What's up, everybody ? Welcome back to the Business Journey podcast. I'm Rebecca, and I'm so excited to be able to dive into Pinterest today. Pinterest for photographers is one of those things that photographers tend to like put on the back burner, because it doesn't seem like one of those obvious marketing strategies, if you will, and there's some merit to that. But I am just a huge believer that every photographer should be using Pinterest, because if you're not, you're missing out on some huge opportunities. And we're going to talk about what those look like here in just a second. But this whole episode is going to be super practical. I want to talk about what Pinterest is truly and why you as a photographer should be using it. We're going to talk about the benefits and what to pen, and I'll even share some of my results of what I've seen with Pinterest in my own business. And so before we dive in, I wanted to remind you that if you have not joined behind the lens yet, which is my brand new membership for family photographers, I highly suggest you jump in. We launched it a couple of weeks ago and we had 250 members in the first weekend jump in, which is incredible. So many photographers are just raving about it. They're so excited for all the content. But one thing I wanted to mention was investments content. In April, there is a Pinterest masterclass included with the behind the scenes video. So not only do you get to watch me shoot a real family session behind the scenes, but you also get access to this Pinterest masterclass where I walk you through how to set everything up in your Pinterest, how to automate everything and make it a breeze. And so if you like this episode and you know, you find some value in it, then definitely go check out behind the lens, because this, the master class included, will just take everything we talk about today, you know, 20 steps further. So it's going to be awesome. Definitely. Go check that out. You can find that Rebeccaricephoto.com/behind/the/lens or I'll link it here in the show notes you can grab it really easily. Let's go ahead and just dive in, Pinterest. Like I said, it's one of those things that tends to sort of like take a back burner with photographers. And I was one of those people when I had somebody in the industry was talking and raving about Pinterest. And I was super skeptical because I'm the kind of person I don't want to spend time on something that I'm not going to see results from. And I was super skeptical because I was like, how in the world is somebody going to book a photo session with me from Pinterest? Like local people probably aren't searching for that kind of stuff like that makes no sense. And so there's a sort of mindset switch that has to happen. And before we go farther, I want to explain first and foremost that Pinterest is a search engine, not a social media. And I think sometimes Pinterest can get lumped in with Instagram and Facebook as a social media. But the truth is, it is not a social media. It's design is not to connect people like Facebook and Instagram. The reason that Pinterest exists is to search things. And so think of the last time you were scrolling Pinterest. Did you search something in the search bar like I know for me I've been looking on like DIY built ins, like I wanted to do this, these fake built ins like IKEA, hack, whatever for my office. And so that's where I've been searching for in Pinterest. And it's so great because I'm able to see pictures of what I want as inspiration. I can click through and see blog posts of how people actually do it. I mean, it's so, so helpful. So it's really important. I understand that it's not a social media, it is a search engine. So when we treat Pinterest as a search engine, then we can start to see the benefits. Because when I started, I was seeing Pinterest as a social media. And like I said, I didn't understand how I was supposed to get clients from Pinterest because I'm like, it's so hard to find people local to you on Pinterest. That's not it's that's not how it was designed. And so as I went, I was able to understand the true benefits of Pinterest. So first of all, and this is a misconception that I think a lot of people have the purpose of Pinterest for photographers is not to book clients. Now, don't turn me off automatically. When you hear that you're like Rebecca. That's what I want to do. I want to book clients. Yes, you do. But Pinterest is such an easy tool and it has other benefits that you really, really need to dive into. So for one, it drives people to your website. Now, they may not be local people, but that is OK. That's not our purpose. We don't necessarily need local people from Pinterest. There are a lot of other avenues that you can get local people onto your website. But an easy benefit from Pinterest is to, drive anybody, people to your website when doing that, it boosts your SEO or your search engine optimization, basically it allows you to be found on Google easier the more traffic that you have to your website, even if it's not local traffic. The more Google will show your website to people that may be interested. It basically tells Google that your website is credible and has valuable content on it if you have zero traffic to your website. Google's not going to show it to anybody because, you know, why would they why would they show a website that gets zero traffic anyways, organically ? And so by using Pinterest as a way to drive organic traffic to your website, it boosts your SEO so that you can be found by your clients or potential clients on Google. So whenever I had this, like, mindset shift, it was game changer because I literally like went back and forth with this guy and he was like, Pinterest is a you need to do Pinterest. And I was like, why in the world would I do Pinterest if I'm not going to book clients from it ? I would ask him, like you tell me, how many clients have booked you through Pinterest ? He's like, well, zero. I'm like, OK, waste of time. But it's not because the amount of traffic that he was getting to his website from Pinterest was insane. And the best part is that a lot of it can be automated. And so you don't have to spend a whole lot of time on this strategy and it just runs in the background. And there are times that I've, you know, worked really hard on my Pinterest strategy. And then there were seasons that I didn't touch it for like eight months. And even in those seasons, I was still getting traffic because the life span of a pin is much, much longer than any other platform that we have. It's so much longer than lifespan of an Instagram post or even a real it's a lot longer than anything that you can post on Facebook. The life span of a pin. I still have people to this day pinning a session from twenty eighteen and that's like my most popular pin is this set of live bunny minis and twenty eighteen. And they get pinned constantly, especially in the spring when everybody's wanting to do like Easter sessions. That's what they're searching. And so I get tons of traffic to my website from that session specifically. So when you think of it as you know, a search engine and the benefit is to drive traffic to your website, it is a game changer. So you may say, OK, Rebecca, like I get it, drive traffic to my website. That may be helpful. What in the world do I even and I want to give you some really practical things that you can pin. And these may seem like, well, duh, but it's not obvious. Like whenever I was first starting, I struggled with this because I'm like, why in the world am I supposed to put out there? So the first thing that you should be pinning is any photo session that you shoot or that you blog about, which if you're not blogging, I'm doing a whole masterclass on blogging next month in behind the lens. So you're going to want to jump into that. But if you're not blogging as a photographer, you need to be blogging, period. No questions asked you how you should be blogging as a photographer. And I'm sitting here like clapping my hands because I'm I'm so passionate about that. Your blog is an easy way for people to find you on Google. It actually is an extended portfolio and it's not a hard step to take. And so with blogging, that allows you to then pin things super easily. OK, so let's just say that you're blogging all of your photo sessions or at least like your favorite photo sessions and don't feel like and I'll get into this in the blogging master class next month. But quick note, don't feel like you have to, like, write all these flowery words for a blog to be awesome, like do whatever you can to get this blog out, if that means typing up one little paragraph about the family, like do that. But anyways, onto Pinterest. So let's say you have your blog on your website, OK, you have a photo session. You can super easily pin every single photo that you share from that photo session on to Pinterest. I was like family photo spring outfits. And so many images came up and I was able to see and if I liked a session, I could click in and see like what that session looked like. And I was generating traffic to that person's website. So if that's a really easy way to create pin able blog posts and another thing you could do is like go in and search something, you know, family photo client tips or something like that, type something into into Pinterest. And you can see what other people are writing about and pinning and use that as inspiration for your own blog. So lots of super helpful things that you can do. And along with that, and I promise I won't spend too much time on blogging. But along with that, as your blogging helpful tips for your clients, you can send those blog posts as part of your experience and that just elevates the experience all of your clients have with you. So I could talk about blogging all day, obviously, but we're not here to talk about blogging yet. We're here to talk about Pinterest. So what to pin, you could be pinning all of your photo sessions on your blog and you could be pinning helpful tips that your clients are searching for. Now, one really important thing to mention is you you should like maybe you say, oh well, I have all my photo sessions in, you know, shoot proof gallery or whatever. Don't send PIN traffic to that shoot proof gallery because that is not helpful. Right ? That's not helping your SEO. You want to make sure that you're sending them to your actual website, not like a third party. And so that's why I highly suggest having a blog on your website, because generating that website traffic, every time somebody lands on that, it creates a hit for your website and it tells Google that you have valuable content to offer. So get a blog, start posting things. That way you have a lot of easy content, super, super easy content to pin. So I did want to share with you like what my journey has looked like with Pinterest. I talked a little bit about how I was super skeptical, but I wanted to tell, like, what this thing looked like for me and like where we're at now because I think a real life application is super important. So for me, like I said, I go through seasons of, like, doing horribly at pinning and then some seasons I do great at pinning. It really helps for me, like if I can set aside time once a month to sit there and do all my pins, usually it only takes like an hour, a month to set up pins for the whole month. And again, I show you that automated process in the Pinterest master class and that behind the lens is only fourteen dollars a month, guys. So even just the master class is like way worth more than fourteen dollars. And so you're getting so much more value than what you're paying into. And so definitely want to go check it out. But I set aside time and I do those pins every month and it just generates so much traffic. And so right now I'm sitting at about one point eight million monthly viewers. Those are people that are seeing my pins in their feed, one point eight million monthly viewers, guys that like you don't have that kind of reach anywhere else. Literally no other platform gives you that kind of reach unless you have like a super viral Instagram reel or tik tok or something like that. But even then, it's really hard. I've never had a reel or tick tock get a million views. I've had like one hundred thousand, but never a million. So that's very rare. And so to see that kind of reach on Pinterest is insane. And not only that, I know that that's like a vanity metric. So the metric that matters is clicks to my website. So I in the last time I checked and it's a little outdated by a few weeks because I've got my notes here in front of me and I wrote down what it was at the time, so I should have updated my notes. But as of a few weeks ago, I was generating a 612 clicks to my website. A month like in a 30 day span, we had 612 clicks to my website. That is incredible, you guys. That's a lot of traffic. Those are people that I wouldn't normally reach or get to my website, you know, from my Instagram or Facebook or whatever that are improving my Google and SEO, you know, scoring. And so that's incredible that that is super noteworthy. And what's another really cool part of it is if you've ever Googled something and then. Like went to the images section of Google, a lot of those images that show up are actually from from Pinterest. And so I Googled a local what's it called like string words, keywords. I Googled DFW Live Bunny Mini because I knew that that was like my most popular mini session, you know, my most popular blog post that's going on pins and stuff. And so I Googled it, DFW Live Bunny Mini. And if you click on the images tab, so many of my images are on that page and they're not connected to my website. They're connected to Pinterest. And so people are finding and if they were, you know, let's say somebody types in, you know, your location, family session or whatever, family photographer. And they go to that images tab. They can see your images from Pinterest on their feet and they can click into it and then click over to your website so easily. And that's an incredible way to get found. And so I have had people, you know, type in DFW, Bunny mini, and they see my images and they click over to my website and they inquire. And like this year, I had so many people asking for money, many, and I didn't do them. This year I was in the middle of moving and it was just really crazy. But all that to say, they found me through Google. And so that was like an unexpected benefit, I guess, from from using Pinterest strategy, because like I mentioned, your goal with Pinterest is not to book clients, is to drive people to your website, but because a lot of nonlocal people were driving traffic to my website, then when local people use the keywords that I like embed in those pins, they're able to find them easier because Google realizes and sees that those images are very popular on Pinterest, even if they're not local. And so then it shows it to people whenever they type in those keywords. So that's super, super awesome. And like I mentioned, it's all with minimal work. I do not live in Pinterest all day, every day, like I don't know about you, but I for sure don't have time for that. So I don't live in Pinterest. It's something that I like set up once a month and just takes, you know, an hour or two once a month. And then it just runs in the background and drives traffic to my website and boosts my SEO and all the things. It's incredible. So if you haven't checked out Pinterest as a photographer, I highly suggest you do, because there are just so many benefits that you're missing out on by not taking advantage of Pinterest. It's free, like it's an incredible resource. And so there's no reason that you shouldn't be using Pinterest. Now, if you're more of a visual person and you're really interested in learning how to automate that, definitely check out behind the lens. This month's master class is all about Pinterest. And I show you like I first you see me and I explain all the things and then I share my screen and show you exactly how to set up all the automation's and how to best utilize Pinterest as a strategy. I show you best practices and all the things there is a monthly option for behind the lens. So if you want to just enroll for one month, it's fourteen dollars. Check it out, see if it's helpful for you. You can cancel at any time. So if you're like this wasn't helpful, then you can just, you know, cancel. But if it was helpful then you can hop in because we have a whole bunch more awesome master classes. Like I mentioned, next month is all about blogging. So you want to take advantage of that for sure. It's an incredible resource. It's brand new. We had 250 photographers jump in in the first two days. So definitely take advantage and join them and learn all about Pinterest. So short and sweet episode, but super, super packed. So I hope you got something from that if you have any questions at all. Like I'm always available on Instagram and DM Rebecca Rie Photography and I would love to help you in any way that I can. And then you can find behind the lens. I'm linking it in the show notes. But you can also go to Rebeccaricephoto.com/membership and you'll be able to just find out all the things there with behind the lens. So thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this is helpful and we will see you again next week. Bye, guys.
Episode Transcript
