Pin Podcast and doing a lot of educational stuff on YouTube. So if you just search Simple Pin Media there, you'll find a lot of great videos that are less than 10 minutes

that just give you bite-sized tips over there too. Awesome. Thanks, Kate. Thank you, Kate. and 10 minutes that just give you bite-sized tips over there too. Awesome. Thanks, Kate. Thank you, Kate. 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 tuning in today and we'll see you next time.