57. Is My Niche a Good Fit for Pinterest?

[00:00:00] Stephanie: You are working hard on your blog content knowing that you want to market your posts on Pinterest, but what if they flop? Is there a way to know if your content will succeed on Pinterest? Let's talk about it. Welcome back to the podcast. We have been celebrating the first birthday of Pay Less for Traffic by answering listener questions this month.

[00:00:34] And so this week we have a great question from a listener. This is a teacher business owner, but they are blogging about non-classroom related topics, and this listener is wondering if there's a way to tell if it's even worth using Pinterest for their teacher business. So I love this question because it's a great reminder that teacher businesses come in all shapes and sizes.

[00:01:00] When we think about teacher business owners, I think we often default to TPT sellers with blogs full of fun classroom ideas and resources, the stuff that teachers often turn to Pinterest for. But there are a lot of other teacher-focused business owners who are creating blog content for their audience, but it's not quite as obvious if that content is the right fit for Pinterest.

[00:01:24] So let's dive in. First, I have a word of caution about classifying an entire business as being in or out of a Pinterest niche. While I will agree that there are niches that are tailor made for Pinterest like recipes and crafts, it doesn't mean that people only turn to Pinterest for those topics. And it doesn't mean that a website outside of recipes and crafts will never get traffic from Pinterest.

[00:01:52] I think the key is to have realistic expectations and to enter the Pinterest marketing world with eyes wide open. I think it's also important to shift our mindset from thinking about whether a business is in a Pinterest friendly niche. Instead, we should think about whether a business can create content on Pinterest friendly topics.

[00:02:15] So let me tell you what I mean about the difference between a Pinterest niche and a Pinterest topic. I think most of us can agree that we fit into the accidental CEO category of business owners. Your TPT product line is already established. Your niche within education is already established. And so you're trying to make Pinterest fit within your existing strategy rather than the other way around.

[00:02:40] Because just as a reminder, I come from a blogging background where I interact with a lot of professional bloggers and they do it backwards. A lot of these bloggers are able to create brands and websites from scratch based on whether or not that niche performs well on Pinterest. So they do all of this background research before they decide whether or not they're going to create this brand.

[00:03:07] They have that luxury of deciding if it's worth it to pursue a business idea based on what they know about Pinterest. But most teacher business owners don't have that luxury. They're trying to find a way to make their niche work on Pinterest. So the way to do this is by focusing on content that fits within a Pinterest friendly topic.

[00:03:29] So I'm gonna use my own business as a Guinea pig here. Most people won't turn to Pinterest to read articles about SEO and Pinterest strategy. They're going to turn to the Google search bar for that information. But there are some topics I can cover on my website that would do well on Pinterest. So for example, anything printable tends to do pretty well on Pinterest, so I would make sure to create posts

[00:03:57] that have some sort of printable element that I could feature on my pins, like a planner for teacher bloggers. Templates also do well on Pinterest, so I might create a blog post with free pin templates. Ideas, as we know, are also huge on Pinterest. When people just want to bank ideas, they often turn to Pinterest to do some scrolling.

[00:04:21] So I might create a blog post with a bunch of content ideas for teacher business owners. Now, this won't guarantee that my content will do well on Pinterest, but by including Pinterest friendly topics in my content creation, I can guarantee that my pinning efforts aren't going to be a complete waste of time.

[00:04:42] So my hope is that by not writing myself off as not being in a Pinterest niche and instead trying to focus on Pinterest friendly topics, that this can be a marketing tool for my business. But really, you don't just have to rely on hope and a prayer that you have created blog content that will do okay on Pinterest.

[00:05:06] There are things you can do to inform that process, and we're gonna talk about it. So after talking about Pinterest niche versus Pinterest topic, a few questions likely remain. How can you tell if a topic is Pinterest friendly and where can you find these topics? So there are definitely clues that will let you know if a topic is going to do well on Pinterest.

[00:05:28] And so I'm going to share three places that you can look for these clues. First you have the Pinterest trends tool. You can find it at trends.pinterest.com. This is not an exact science because there are a lot of Pinterest friendly keywords that do not show up in this tool, but it can be a good starting point.

[00:05:51] So again, going back to my Guinea pig of a business, I looked through the trends tool for stephanie Royer Solutions because I wanted to see if there are topics that I can cover with my upcoming blog content. As suspected, very few of the potential topics that I had on my mind actually showed up in the trends tool, but I did discover that blog post ideas is a trending topic on Pinterest, so I could lean into that for some of my Pinterest friendly content.

[00:06:24] Another place to look is the Pinterest search bar itself. When you type in a general keyword, are there a lot of those colorful topic bubbles to help you narrow down your search? That's a good sign because Pinterest gets this data from user activity, so the more bubbles that you see when you search a topic, the more searches there have been on that topic.

[00:06:49] And so if you search for something and there are no auto complete suggestions or bubbles, it's a pretty good indication that people aren't really searching for this on Pinterest. And finally, Google can give us clues about whether or not a topic is Pinterest friendly. I know that seems odd, but it's true.

[00:07:09] If you search for a topic in the Google search bar. And somewhere on page one, you get a Pinterest result, that tells me that it can be worth a try to create pins for that blog post idea. And so those are just three places that I like to look with a quick check to see if a topic is going to be Pinterest friendly.

[00:07:31] But even if something is not Pinterest friendly, it does not mean that you should skip it because it could still be a great keyword for Google. And you can also get traffic through your email list and from social media. So just keep that in mind that you might decide to write a post about a topic that is not going to do well on Pinterest, and that's okay because you can still get traffic to that post in other ways.

[00:07:58] So I hope that this episode has helped you feel a little bit better about creating Pinterest content in what might be considered a non Pinterest niche. If you're in this position, you will likely find that it takes a little bit more thought and planning to see traffic from Pinterest, and it might not be floodgates of traffic, but I've always been of the opinion that some is better than none.

[00:08:22] The key is just to put in the right amount of effort that matches the outcome, which leads me to my final disclaimer. I think it's important to proceed with caution. Don't go all in on a full blown pinning strategy until you've tested the waters. You might find that the bulk of your marketing efforts are better spent elsewhere, and that Pinterest is just going to be a smaller tool in your traffic toolbox, and that's okay.

[00:08:50] At the very least, I would suggest that you add a Pinnable graphic to each and every post you create, even if you don't think that it's a good pinterest friendly topic because you never know what users will want to save for later, and those user saved pins can go a long way in showing the algorithm that your business is Pinterest friendly.

[00:09:12] I will be back next week with another listener question, but it will have a let's pay less twist to it since it's going to be the last Saturday of the month. Make sure that you're following the Pay Less for Traffic podcast so you don't miss it.