5. Blogging and Pinning: The PB&J of Organic Marketing

Stephanie 0:00

On their own pinning and blogging can be great tools for getting more organic traffic. But much like peanut butter and jelly, they are at their very best when they're put together. Let's talk about why you might want to add a little pb&j to your marketing strategy.

Stephanie 0:17

Hey there teacher business owner, it's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:28

Welcome to today's episode, before we dive into talking about the PB and J of organic marketing, I just have to give a quick shout out to my awesome podcast manager, Janice. She's actually inspiration for this analogy, as we were planning out the episodes, because I'm going to be talking about both Pinterest and blogging, usually individually on the podcast in different episodes. But sometimes we'll talk about both. And so she started using PB and J as just this shorthand of an episode that's going to talk about both Pinterest and blogging. And I don't know it just stuck in my mind. And so for this episode, when I was going to talk about how blogging and pinning go hand in hand, I just had to borrow Janice's analogy, so shout out to her for her inspiration for today's episode.

Stephanie 1:17

The reason I love the PB and J analogy so much is because it works in so many different ways when we're looking at Pinterest and blogging. So first, peanut butter and jelly. It just has an awesome effort to results ratio. I mean, you can't argue with the fact that it takes very little effort to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But it's a pretty easy way to fill hungry bellies in a hurry, you get a great result for minimal effort. And so when we look at Pinterest and blogging, you'll also find an amazing effort to results ratio, but maybe just in a slightly different way, because it does take time and effort to blog and pin for your business. But you get really long lasting results from those efforts. And so you're able to keep that ratio of effort to results much more on par with the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Stephanie 2:14

The next reason why this analogy just works is because peanut butter and jelly is not for everyone. Just like there are people who can't eat peanut butter. There are some businesses that just won't get very good results from Pinterest. No matter how hard they work to create pinnable graphics, their audience just isn't on that platform. And there are other businesses whose audiences would not be served well with blog posts. But the good news is that the teacher niche is alive and well on both Google and Pinterest, just like I talked about in episodes two and three.

Stephanie 2:48

And the final reason this analogy works is because peanut butter and jelly can serve different purposes individually, but they're the best when they're together. Because sure, you can use peanut butter as an ingredient in baked goods are on a piece of celery or, you know, let's face it straight off the spoon for a quick snack. And then on the other hand, you can drizzle jelly on ice cream or slathered on some toast. But if you're looking for an easy meal, there's just something about that PB and J sandwich.

Stephanie 3:16

And the same is true for blogging and Pinterest. Some people use either a blog or Pinterest for different aspects of their business, and they don't use them together. So for an example, there are some people who make a really good affiliate income completely on Pinterest without ever starting a blog. And there are some bloggers who are perfectly content with just sharing their blog posts with their email lists or social media followers. They don't feel the need to put their blog posts on Pinterest.

Stephanie 3:48

But if your goal for blogging is to soft sell your TPT products. And your goal for Pinterest is to get more people to see your TPT products, then you'll get the best results by using them together.

Stephanie 4:00

So let's talk a little bit more about why blogging and Pinterest works so well together. So the first thing is that consistent regular blogging makes your Pinterest efforts more effective. You'll remember in episode three that I shared a little bit about how Pinterest works differently now than it did back in the glory days. There are two major differences between Pinterest then and now.

Stephanie 4:24

So first, Pinterest favors pins that go straight to a blog post rather than a third party site like TPT or Etsy. This has never been confirmed by Pinterest. But it's undeniable that pins that direct to your claimed domain, your blog, they are treated differently by the algorithm.

Stephanie 4:43

I'll tell you about one way that I monitor this just in case the algorithm ever suddenly shifts. I just like to keep track of how TPT pins are ranking. So I have clients who like to make a few TPT directed pins per month just a couple to hedge their bets just in case that all of a sudden Pinterest flips the switch and TPT pins are ranking really well again. Now I am clear and telling them that I doubt that that will happen. And they're fine with that. So we just go ahead and make a couple per month.

Stephanie 5:14

Now I track these keywords by searching for them in the search bar. And then on the right hand side of the search bar, you can select the option of your pins instead of all pins. And so I put it as your pins, and I search for that particular keyword. And as I scroll through the pin results, I can clearly see all of the pins that we've created to target that keyword all in one place. And so in this list of results, our TPT directed pins, and then the ones that go straight to the clients website.

Stephanie 5:48

Now when they're all right there in front of you on Pinterest, it's easy to see the impressions and clicks from the past 30 days. And you can also see a little TPT label under the pins to that shows that that pin directs to the teachers pay teachers website. Now as I scroll through these pins, most of the TPT directed pins are sitting at zeros across the board in their stats. They have zero impressions, zero outbound clicks, zero saves. Now if they do have impressions, there are a few. It's typically in the single digits and they haven't had any clicks or saves.

Stephanie 6:25

Now in the search results, any pins that actually have stats worth mentioning, they are always pins that direct to the client's website. So yes, I know this is anecdotal. And you definitely should take this with a grain of salt. But I highly suggest that you compare the pin performance for your TPT directed pins compared to your website pins.

Stephanie 6:49

The second major difference between Pinterest thin and Pinterest now is that the algorithm appears to be favoring pins that go to brand new, never been seen before URLs. Now, again, this is anecdotal. So I always suggest that you experiment with this yourself.

Stephanie 7:05

But when I pin for clients, I noticed that the brand new blog posts do well almost right out of the gate. Now this doesn't mean that fresh pins for older content get zeros across the board. I mean, they do just fine. But I feel like the best pins are the ones that go out immediately after the blog post is published.

Stephanie 7:25

So if you want to use Pinterest for your TPT business, I would highly suggest having a blog because it will make it more likely that people are going to find your products on Pinterest, because pins that direct to fresh blog posts rather than TPT. They're going to serve your teacher business the best. Now, as with any algorithm, I do reserve the right to change this recommendation. But it's been the same way for years. And I really don't expect it to change anytime soon.

Stephanie 7:55

So now let's talk about how Pinterest can make your blogging efforts more effective. We've talked in a previous episode about how the Google search engine takes time to index your content. This is especially true if you have a newer website, it can take a while for Google to make a judgment call about the quality of your content, and then index it appropriately.

Stephanie 8:19

In a q&a session a couple of years ago, John Mueller, who's a representative of Google, he talked about what happens when Google recognizes new content on the internet. So he said that they can crawl and index the new blog posts, but they don't have a lot of signals for the actual quality of content. So that's like making a call about where in the search results, that new piece of content belongs.

Stephanie 8:46

So then he said that their systems try to make assumptions about where they think the content should fall, because they usually line that up with how the rest of that particular website is performing. So if they know that this website's content is usually you know, ranking number 10. They assume this content probably belongs around slot 10 as well.

Stephanie 9:11

Now, he said that sometimes the assumptions they make are on the high side. And sometimes those assumptions are on the low side. He said this is basically just the system is trying to figure out where the new content should fit before they have a lot of signals about the quality of the content. There's a lot more that we can discuss about this process of indexing. But I just wanted to mention it in this episode, just to give you an idea of the amount of time that it can take for a new blog post to really find its place in the search rankings. And so this was a really interesting q&a. I will include a link to a summary from Search Engine Journal about all of these comments from John Mueller if you'd like to read more. But again, I just wanted to share a few highlights with you to just give you a better picture about why blog posts can take time to show up in search results.

Stephanie: 10:04

So now let's chat about what all of this has to do with Pinterest. Even though it takes pins a little while to gain traction and to get indexed, it takes a significantly shorter time to do that, than it takes for blog posts to gain rankings on Google. So the beauty of focusing on both Pinterest and blogging is that you're able to use Pinterest to bridge the gap in traffic while you wait for your blog posts to get noticed on Google, because if you think about it, Google Analytics is tracking your traffic sources, and can see that people are coming to your website and reading your blog posts. It might not be from organic search, but they can see that people are coming from Pinterest, and maybe clicking around on your website, staying there for a little while before they bounce. And so if you have a lot of visitors from Pinterest hanging out on that new blog post, Google is probably receiving some positive signals about the quality of your post,

Stephanie: 11:03

I hope that this discussion has helped you see that Pinterest and blogging really do go hand in hand, the effort you put into one of these platforms, is going to make your efforts on the other platform even more effective. And you can truly create an organic traffic machine that's working for your business 24/7, you'll be able to get more eyes on your products around the clock. You don't have to rely on spikes of traffic from strategically timed social media posts and emails. Because nothing beats the Old Faithful, PB and J.

Stephanie: 11:38

So with all of this in mind, I would suggest that you just take a few minutes to go over your workflow and think about where you are at in creating your own PB and J organic traffic sandwich. You know, we got to have those ingredients well balanced. And so are your blogging efforts and Pinterest efforts pretty well balanced? Or do you find yourself making a lot of pins for old content? Because you haven't written a blog post in a long time? Or do you have a bank of fresh blog content that you haven't added to Pinterest in a while. So just kind of look at where things are, and decide if there are any adjustments that you need to make to your workflow in order to get those elements a little bit more in balance.

Stephanie: 12:22

Now, if you are a student in bring your own traffic, I have some good news for you. You already have access to a sample workflow that you can use to help you set up a blogging and pinning routine that is well balanced. You'll find that in less than 4.4 around the 11 and a half minute mark.

Stephanie: 12:41

Before you go though, make sure you're following the pay less for traffic podcast so you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes. I'm cheering you on as you make the most of blogging and pinning for your teacher business.

Stephanie: 12:54

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love it if you could share it with a teacher biz bestie you have created high quality resources. Now let's help teachers find them. I'll see you next time.