Looking for a way to increase your marketing effectiveness WITHOUT increasing your budget? Or perhaps you’ve always relied on Facebook marketing and haven’t delved into Pinterest strategy for your business.
We’re settling the Pinterest vs Facebook marketing for business debate today, by teaching you how you can use BOTH without spending any additional money!
We sat down with Facebook and Pinterest marketing maven Holly Homer to
talk about harnessing the record-breaking engagement on Pinterest right now to assist your Facebook marketing.
Watch the full video replay to listen in on the interview with Holly Homer, and keep scrolling for interview-style show notes filled with Holly’s wisdom and anecdotes bout mad-scientist level experimentation with Pinterest marketing.
And don’t forget to snag our handy worksheet on how to make Pinterest work for your Facebook marketing strategy here!
Watch the Full Video Replay
Meet Holly Homer, Pinterest and Facebook Marketing Extraordinaire!
Holly Homer is the Founder + CEO of Kids Activities, an incredible resource for fun, easy and inexpensive activities to play, teach and learn for kids!
One thing is for sure – this Dallas mom knows her stuff! She and her husband have partially homeschooled their three boys (now teenagers) since Kindergarten.
When she’s not curating tons of new, inexpensive activities for children, she’s also speaking, teaching and coaching on business-building and negotiating social media algorithms. Oh, and did we mention she’s a best-selling author of three books?
You’re going to love learning how Pinterest totally changed the game for Holly’s Facebook marketing strategy. Buckle up!
Q: You also have a business/marketing consultancy and courses in addition to Kids Activities. What (if anything) are you hearing lately from your audience about interest in Pinterest for marketing?
Holly: The biggest concern right now is what has changed and what has not. When you’re dealing with any kind of algorithm, you need to make sure you’re putting out content that’s timely and trending.
What you see trending on Pinterest right now is what people looking for and need right now – those are the Pins that are doing really well.
For example, on Kids Activities blog, a lot of our stuff is doing really really well right now because we constantly write about what to do with your kids at home with very few supplies, how to educate them casually through play, also provide a lot of resources for parents and teachers.
Q: What great ideas are you seeing being implemented in Pinterest marketing or just, in general, to adapt to our changing times?
So, this is a weird time. People still need to get the word out about their business, but they don’t want it to sound insensitive, or offend people who might be in a different situation or sick – there are so many minefields that can happen from situations like this!
Just remember that you are an expert in something that’s useful. If you can produce content around that zone of genius in a helpful and resourceful way, the opportunities from people looking for those things will shock you.
The past month for Kids Activities blog had almost doubled our best month for traffic ever – that’s counting the days when Facebook was really generous and I could send millions of people to the blog directly from Facebook!
That just goes to show you that today is really, really an opportunity to be helpful. When businesses look at it that way, the door just opens to opportunities.
Holly Homer
It’s so easy to get worried about our own situation – this happens to us all.
When I think about what this looks like for my audience, especially moms with small children stuck inside and no plan, this is STRESS.
If we can give them a tiny vacation or a tiny tip or a tiny way through that in an easier way, that’s the biggest community-building opportunity ever.
“I can make it to bedtime today because I saw this on Kids Activities blog today, or opened this email and saw this, or saw this Pin on Pinterest.”
These are portals into your community when you’re serving your readers on the highest level.
Q: Speaking of Facebook Marketing, tell us about how you got started on Pinterest and how it ties in!
Little known fact: my success on Facebook was based on my Pinterest strategy. I was on Facebook first, but I didn’t have a big community over there – I just had an ordinary Facebook page like everyone else.
When Pinterest came out, I was like “not another social network!”
But I joined a later beta, and what won me over was that I opened up Google Analytics and I was getting traffic from Pinterest – from a social network I wasn’t even on!
I hopped over to Pinterest and was just pinning things and creating boards. One thing I loved the ability to share the best and the brightest from around the internet without any negativity.
I got more followers when I was the source of amazing things. At the time I was pinning 80% other people’s content and 20% my own.
The more I pinned amazing things, the more followers I got! Well, what if that worked on Facebook?
That’s why I started pushing the boundaries of Facebook. Don’t listen to gurus. They said don’t post more than two times in the group or you’ll alienate your followers – Two posts a day didn’t even reach all of my followers!
The Secret to Holly’s Facebook Marketing Strategy – Inspired by Pinterest!
What if I post every hour of the day with 12 posts a day? I tried it out and looked at my Analytics – “hmmm…that’s not negative.” What if I post 24 hours a day?
If I’m always posting the best stuff on Facebook for my target reader, what’s the harm?
If you’re always posting amazing things that people want to interact with and comment on and share, then the number doesn’t matter. They’re in for the adventure!
I would find content on Pinterest and share it on Facebook.
I didn’t care about photos and memes, I cared about quality links to teach people things and that they want to click through. So I would use my Pinterest boards to find things we could share on Facebook. Then, I would watch the top posts and top performers to see what we should post more of.
Q: How would you use analytics to determine what you should post more of to your Facebook community from Pinterest?
So here’s the thing: I never asked my audience how they’re dealing with X, Y, and Z. Why? I know exactly what they’re doing, what they’re thinking and what they need because I’m watching all these analytics.
Every time someone clicks on a link or engages with something that’s a vote for what they need. And if you see that they are repinning these things, the next thing they need will be X, and that’s the content you should go create today.
Bottom line: If you’re a Facebook marketer wanting to know what people need now, share content on Pinterest and see what people are repinning to get those insights.
Q: What would you tell someone who has tried social networks and maybe they’re blogging, but they haven’t tried Pinterest for marketing yet?
There is nothing to lose, and it’s free. Plus, you likely already have an image on that blog post!
It’s easy to get started and try things. Why not just go in and create the boards that you might want for your business? Strategize this way – one piece of content should fit within multiple boards. Your boards should cover the topics or categories you are an expert in or are already on your blog.
Then find the best and the brightest- repin their top Pins and see what resonates!
That helps you attract the followers who want to see what you’ll post next. Pinterest is where you can get a follower just because you share something that resonates with them. And next time you write content, Pinterest is more likely to show that to that person.
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Q: How should someone get started with this Pinterest method?
Go spend a few hours today, next week, and experiment with pinning and watching the repinning trends.
The algorithm isn’t going to forget you between week one and week two. Take it as a test and start doing research!
When you start seeing what people interact with based on other peoples content, it will help motivate you to make your own!
Q: What if someone doesn’t have a lot of Pinterest followers?
It doesn’t matter how many Pinterest followers you have – Pinterest treasures the average user over the superuser.
Mathematically, when you pin something cause you’ve only pinned 22 things in your life, Pinterest will weight it as more special than if it’s your 53rd pin of the day.
For example, I need the average mom to pin the unicorn slime, because when I go into my Pinterest analytics and I look at the source of my top pins or repins, it’s always Sally from Nebraska with 22 followers and three pins. But one of them was MINE!
If you have little to no following right now and you start getting really strategic about pinning, not only is your following going to grow… but Pinterest will wake up and say “he hasn’t pinned anything for 42 months and now he’s pinned these three things – they must be kind of important.”
In Pinterest most of the activity is happening in Search (which is follower-agnostic) so it’s not true that no one will see your content.
Q: How do you monetize sharing other people’s content?
I don’t, but I built my community on the back of that other content.
I can’t literally write the best blog post every single day in every single category I cover. But if I find the most amazing thing here, and here, and here and present it to my community through Facebook and Pinterest, I basically get credit for it.
They don’t care that it didn’t come from Kid’s Activity blog! I build my ideal audience and my ideal community that way and it’s really a win-win.
Especially if you share a high-traffic piece of content, and then the next thing you share is your own content. That’s positively monetizing and building credibility for your own pieces.
Algorithms are based on credibility with my users. If I’m pinning a bunch of stuff that my followers are just scrolling past, that deflates my credibility.
But if I’m pinning things that stop that scroll, get that click or get that repin, that builds my credibility.
What I can do is create one thing, and then curate other things that I think are awesome around that topic, and that will help stop the scroll with my own content.
Q: So how do you build community on Pinterest? Do you? Or is that just for Facebook?
I actually build community through my email. Basically, I use Facebook and Pinterest to get people onto the blog, and then to give them something awesome in exchange for their email address. I need my people to be close to me!
In that email here’s what I’m going to say. If you’re on Pinterest Sally, this is my top-performing Pin, you should consider repinning it.
Q: How would you advise people in niches where the content doesn’t seem as relevant right now? Ex: travel, fashion, weddings
The thing I’ve always appreciated about Pinterest is that I can have a cowboy boots board and it’s fine. I can have a tile I love and put it on my kitchen board and it’s fine. You can have other interests and other topics!
In terms of still staying relevant to your industry, for example: how can you take your travel virtual? Maybe teach your followers how to scrapbook travel photos.
What can you do in that niche to celebrate it that you didn’t have time for before?
All you need to do is hop on and start testing. All these networks have amazing analytics, you’re going to test things out, open your analytics, see what’s working, and do more of that. You can do that in your spare time today, around Tiger King!
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