5 Pinterest Secrets and How To Gain Traction with Them with Amy Locurto: Mediavine On Air Episode 17

Did you know that Pinterest and Google interact quite a bit?

Both are search engines and some of your Pinterest traffic may actually be Google traffic.

In Episode 17 of Mediavine On Air, I was joined by Amy Locurto from Living Locurto and Amy’s Circle for a chat about how using Pinterest like a real user can boost your Pinterest results. She shares her five secrets on how to drive users to your site and the successful ways she’s used it for her own blog.

Make sure to listen to the episode in full and let us know what you think!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Helpful Resources

• Living Locurto
• Amy’s Circle
• Amy Locurto’s 5 Pinterest Secrets and How To Gain Traction with Them Presentation
• Our Youtube Channel — where you can find other Summer of Live and Teal Talk episodes!

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNY GUY: Hey! Hello, everyone. How are you doing today? Holy cannoli, it is Wednesday, June 2nd, which means it’s summertime. So we are doing the only thing that we could possibly do, which is kick off our fourth annual Summer of Live. Yes, sound effects, applause, applause, applause. Yes, we are so excited.

I’m Jenny Guy, and as hard as it is to believe, this is my fourth year hosting our summer extravaganza, where the weather is hot, but the content is hotter. One Facebook Live featuring an industry expert a week for the next three months. Due to COVID-19, last year was all about the pivot, a word that we swore none of us would ever say unless it was in regard to that Friends’ episode.

But we asked all of our speakers from our canceled conference in Baltimore to move to the Facebook Live format. But this year, we’re masked, but we are on the road again with a new day, same time. We’ll be on Wednesdays this summer. We’ll have you out in an hour or less with all the knowledge you can cram into a lunch break.

And we also took applications for the first time ever this Summer of Live, and we are so, so glad you did. You guys were eager to share your expertise with our audience. And so we have some amazing pitches to go through.

Our theme for the month of June is growth, and we are walking directly into the lion’s den with our first topic and speaker. It is Pinterest, the platform all content creators love to hate. My guest today wants to ask you, Are you frustrated with Pinterest and can’t seem to gain momentum? Tell us the comments.

That’s because Pinterest has changed, and doing the same thing you’ve always done is most likely not going to work anymore. Amy Locurto, former speaker for Pinterest, current DIY blogger, and Pinterest strategist, has the secret you need to know about today to up your game for more traffic and sales from Pinterest. Hello, Amy.

AMY LOCURTO: Hi Jenny! Thanks for having me. Hi, guys.

JENNY GUY: Thank you so much for coming. Oh, here come the frustrated comments. I knew they would come.

AMY LOCURTO: Be nice to me! Be nice.

JENNY GUY: Oh, they will be so nice. We will be so nice to you. We’re just so excited to have your expertise here to shed some light on this. Everybody, if you have questions for Amy, please post them in the comments. I’m going to start out by reading a little bit about her, and then she is going to present to you. Not to worry. This slideshow will be available to you after the program. We’ll put it into the comments. We will also have a special offer that we will make available to you in the comments.

But first, a little bit about my amazing guest today, her first time on a Mediavine live. She has been a graphic designer for 25 years a, DIY lifestyle blogger for 13 years at livinglocurto.com. She focuses most of her time now as a business coach and Pinterest strategist at Amy’s Circle, a mastermind community with resources to help bloggers and online business owners increase their income. Amy was the very first Pinterest ambassador traveling to various social media conferences as Pinterest’s official speaker. She is now a beta tester in the Pinterest creator community and has taught hundreds of bloggers her winning Pinterest strategies.

So, Amy, we are so glad you are here. We were talking a little bit before this. It seems like there’s a lot of hate and a lot of frustration going right now with Pinterest. So we are so excited to have you shedding your expertise and sharing that with our audience. OK everyone, I’m going to share her screen. I’m going to share my screen, show you this presentation. Amy, take it away.

AMY LOCURTO: Hi, everybody. OK, thank you for having me. And just so you know, I’m an influencer and blogger just like you guys. I have been in Pinterest from the very get-go. So I think I’m a little more involved than anybody really should be. So I started Amy’s Circle, which is my community. I’ve got to actually have a private mastermind. I have systems and tools and courses at AmysCircle.com as well as my blog, Living Locurto.

So I just want to let you guys know those are two separate things, and I’ve been doing this for almost a couple of years now with Amy’s Circle, and it’s really great. I love coaching bloggers and sharing my knowledge and helping you guys grow, so that’s what I’m here for. And I know I’m as frustrated with Pinterest as all of you are too. And that’s what I wanted to get into, and you’ll see my kitchen. I’ve got graduation going on in the background here. My son’s graduating, so we’ve got party decor. So ignore it. That’s what it normally looks like.

JENNY GUY: It’s OSU Cowboys decor, which by the way, we’re both native Okies here.

AMY LOCURTO: Isn’t that crazy? That’s–

JENNY GUY: What!

AMY LOCURTO: –so fun. I’m from Dallas now. But I’m not far from Oklahoma. I consider myself an Okie and a Texan.

JENNY GUY: You can claim both.

AMY LOCURTO: Yeah, so I wanted to talk about why you should be excited about Pinterest, OK? Because we’re all like, wah, wah, Pinterest is different now. It sucks. Well, actually, did you know– Here’s secret number one. I’m going to give out five secrets. Number one is that using Pinterest can actually help you with Google. OK, so I put on my side Pinterest and Google. That just equals magic. And you guys have probably seen it.

So here’s a slide. If you ever go, and you’re searching– Let’s say I searched black cat tattoo. Look at this, OK. I’ve highlighted– it’s on page one. It’s like the third– Actually, the second thing that ranks for that keyword on Google is Pinterest boards, and the third one is a pin. Here it is.

Now, this person, who is– I’ve got to get close– Jessica, has 14 whopping followers. Now, I don’t know, let’s say we all decided to get a black cat tattoo, which I have a black cat, and I thought– well, I used to. He passed away. But anyway, I was like, I want to know some ideas for that. Now, this lady that has 14 followers is ranking for that keyword on Google.

Oh my gosh, she has no idea. Let’s say this is a blogger, and she’s starting to get traffic to her site. She has no idea this is coming from Google. Now, if I can get ranked in Google because I use Pinterest, sign me up. So I’m going to tell you how I figured this out. So it’s just like magic how Pinterest and Google work together, and you won’t see this on Instagram or TikTok, and that’s why I love Pinterest so much.

So basically, I found a keyword that I was ranking for in my Google Search Console, but it wasn’t something that I thought I was ranking for. So it was a keyword with very high search volume, and I was like, what is going on? I’m ranking for this? Hello! How am I ranking for this?

So I did some investigating, and it turns out, it was a pin. It was one of my pins that was actually ranking number one on Google for this really high search volume keyword, right? But Google was somehow connecting the dots to my website. And it was giving me credit. It was giving Living Locurto credit for that keyword.

And I never knew I was getting this because what was happening was people were clicking on the Google– the pin that was ranking on Google, going over to my pin on Pinterest, then they were clicking over to my blog. So I never knew that what I was getting was actually Google traffic because I just thought Pinterest traffic. That just blew my mind, and it made me more open to OK, this is exciting. This is why I’m connecting the dots. Google, Pinterest– there’s some magic going on. Sign me up.

So I just wanted to let you all know that this is not really a secret, but if you didn’t know this is something you need to know and why I love Pinterest because Pinterest and Google are both search engines, but somehow they’re working together, and don’t ask me how what it is and why.

I just know what’s going on now. And so that is really exciting, and I wanted to share this girl that had the black cat tattoo just because she has 14 followers. This doesn’t mean– you don’t have to have a million followers on Pinterest. You can have this happen and be ranking number one or on page one of Google for some keyword and hardly have any followers on Pinterest. It’s just like levels at the game.

It’s really cool. So I love that. So you can be a new blogger, new person on Pinterest, and still have something ranking on page one of Google. That’s exciting. So I hope that inspires a little bit of you and make you not hate it so much.

Now, I don’t work for Pinterest. I’m a blogger like everybody else. So that is one thing I am very excited about. So I wanted to let you guys know that was my number one thing I wanted to share. And we can move on to the next one.

Number two, the secret is you’ve got to use it like a real user, OK? So why you want to do that is because once you’re in it, using it like a normal Pinterest user uses it, you will notice all kinds of things. You’ll see new features. You will actually–

And it gives you more engagement, and it shows Pinterest that you are using it. You are also a user and a creator. So that’s just going to help you overall.

So what I would do is– you set up a few personal boards, and you use it just like a real pinner would do. Doing this helps you. It just knows that you’re available. You’ll get a boost in your results by being active, and here’s an example.

So I know a lot of people get really frustrated because they see things that maybe they’re pinning themselves. They’re just like, oh, I don’t want to see that content. So you can actually go– Oh, if you’re annoyed by what you see in your feed, tune your home feed. And you go over to your– I did a screenshot.

Go to pinterest.com/edit, and you can tune your home feed. And you can give it the suggestion, keywords, and the things like the topics. I think you can check– you can do the topics, and that will help you see more things that you want to see as well. I mean, you’ll also see the things that you’re pinning, but I search for pools and ideas and inspiration and things from my backyard all the time.

I’m in it like a user. And I think that really helps me as a Pinterest strategist, for sure, see what’s going on because I’m just on it all the time. I’m on it for work. I’m on it for personal.

JENNY GUY: So Michelle’s asking this question, and I wanted to ask you this too. So do you have two separate accounts? Are you browsing from your business account? OK, great. Just wanted to make sure you–

AMY LOCURTO: I have another account that was a previous business that I had before this, and I just forget about it. You can toggle between both accounts if you want, but I don’t. And I just pin. I have several boards that are just personal, and that’s OK. So you have to remember that if you’re going to be pinning personal things, you don’t want to pin too much because you don’t want to hurt your business.

So take note of that. I could be pinning backyard ideas all day, and then I have to remember, oh, crap, this is work. Maybe I should switch over to that other account and do that. So be mindful of that. You don’t want to be looking spammy.

JENNY GUY: Michelle said, “Should we be repinning and make those personal boards secret?”

AMY LOCURTO: If you want to make them secret, great. Because for me, those boards could get ranked really high on Google. So what if my backyard ideas for my personal self got ranked number one on Google? Then, I’m going to start making backyard idea posts and put them in that board. I don’t do any more work than I have to on Pinterest. So that’s just an extra thing that you would have to do. I don’t think it really matters is all I’m saying. Just don’t give yourself any more work.

JENNY GUY: Very fair enough.

AMY LOCURTO: What is that? OK.

JENNY GUY: We appreciate less work.

AMY LOCURTO: Yeah, well, less work’s better, and it’s summer, so we want to get all the work we can get done. OK, the third–

JENNY GUY: Sorry, before we go on, there’s one more thing. Heather says, “Should the pins on the personal boards be on brand for your business, i.e., if I’m a food blog, does it help if I’m personally pinning gardening posts?”

AMY LOCURTO: I don’t think that matters. It depends on the board. You should not be pinning gardening posts to your food board. That will be a whole separate board that you call gardening or something. I don’t think that’s going to hurt or help you at all. It’s just a whole other– Every board you have is a little mini website. Just think of it like that. It’s a little mini area.

Overall, if all you do is pin food, and you’re worried about maybe that hurting you, then, yes, switch over to the personal account. For me, I’m a lifestyle blogger, and I blog about everything. So I don’t really care if I’m pinning pools because that could actually go into my content. So yes, it depends on probably what you’re doing.

So maybe if I was just a finance blog, and all I did was finance, it might be weird if I had swimming pools and stuff on there. So just take note of that. And I forget, but I’m one of those people that just has every kind of content on my blog. So yeah.

JENNY GUY: What you said is exactly right, and perfect. And what Heather said is, you can pin about gardening on your personal blog but then use that produce on your food blog. There’s ways to cross pollinate them in the way that Amy is.

AMY LOCURTO: I just think it’s very important to be using it as a user. So look for recipes, or maybe there’s some other content that could relate, like maybe you’re looking for kitchen ideas or decor ideas that have to do with the kitchen. That all relates to food. Maybe you’re looking for ways to decorate with fruit. I don’t know. But think about it. So whenever you are– just use it as a user is all.

JENNY GUY: Very smart.

AMY LOCURTO: You have to put into it. I don’t think there’s any particular way. And I pin a lot for my personal self on my Living Locurto account, and I don’t seem to get any trouble. And there’s some weird things that I pin. I have a daughter that was a competitive cheerleader forever from the time she was eight. She’s 15 now. And I’ve pinned cheerleader stuff. It has nothing to do with my blog, but it was on a specific board. And I need to go back and look at that and see if that ever ranked. I guess I should do some shared content on my blog.

JENNY GUY: Why not? People are searching it.

AMY LOCURTO: I do. I look at what boards are ranking high on Google, and then I might create some content for that, which brings me to– what are we on, number three?

JENNY GUY: Number three.

AMY LOCURTO: Secret number three– you need to make content that Pinterest users want. So, like I said, if I had a board that was starting to rank really high in Google, and those are things that you can find. You have do a little research by yourself. But you can find those things, and then, I might start making more content for that topic because I know, oh, that’s doing really well on Google. Remember I said Google on Pinterest? And then, it’s content that Pinterest users want.

So I’m just saying if you’re going to be successful, and you want to be successful with Pinterest, you can’t just swoop in willy-nilly and have no strategy. You need to really be making content that is super amazing for Pinterest people. You could have amazing content over on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, but that might not translate over to Pinterest people. We all know Facebook has the– there’s certain things that Facebook people like. There’s certain things that Pinterest people like. So you need to really think about why your content’s not working, what you can change or do different.

And one of the things you can do– Pinterest makes it so easy for us to figure out what the Pinterest people want. They’ve got trends, and if you have not used the trend tool, here’s the link right here– trends.pinterest.com. And it’s pretty incredible. Instagram doesn’t have this. TikTok kind of does by– you can go and see what topics people are really interested in. This is dead on. I will tell you. And if you want to go to the next slide, I kind of walk you through how to use the Pinterest trend tool. So it will give you what the top topics are for certain topics.

Here you can actually go into search certain topics on the trend tool. So I was thinking about summer. This is the summer series. Let’s look at summer, and you can just start typing things in, and it will auto-populate, just like on Pinterest and Google.

So I start typing in summer. Summer recipes popped up. OK, so I can actually take up to five keyword topics, and then it will show the graph, and it shows when those things start trending, how many users are searching for those things. Oh my gosh, this is gold. You could just spend all day on here. This is when I’m talking strategy and why you need to think about it and not just pin, oh, I just did this great thing. It was great on Instagram.

But maybe you should search Pinterest trends and see when that would be a good time to pin it. So anyway, this is what you could do. And then, what it does is– see the bottom where the little photos are? It’ll show you samples similar to what you’re searching. And it’ll start searching. I don’t even know what I was doing. But pasta salad popped up. That is super trendy right now.

JENNY GUY: Blue, you’ve got summer recipes. Orange, you’ve got summer dinner recipes. In green, you’ve got pasta salad recipes, and on purple–

AMY LOCURTO: OK, but pasta salad–

JENNY GUY: –you put summer dessert.

AMY LOCURTO: Look at pasta salad. Look at the green. Oh my gosh, that is like right now. I was so excited. I’m like, what, I need to do some– get my pasta salads back out and start making some pins for this. So you might be searching for summer ideas or summer recipes, but it will lead you to that really trending topic just by typing something, and It’ll show you samples at the bottom.

So it’s a very, very powerful tool. And you’ll notice sometimes the trends are a little behind, like if it was just– it might show some things from graduation still, even though graduation might be over for a lot of people, and that might not be super trendy right now. So just note it’s a little– if you’re looking at it live, it’s a little delayed.

But this part, when you start searching, you can see all year long, and what it was doing last year this time. It’s a really powerful tool. And so I always type in some other keywords so you can see the difference and see, oh, this is searching way more. And it’ll help you whenever you’re trying to come up with the keywords and the titles for your pins too, because you can change those up. Even if you have a different title on your blog post or your product, you can change the title to make it Pinterest user-friendly. What they want. And that’s what I mean when you’re making content that Pinterest users want. You’re also typing out the words that Pinterest users are searching. It’s all in one thing.

JENNY GUY: And they put it right there, and it’s prettier even than what– Google does something similar with their Search Console, but it’s not as pretty or as colorful–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AMY LOCURTO: And it just shows you this actually is very user-friendly. And there’s several different tools. There’s related trends. There’s popular pins. Then you can just see, oh, this is what a popular pin looks like, and you click on it and go look and see how they design their pin. And that will help you to. Well, that’s an eye-catching pin, which brings me to the next tip, which is–

JENNY GUY: Is it OK, Amy, if we pause for a second and take a couple of audience questions real quick?

AMY LOCURTO: Sure.

JENNY GUY: All right. Salads for Lunch says, “How do we research which boards are ranking on Google?”

AMY LOCURTO: Oh, I would just type things in Google. This is a URL, so you have to put it in and then see if it’s ranking. I can’t remember the exact way I did it. But what I’ll do is I’ll just type in, like, Pinterest. You could type in– go to Google and type Pinterest and then type the name of your board and then see what comes up. And if it’s on page one, you’re going to know it’s ranking. That’s a good board. Yeah. Sorry I don’t have any details for that.

JENNY GUY: That’s OK. We can follow back up with that. We will follow back up with that.

AMY LOCURTO: That’s a good question though, and I know I know the answer, I just can’t think of it right off the top of my– what–

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AMY LOCURTO: –that I used.

JENNY GUY: Kelly says, “Is there a difference between pinning directly from your site or manually uploading the pin to Pinterest? Is one more effective than the other?”

AMY LOCURTO: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s any difference. If you have the Pinterest little Chrome extension, or I use the Grow plug-in, so I’ve got that. So I don’t think there’s any– as long as it’s all tied in to your verified account on Pinterest, and it’s your URL, I don’t think there’s a difference whether you pin from upload manually or pin from your website. I do both.

JENNY GUY: OK, and then Michelle says, “So how do you figure out your keyword to go after on Pinterest? I don’t want to cannibalize what is already ranking well on Google, but I do want to take advantage of what Pinterest is currently rewarding.”

AMY LOCURTO: Yeah, Michelle, the trends tool is amazing for that, and you can keep typing in– you can only compare up to five keywords on that. So it’s kind of a pain. I wish I could do more. So just keep typing things in, and then you can see. It’s pretty obvious after you start doing it. You’re like, oh, that’s so crazy. And it might not even be what you’re ranking for in Google at all.

But the cool thing is you could be ranking, let’s say, a blog post about blueberry muffins or maybe their lemon blueberry muffins. What if you’re ranking for lemon muffins over on Google, and then you start ranking for blueberry muffins on Pinterest. See now you got double whammy. You’re going to get traffic from both ends.

So I don’t think it’s going to hurt your rankings on Google if you’re doing the same thing, if you use that same keyword on Pinterest. I was trying to rank for that keyword on Google, but it was doing well on Pinterest, which made it rank really high on Google too. So I guess it wasn’t going directly to my blog. It was going over to Pinterest but then back to my blog. I’m still getting tons of traffic because I was ranking number one on Google for that pin, so I don’t care where it’s coming from.

I was like, hey, if I’m ranking for one, if it has to go through Pinterest and then come back to me, that’s OK with me. I would love for it just to be right on Google. So research trends for sure. You can actually type things in the Pinterest search too and just see what comes up because it will actually show you when you start typing in the Pinterest search– it will give you a list of things below. Before you hit Return, you’ll see an auto-populated list of keywords. So that’ll give you a hint too.

JENNY GUY: Just like we do with Google, very similar but not same. While the procedures are somewhat similar, it’s not the same audience. So, you’ve got to think about that.

AMY LOCURTO: They used to have these nice tabs that went across, and you could just see that. Now, it’s like, oh, I only see five little additional topics, so you have to keep typing in different keywords and just see what keeps coming up. The trend tool makes it so much easier now though. It’s so much quicker.

JENNY GUY: The trends seems amazing. OK, well, we will take a break on the questions. Go back to your presentation on making scroll-stopping fresh pins.

AMY LOCURTO: Oh, OK, yes, that’s where I was.

JENNY GUY: Yes, ma’am.

AMY LOCURTO: All right, so like I said, when you’re in the trend tool area, you’ll see the top trend pins. You’ll see the top ranking pins. And I like to look at those and just see, OK, what are they doing for their pin. And it’s usually always really bright colors, eye-catching, we’re talking scroll-stopping pins. And like I said, Jenny told you I’ve been a graphic designer for 25 years. Yes, I’m old.

And I’ve got my degree in graphic design, I owned a design firm for many years, and I did this for Fortune 500 companies. And so I started Amy’s Circle and AmysCircle.com, and you can go there. If you don’t have any design abilities, don’t worry. I have hundreds and hundreds of templates for use with Canva– I use Canva. It’s free, super simple– that you can buy. They’re really cheap. You can drag and drop. Everything’s optimized, been tested. These are ready to go for you. You just have to drag and drop, change the colors, if you want.

I just want to show a sample of some of the pins that I’ve designed for my templates. They’re very bright. I use a lot of sans serif types, which means it’s very blocky. It’s like Helvetica. It’s like strong, bold text, so you can see it from a phone. You want to make sure it’s– Look, I’ve got my glasses on. I can’t see anything. If it’s bold and big, the better for me.

So eye-catching’s great. I think you can veer away from your brand colors if you want because it’s Pinterest. People there don’t know you. That’s OK. You just want to get them over to your website, then you’ve got all your branding. They’re not going to go, mm, I’m not clicking on that because that doesn’t look like Living Locurto’s stuff.

Yeah, I don’t care. I just want them to get to my website. Then, they can get to know me there. That’s when you have to catch their attention. And that’s when you get them in your email list and get to know them through that. But for Pinterest, it’s just a billboard. Change your colors up if you want.

You don’t need to have– if you have a gold or a light tone, it’s OK to go for maybe a navy or something that’s just black, something that will stand out of the crowd. Standing out from the crowd is key with Pinterest, for sure. So I definitely recommend playing around with your pins, looking to see what those top pins look like, what colors are you using.

Here’s the secret– red is my go-to. Red, hot pink– those seem to be the colors that catch the most– that get me the most traffic. So in my templates I always use red, and I try and steer away from it, but I’m like, but that’s such a good color.

JENNY GUY: People just like it. Your goal is to stop them initially and then to get them to click.

AMY LOCURTO: And I have no red in my branding at all. Only on Amy’s Circle do I have the red. So I use red a lot. It has nothing to do with my branding at all.

JENNY GUY: People just like it.

AMY LOCURTO: And you know, I discovered that by accident years ago because I just get bored as a designer. I’m always like, I’m sick of my teal and my– I have teal and orange and like a pinky color. I just got sick of those, so I started using red because that’s my favorite color, and I just started doing pin designs that have nothing to do with my branding.

And by accident I discovered it does not matter. It does not matter. These people are Pinterest users. They don’t even know me until they go to my website, so why am I sticking with my orange all the time and my teal? I can switch it up. So years ago, I did that, and then other people weren’t, and I thought, Oh, I need to be like everybody else and do my branding, but it’s boring.

And good for me that I didn’t because oh my gosh, I got so much traffic and grew my following and all because I just was bored with colors and wanted to change it up. And I love commercial look anyway because that’s what I do for a living as a commercial design. And so I have lots of tips. I have a mastermind too that– a private mastermind– and I get tips on all this stuff and free templates.

JENNY GUY: And we will be giving a very special offer for all Teal Talk– we’re not on Teal Talk. We’re on Summer Live. All of our Summer Live–

AMY LOCURTO: We’re on Summer Live.

JENNY GUY: –audiences, we have a special offer going from Amy. Amy tell them what you’re offering.

AMY LOCURTO: OK, you guys, I offer several things on Amy’s Circle. Like, I said templates now– this is so easy and saves you so much time. I wanted to help people because this is what I do for a living. This is what I did before blogging– design, design, design. And I love it.

So I started creating templates, so I’ve got 15% off of all of my– any of my templates you want. Just enter the code SummerLive when you check out. You get 15% off of any of the templates. I’ve got 103 just kind of evergreen Pinterest templates of all different sizes that you can use. You can drag video over– all kinds of stuff. I’ve got holiday themes, so I have 35 different holiday themes throughout the whole year. It goes from New Year’s to Christmas. We’ve got all different holiday themes, and there’s animated pins in there too, which is really, really cool.

Yeah, it’s not your normal animated pin. It is a really neat– so you don’t have to know video or anything to have a video pin with my holiday themed templates. I get a lot of traffic from holidays, so I put a lot of time into my holiday themes and everything. Oh, there’s Liz. Thank you!

Oh my gosh, we’re going to talk about Liz. Then, I also have– I just launched Facebook templates. You guys, I know we’re getting off topic, but look, if you all know Liz Berg, go look at her Facebook page. It is crazy revived from– she’s using my Facebook template, so I’ve got a little bit for everybody there.

And then I also have 100– I’m giving you guys $100 off. Here you go. Take my money. I’ve got a Pinterest mastermind course, and you can watch it at your own time. It’s six lessons, so it can take you six weeks, or it can just take you a day or two, however long you want. It’s got my secret strategy in there, and all kinds of things, and I keep it updated.

I’m actually going to go and update a few more things this afternoon. So it’s totally up-to-date, and it’s got another hour of Q&A in there too. So you get a one hour of class and then an hour of Q&A from some mastermind testers that I had in there.

JENNY GUY: Perfect, amazing deal– great way to kick off the summer to get yourself set up for 4th of July and all the holidays that are coming up and then going into Q3 and Q4 when we get really serious about holidays. She can get you set up with all of that. And we are so excited to try everything. I wanted to ask you– we have some questions, but I wanted to ask you in terms of color, do you do A/B testing on your pins, or do you just kind of let it fly and see what happens?

AMY LOCURTO: Oh no, I don’t let it fly. I do a lot of testing. Yeah, definitely, and that’s all in my mastermind course. I explain how to do A/B testing and then the amount of pins you should be pinning for the A/B testing because you don’t want to go– Pinterest is a long game. So you need to get a little bit of time when you’re doing A/B testing. And I did figure out the red by accident years ago, and then red is just a great– just any kind of bold color– just pick the color you like.

JENNY GUY: Eye-catching, yes.

AMY LOCURTO: And I also, when I A/B test, I’ll do a little bit of different photos, along with colors. There’s a lot that goes to it, and some will tank. So you’ve got to keep going on the testing. But you just don’t want to– we have a very little amount of time, right? We’re all busy. And then you don’t want to pin too much because you don’t want to get marked as spam, so you have to be pretty strategic about it.

So definitely it’s all in my course. And I’m happy to talk with people. You can set up an hour– schedule an hour with me, and I can just go through it really quick if you want. So that’s also on AmysCircle.com.

JENNY GUY: Definitely go visit, and you’ve got the code SummerLive there. I want to ask a question from Hari. She says, “Would you suggest to enable or disable rich pins?”

AMY LOCURTO: That is up to you. Pinterest says to use rich pins, so I use rich pins. And I have a lifestyle blog, so I need rich pins because I don’t have them– OK, I use a recipe plug-in, which will pull the meta tag information into those rich pins on Pinterest for my recipes. But I also have articles, so I don’t have rich pins for–

It wouldn’t pull any meta tag info for my articles if I didn’t have rich pins on. And that is so important to me for my website. So maybe if you’re just food, and you don’t– you just really have to think about your content and test it. So for me, I tested it. I turned off rich pins. I left them off for about six months. I didn’t see any difference. Nothing happened at all.

So I was like, well, then I’m going to turn that back on because I get– I’m going to have that meta tag pulled in. And granted this was pretty early. This was about two years ago that I tested it. I haven’t tested it lately. But I just suggest testing it. Nobody can tell you until you test it out for yourself and for your own content. And give it time because it won’t– the people that have things just miraculously happen overnight– that just didn’t happen for me. So maybe it will for you.

JENNY GUY: You’ve just got to test it. Do it for yourself. And I think that it’s a good thing to note that part of what you were saying in terms of using Pinterest as a user, that’s how you see those features. If they’re saying to use them, they’re going to reward in the same way that Instagram is all about Reels. They are putting their time and their energy and their dollars behind it. Listen to what they’re telling you. Kim says, “If you rebrand, is it OK to change your Pinterest display name and username on your account?”

AMY LOCURTO: Oh, Kim, that’s a hard question. You can change it, but I will tell you if it’s all different content, you might have problems. OK, if you change it, just know that everything in Google will have to be reindexed, so that could be a problem. If you’ve got pins that are ranking over on Google, it could be a problem. They could just go away.

So I don’t recommend changing any URLs, especially on Pinterest. I don’t know. You could change your photo. I personally wouldn’t change my URLs on Pinterest just because I’m doing really well there. Things are ranking in Google, and if I change them, I’m taking the risk of losing all of that, losing any traffic I’m getting that’s coming from Google over to Pinterest back to my blog.

So just think about that, OK? I’m not going to say you shouldn’t do it. It’s just your choice. I’m just too scared to do it, so I wouldn’t do it for myself. I just changed my photo. Y’all are going to hate me for this, but the last thing that is the secret mojo to winning on Pinterest is doing idea pins. And idea pins are the new name for story pins if you guys didn’t know that. They changed the name to confuse us even more. It’s like, OK, we’re even more confused.

So now they’re called idea pins instead of story pins, but this is a feature that Pinterest is wanting us to use. They are featuring these things. They are only working on idea pins right now. It is their focus.

So if you want to succeed, I would suggest get on your phone, make them on your phone because if you make them on your phone, you’ll notice just– I think it was just last week– they made a lot of great updates to idea pins. So now there’s music, there’s stickers, you can tag yourself. There’s just all kinds of things you can do but only on the phone.

So make sure that you update your app, your Pinterest app, and then not everybody– some of you might not have idea pins yet, but I think in Canada some people still don’t have them. It just depends. But if you do have them I would suggest just putting together one really quick and make sure they’re like at least five to seven slides long. It’s just like an Instagram story or TikTok or something.

JENNY GUY: And can you use Canva for them?

AMY LOCURTO: You can. Oh, yeah, you can use– Yeah, if you want to go to the next pin, I’ll show you what kind of stickers– Yeah, idea pins– see the little hearts and everything? Those are the new stickers that they have. And they’ve got arrows, so if you wanted to point to– I know people get very frustrated about oh, they can’t click through the story pin to get to the recipe, or they can’t click through to get to whatever product you’re talking about. That’s where these stickers come in handy with the arrow, or you could type in your URL really big with the arrow, or you could do a video of yourself saying, I know this is frustrating, and you can’t click through, so click AmysCircle.com. You just have to tell people what to do.

But think of the idea pins as being the billboard. This is the advertisement, and I know I’m old school, but you drive down the highway, and you see a billboard. That was my dream to design billboards for a living when I was a little kid. And now I think of that when I do an idea pin, and I’m like, Oh, I’m not even going to get any traffic. But it’s OK because I’m advertising. And if you want to go the next slide, I’ll show you a sample of something that I did. Here I am in a goofy–

JENNY GUY: Adorable.

AMY LOCURTO: –elf hat because I was launching– this was last November– I was launching my new holiday Pinterest templates. My Amy’s Circle is a whole different website. It’s not even Living Locurto.

So I just wanted people to know that follow me hey, I have this other thing that I do, and I gave– I was just like, I’m giving you– and I had a discount code in there too in this thing. I was just advertising. The more eyes on it, the better because I’m busy. I don’t have time to advertise anywhere else but Pinterest.

So I was like, oh, I’m going to make a story about that. So I did a little video, and I just talked to people and told them who I was. But if you see the stats, that got 123,000 impressions. This had nothing to do with my Living Locurto blog, so I didn’t really care if I got click throughs, too. This is just something that I wanted to advertise and tell people about, and hopefully they will be like, what is this lady? And if people want to find you, they’ll find you. Half the time, they don’t know how to use it, how to click through sometimes even to a normal pin to find your deal. But I’ve seen things on Pinterest, and I’m like, I need that product. And there’s no link to it. I will go on Google and find it and I–

JENNY GUY: I’ll search things too. Same.

AMY LOCURTO: If people really want to find something, they will find you, or like on here, they would leave a comment and be like, how do I get your templates? Boom. I’m like, Oh, here you go. There are ways they will find you. I just want to show you this is stats. Now that’s from last November. Y’all, this is still going crazy, and it’s not– that’s the cool thing about idea pins. They don’t just go for 24, 48 hours. They will last. They will keep going. You can repin them. You can repin them and keep them alive. So that’s one good thing that’s different about idea pins versus the story pins on other platforms. They’re not just gone automatically after 48– 24, 48 hours. And this is still going, and I just saw that. And I was like, Oh, so this is the time I need to be promoting that.

JENNY GUY: Hey, why not?

AMY LOCURTO: Yeah. That’s how I use– that’s another thing that I really like about idea pins, and I just wanted everybody to know that it is a very important feature for Pinterest right now. So they are very much promoting them. And you might see one that gets like this, 120,000 impressions, and you might see one that only gets 1,000 impressions.

And there’s no rhyme or reason. It just depends on when you post them, how many you do. But it will help, and you can always– they always have a thing at the end that says, follow Living Locurto for more ideas. So make sure you have– Right now, people can actually download your idea pins and re-share them, so make sure you have your branding everywhere on it. That’s a new feature too.

JENNY GUY: This feels like Google Web Stories to me. This feels like whereas they don’t have really great monetization right now, and they’re not exactly what– they’re still in development, but they’re an advertisement for you. And we’ve got something– Nicole is saying, I have one story pin I made to try them out. It’s very popular. Literally no traffic ever to that post. She doesn’t see the point. Nothing but frustrated comments by users, but you’ve listed a ton of really great methods for getting people to try to click through. Is there–

AMY LOCURTO: You just have to tell them.

JENNY GUY: –anything else?

AMY LOCURTO: People are frustrated on normal pins for me. They’re like, where do I– or a video pin– where do I find the link? I’m like, you have to– So in my description, I’ll say, please click the title to go to my website and print this recipe. You have to tell people. You have to communicate. So I do a lot of video where I’ll be like– And you can even do an end card that’s just you talking saying, hey, thanks for watching my idea pin. I hope you enjoy this idea pin, or hope you enjoyed this idea. You have to visit my website, livinglocurto.com, to print this recipe, just like on YouTube. They’ve trained everybody. They go, click below! Leave a comment!

We’re going to do that with idea pins. And so you have to get– it’s a strategy. It’s the same. You can’t just do what you do on other stories. This is a different platform. We just have to get a little creative and get a little strategy going. And once you do, you train people how to use it because Pinterest doesn’t do a very good job of training their users, and that’s up to us. If we want it to be successful, we really have to tell people exactly what to do, and they’re fine with it. They’ll be like, oh, that’s how I get that. I was confused. I don’t know what this is. And eventually, I think, if this sticks around, they’ll get it they’ll understand. Oh, I probably need to go to her profile and click on her website.

JENNY GUY: Especially if you tell them enough times, over and over and over again at every possible–

AMY LOCURTO: Yeah, I think it’s so new, and they’re used to it being like other stories or something else. And until Pinterest start sending out emails to their users explaining what to do, they don’t know right now, and it’s in beta. It’s all new. So, yeah, it’s frustrating to a lot of the users. But that’s what Pinterest is not giving up, they are doubling down. They keep adding features and taking things away and changing so they’re clearly focusing a lot of attention on this right now. Yeah, I know it’s frustrating, but it’s all new, and if it lasts, we’re just going to have to roll with it. A lot of rolling with it in this industry, right?

JENNY GUY: The truth for everything. Hari, let me tell you about page experience. Just kidding. Hari, says, “What would you suggest focusing on more– video pins or idea pins?”

AMY LOCURTO: Ooh, boy, I would do both. Right now, I would do– When I say focus on idea pins, I’m not saying you’ve got to do one every day. One a week, do a video pin. You could put those both– You could do a video and have a little bit of it going in an idea pin and then do your video pin. So you just kind of regurgitate your content and use it for different types of pins. So you can actually put– I think video makes the idea pin do better. So I would do a little bit of both. Right now, I would do an idea pin first, then I would do the video pin. But video pins are going to bring you more traffic. It just depends on– Like, for this, I was just trying to get out the word that here, I have these templates, and this is all new. Check it out. So it just depends on what you’re trying to promote and how many websites you have. You can cross promote on one of your Pinterest platforms with idea pins, which is what I was doing because I don’t have an Amy’s Circle Pinterest account. I don’t think even if I put a pin on Living Locurto that’s going out to AmysCircle.com would even do well because it’s not my verified URL that I have for that business account. So that’s why I did an idea pin. So see what I’m saying? Think about what you’ve got, what you’re promoting, and that will give you an idea of whether you start with the video and/or– I would definitely do both. If that makes sense.

JENNY GUY: Great. OK. They’re both good. The answer is yes. The answer’s yes.

AMY LOCURTO: And that comes to me– just saying that a video right now– idea pins and video are going to be your best bet for getting some traction with Pinterest, for sure.

JENNY GUY: And that is as we’re running low on time here. I wanted to close that we had some questions about Tailwind and group boards and scheduling, and a lot of people are saying they’re quitting Tailwind, so I would just like to hear your thoughts about–

AMY LOCURTO: No!

JENNY GUY: –group boards and scheduling versus– yeah, just tell us what you think.

AMY LOCURTO: Oh my gosh, I love Tailwind. I couldn’t have a business without it, so don’t quit it. We need Tailwind. Oh, Tailwind is– which I just had Danny, the owner of Tailwind in my mastermind community, and he talked with us, and we talked a lot behind the scenes, and it’s– Yeah. It’s Pinterest approved. And he even said, he’s like, yeah we keep– are you sure, Pinterest? Like, asking, they’re like, stop asking us. It doesn’t matter if they pin through Tailwind or us. That’s what Pinterest tells them. So it does not matter.

Now, you might see a difference because you’re doing something different. Maybe you’re scheduling on– you’re not really thinking about it. Maybe you’re just putting things in your queue over on Tailwind and not really having a strategy. And then maybe once you stopped using Tailwind, then you started really manual pinning, you’ve got a strategy now, and you’re actually using it like a user. Maybe that’s what helped. There’s several different factors that could go into why all of a sudden if you stopped using Tailwind, it’s doing better. But really in reality, it’s not supposed to be any different. So I love Tailwind. I love how I can schedule things out up to a year. That just makes my life so much easier.

JENNY GUY: And so you don’t– you haven’t seen any negative impact from scheduling.

AMY LOCURTO: No! I don’t know if that’s it, because I haven’t stopped using it. I can’t tell you for sure. I just know for sure that Pinterest says they say there is no– they don’t hurt–

JENNY GUY: Discriminate.

AMY LOCURTO: They’re not going to penalize you for having a Tailwind pin. They have said that over and over and over. So I just wanted to let you all know. So I don’t really know anything else to say, but it’s really no different.

JENNY GUY: And what about group boards versus– is it still worth investing time there?

AMY LOCURTO: I love my group boards, but I started them with a strategy involved. Most of them are groups of people that I’ve gotten together with that we were like, we’re going to share each other’s pins. It’s not just a big old group. So yeah, you need to be– if you’re on a group board, make sure it’s– people are pinning what they’re supposed to pin to that board because if they start spinning– it’s a gardening board, and they start pinning shoes to it, it’s not going to do well. Pinterest is going to be confused.

So make sure you’re in a board that people know the rules. They know what they’re supposed to be pinning And if it’s not a good board like that, then maybe– and it’s not bringing you traffic from any of the pins, I would reevaluate why you’re in that group board, for sure. But most of mine bring me lots of traffic, so they’re still doing good. It just depends on the group and the group board.

JENNY GUY: All right, Amy, this has been so, so helpful. Will you reiterate one more time your special that you’ve offered everybody and what they can find when they go there?

AMY LOCURTO: Yes, OK, you guys, I’ve got great offers for you. I’m giving you $100 cash. Just go over to use it for my Pinterest mastermind course, and that’s a six week course. It’s got my strategy, how to A/B test, and all kinds of things. You get Pinterest tips in there too. It’s full of really, really great things. And it’s six weeks. You can do it all in one day, or you can take six weeks to do it. Do it on your own.

I’m available too if you have questions once you’re in it. Feel free to email me. You’re part of Amy’s Circle once you get in there. And then, I’ve also got Pinterest templates and Facebook templates. So you get 15% off. Use the code SummerLive for both of those things. Just go over to Amy’s Circle and shop around. And you’ve got this until June 25th. So I would love for you guys to be a part of the Amy Circle community. I’ve actually got a private mastermind too. It’s closed right now for new members, but you can get on the waiting list, and I will let as soon as I open that up. But it’s full of great– it’s full of amazing bloggers and great community of people.

JENNY GUY: That’s what it’s all about. Thank you, Amy. Guys, please go ahead and check out the code. So go to Amy’s Circle to put in SummerLive. And then, next week, guys, one week from today, it is June 9th at 3:00 PM Eastern, two PM Central. It will be Jessica Turner of The Mom Creative, and we are going to be talking about affiliate marketing. More details on that to come, but another great way to get some growth happening here in June on the Summer of Live. Amy, you have been a delight. We are so glad to have had you. Thank you so much for being here.

AMY LOCURTO: Thanks for having me It was fun.

JENNY GUY: Yeah, it was a blast. Bye everybody! We’ll see you next week.

AMY LOCURTO: Bye!