Cynthia Sanchez launched Oh So Pinteresting in February 2012 and after a few months she was approached by a company and asked if she would not only help them with Pinterest but also manage their social media accounts. In September 2012, Cynthia left her job as full time radiation oncology nurse to focus on growing Oh So Pinteresting and her new social media business.
Just like the medical world, social media is ever evolving and changing. It requires continuous study to stay up to date on the latest methods and products. Since launching the blog, Cynthia spends time taking courses and attending several conferences a year focused on social media.
In growing and marketing her own business, she has had to learn multiple social media platforms and how to create content for them. Cynthia writes the content for the blog, produces her own podcast, records videos and creates graphics. Cynthia uses her experience as a nurse to help her empathize with clients. She continues this approach in her business and encourages clients to take the same approach in their social media marketing. For fun, aside from exploring the usefulness of Pinterest, Cynthia enjoy traveling with her family, which consists of two sets of twins, crafting, and learning photography.
Narrator: Speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches, and info marketers unite. The speaking of wealth show is your road map to success and significance. Learn the latest tools, technologies and tactics to get more bookings, sell more products and attract more clients. If you’re looking to increase your direct response sales, create a big time personal brand, and become the go to guru, the speaking of wealth show is for you. Here is your host, Jason Hartman.
Jason Hartman: Welcome to the Speaking of Wealth Show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we discuss profit strategies for speakers, publishers, authors, consultants, coaches, info marketers, and just go over a whole bunch of exciting things that you can use to increase your business, to make your business more successful and more and more passive and more and more automated and more and more scalable. So we will be back with a great interview. Be sure to visit us at speakingofwealth.com. You can take advantage of our blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, and many other resources for free and speakingofwealth.com and we will be back with a great interview for you in less than 60 seconds.
Jason Hartman: Hey, welcome. I wanted to do something a little bit different today. I wanted to let our guest introduce herself. And she originally became very interested in something back in 2011, and her introduction will be better than mine. So, let’s say hello to her.
Cynthia Sanchez: Hi. I’m Cynthia Sanchez and I’m addicted to Pinterest.
Jason Hartman: That’s fantastic. Well, Cynthia, welcome to the show. And it’s great to have you. There’s so much interest in Pinterest.
Cynthia Sanchez: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here, and yes, I have a big interest in Pinterest.
Jason Hartman: It’s one of those things that, like Facebook and Twitter and so many other social media, Instagram, etcetera, etcetera, it’s really changing the way we interact and engage with potential customers and clients, right?
Cynthia Sanchez: It is. It really is. It has had a big influence, not only in that but also on the other social networks that you just mentioned. It kind of was the big tipping point I think for moving everything into more of a visual space.
Jason Hartman: Can you give us just a little quick history of Pinterest? Did it start in 2011?
Cynthia Sanchez: Actually, 2011. Yeah, it kind of really started really small, slow start, up until early 2012 if I’m getting my years right – or mid 2012 – but it was by invitation only. So you had to have somebody that was already a part of the Pinterest space invite you to join. You couldn’t just go to Pinterest.com and start an account. That has since changed. So, even though it had a slow start, it was still the fastest independent website to grow to 10 million users.
Jason Hartman: Well, big brands, big national brands are using it extensively, especially if they have a visually oriented product. And, I guess any product can be turned into a visually oriented product. But tell us a little bit about it and why our listeners should really be using it as a platform.
Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, well really where the power of Pinterest lies is in its potential for traffic generation. Shareaholic did a study early last year, but at that time they found that it was driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn combined, not just individually, combined. And it was really a close second to Twitter. For such a new site, that’s pretty amazing. And, really, visual brands or any kind of brand, like you mentioned, can just take advantage of how the Pinterest platform works. It’s very public, it’s very open, and for your listeners that may not be too familiar with it, Pinterest is pretty much a collection of visual bookmarks. On your internet browser, you can bookmark sites, something you just kind of want to hold and save for later. Well, you do this visually on Pinterest. So, if a website, a product, a blog, anything that has an image, you can then pin that to Pinterest. And it links back to the site that you found it from. Well, if you pin it to your account, you can then organize it into categories, which are called boards, and anybody and everybody can come and check out your boards. It’s very public, very open. If they like what you’ve curated, what you’ve saved and organized into your boards, they can then pin it to their boards and their followers will see it. So, if I have 10 followers and 10 followers see my things and then they pin it to their 10 followers, you can see how it really, really grows. It can really grow quickly.
Most of the pins on Pinterest, 80% are re-pins, meaning that somebody came to somebody else’s account and then put it to their account. They don’t come into the internet itself. Not as many do anyway. So that’s really where the power is. Really, if you think about Facebook or Twitter, imagine if 80% of Facebook posts or Twitter tweets were re-tweets or shares. Those numbers are nowhere near the same.
Jason Hartman: Oh, okay. Kind of elaborate on that a little bit if you would.
Cynthia Sanchez: Sure, sure. So if you get 2% engagement on Facebook, you’re doing good. That’s what the pros say. Because that means that you had 2 people share your post out of every 100 that saw it. And now that we’ve had those changes with Facebook, not everybody that follows you sees your post. They want you to buy ads, they want you to sponsor posts, those types of things. On Pinterest, everybody that follows you has the opportunity to see your pins, your content in their feed. And it’s really common, where on Facebook it’s more common that you see something that you like from people that you follow, you click LIKE, you might leave a comment, and maybe if it’s just something extraordinary you share. But, on Pinterest, if you like it, you’re more likely to pin it and share it with your followers. You can comment, you can like, but those two habits on Pinterest just aren’t very common. So it’s really kind of the flip. It’s the opposite where sharing is very well accepted and done most often, as opposed to Facebook where it’s done the least often.
Jason Hartman: So, when you say Facebook, though, you really, in fairness, have to distinguish between a Facebook page, like what they used to call a fan page and a personal Facebook page. I assume you’re talking about a business page, right?
Cynthia Sanchez: Yes, yes. And even with personal accounts, if I see something from a friend or family member, I may or may not share it. It’s not as common for me to share things, either both on the personal side or the business side.
Jason Hartman: Is there a highest and best use of Pinterest, for example? If someone listening is in certain types of fields, should they be going, wow, I better be using Pinterest to its fullest potential immediately versus if someone is in a different set of fields is it more like a maybe? Give us a fair assessment of that. I know you’re the Pinterest addict.
Cynthia Sanchez: Sure. Well, currently I guess the prime demographic that’s really interested in Pinterest is women from the Midwest, ages early 20s up into mid-40s. That’s the main group of people that are using Pinterest right now.
Jason Hartman: I’m curious about the geographical segmentation of that. Why Midwest?
Cynthia Sanchez: You know, they just seemed to be the early adopters, which is also uncommon from other social networks that typically have a coastal type of adoption and integration really quickly. Usually something starts on the east coast or west coast and then it kind of spreads across the country. For some reason, women in the Midwest just really gravitated towards that. And it might have to do with the type of content that is so easily shared on Pinterest, really the things that are informational, educational, inspirational, aspirational, that dream vacation, that dream house, those dream clothes or shoes. Those do really well. If not, it gets down to the real life, to what do you make for dinner, how do you fix something around your house, how should I plant my garden? Those types of topics are really, really popular on Pinterest. But I kind of caution businesses that aren’t necessarily focused on those types of topics to not shy away from Pinterest too quickly because, if you think about it, when Facebook first launched, its prime demographic was college students trying to look for a date or to find out what’s going on with each other. And that has really changed dramatically. And I really see Pinterest evolving and changing. And the way they’re positioning themselves to grow, they are not necessarily trying to pigeonhole themselves into being a social network. They’re really trying to expand more into the area of being a search tool if you will.
Jason Hartman: And what are some of the best secrets and best practices that one can use with Pinterest?
Cynthia Sanchez: Anybody out there with any kind of visual presence or web presence with images attached to them, a website, a blog, e-commerce site, whatever you might have, if you use images on there, the best thing that you can do for yourself, the easiest thing that you can do would be to add a pin-it button. Because, even if you’re really not that interested in getting started on Pinterest, if you’re not ready to make that leap or you just can’t fit it into your schedule right now, don’t I guess miss the opportunity for other people that are already there to share your content for you.
Jason Hartman: Now, the pin-it button, would someone with a sort of dry business oriented website that talks about, say, economics, would they put a pin-it button on there for people to pin this text around? I mean, it seems like it’s really just for visual stuff.
Cynthia Sanchez: Well, a picture is worth 1000 words like they say, and really it’s up to the person interpreting that image. If you have something really dry or business focused, economics, statistics, and all those types of things, if you can have some sort of visual, if you already do have sort of visual included in your blog post which is really recommended among marketers no matter what the topic is just because it draws people’s attention more than just text – if text were enough, then newspaper and magazines would just stick with that. So having just sort of image with it will always help.
Jason Hartman: I mean, usually on those dry sites that I was referring to, it’s a clip-art picture.
Cynthia Sanchez: Something, anything. It’s not gonna be the Vogue magazine or a National Geographic magazine type of image, and that’s okay. But that still gives the visitors to your site an opportunity to then curate it to their Pinterest account. And it’s not uncommon for an economist to be a woman in her 40s in the Midwest who also happens to have an interest in other things. And that’s part of the beauty of it is it’s all of your interest, any of your interest and you can save them on Pinterest. Now, I wouldn’t expect that economist to have floods of traffic coming in from Pinterest, but are you really gonna say no, I don’t want any traffic coming from Pinterest or limit the exposure of your content?
Jason Hartman: Yeah, and certainly in the economist example, graphs and charts can be pinned, right?
Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah. I mean, if we have other business owners on there, other people interested in your topic depending on your angle on the economy, it could attract different kinds of people. And that’s really the thing that Pinterest is focused on is that it’s focused on people’s interests and those can be wide and varied.
Jason Hartman: Right. Okay, so add a pin-it button on your website. That’s easy enough. What else?
Cynthia Sanchez: If you decide to go the step further and really want to start getting some of that traffic from Pinterest, then you start taking a look at the visuals that are available. Maybe you step away from just the basic clip-art or that graph, and then you start expanding into maybe stock photography or images that you create yourself or you start really taking more attention or paying more attention to those images. If you’re a speaker or things that have some sort of consulting, more of a service provider than have physical, products to sell or to offer, those are still doing well on Pinterest. You just have to get a little bit creative as to how you rep those visually. And those could be just an image that you make on any type of image editing software where it’s a background and some text over it just explaining the trends and the economy of the southwest in 2012. And it’s just a simple image or simple graphic made with an image editing software. And you put it on your site and upload it to Pinterest and then link it to that article.
Jason Hartman: So, I’m looking at my Pinterest account now which I admittedly rarely look at. We’re very active on Facebook and Twitter and so forth for my different businesses, but I don’t really use Pinterest that much to be very candid. And as I’m scrolling down the page here, I see a massive female orientation here. And not to sound like I’m stereotyping anything but I see fashion, I see cooking and food and interior design and some sexy clothing. I see some hairstyles. I mean, all I did is sign up and then I just started getting these notices, so and so from your Facebook list is following you on Pinterest, blah, blah, blah and just like that, as I assume it evolves that way for most people. But what’s the demographic makeup? I mean, you mentioned women from the Midwest. You mentioned ages. But how skewed is it towards the female audience?
Cynthia Sanchez: Right now it’s very skewed, but what you are seeing in your main Pinterest feed is a reflection of the accounts you are following. If you wanted to shift what you see in your feed, then you would need to unfollow those boards or those accounts of probably the women that are pinning the hairstyles and the recipes and those types of things.
Jason Hartman: Right. But I didn’t try to follow anybody. I just linked it with Facebook. I didn’t officially go out and look for anybody.
Cynthia Sanchez: When you first launched your account, you are required to follow people. Pinterest has to give you something to see. So let’s say you had an interest in photography or you had an interest in, whatever you selected as interest or images that you liked. Depending on when you launched your account or started your account, they asked you kind of different kinds of questions or gave you different kinds of options, but they’ve always kind of started you off with a few starter accounts to follow.
Jason Hartman: Right. But now, the things I see in here are pinned or re-pinned by people that I recognize these names from my Facebook account.
Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, if you followed them, yeah, Pinterest doesn’t automatically make you follow anybody, whether you’re already connected with them on Pinterest or on Twitter. They let you know that they’re there. If you do connect those accounts, you don’t have to link them with those other 2 accounts, but they let you know that they’re there.
Jason Hartman: As I recall, I thought it just said do you want to just follow everybody on Facebook or something like that. I don’t remember.
Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, I don’t remember that option ever being an option for any of the accounts that I’ve launched. Pinterest is kind of notorious for rolling out features for a couple of days and then kind of taking them back. So, that may have been something that was just active when you launched your account. But if you want to change your feed at any time, you can always go into who you follow and there’s a number up there of the people that you follow. Click on that number and it’ll show you everybody. And you can unfollow that. Now, let’s say you do have an interest in economics, for example, you can go up to the Pinterest search box, search for either individual pins or boards, categories or groups of pins within that space or even people that say if there’s an economist or something that writes about economics and they have that in their account name, then they will come up under pinners and then that would be who you would follow and then you would see more pins geared towards that information.
Jason Hartman: Oh, I see. Yeah, what I did here is I just followed a bunch of people that I knew. That’s what happened, yeah. But I’m just saying, it seems like the females are way more active on it. So, to answer that question, do they publish and tell anybody what the percentages are of active users? Because that would be interesting to know.
Cynthia Sanchez: Well, there isn’t really anything straight directly from Pinterest. There have been these marketing companies and research companies, Nielsen and these big companies that have kind of said, well, we estimate this, we estimate that, and I hear estimates of 80% female, and last estimates of global users is 70 million and the 80% female is really domestic here in The United States. Once you go overseas anywhere, it levels off to be more 50/50.
Jason Hartman: Oh, really? It’s so interesting how people act in these different mediums and how they participate. Very, very interesting. Okay, well, any other best practices that you want to share?
Cynthia Sanchez: Sure. If you really do decide to launch a Pinterest account, you really want to take advantage of any place that there is text and keep SEO in mind. As I mentioned before, Pinterest is really trying to go in the way of search and really to make it easy for you to find what you are interested in. Take that economic example from before, if I search for “economics” and I want to find the economist that has a site about economics, then I want to make sure that my Pinterest account has economics or economists listed wherever I can that has text, maybe my name and then “–economist” as my account name. And somewhere in the account description – I want to use those words, phrases that go around economics. And my board titles, wherever I can use those keywords that I want to be found for whatever my industry or my niche is, try to use those as many places within your Pinterest account to make it easier for your content to be found. And that’s for a couple of reasons. Of course, it will help you be found within the Pinterest search results. But Pinterest and Google seem to have a really strong relationship and more and more we’re seeing Pinterest pins, Pinterest boards, and Pinterest accounts coming up in Google search results to where if you’ve had a hard time, you’re trying really hard to rank in Google rankings – maybe your site won’t because it is pretty competitive, but Pinterest accounts and Pinterest boards seem to be having a really easy time of it lately.
Jason Hartman: I would kind of think that infographics would be a big thing on Pinterest.
Cynthia Sanchez: They are, they are. And, really, last year they really were. Oh my gosh.
Jason Hartman: You couldn’t log in without seeing 20 of them, right?
Cynthia Sanchez: Exactly. And that’s for a couple of reasons. One, they’re bright, they’re colorful, they give a lot of information in a really small space, and they draw a lot of attention. And another reason that they were so popular on Pinterest, and this kind of still holds true today, is that they are vertical images. They are really tall. And on Pinterest, every image has the same width. Every image gets the same width – there aren’t really any big horizontal pictures. They’re all tall, vertical pictures. If you happen to have a square or a more horizontal oriented picture, it gets kind of squished down. So, to really stand out, you really want images that are taller, and infographics were perfect for that.
Jason Hartman: Wow, there’s a big opportunity, folks. If you’re thinking “How can I make my content visual?” which is one of the objections or obstacles that I raised in this discussion, well, there you go. If you don’t think you have visual content, infographics, big opportunity there.
Cynthia Sanchez: Going back to that economist example, that would be perfect information for an infographic.
Jason Hartman: Very good. And the economist example was just pulled out of a hat. Well, tell us a little bit about what it is you do.
Cynthia Sanchez: Sure, pretty much just like what we’re doing right now, I help businesses get launched on Pinterest and really take a look at what their needs are and what their needs are and what their goals are if they don’t have any yet, what their goals would be to accomplish with Pinterest in how we can best meet those goals, help them with their image decisions and how to go about finding them, getting them, using them in their content, establishing their boards, finding influential pinners, if you will, to follow and how to become those influential pinners, best practices, timing, scheduling, all about everything about getting your Pinterest account up and going.
Jason Hartman: It’s funny the language you’ve used. Of course, pinners, that’s not a surprise, but curators or curating content, I mean did you start using that word or is that a common Pinterest. It reminds me of being in a museum.
Cynthia Sanchez: Actually, that’s a common social media term. So, if you’re curating either on Facebook, on Twitter, wherever you’re collecting things and then kind of putting them on display exactly like a museum curator, and that’s I guess where that phrase came from.
Jason Hartman: I thought that was sort of a Pinterest oriented word because it’s so visual, very good. Well, give out your website, if you would, and tell people where they can learn more about you, Pinterest, and maybe help recommend a 12 step program.
Cynthia Sanchez: Please let me know because my family really is asking for help. Everyone can find me at OhSoPinteresting.com.
Jason Hartman: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and just any last thing you’d like to mention.
Cynthia Sanchez: If anybody has any question, please feel free to leave them. I am more than happy to answer questions. I know it can always be overwhelming to start something new, and anywhere on the blog I’m available. And thank you very much for inviting me on the show.
Jason Hartman: Thank you, Cynthia.
Narrator: Now, you can get Jason’s Creating Wealth in Today’s Economy Home Study Course. All the knowledge and education revealed in a 9 hour day of the Creating Wealth Boot Camp, created in a home study course for you to dive into at your convenience. For more details, go to JasonHartman.com.
This show is produced by The Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights or media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com or email media@HartmanMedia.com. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. exclusively. (Image: Flickr | mkhmarketing)
Transcribed by David
Read more from Speaking of Wealth
Read the New Rules for Career Success
How Entrepreneurs Hatch New Ideas
The Speaking of Wealth Team
Transcribed by Ralph