Megan Johnson is a military spouse, a mom, and a Pinterest marketing expert. She has been working in Pinterest Marketing for over 10 years and has helped hundreds of clients in just about every niche you could think of! She also sells two Pinterest-focused marketing courses that have enrolled over 8,000+ students to date. We are so fortunate to be able to learn more from her about marketing for small businesses on Pinterest in our interview today and our upcoming live presentation in the Textile Design Lab on October 9th!
Welcome Megan, tell us about your background and how you became a Pinterest expert. How are you currently working with Pinterest? I graduated college in 2008 with a degree in marketing. And I worked in the corporate world up until I had my son in 2011. After that, I planned to take a year off to be home with my son while my husband was deployed. I did some freelance marketing work for about three years until a company I worked for wanted me to look into Pinterest as an outlet to reach a new audience of homeschool moms. I soon realized what an untapped market Pinterest was and how little information was out there on how to use the platform properly. So I dove right in!
I learned as much as I could and started offering Pinterest Marketing services as an add-on to the other online marketing services I provided. Soon enough, I was doing more and more with Pinterest, and that is when I developed my first course, Pinterest Ninja. I launched the course in 2017 and continue to keep it up to date with the new features Pinterest offers. There were SO many courses out there that lacked a lot of information, the ones that did contain it all were $300+. I wanted to create something that was packed with everything you needed to know to succeed on the platform AND make it affordable.
What are the most common mistakes people make when using Pinterest in 2024? Using outdated practices is the biggest one I see. I think the part that is hard is that everyone is an expert now, and everyone is teaching vastly different “strategies.” The biggest thing to remember is that pinning will look very different for every single account. So many factors come into play when planning out a pinning “strategy,” such as the age of your account, how active you have been on it, and whether your profile, boards, and pins are correctly optimized. So, there is no “one size fits all” pinning strategy. But pinning with current best practices in mind (and staying consistent) is what will make or break you.
How should you prepare an image for posting on Pinterest? How can you make certain the image gets attributed to you as the creator? You always want to include a logo or a URL somewhere on your image. That way if someone steals it, you can use the Pinterest content claiming portal to prove it’s yours and get the stolen ones taken down.
Do you recommend making a business account? If people have one, what are the best ways to follow the analytics? Yes, if you want to use Pinterest for your business you need a business account in order to have access to analytics and metrics. You won’t get those with a personal account. Your analytics will be in your business hub, and they will show a 30-day shot of how your account is performing as a whole. I recommend checking the analytics weekly. Each pin will also have its own set of metrics you can look at as well to get a better idea of how each individual pin is performing. In my live presentation I will address why pins do well and some don’t and what to pay attention to in terms of impressions, saves etc.
Walk us through your best tips on researching trends with Pinterest. The Pinterest trends tool! I use it for every single account I manage. It will show you growing trends. Something to keep in mind is content trends on Pinterest 2-3 months before a season or holiday. So right now Christmas content is only growing. I know if I pin Christmas content, it will continue to grow and gain traction until Christmas. So, using the trends tool to find growing trends in your niche will help grow your reach and engagement.
Are there any changes you wish Pinterest would make with its platform? Honestly, I know a lot of people don’t always love the changes Pinterest makes. I think it’s because we get so used to doing something a certain way, and it works well for us. Then, they change something, and maybe your views will drop a little, and then people will tend to give up. But they continue to change the platform for the better, and the basics of Pinterest, in terms of SEO and optimization, have, for the most part, stayed the same. So, as long as you are willing to change up your strategy now and then, changes won’t bother you as much.
On your blog, you have lots of articles about using search engine optimization (SEO) to maximize your post views, when you create a new pin, is the SEO section “tell everyone what your pin is about?” Yep! That is it! Also, the SEO of your pin’s title is equally important as the SEO of your pin description.
Can you give us a quick preview into the training you will be offering to our Textile Design Lab members? What can people expect to learn? I will be covering the basics of getting started with Pinterest. I will go over all the places you want to place SEO on your account AND your pins. I will give a run down on how the algorithm works and how often you should be pinning. We will discuss all of this and more October 9th at 1pm EDT.
