Pinterest Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs with Anna Zubarev | Ep 15

Pinterest is the social media platform which focuses on images. Many people ignore Pinterest as there is usually no interaction with people and it’s entirely different from typical Facebook or Instagram. However, with the right Pinterest strategy, it can be an excellent source of traffic to your blog for a long time.

In this episode, Anna Zubarev shares a Pinterest strategy for creative entrepreneurs that helped her to gain more than 10.000 followers on Pinterest and constantly get traffic to her blog.

Anna is a Social Media Strategist who is passionate about Social Media, Traveling and Family. She has been recognized amongst Top Social Media People to Follow on Pinterest.

She has also been named Top Social Media Blogs to follow, and she’s been mentioned in the Huffington Post as Mom Prenuer.

Anna is also a full-time Marketer and a Mom of 2 terrific kids. She retired from the Corporate industry in 2012 and looks at life always from the bright side.

In this episode, we will cover:

• [00:22] About the episode and Anna Zubarev
• [02:20] Anna Zubarev explains what a social media prenuer is and why social media fascinates her
• [03:30] Anna describes her transformational year and why she was attracted to Pinterest
• [06:18] The roadmap to begin using Pinterest
• [07:23] Who is Pinterest for and what is its audience demographic and why?
• [11:27] The very basics of Pinterest strategy and how to start using it to generate traffic for your business
• [13:19] Step one, create a Pinterest account and profile
• [13:57] Step two, create your bio with the same relevant keywords that associate you to your business
• [15:03] Step three, verify your website
• [15:18] How to create effective boards and how it can positively affect your business
• [16:41] The importance of SEO and how you can learn all of the tricks for free
• [17:23] The connection between pins and boards, and what you should be doing
• [19:44] Anna gives her boards and pins as an example to follow
• [20:26] The 80/20 rule and how to follow it on Pinterest
• [21:58] Engaging with others on Pinterest by joining group boards
• [24:34] How to get people to re-pin your pins
• [27:16] The steps you can follow right now to begin your Pinterest business account
• [29:22] Why Pinterest may be the right site for you
• [30:30] Where you can find Anna Zubarev
• [32:55] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show

12 Steps to successful Pinterest strategy for small business

• Step 1: Create your profile for business, that’s number one
• Step 2: Brand it with a photo image of your brand
• Step 3: Verify Your Site
• Step 4: Make sure you add the keywords in your profile, your boards, descriptions, everywhere you can
• Step 5: Optimize your pins with keywords
• Step 6: Pin only quality pins
• Step 7: Create tall pins, which I’ve just mentioned, the size is 735×1110 px
• Step 8: Follow the 80/20 rule
• Step 9: Engage and collaborate with others
• Step 10: Pin multiple pins daily
• Step 11: Pin to multiple group boards, not just your own
• Step 12: Automate your pin strategies with using specific tools

Pin the quotes on your Pinterest:

Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:

• Pinterest Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs

Resources from this interview:

• Learn more about Anna Zubarev on annazubarev.com
• Follow Top Social Media People on Pinterest
• Take a look at Top Social Media Blogs to follow
• Check 20 Power Mums Share Their Life Hacks, Productivity Tips & Tools
• Find Pinterest groups to collaborate with on pingroupie.com
• Create visual graphics with Canva
• Use Tailwind for scheduling your Pins
• Follow Anna Zubarev on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram

Connect with Marina Barayeva:

• marinabarayeva.com
• Follow Marina on Instagram
• Follow Marina on Twitter

Pinterest Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs – Interview Transcription

Marina Barayeva:

Hi, Anna. How are you doing? Welcome to the show.

Anna Zubarev:

Hi, Marinochka. It’s very good to finally be able to connect with you online and speak to you live, as we met previously on Instagram, which is, listen, nowadays social media is everywhere and the ability to meet with fantastic people from all walks of life is phenomenal. So yes, it is great to meet you finally.

Marina Barayeva:

That’s amazing how we connected to you through Instagram, just exchanging comments and here we are.

Anna Zubarev:

Mm-hmm (agreement).

Marina Barayeva:

That’s awesome. Anna, please tell us about yourself. What are you doing? How do you relate it to Pinterest?

Anna Zubarev:

Wow. Before Pinterest, let’s just start from the beginning of me. For those of you who are going to be listening to this podcast, the audio, or who are reading this about me, I’m Anna Levina-Zubarev but on social accounts I’m known as Anna Zubarev or simply Anna Z.

My life has been transformed by three different careers in my life. I’m a mom of two amazing kids, a girl who’s 10 years old and a boy who’s six years old, and a wife, a friend, and of course most importantly, I’m a social media preneur. What that means is that I love everything that has to do with social media. I’m fascinated by connections, as I’ve said previously, I’m fascinated.

The use of social media enables us today to connect with absolutely phenomenal people, fantastic people, and very talented people that we probably would have never had the chance of meeting otherwise if it wasn’t for social media.

With that being said, in 2012, which was the transformational year for me where my corporate career had ended and my new life or social media preneur had started. Yet I didn’t know at the time that I’m going to be who I am today. I was just on the path of discovering who I want to be, who do I want to inspire, how do I want to take my life to the next chapter.

Obviously, Facebook has been my first and foremost social network where I’ve met and connected myself with phenomenal people. Second platform was Instagram, and the third was Twitter. Twitter, I’m not so jazzed about it because there’s so much noise on it.

I’m a visual marketer and I’m creative by nature. So, when I came across Pinterest, all the light bulbs were going on in my head and I said, “Oh my God, this is it. This is where I want to spend my time.” Yet initially when I came across Pinterest, I didn’t know exactly how I’m going to navigate this place. There were so many different color variations. Everything was so bright and colorful that I was actually beginning to lose my focus of concentration on it.

But this is where I stopped for a moment and I started to dig and read and listen to many other influencers who inspired me to use the platform properly, which is Pinterest.

Pinterest has been my guiding force for all sorts of inspirations. And again, I’m a creative person by nature so everything that I do in my life, everything that I want to proceed or pursue is naturally inspired by visual content. So, Pinterest, for that matter, is a perfect platform for those that are inspired by visual content.

This is basically how it all started for me, is by going into Pinterest, learning the ways on connecting myself and creating the right content for Pinterest, and being able to get today over 10,000 followers for Pinterest. That, Marina, will answer my first question for you.

Marina Barayeva:

Wow. That’s a lot of followers. Teach us how to get there (laughter)!

Anna Zubarev:

Well, before we get there we need to ask ourselves questions.

• Why do you want to use Pinterest?
• Who is your targeted audience?

Which is the most important question, because if we don’t know where we’re going, the road is not going to take us anywhere. Before we go on a journey to see Paris or Shanghai or New York or Moscow, or any other city, what do we do first? We take a roadmap.

The roadmap to understanding Pinterest: you need to know why you want to use it, which types of audience you want to inspire by your work and the type of work you need to be doing in order to inspire others.

These are the most important questions you want to ask yourself:

• Why you want to use it?
• Who are you going to be talking to with your content?
• What type of content you want to create for Pinterest?

Marina Barayeva:

And we need your help with that. What do you think? Who is Pinterest for and what businesses can benefit from it and how?

Anna Zubarev:

Pinterest has been known as a platform for the majority of a female audience because, naturally, females are visual creatures. We like to see it, we like to touch it, we like the visual aspects of things, so naturally over 70 percent of Pinterest’s audience are females and only 30 percent or so are males. And that’s because, again, it’s all to do with visual aspects of things because men are naturally more…

I don’t want to give labels to people but naturally men are logistical. They are better readers than females, and females like to see things.

Another aspect of Pinterest is people go to Pinterest to buy things. An additional thing about Pinterest: Pinterest works exactly like Google. Whenever you go to Google for search or you go to Bing or Yahoo!, the search engine you are using, you can apply the same strategy on Pinterest.

Even if you’re not going to be using Pinterest for business, you’re going to be using it simply for your pleasure, for searching whatever items you’re looking for or searching for answers. It could be work-related answers or personal related answers, or it could be medial, or shopping. Whatever answers you’re seeking, you can find them on Pinterest.

And the most important fact about Pinterest is a fun fact of that. People typically go to buy things on Pinterest. That means whenever you go to Pinterest to look for fashion items or maybe some kind of beautification item like makeup or tutorials, just like you go to YouTube, you could certainly find the same information on Pinterest. Except Pinterest gives you more data on it and it works exactly like Google. It’s a search engine.

Pinterest is not a social platform. Some people are mistaken. It’s a book-marking tool, its exact title for Pinterest. For those of you that hear this for the very first time and you’re shocked, it’s very true. Pinterest is a book-marking tool that is used as a search engine.

How do you want to start with Pinterest? For those of you who already have an account with Pinterest and for those of you that have regular accounts, simply for personal use and you want to use Pinterest to generate traffic to your blogs. I’m giving you steps ahead of information.

Initially, in the beginning of this interview, I said, “Why do you want to be using Pinterest? Well, Pinterest works along together with specific promotions.” Again, I’m going to be jumping hoops in here and explaining to you guys different variations on how things work on Pinterest.

I’m going to give you guys maybe a checklist of some sort where you can literally take those steps on navigating yourself properly. By the end of this interview, you’re not going to get a light bulb and say, “Oh my God, I’ve got an ‘ah ha’ moment and I’m going to get this down and greedy with Pinterest.”

Anyway, let’s go back to the very basics of Pinterest.

Marina Barayeva:

That sounds great. What to start with?

Anna Zubarev:

Where to start? Number one, if you are a blogger, a creative blogger, and we’re talking to you right now and you are the right fit to listen to this podcast. Number one, if you already have a blog, perfect. If you don’t have a blog, please get to it. If you have an offer you’re trying to promote through an affiliate link, Pinterest is perfect for that as well.

The ultimate Pinterest strategy guide basically starts with you creating a Pinterest account and making sure you create a Pinterest for business account. This is the most important thing you need to understand.

A regular account doesn’t give you analytics. A regular account doesn’t give you the ability to promote your pins, and a regular account doesn’t do much for you except you add and create, and you can interact with others, you know, regular stuff like you do on any social network.

Now, when you create a Pinterest for business account, which is absolutely free by the way, you need to remember and always have in mind that Pinterest is a search engine and is operated with keywords.

Keywords must be entered in your profile when you set up your profile. Keywords of who you are and the nature of your business. If you have a website that sells makeup, you want to add those keywords into your profile that have to do with the stuff you’re going to be adding into your boards, the stuff you’re going to be pinning.

Number one step:

• you create a Pinterest account for business
• you create your profile
• in your profile, you put in your name or the name of your blog

If your blog states ‘Makeup by Marina’ that’s exactly how your profile needs to be stated. If your blog has a name that is your business name, that’s exactly how you name your Pinterest profile. That way those keywords could be affiliated with your Pinterest profile.

Number two thing, you create your bio. You add your biography, a short biography, I believe it consists of 200 characters, and basically, it’s the same situation. You can add the keywords, the same that you use for your Pinterest business name, you can add it into your profile.

Another important fact about branding yourself properly on Pinterest, not only creating the proper name for your Pinterest account but you want to use a proper image to associate with your account. If you already have a logo, that’s exactly what you want to use for your profile. If you’re using your beautiful picture of your face as your logo, that’s exactly what you want to use as your Pinterest profile.

Number three, let’s call it next step, you want to verify your website. You want to add your website into the profile and you want it verified.

After that, you create boards. You need to be able to create boards, and several boards, that will be associated with your profile. You want to use the boards that are going to be associated with the type of business you’re running. Again, if you have a makeup business, if you have some kind of blogging about creating water color paintings, you want to be able to add relevant boards that can be associated with art, stuff like that.

Additionally, when you create those boards, make sure to add description with keywords, the same keywords you’ve used for your profile name and the same keywords that you add into your bio.

Additionally, you want to add the same keywords into the description of each board, even if the board could be associated with makeup tutorials or it could be associated with medical advice or blogging advice, or art advice, travel advice. Whatever advice you are giving, whatever stuff you blog about, these are the keywords you want to use for descriptions. This has to do with SEO ranking, guys.

For those of you who are not familiar with SEO, I strongly recommend you guys take video tutorial lessons. There is so much free stuff out there on YouTube, beyond my belief. You can all get this for free and you don’t have to spend a dime learning things about that.

Everything I know today did not cost me a penny because I took my time, I did my diligence of learning every single step of the way on how to do these things. I figured out how to get those 10,000 followers on Pinterest.

Next step. When you create these boards and you add the description, make sure to add at least 10 to 15, or even 20, relevant pins to each board. That means that if you have a board of let’s say social media strategies, you want to be able to use only social media strategy pins that will go in there.

If you have visual design tips, and I’m reading off my particular boards right now that I’m speaking about, so that way it’s going to be already something to work with, you want to add pins that would be visual design tips about it.

Again, you don’t have to come up with these things. What I would suggest is this. “Anytime you are trying to learn stuff, don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Don’t go to Pinterest for this. Go to Google and find 100 top social media influencers. See the type of social media profiles they have. Find Pinterest influencers, see the type of Pinterest profiles they have and try to model after it. Never copy anybody else’s style because your reader will always know how real or fake you are trying to make it.

There are lazy people out there who constantly try to copy your profile and trying to, not reinvent the wheel but they have a lazy method. They literally go into Pinterest or any other social media profile of yours and copy word by word. This will not work for you because what I’m capable of, you might not be capable of. What I’m interested in, you might not be interested in or your readers could not be interested in.

With that being said, always model after people who inspire you. Remember this, guys, always model after people who inspire you.

In my case, I have about 50 to 60 boards, between those numbers. I don’t have the exact number right now in my head but let’s call it 55, somewhere in the middle.

I’ve created these boards and I’ve started to pin. In each board, on average, I have between 500 to 2,000 pins. What that means is this. I’m constantly pinning stuff into Pinterest. That means this is the type of engagement people want to see on Pinterest. Don’t expect getting Pinterest followers right from the get-go, even if you set up your profile correctly.

The way Pinterest works is by simply interacting with others. The 80/20 rule exists. For those who don’t know anything about the 80/20 rule, I’m going to explain it to you. Eighty percent of the time you need to remember to pin other content from other pinners, and 20 percent of the time you only want to add your own.

This is the most important thing you want to remember. You need to be consistent on Pinterest in order to get some visibility from others to your account. You want to apply the 80/20 method by 80 percent of the time adding other pins, re-pinning other’s pins, and 20 percent of the time you want to add your own content.

Again, consistency breaks the resistance. That means that every single day, make yourself a goal to go to Pinterest and pin 10 to 15 minutes a day. Make sure you add relevant pins into your boards.

If the board talks about Instagram marketing, that’s what you add. You only add Instagram pins on it. If you want to add articles that have to do with the particular business you’re running, whether it’s makeup or art or travel, you want to add those types of pins into the relevant boards.

The next step is engaging with others. That means also collaborating with others. It’s actually one of the key components in gaining engagement on Pinterest. You want to create group boards and you want to get access to group boards that are associated with other pinners. Not just pinners that have one or two pins in their boards but people that you see have good pinning abilities.

You want to get into pingroupie.com there is a website, it’s a free website. You go to www.pingroupie.com and Marina will be able to hyperlink this or leave this somewhere around this podcast or her blog.

Basically, you go there and you choose the type of groups you want to get into and basically start collaborating with others. You go to this group, you try to add yourself on there or you need to connect with the moderator of the group.

Send them a message sometimes if the group is popular or the moderator doesn’t want to add anybody who’s anybody, they want to add only relevant pinners who is going to do the diligent work and is not going to spam that group.

That’s where you want to basically find several groups. I would say being part of 10 to 15 groups can benefit you. But again, it’s not going to benefit you if you’re not going to do the work.

Schedule every single day to work on Pinterest. Schedule 10 to 15 minutes a day, daily, to work on your Pinterest account. “If your account is new or even if it’s not new but it doesn’t have any engagement, it doesn’t have any activity, people will simply not find you.” If you do not have the keywords for people to find you, if you don’t create new content, if you don’t engage with others, your stuff will not be found. It’s as simple as that.

Engage with others and pin multiple times a day but make sure you pin good pins. Double click on the pin, make sure there is content behind it. If you’re going to be putting spammy pins, nobody would want to re-pin those.

The key for people to re-pinning those pins, if those pins are yours, is creating relevant size, making sure you optimize the right size when creating those pins.

The best tool I can recommend which I use for creating any sort of visuals is Canva. C-A-N-V-A.com. It’s a free website. You can use the paid version. I’m using the free version still. There is no need for me to pay for any of that stuff.

It has all the optimized sizes, up to date, that can give you a creativity level where you can go into it, create yourself a free profile, choose the size you need to choose for whatever platform you’re choosing, specifically we’re talking about Pinterest right now. You want to use a Pinterest friendly size to create that visual for your blog.

Whenever you’ve written in your blog, you want to use several different… Well, I use at least three, where I can multipurpose my pins, not pins but I want to multipurpose my visuals within my blog so I can use them for my Instagram account, I can use them for my Facebook fan page, and I could use them obviously specifically for Pinterest.

The best optimal size for Pinterest is 735 by1100 pixels. This is the best size of the visuals for Pinterest that you want to use.

Also, go to Pinterest. If you have no idea how to create those visuals or you don’t know what’s going to work Pinterest, go to Pinterest and see what are the most popular pins in your niche that have been re-pinned the most and try to model after that creation.

This is how it all started for me. Nobody taught me anything. I’m a visual by heart and what I see, I model after the success of others. It’s as simple as that.

Marina Barayeva:

That’s a lot of information, Anna. Thank you so much. If you would put that into a little guide, what are the three steps our listeners could begin with to create a Pinterest strategy? You listed a lot of things. What can we start with?

Anna Zubarev:

I’m going to repeat those steps for you. I’ve created a blog around this so I’m looking at 14 steps.

• Create your profile for business, that’s number one
• Brand it with a photo image of your brand
• Make sure you add the keywords in your profile, your boards, descriptions, everywhere you can
• Optimize your pins with keywords
• Pin only quality pins
• Create tall pins, which I’ve just mentioned, the size is 735×1110 px
• Follow the 80/20 rule
• Engage and collaborate with others
• Pin multiple pins daily
• Pin to multiple group boards, not just your own
• Automate your pin strategies with using specific tools

I personally use Tailwind but then again, Marina, all the links I’m going to give you as soon as we are done with this.

• The most important thing is pin daily. If you do the daily work, consistency breaks the resistance this is the most important tip I’m going to give you, with anything. You blog daily, you pin daily, you schedule your pins with Tailwind, that’s the tool that I use.

The other thing I’m going to tell you is this, just for reference. That’s as simple as that. It’s a fact.

Whenever we use Facebook for our social media needs, for personal use or business needs, we post something. That post, in my personal take, could float around and get engagement in two or three days. We have Instagram, you got a day for engagement. You’ve got Twitter, you’ve got 24 seconds.

Pinterest can give you engagement for unlimited time, up to six months, but in my proven records I have pins that I have pinned personally, I’ve created personally three years ago, and I still see people pinning, re-pinning them constantly.

Why? They have been created properly for Pinterest, specifically for Pinterest. They have value in them. If you create valuable advice for your readers, for your market, I can almost guarantee you, there’s nothing guaranteed in this world but I can promise you, if you have that valuable advice for your readers, your people will keep coming back to you for more advice.

Marina Barayeva:

Thank you, Anna. So many great tips over there. Now we want to know more about you. How can we connect with you, find your blog, just know more about what you’re working on?

Anna Zubarev:

That’s easy. My blog is annazubarev.com and I mostly blog about Pinterest strategies, social media strategies.

My personal account on Instagram is also @annazubarev and on that particular account, I mostly talk about my personal life, my travels. My husband and I retired from the corporate world and we became self-employed since 2012.

We traveled the world. Just take 2016, we’ve traveled 10 times around the world. Last year we’ve traveled about eight times. My husband was able to take me on the most amazing trip of my lifetime. We went for my birthday to Paris. We went to Hawaii last year. We went to the Dominican Republic. Just to name a few, we went to Vegas, Orlando.

Guys, this is the life of a self-employed entrepreneur, social media fanatic and mom of two amazing kids. Anything is possible if you make it a priority to set yourself goals and pursue to proceed them.

Marina Barayeva:

Thank you, Anna, for this big inspiration.

Anna Zubarev:

My pleasure, Marina. I hope for those of you that are going to be listening to the podcast, I can tell you, just to conclude as we are concluding this podcast, anything is possible as long as you believe in yourself.

Believe in this possibility. Know that if my husband and I, former slaves to the corporate world in America, were able to retire ourselves and life fulltime off the income we make on affiliate marketing sales. I’m telling you guys, anything is possible.

Again, annazubarev.com is the best place to find me and I’m so glad to have given you this valuable advice that worked for me, for my Pinterest, and hopefully this will work for you as well as long as you commit to it.

Marina Barayeva

Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.