[This is a guest blog post by Ruby Ringo]
SHOULD Your Podcast Be on Pinterest?
Let’s start with the obvious question: SHOULD your podcast be on Pinterest?
Ironically, the answer to this can be found in another question: should you have a podcast?
Because the reasons you have a podcast are likely the same reasons you should (or should not) have your podcast on Pinterest.
You probably should NOT have a podcast, and your business probably should NOT be on Pinterest if you:
- Have a medical degree or a law degree and are only licensed to practice in one or two states
- Own a brick-and-mortar store and only serve local customers
- Serve so many clients that you are sending people away
If you are effectively serving your audience with a podcast, your podcast SHOULD be on Pinterest if you:
- Provide services online with clients in many locations
- Are an e-commerce seller shipping to many locations
- Blog and/or have digital products
- Have a workshop or course
- Are an author
- Are SO DONE with fighting social media’s ever-changing algorithms and terms that require ever-increasing engagement for page owners, with very little ROI
- Need to get your product or service in front of a new audience, while simultaneously building authority for your brand/business
In a nutshell, if you have a podcast, you should be on Pinterest.
Pinterest is a Search Engine That Your Ideal Client Uses
Pinterest is a powerful search engine. It is not social media.
Which means all of the annoying elements of engagement required of businesses on social media are gone. And what you are left with is one of the very best marketing tools: evergreen content that continually points consumers in the direction of your offer(s).
Your pins do not disappear into the black hole of social media feeds an hour after being posted. Your ideal client will still be shown your pins long after the hour in which you first pinned it.
If you think of Pinterest as the go-to spot for recipes, outfits, and interior design ideas, you’re not alone. But Pinterest also guides users to activities, workshops, books, courses, coaching, resources, services, products, blogs, and podcasts. And users are very intentional about what they are searching for.
This means that your SEO must be rock solid.
Rock Solid SEO for Your Podcast Pins
That is the catch.
You need to understand HOW to post on Pinterest so that your pins will be shown to your ideal clients, and not to every one of the 522 million monthly active users worldwide. If your SEO is solid, your marketing efforts will be on-target and your sales will show it.
When your podcast is featured on pins with solid SEO, you’re giving Pinterest all the info they need to make sure they send your pin to the correct users. And Pinterest users are actively searching for the very topics you cover in your episodes.
Which means that the pin you create tomorrow may still be sending you listeners/customers in 6 weeks, or 8 months, or ten years. (I know a couple different business owners this happens to.)
Pinterest offers unique (and largely untapped) marketing advantages for podcasters looking to grow their audience. Not only are your podcast episodes easily repurposed as pins, but your intentional SEO on Pinterest tag-teams with the SEO on your website, which means a double exposure that builds your authority in your niche. Even non-Pinterest users see your pins as the top results to Google searches, so your pins are useful marketing tools both on – and off – Pinterest.
SEO on Pinterest cannot be haphazard to be effective. It needs to be solid throughout your entire account – account name and description, board names and descriptions, pin titles and descriptions, and the text on each pin. Yes, Pinterest “reads” the text on the graphics, too.
Case Study – Health With Hashimoto’s (with Esther Yunkin)
Let me give you an example of just how powerful an optimized Pinterest account can be for a podcaster.
Last year I worked with a podcaster who had been consistently pinning on Pinterest for quite some time, but was unhappy with the lack of results she was seeing. I spent time learning Esther’s niche and researching keywords before cleaning up and optimizing her account. Then, we talked through a few simple changes she could make in her pinning strategy.
Her account showed these astounding results:
In May, she had 8.09K impressions and 153 outbound clicks.
In December, she had 52.44K impressions and 1.68K outbound clicks.
(In case you are unfamiliar with Pinterest terminology, “impressions” are how many times your pin has been on someone’s screen, and “outbound clicks” are how many times someone has clicked your own link that is attached to your pin – your website, your podcast, etc.)
Esther was averaging 256 new episode downloads within 7 days last I heard, and had around 87K total downloads – largely due to the traffic from Pinterest.
Conclusion: When Should Your Podcast Be on Pinterest?
Now. Your podcast should be on Pinterest right now. Even if you only have a handful of episodes.
I would be remiss in my job as a strategist if I did not note that it’s far easier to build a strong foundation with an optimized account from the beginning, than it is to clean up an existing account that was not optimized for SEO, or that used out of date practices for strategy.
If you are already on Pinterest and not seeing the results you want, it’s okay. It’s fixable. But if you are just beginning to explore the idea of Pinterest marketing for your podcast, now is the perfect time to build a solid foundation on Pinterest and watch your numbers grow.
Build it right; build it strong.
A new audience is waiting to discover you.
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