006: Cynthia Sanchez – Pinterest for Photographers, Everything You Wanted to Know

006: Cynthia Sanchez – Pinterest for Photographers, Everything You Wanted to Know

Andrew Hellmich: Hi Cynthia, welcome to the podcast.

Cynthia Sanchez: Hi Andrew, thank you so much.

Andrew Hellmich: It's a pleasure. I'm so glad we finally got together. It's been a little bit of an organizational strategy to sort of get us here together over Easter and I'm super happy to have you on here and super excited, because you really are the mover and shaker when it comes to Pinterest.

Cynthia Sanchez: Oh, thank you so much. It's my pleasure.

Andrew Hellmich: So what I was hoping to do for my listeners today was to, I guess, get right down into the nitty gritty of starting a ,starting with Pinterest, and using it to get clients or viewers back to our websites and our blogs, hopefully from our local area, and hopefully we're going to see extra bookings from that, from that action. So do you think you can help us with that?

Cynthia Sanchez: I think I can. And this is actually really exciting for me, because on my podcast, I have not yet talked to anybody that's coming from, you know, with Pinterest or through Pinterest, from a photography standpoint, from a photography business. So this is really exciting for me, too.

Andrew Hellmich: Excellent. I know this is going to be really, I think, easy and hard at the same time as me, because I'm a total Pinterest novice. I've had a little bit of a dabble. I certainly understand that it can be powerful. I know that the female photographers in my industry definitely have an advantage over the guys that it not so into Pinterest. I know that the guys are using it, but the girls, I guess, seem to have taken to a lot, a lot easier.

Cynthia Sanchez: Which to me, is kind of surprising, just because, you know, it's so visual, it's easy to use. So for those gentlemen out there that haven't quite jumped in, I'll take you through the basics of getting started. Nothing to fear here. It's okay. We'll walk you through it today.

Andrew Hellmich: Beautiful. So I think to start off first, Cynthia, I know that there's the option of having a personal account and a business account. Do I have to have a personal account to have a business account, like with Facebook?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, you do not. You can have either, or you can have both. And my recommendation is if you are going to use Pinterest as a business that doesn't necessarily have a personality attached to it, which I don't think would be the case for photographers, because photographers and having a photography session is so personal and intimate sometimes that you do want to show your personality. So for your audience, for your business, you know, majority type of, I guess that would be listening to this podcast, would be to have a business account, but add a personal touch to it. Now, if you want to have another Pinterest account that's just for your personal interest, that has nothing to do with photography or for bridals or for portrait sessions or those types of things, then you can have both types of accounts, and they would not be tied together. You would need to use a separate email address for each of those accounts, though.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And now I know listening to you and following your blog, that the new addition to Pinterest is the analytics side. Now that only goes with the business side, doesn't it or a business account?

Cynthia Sanchez: It can actually go with a personal, personal account, as long as it has a verified URL. So let's say you had a personal blog, and it wasn't really a business based, you know, blog or website, you can attach a URL to a personnel account at this time.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: And to get a verified account, it does require you to install a little bit of code to your server, you know, kind of on the back end of things, which does require a little bit of technical expertise, depending on what platform or how you know, you have your blog or your website. So there's a lot of variables depending on what you use to host your blog, your website. So it's kind of hard to say specifically how to do that for each kind and but Pinterest does have a little bit of a walkthrough, and there's several tutorials that you can find online.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so, so I've chosen to go with a business account. Then let's say that is, should I be looking at Pinterest if I'm purely doing this for business? And so let's say that, you know, I really, I'm really, I'm so busy with weddings and I've got Facebook, and that's where most of my clients are, and I'm just want to dabble in Pinterest. Do I have to dedicate a lot of time to Pinterest to get started? And is the main aim of it going to be to bring people back to my blog?

Cynthia Sanchez: The main aim of it is to bring people back to your blog, back to your website, so that way they can really take in all of your content, contact you directly, that type of thing. One thing that Pinterest does lack is a direct type of communication. There you can leave comments underneath individual pins, and pins are images taken from a website or a blog, or images that have been uploaded and those that have been taken online link back to wherever it is you got them from online. Underneath each one of those pins, you can leave a comment, and people can comment back to you. So there's a little bit of communication, but really you want to use those pins to bring traffic back to your blog, where they can communicate with you directly, find out more about your products and services. If you really are successful on Pinterest, I mean on Facebook, I would highly recommend that you cross promote your account on Pinterest onto your Facebook account so your followers there the account that you already have, more established since Pinterest is relatively new, most businesses find that they already have a good following if they've been pretty active on Facebook for a while. So you can actually link a pin to your Facebook account or just say, "Hey, check out our Pinterest account." And there's little widgets and things that you can put on if you, especially if you have a WordPress blog or website where you can show your latest pins and then tell them how to find you on Pinterest. So you still bring back your, you know, the traffic to your blog or website, but then also let them know that you're on Pinterest. And what type of content you're going to be offering on Pinterest, the type of content that you offer on Facebook as opposed to Pinterest could be similar, but you could offer a little bit more, I guess, help or support. You know, especially with the wedding type of topic or content, you could offer links to, you know, how to take care of your shoes or how to, you know, make sure your hair stays well. You know, looking throughout the day for your wedding. You know, more tips or advice that would still go along with the wedding type of thing, but not necessarily directly related to the photography part. So you could kind of become a resource for wedding, for brides getting ready for their wedding on Pinterest, but just let people know on Facebook that you're over there.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so, okay, so let's say I post, so you're saying, If I have a blog article and say, how to keep my hairstyle looking fantastic, how to keep your hairstyle looking fantastic for your wedding day. So I should then pin an image from that blog post to Pinterest. So would I also use that same image on Facebook?

Cynthia Sanchez: You could, you could. The thing with Facebook is that, you know, especially with the timeline, most time I find that, you know, once it's gone off the timeline, you kind of don't tend to go back to it too often. Maybe if you're checking out a new account or somebody new to follow, you're going to go back and look through their old photographs you know, or images that they have on their Facebook account. But on Pinterest kind of has a similar thing, where it has a feed where people that follow you see you know your most recent pins, whether they be from your site, something else you found on Pinterest, or something that you found somewhere else online, but people go and check out boards a lot of times. I find this more often, where they go back and check out your individual boards, which are kind of separate categories within your Pinterest account, and they scroll back and they see what you had pinned before, because if they pin, if you pin something that interested them now, chances have it that you also have something pinned before that would also interest them as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, I think I've got that. So Facebook, I'll just get my Facebook account going the way that it already was. Let people know on Facebook that I've got a Pinterest account and what I'm doing in Pinterest and try and get them over there, looking there. And also use Facebook to still bring people back to my blog, just like Pinterest will. Is that right?

Cynthia Sanchez: Yes, yes, definitely. Just, you know, kind of cross-promote, if you run a promotion on Facebook, which, you know, there's so many third party apps where you can run contests and promotions and types of things, well, you can also create an image promoting that on Pinterest.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, okay, that's cool. So let me, let's go back a little step now. So I've got my account. I'm going with this business account, so I'm guessing the only way that I can bring people back to my blog or my website is through links. So where should I be adding my links when I first set up my account?

Cynthia Sanchez: Okay, there's a few different areas of where you're going to have an actual link back to your account. The first one is going to be where we talked about a little bit where you have that verified URL under, next to your profile image on Pinterest, there's going to be, you're going to have an account description, and underneath that, there's going to be a couple of links, actually, one that will go back to your URL, to your blog, to your website, another one, if you choose to link it to a personal Facebook account. Unfortunately, right now you can't link it to a business page directly. If you do link it to your personal Facebook account, I would recommend kind of guiding the people that show up on your personal page over to your business page, especially in the about me section. And you want to make sure you set your privacy settings really strictly, really tight if you don't want people knowing about your personal side of Facebook, and if not, then just don't link it, if you're not comfortable with that at all. Twitter, you can just link it to your business Twitter account. So there's another link. So all of those three links are in your, I guess account description.

Andrew Hellmich: That's at the very top of the page, isn't it?

Cynthia Sanchez: That's at the very top of the page, yes. Each pin that you have links back to your blog or website that you've pinned from your blog or website, also you can upload images. So let's say you just did a beautiful portrait session with somebody, and you haven't written a blog post about it, but these images are just so fabulous that you want to share them right away. You could upload them directly onto Pinterest, and then in the descriptions you know, say, you know, "Incredible photo session at this specific location. For more information about my photography", you know, or something like that, you can also link that image to your blog or website. So there's another place to link it there, even though it didn't come directly from your website, you just uploaded it, and you do that by clicking the 'add button'.

Andrew Hellmich: So hang on. So where can I upload that? Just directly from the hard drive of my computer? Or it has to be online already?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, you can upload it directly from the hard drive of your computer. If you have the mobile app. You can even do it from your camera phone if you happen to catch something while you're out and about.

Andrew Hellmich: Didn't know that. Okay, I thought, I thought the image already had to be online to use it on Pinterest. So that's not the case.

Cynthia Sanchez: No, that is not the case. Once you upload it, though, you have to kind of go through the whole process of uploading it and getting it to the board that you wanted to get it to. Then you have to open up that pin and click the Edit button. When you click the Edit button, then you can assign a link to it, so when you first upload it, it doesn't go anywhere. It just kind of opens. If somebody were to click through that image and enlarge it and then click it to try to go to a website, it would just kind of open up the image again in a bigger blank page. But if you edit it, you can go and add it a link to it, so it'll take them back to your blogger website.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so the image itself becomes a link, or you can add a hyperlink in the description.

Cynthia Sanchez: Both. You jumped ahead. You jumped ahead to my next tip.

Andrew Hellmich: Sorry.

Cynthia Sanchez: Okay, so you've linked, you've linked that image back to your website, and you're going to add a description, too. And when it comes to descriptions, really think about those keywords. So let's say we had a beautiful portrait session of a bride. You're going to want to put 'portrait bride', maybe something about the location, maybe something about wedding. You know, you want to get a nice keyword, rich description without going overboard. You know, you can obviously tell when people are just jamming keywords into phrases, you know. So be natural about it. Try to think of the terms that people would use to search. People use Pinterest, kind of as a search engine. And I don't want to get too far off on this topic, I want to make sure I answer your question, but in your description, make sure that you, you know, use those natural search terms. Don't just put portrait session on date of, you know, the bride's name, because people won't search for the bride's name. People won't search for the date they're going to want to search, they'll search for 'portrait ideas for my wedding'. You know, things that people would search for. What would you search for if you're looking for something? Make sure to use that phrase in the description, but at the end, or somewhere in there, 'Portrait session done by, you know, my photography website.com, in, you know, the beautiful church courtyard of, you know, St Mary's Church or something', you know, just so make it sound natural, you can include, if you put whatever.com, whatever.org whatever dot you know, whatever your, the end of your URL is, that becomes a clickable link. So you kind of have a few places to put your links within Pinterest.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so with those links in the description, do I need to use HTML? Or I can just do www dot impactimages.com.au,

Cynthia Sanchez: You can put, you not even the 'www', just that last part, impact images, I forgot

Andrew Hellmich: .com.au and that's it.

Cynthia Sanchez: There you go. You just need to put that and within that description, people can just click that and be taken to your main page of your website. Now, as far as while we're talking about links, do not try to use link shorteners. I know people really want to track their traffic, you know, with link shorteners, but sometimes that gets kicked out of spam on Pinterest. So I would recommend just linking to the whole page, to the whole account your, you know, website or blog, don't try to use a link shortener, because for some, you know, I guess in the past, there's been issues with spam, you know, using those.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so does Pinterest tell you that it's spam, or they just don't show it on the board, or you get, you get in trouble?

Cynthia Sanchez: Sometimes, though, oh, well, they'll get kicked out. Or what will happen is, when you click on it and try to go through it, it'll pop up a message, "This appears to be a suspicious link. Do you want to proceed?"

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: So that could kind of turn people off. "Oh, I don't want, I don't want a virus. I don't want to go someplace bad. No, I'm not going to go there." And if they continue to see that coming from your account, that could lead to people maybe unfollowing you.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so let me get this right, so that the best practice is to have obviously interesting images, but make sure that I have a good description with a link back to my blog or my website.

Cynthia Sanchez: Now, I wouldn't, I don't recommend putting a link in every single description, just because, if you pin it, if you're pinning a lot, that could be seen as a little overboard on self-promotion. And you know, you kind of did ask me about time, and I don't think I really answered your question very well. And as far as time goes, to get the most traction out of Pinterest, I've found I, you know, when I first started out, I would have these marathon pinning sessions where I would sit there, "Okay, I'm going to pin for an hour. I'm going to pin all this great stuff. I'm going to bring in content from outside of Pinterest, re-pin, you know, and share stuff within Pinterest following new accounts and all that kind of stuff." And my account was kind of slowly growing, kind of growing at the same pace I was following. It was neck and neck. And then I kind of changed my approach. Well, I'm going to blog, I'm going to pin just a few times in the morning, a couple times in the afternoon, and things kind of started picking up, like, "Hey, this is working", where I kind of spread it throughout the day. And then I interviewed somebody, and she happened to have over a million followers. Okay, that's, that's quite a lot of followers. And you would think that it would be somebody that's a celebrity, or somebody that, you know is, you know, just even popular online. And it's not, she's not, she's just, she's got a blog, she's got a little business that she sells, you know, imprinted products and paper-type, stationery type, things. Great business. But she's not, you know, Martha Stewart, by any means, or Oprah. So I asked her, you know, it's like, "Okay, you got to tell us a trick. What's the trick?" She's like, "I am on Pinterest throughout the day, just a little bit here and there, little bit here and there." And I tried that approach, and it works. It definitely works. So as far as time goes, kind of 5-10 minutes in the morning, 5-10 minutes in the afternoon. If you know you've got a blog post coming out, pin it out in the morning or the afternoon. Just kind of spread it out. And if you kind of try track on Pinterest, when you you're watching your feed, you can open up your account to where you can see just the people that you follow, you can see their pins, and kind of keep an eye on the top left corner of your account. And this is something I haven't told anybody before.

Andrew Hellmich: Oh

Cynthia Sanchez: A secret tip here, keep an eye on the top left corner of your account, and you'll see how many pins are being pinned. You'll kind of see a changing number, six new pins, two new pins, three new pins. And you'll kind of kind of, once you're on it a while, they'll kind of kind of catch a trend of when your most popular times of day are for you and your followers, and, or the people that you follow. So most likely the people that you follow are going to be following you back, or kind of be, you know, you'll see what the most active times on Pinterest are. I guess it's kind of, kind of how I found to to follow that number. So let's say I'm on at 10 o'clock in the morning, and I noticed six new pins pop up within just a couple of minutes. It's like, "Okay, people are on right now. Time to pin a few things." I'll see that those get pinned, re-pined more often, or, let's say I'm on at two in the afternoon, and not very many people are on. I'll see two new pins within that same time period. It's like, "Oh, it's not so busy right now. I'm just going to pin a couple of things. I'll check it back again later."

Andrew Hellmich: Is that a live number that's just ticking over, is it?

Cynthia Sanchez: It is, it's just with the people that you follow. So if you only follow 10 people, chances are that you're not going to see a lot of activity, because you're expecting all 10 of those people to be on at the same time.

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Cynthia Sanchez: If you're following you know, a few 100 people, that's a little bit better sampling of the Pinterest pool, if you want to put it.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so what's the etiquette, Cynthia? If someone follows me, should I automatically follow them back? Is that the way it works?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that, especially for a business account. Just because they follow you doesn't necessarily mean that they would offer, I don't want to sound kind of harsh when I say this, that they would necessarily offer anything that would benefit you. Let's say you have, you know, a new bride. She's maybe you know, or a new person that, or person that's just about to get married. She just found out she's gonna get married. So she's pinning things off for a year, two years out, and, you know, she's just gonna pin stuff about weddings, maybe every now and then, and the rest of her the rest of her boards are dedicated to kittens. So your feed would get clogged with kittens, which doesn't necessarily, you know, coincide with what you're going to want to be re-pining, or things that you necessarily want to share with your audience. Along that same route, let's say somebody you know is really into planning their wedding. They're getting serious. It's the date is getting, you know, closer, and they're really getting to that planning time, then more of the content that they bring in might be stuff that they're going to that you would want to share with your audience. So let's say she's got a board dedicated to, you know, table settings and, you know, ideas and inspirations for colors or something like that, and that would be just one individual board where she could have multiple boards related to her wedding. You could choose to follow that board and maybe the location board and the dress board, but not follow her one and only kitten board. So just kind of be careful and selective on who you follow back, make sure that it would, you know, really contribute to your followers. And then also, you can also choose to follow just one board or the entire account, or, you know, however many boards you want to, you don't have to follow the entire thing, which is, I think, kind of another benefit over Facebook where, at face in Facebook, you have to hear everything that they're talking about, whether they're talking about something that really interests you or not. You know, if you're following a celebrity, you have to hear all about their latest movies, plus their personal life. If they choose to follow it on Facebook. On Pinterest, I could just choose to follow, you know, information about their latest movies.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect. Okay, I've got it that's really good that you can just follow, just follow just individual boards. I didn't know you could do that either. So this is great. This is great.

Cynthia Sanchez: Good, good, good.

Andrew Hellmich: Let me take you back again, a little bit back to the beginning, to the setup part. When I'm setting up my actual boards, is there, should I be looking at doing certain things? Should I be using keywords, or is it really it doesn't matter how I name the boards?

Cynthia Sanchez: Oh, it does matter. It does matter. Within Pinterest, you can search for individual accounts. So 'pinners' is what it's called. You can search for boards or you can search for pins. So in your account, I would name your account, you know if you're going to have the business account, Impact Images and then say studio and wedding for portrait and wedding photography on the side. So that way you have the name of your business and what your business is about, because Impact Images could mean a couple of different things. And that way you get a little bit more specific in the way your account is searched for. So people are searching for bridal or for wedding or for, you know, those types of things.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure

Cynthia Sanchez: That your account will pop up. Boards, you do want to consider keywords, but you only have about 26 characters, if I'm remembering all these numbers right, to fit. There's so many numbers within Pinterest, to fit within what you can see. Now, it doesn't mean that you can't search for it. So, if I had a board name that had, you know, 75 characters, it doesn't mean that it's not searchable. But when people come to my account and they're scanning my account, if I say "Extra super fun, nice portraits, portraits it's going to be at the end", and that would get cut off, from the just the glance at my board.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: So people wouldn't know what was super extra fun. So I would want to put 'portraits that are super extra fun', you know. So make sure you put that main keyword at the beginning. You do want to get a little bit creative and show some personality. You don't want to just say 'portraits', okay. I mean, you could. But, you know, just to add a little bit of your personality, especially you have a specific style, that would be a good place to put it. And also, each board has a description, and that's another place where you can use keywords as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so let me, let me just ask you, then say I'm based on the northern beaches of Sydney in Australia, and I'm a wedding photographer. So could I have something like 'Amazing brides from Northern Beaches Sydney?' Would that make that more searchable to or more appealing to girls in the Northern Beaches area looking for photos?

Cynthia Sanchez: That's quite a few characters to use. Can you repeat that name again to me? Sorry.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. I'm just trying to think, I guess, of an area that I might be based in. So it could be Texas. So could I be, could I have something like or Fort Worth Texas. So, bridal, 'Amazing bridal gowns, Fort Worth, Texas'?

Cynthia Sanchez: You could, yeah, definitely put 'Amazing Bridal Gowns' first and then the location after. Or you could choose to put the location within the board description. One thing I did forget to mention in your account description, you will also have an opportunity to put your location as well, so that they haven't really used much of the location based search functions. But I think that is something that's coming up later with business accounts. I would predict that to be, you know, the case, you know, with Google kind of moving into local, a little bit more local searches and that type of thing. I think Pinterest may follow suit. If not, why would they want to know exactly where you're at, you know, or give you the option for location. So I would, you know, at least, you know, put something about the area that you're targeting within that account description, and then you can definitely use it again within your board descriptions, and then again in your pin descriptions. If you're on location shooting somewhere, you can put, you know where you took that picture.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, cool. So if I'm using those locations, am I more likely to attract clients or people looking to pin things in my area?

Cynthia Sanchez: It depends on how they use the search function. But one thing that I've noticed more and more is that Pinterest accounts are coming up in Google searches, Google and Pinterest have this great relationship, and I think it's because even though Pinterest is an image based search type service or an image, you think of Pinterest, you think of images, there's a lot of text that goes along with it, and it's people adding that text. It's people adding the descriptions, it's people adding the URLs, you know as links. It's all about people, and it's people that do Google searches. So let me give you an example of what I mean. So something that's kind of popular on Pinterest is coffee humor. You know, jokes about coffee. You know, 'My day doesn't begin until I get my 10th cup of coffee', you know, and a little funny graphic behind it. And I know this doesn't have to do with photography, but it's just kind of about how Google is working with Pinterest. So I did a Google search for coffee humor one day, and the very first result that came up was a small, little coffee shop. I think they have maybe a couple of locations based in a small town in Ohio, which isn't highly populated. They don't have a huge website. They're not a huge corporation, but their Pinterest board about coffee humor ranked number one. They do have an online store. They do have a Pinterest account. It's not a huge following, but the board that ranked number one had coffee humor in the name of the board as the description and coffee humor scattered throughout the pins. Coffee, of course, was named in every single pin. So when you're having brides do searches within Google for local photographers, that is where they may get your first introduction into you, they may actually find your Pinterest board first.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. And then if there's links back to my..

Cynthia Sanchez: That makes sense?

Andrew Hellmich: It does, yes. So then, if there's links back to my website or my blog, then that's a prospective client.

Cynthia Sanchez: There you go.

Andrew Hellmich: Got it. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the actual images that I'm finding to pin on the boards. On my boards, is it okay to follow and re-pin my competitors images, other photographers?

Cynthia Sanchez: I've kind of run into the situation with a salon that I help with on Pinterest and I haven't followed any other or they haven't followed any other salons back for hairstyle inspirations, or those types of things, unless they followed us first. It's like, "It's okay if you follow me, and then I'll follow you back if you follow me", you could always, because, you know, I kind of have that hesitancy, you know, I don't want to, you know, say, well, "You're using my, you know, my ideas, my inspiration for your business." But when it comes down to it, on Pinterest business terms of service, if you are participating in Pinterest as a business with a business account, you are saying that it's okay for other people on Pinterest, including other businesses, to re-pin your content. So let's say, you know Joe the photographer has, you know, some great images that you would like to share on your account. He's pinned them himself to Pinterest on his account. You ,as you know, another business account can re-pin those images according to Pinterest Terms of Service. Now, to take an extra step further, you could always email Joe the photographer, "Hey, I like your stuff. Would you mind I show it on, you know, if I re-pin it to my boards", that gives you, you know, an option to, you know, at least reach out to them say, "You know, do you mind? Can I", you know, and kind of just take it a little bit, you know, a step further.

Andrew Hellmich: Right. So some people, so other photographers may be offended if you re-pin their work.

Cynthia Sanchez: You know, I'm not, you know, since I'm not really into the photography world, I'm not sure how you know, I mean, and I'm not sure how possessive, you know, they would want to be, with that, of course, you would want to give them credit. You would want to say, "Hey, this is, you know, something I'd like to share from Joe's photography." You know, that type of..

Andrew Hellmich: I can't imagine many photographers doing wanting to do that.

Cynthia Sanchez: Okay, okay, I'm sorry.

Andrew Hellmich: Unless the other photographer was from, you know, the other side of the world or a different state, or something like that, then it's not an issue.

Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, yeah, you know. So just, I know some people tend to get really possessive with their work, especially creative work. Copyright was something that's still something really big of, you know, of a concern and keeping some businesses off of Pinterest, but that you know, as far as Terms of Service, what you agree to when you start, you know, that's kind of how it all works. But if you know the photographer as you know and the way it works, sure, pin away that, you know.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so I want to come back to copyright in just a minute, but so just let me stay with this. If I re-pin another photographer's work, I'm guessing and assuming that I can't change the links then so that if someone clicks on that, it comes back to my website.

Cynthia Sanchez: Actually, you can.

Andrew Hellmich: Ohh..

Cynthia Sanchez: Like, I know, I know, you can change the links, even if it's a re-pin, okay. This may be something that changes down the road, but as of right now, I can pin that to my board, and I go back to that same edit button. Every pin that you put onto your board, whether it's a re-pin, something you upload, something you get from your own website, you can click that Edit button and change the link. And that's why it's really important when you're re-pinning content, especially for your business, that you go ahead and click through it. Go ahead and just give it a quick click. Yep, it looks like the, you know, actual website is loading. It's not taking me off to some, you know, spam, something or other. I once followed an account and looked like they were pretty active on Pinterest. Sure, I'll follow you back. Just, you know, really didn't pay attention. I didn't do my due diligence, and, you know, kind of investigate before I followed them a little bit. I just re-pinned, you know, followed them. And so I was seeing a lot of these pins, great looking pins. And then when I found something that I was really interested in, I clicked through it, and it took me to a weight loss site. Had nothing to do with the, you know, butterfly image I was looking at, or something like that. And then I went and looked at the person's board, and I really noticed, "Oh, the name isn't spelled quite right." They have pinned 10,000 pins to one single board. And, "Oh, let me click through a couple of these. Yeah, all of these pins go back to some weight loss site." So it was obviously a spam account. So just, you know, kind of, before you share it with your audience who is coming to you as a resource, click through it. Make sure that it's ,you know, that it's legitimate, that it goes to the original source. A lot of times, and I've seen this more and more lately where it's kind of they take the images, put it onto a site with a bunch of AdSense ads, and doesn't ever link back to the original site, so that I wouldn't necessarily re-pin that, there's, there's way if you'd like to do image searches on Google, there's even if you use Google Chrome, there's a plugin to do just an image search within Pinterest, and I can send you the link to that and just install it in Google Chrome. And then, while you're in Pinterest, you can just click search, and it shows that. I think it still works with a new look. I'll have to double check that, I use that a lot with the old look. And if not, just open up the pin and open up another browser window in Google, no matter what browser you use, drag click on the image, drag that over into the Google search within images. You know, you kind of you can switch. You can switch around in Google to search the web or search images or maps or that type of thing. Have Google switched over to images. Drag that image into the search box, and it'll show you where that image has appeared online. More and more I am finding links back to Pinterest, but if you find one that's a little bit different, "Oh look, yeah, this is a blog post or an image about a wedding gown. All these go back to Pinterest. This one goes to a blog about weddings. This is probably where the image came from."

Andrew Hellmich: Right

Cynthia Sanchez: "So you can click through, open it up. Yep, that's where it is. That's the one I want to pin, not this other one that took me off to, you know, a site that doesn't really tell me anything about the image."

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so let's say, can I give you an example here.

Cynthia Sanchez: Sure.

Andrew Hellmich: So, let's say I take an amazing image at a portrait sitting next week, and I put that onto one of my boards. It has a link back to my website. And then someone else, another photographer overseas, loves the image too. They re-pin it onto their board, and they change the URL to their website. And then someone, other people start pinning from that person's board. Pardon me. Sorry.

Cynthia Sanchez: No problem.

Andrew Hellmich: Then, does that, does that link that they've reassigned to my images? Does that stay with that image?

Cynthia Sanchez: It stays with that image, yes. So that's where we get into watermarking. That's where we get into, you know, claiming your image, and there's a little bit of controversy over this. Well, if you're watermarking, and that watermark shows up all over Pinterest, well then you're self-promoting. No, I'm actually trying to protect my work for that, you know, for that reason, just as you mentioned before. I found some incredible content on Pinterest that I absolutely loved, and I wanted to learn, you know, more about it. I wanted more details about it, but there was no watermark or no link, or no URL, or nothing within the image itself. And it got put onto one of those Adsense, you know, 'let's make money sites'. And I did a search within Google Images, and I could not find that original link without digging back like 10 pages, you know, and I finally found it. And, you know, if I have time, I'll do that, but sometimes I won't, and that's just because I'm taking the extra time to do that. Because I know how much work it takes to create these images, how much work it takes to create content, that I want to make sure that the original source is being credited. Most people on Pinterest aren't going to go through all of that. So for me, I, you know, if you can put a small URL in there, a small watermark with your, at least your business name, something that's searchable, a URL, you know, Impact Images Photography, you know, however, you know, you primarily come up on Google, you know, just a little something there. Now, of course, it can be cropped-out, but that would mean people would have to download your image, crop out your watermark, and then upload it. So they're going to have to go through extra work too. Of course, they're going to want to get the stuff that's easy. If they're going to, you know, want to do what you just said.

Andrew Hellmich: Sure.

Cynthia Sanchez: So, you know, that's, you know, that's what I recommend putting it, you know, at least somewhere in there.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, that's perfect. That makes great sense, because it really is an issue. There's actually quite a few Australian photographers that I know of that have had their work basically stolen and put onto other people's websites and been shown as that person's work, and they're booking work that way. So a watermark, it sounds like the best solution.

Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah. You know, I mean. And it's not a perfect solution, you know, but it's, it's kind of the best we have right now. And I'm not sure why Pinterest allows you to change, I mean, I guess it's good, you know, if you did find the image on a site that you know, people did download it that you know, and then claimed it was their own, then, you know, I guess it is good that you can change the link, but I've seen it, I guess, abused quite a few, many times lately.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, got it. All right. So, if that's not the best way to find images, say, from other photographers, where is the best place to go looking for great images for my Pinterest account that's going to appeal to other families and couples looking to have great portrait shoots or wedding photos.

Cynthia Sanchez: Well, I mean, I think if you're using it to promote your business, if you're going to really showcase your work, then yeah, you should just put your images. Now, if you're going to do locations, now your specialty isn't landscapes or, you know, those types of images. You do more portraits and wedding type things. Well, then you could go to, let's say it's a specific type of park or venue or location, go to that places website, or search for images about that place and then pin those let's say, you know, there's a beautiful courtyard or beautiful garden. You know that you find an image of on a gardening site. It may not be necessarily close to your location, but you could re-pin that image and in the comments, say "A garden location like this would make a beautiful backdrop for a spring wedding", or something like that. So it's not necessarily the photography that you're showing off. It would be the location in that sense, is that kind of what you're asking about?

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah, yeah, that's good. So let's say I found that, say I found that gardening photo, and I love it, and it's going to appeal to my couples, and can I add a link then to bring them back to my website with that photo? Or that's not right either?

Cynthia Sanchez: I kind of wouldn't do that. Just let your account speak for itself in that sense, because then you're kind of taking that, you already put your opinion that this would make a beautiful backdrop for, you know, a wedding or a portrait, a family portrait session, that already gives your opinion as a photographer, what that would do, including a link, could seem a little pushy.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so I'm trying to appeal to people. I'm trying to show people my personality and my style through my Pinterest account. Is that what I'm trying to do? That I'm trying to do that more than just trying to feed everyone back to my website all the time.

Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, and that's where you kind of have to keep a balance. You have to keep a balance of what would be, you know, sensed as kind of marketing your business, and you know, you're wanting to make, you know, get your bookings, you know, filled in, but at the same time showing how you are as a person, because you want to feel comfortable with the person that you're going to trust to this special occasion, right? So if they know that you also love, let's go back to kittens. You know that may appeal to certain people, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with your photography. So it really depends on how you want to approach your account. How you approach your business, if you're very personal and open and sharing on your business page about personal things that you're interested in, yeah, so you do, your business is primarily focused on portraits and weddings, but you also like to go, to see, you know, race car events. And you take a couple of great images of race car events, and then you like to follow, you know, what's, what's going on there. Then you can also have a board dedicated to that. This is what I do in my off-time, so they get to know about you a little bit more as a person. You could do it that way. But then also, you might bring in the groom side who's also interested in race cars. "Hey, this guy likes race cars. He'll like, you know, my, you know, my future bride might like this too. Let me show her this.", you know. I mean, it could go work in lots of ways too, because, you know, showing that whole, rounded person, you know, because everybody has different interests. So it just like, you know, kind of, I said at the beginning, it's just depends on how you want to present yourself as a business. Some people like to keep it, you know, down to business, nothing personal, you know, that kind of thing. But it just depends on how you really want to approach it.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so if I did want to keep it just down to business and purely business is, would it seem weird to have a Pinterest account and just be posting images that I took?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, no.

Andrew Hellmich: You don't stand overly committed to that answer.

Cynthia Sanchez: Just taking pictures, I mean, I guess even in the business terms of service, Pinterest is not to be used as purely self-promotional. It's not to be used as another way to republish your website. It's supposed to be an engaging, interactive, social community. So you're supposed to, you know, also share. I mean, it's like, you know, if I just came and gave you all of my stuff, but I never wanted to show any, and expected you to show my stuff to everybody you know, but never wanted to share any of your stuff to the people I know. That would kind of seem like a really one-sided relationship. Yeah. So I would definitely really try not to do that, unless you're really, really famous. You know, Martha Stewart can get away with that, but even then, she doesn't have a huge following. That lady that I mentioned before, her following is bigger than celebrities following, so that doesn't even work for the celebrities. It's more about being a service and a resource to your followers.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, got it. So you don't want, it's not just a brochure for your work, that's what you're saying.

Cynthia Sanchez: No, definitely not.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So let's say I have a couple come in, that they're interested in booking my services for a wedding. And what I, would it be a good idea to let them know that I'm on Pinterest, and would it, would it be weird to follow that perspective bride on Pinterest?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, no. If they come in, especially they come in and talk to you, you could say, "Hey, are you on Pinterest?" And they you know, of course, because she's just this ultra super smart, savvy woman, she's going to say yes, and he's going to say, "Well, yes, I'm on Pinterest too. We both are." And you're going to say, "Great, so am I? And I have a whole board dedicated to locations here in our area that you could check out and, you know, click through them and see more about those locations", because you pin that from that hotel website or that park or that church or whatever the location is. "Check out that board and let me know what you think. And maybe that'll give you some ideas of what we could use as locations for your engagement, you know, photos for, you know the different photo sessions if you want to have." You know, I'm not sure how many bridal sessions you can have as a photographer, but you know you could, you could have different locations. Or you could say, "I also have, you know tips about choosing clothing, about protecting your shoes, about protecting your makeup, on how to", you know, all those types of wedding resources that you don't necessarily have to write. You can use your Pinterest account as just an overall 'let's get ready for your wedding resource.' And you're the guy that has that. Now, if they go to the photographer up the road and they say, "Yeah, sure, here, let's look at my book. And here's a list of locations." I think the person with a Pinterest account that has something that they can refer back to at their leisure whenever they want get more in depth information, would have a better shot of booking that couple than the other one that just has a list.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, that sounds a lot more of a positive way to use Pinterest. That sounds great. So I can create a resource by, say, going to, you know, big American or Australian bridal blogs that have lots of information. Pin one of their images that has a great article that might be appealing to my couples, and use that on my Pinterest boards.

Cynthia Sanchez: I think you've got it.

Andrew Hellmich: All right! So now we're getting away from the dirty, secrety sort of Black Hat sort of stuff, and into the nice stuff.

Cynthia Sanchez: There you go. There you go. Ultimately, that's what Pinterest is about. It's about being a resource for me anyway. That's the way I approach it. I like to be a service, you know, to the people that follow me. I want to make sure that I'm pinning stuff, not only that, you know, is reflective of me and my taste, because my account is more of a, it's kind of a hybrid personal account, because that's the way it started. And so does have quite a bit of personal information, but it also has stuff about the business side. Had, you know, business reports about Pinterest, business approaches to Pinterest, the articles that I write about using Pinterest as a business, those types of things. But then I also do stuff about blogging. I do stuff about podcasting, you know, just kind of that rounds out the whole picture. But each one of the things that I pin, you know, I want, especially depending on the board that I pin it to, I wouldn't put in a recipe to my blogging board, because my blogging board is about blogging. It's not about this recipe that I found. But if you want to follow my recipes, these are the types of things that I like. These are the types of things that I'd like to prepare. So if you're interested in that part of me, follow that but if you're not, then don't follow that board.

Andrew Hellmich: Cool. Yeah, that's good. And can I, Cynthia, can I pin multiple images from one website without appearing lazy?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, no, definitely not. You know, if you have this, you know, fabulous bridal blog that you have found that has tons of great information, you can pin multiple images from that site. And if she, if she or he has a Pinterest account, I would reach, you know, pin from the Pinterest account. If you can find those blog posts easy, because then they'll see that you're re-pining their stuff, and maybe they'll follow you back. They'll share your content to their audience. That's kind of a give and take there. I found within pinning on Pinterest that if I pin a multiple variety of sources, kind of how I mentioned before, pin, you know, re-pin, reshare content already on Pinterest, bring stuff from new places, follow new accounts that kind of seems to grow my following Pinterest seems to to put my content out to the public more. I guess that way. You know, when I, when I do all the multiple types of things, when I use Pinterest to its fullest, instead of just always re-pining from the people I follow.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so when you, when you go to new people, and you re-pin things, is that the same? Would that be the equivalent of a like or liking someone's comment on Facebook? Is it the same sort of thing?

Cynthia Sanchez: No, because you can actually just like pins too. You don't have to. Let's say I come across a pin that's about, you know, something that I really don't have a board that it's set up to categorize in. So let's say I don't have a board about dogs. We'll switch to dogs now. I'll pick on dogs. But there's this cute, adorable picture of this puppy, and it just, you know, pulls at my heartstrings. "Oh, I like it, but I really don't have the board to pin it to", so I could just like it. And then I have a whole separate section for my likes.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: When people come to my account, they can see all the stuff I have pinned into my individual categories, and they can also click on how, on the likes and kind of in the top menu bar there, and see what I've liked. I didn't, I liked it, yeah, that's pretty cool, but I didn't have necessarily a category or a board dedicated to it or about it. As far as reusing the images isn't something that we haven't talked about. So let's say you have a blog post that you wrote about maintaining, you know, your hairstyle throughout your photography session, because you know it could take a couple hours, right?

Andrew Hellmich: Sure

Cynthia Sanchez: So you know, when you have weather and all that kind of stuff. So you wrote a blog post about it, and the images from that session just came, you know, that you want to use for that blog post just came out wonderfully. So not only does it have that tip on, you know, hair and beauty, you know, as far as weddings are related, you got these great images of this gorgeous bride and this gorgeous dress. And then the location was also fabulous. So there's probably three or four boards within there, kind of just that little scenario that you could pin that same image to. So it could apply to the location, it could apply to the dress, it could apply to hair and makeup tips, and it could apply, you know, to whatever else you know, you find within that. So if you're going to try to pin that would give you the that multiple, I guess, opportunities there to promote your work within your Pinterest account. Don't pin that same image four or five times in a row to each one of those boards. Pin one, now to, you know, the hair and makeup board. Pin one, you know, a couple hours later to the, you know, the dress board. Pin one, you know, even a few hours or the next day, to the location board. Because, if not, then you're kind of giving all of your content out there at one time. If people are following thousands of Pinterest accounts, it'll go in that one big bulk and they'll lose it, and they'll know, you know, kind of get lost in the feed and they won't see it. If you kind of sprinkle your content around throughout the day or over a few days, you have more of a chance of getting seen more often.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, so that's where it's a bit like Twitter, where that's just flowing constantly. If you miss the boat, then that's it. It's gone.

Cynthia Sanchez: Exactly, exactly. It used to be, oh gosh, last year I could kind of scroll back, keep on scrolling back, and keep on going back, you know, as far as I wanted to, "Oh yeah, I saw that, you know, my friend pinned that, you know, yesterday morning. I'm back to where I last left off on Pinterest." You can't do that anymore. I can't tell you exactly how far it goes back. I think it's more of a number than a timeframe. So if you've got a really active account where you know you're following a lot of people, that can limit what you see.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: Yeah, so try to kind of scatter it. And then also, if you're on a mobile device looking at Pinterest, if somebody is following you on, you know, if they're out and about and they're using their iPad or their iPhone or Android or whatever it is they're using to follow you on Pinterest, if you pin the same thing a few times in a row, all they see is your images, and that is annoying, you know, they did, I mean, yeah, you may have beautiful photography, but they don't want to see that same picture five times in a row, you know, because that takes up the whole screen. Because everything's so much condensed on, a much more condensed on a mobile platform. So you want to space it out. You know, don't be rude, don't be pushy, just, you know, space it out.

Andrew Hellmich: That makes total sense. I've covered so, you've covered so much. I'm totally I'm looking at it in a totally different new light now, which is great. I think I'm going to know where to go from now on, as far as approaching the pinning and what I should be doing. How to do it for my business. I did have one last question before I hand over to you, Cynthia, and that's regarding Instagram photos. Can I put my Instagram images to Pinterest?

Cynthia Sanchez: Okay, this one, this one you, Instagram went through their recent change a couple of months ago. You couldn't, but before that, you could. So what I would do now, what I found most recently, and it's been a little while since I've checked, you can open up your Instagram account in Internet Explorer, was the last time I checked where you could actually use the pin-it button. There's a tool on Pinterest goodies, or if you look search for 'Pin It button' within the business side of Pinterest, there's a couple of ways you can get it, but it's a tool that you just drag up to your bookmarks bar. So that way, you just click that Pin It button or that click it pin it phrase up in your bookmarks bar, and it'll pin from any available pinnable image from the website that you happen to be on. So let's say you go to that blog that we talked about earlier, that wonderful bridal blog, and it has, you know, images that you want to pin but and they say they're on Pinterest and you want to pin it, but they don't have the actual Pin It button tool or the share tool. You can use that Pin It button in your bookmark bar, to pin but..

Andrew Hellmich: And that will work with, that'll work with Instagram photos too, from your account?

Cynthia Sanchez: It works. It works with Instagram photos. It did on Internet Explorer when I checked it about a week ago.

Cynthia Sanchez: Okay

Cynthia Sanchez: So things are always changing now that Pinterest is roll-out the new look, some things that were ‘pinnable’ before, depending on the size, I've found the smallest image that I could pin was 231 pixels wide. This is just kind of exploring around on Pinterest to see the smallest because it used to be that you could pin something that was only 80 pixels wide. Now that has changed. If an image is smaller, so far the smallest image I could find is 200, I'm going to try uploading something that's on, are 231. I'll try uploading a few and see if it'll let me upload something that's only 200, but since they've changed over to the new look in the last few weeks, their image sizes have to be bigger, so that's something to keep in mind as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, now you just..

Cynthia Sanchez: Back to Instagram. I'm sorry.

Andrew Hellmich: No. no, no. Now, you just jogged my, I got another couple of quick questions as well. So did you answer the Instagram one that, so we can definitely pin our Instagram images where you could from last week if we have that Internet..

Cynthia Sanchez: From Internet Explorer, but it didn't. It never worked from Chrome. So it depends on which browser, and I'm not sure why or how that makes a difference. But you couldn't, but what you could always do is, you know, download that image, re-upload it to, I mean, it's the roundabout way. It's kind of a long way around. And, you know, re-put that link back, you know, that type of thing, kind of how we talked about uploading image earlier.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. Now, the question I have got that you've just reminded me of is, as photographers, we want to make our images easily pinned as well, don't we? Say, what's the best way to make our images appealing to Pinterest users that come to our site?

Cynthia Sanchez: To make them appealing?

Andrew Hellmich: Sorry. When I say, not so much appealing. How do we make it easy for them to pin our images?

Cynthia Sanchez: There you go. You want to install the Pin It button onto your site. And if you go to Pinterest, business.pinterest.com, you can find a site or a link to or a piece of code that you can embed in your site to have that Pin It button show up. There's also, if you use WordPress, there's something that's called the Pin It Button, and pin it is within quotes "Pin It for Pinterest", and I will send you the link to this plugin. And it can, you can have the pin it button show above and beneath your, let's say, your blog post. It'll show at the very beginning. It'll show at the very end, so people will remember that, "Yeah, I can pin this." I really like this plugin, because I can select which image I want to have represented. So let's say I have five images within that blog post. There's one that I really like that I think is the most pinnable, that I've optimized for Pinterest, that I've included my, you know, watermark in, that I've, you know, made a good size, that type of thing. I can assign that one image to the Pin It button underneath my blog post in the kind of the settings area. Then I can also write my own description, so I can say and use all the keywords that I want to have used in that pin when somebody else comes and pins it, that's where I can put my URL. That's where I can put, you know, everything that I ,and how I want it described. So when people click that Pin It button and it goes, you know, to their Pinterest board, they assign it to their board. All of the information I would like to have in it is in there. Now they can change it, but most people are kind of in a rush. They kind of really don't want to mess with it. Most people, I would say, would just kind of leave it as is, unless you put, you know, 25 hashtags, and you know, it didn't really make sense, and, you know, then, then people might edit it. But if you keep it short and simple, but to the point, you know, and communicates with keywords, I would say, nine times out of 10, and that's just a guess there, that people would kind of leave it as is. So that way your content shows up on Pinterest, on somebody else's account. How you would like to have it shown?

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, that's, I've got it. So the plugin, or add some code to your site. So that's pretty easy to do. So you're going to send me the link to the plugin. That's right?

Cynthia Sanchez: Yes, I will.

Andrew Hellmich: Fantastic. And just you've made me think of another thing how to. How do I measure the success of Pinterest in regard to bringing people back to my website?

Cynthia Sanchez: Well, Pinterest does have those analytics that you can measure, but if you haven't really gotten started yet on Pinterest, one thing that you can do, which is really easy to do, go into your browser, type in pinterest.com/source/whatever your URL is. So mine would be pinterest.com/source/ohsopinteresting.com and that will show me what the most recent pins directly from my website are, so I can see what people are finding popular and then also what you can do is use your Google Analytics. I mean, that's going to give you the most you know overall, broad view of the traffic coming back to your site and where it's going and that type of stuff, more information that you can dig into. On Pinterest analytics, though, they did kind of come out with a tip, and you can see this within Pinterest analytics itself. If you hover over the question marks, the blue question marks on Pinterest Analytics and click through, and click on them, a little box pops up, and within that box there's some tips. If you click on the tips, then that gives you a more broad description of the tips that Pinterest is offering you. So go do that. Read those tips, because they're the ones that know, right? And one of the tips mentioned sometimes Google Analytics will not count each and every visit from Pinterest if they happen too quickly. It didn't give a specific timeframe, but I could see if I went to your board and I saw, you know, this beautiful, you know location setting, and you had like five location settings. I clicked on one, was on your site for two seconds, clicked back to Pinterest and went to another site, or went back to another pin, came back to your site. That would happen within just a matter of a few seconds. Google Analytics may only count that as one visit where Pinterest said they'll tell you that it was two visits.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, all right. So which one do you, which one do you monitor mostly for your website, the Pinterest Analytics, or Google Analytics?

Cynthia Sanchez: I kind of combine them both. I combine them both. Pinterest analytics don't get very, very detailed, where Google Analytics can get a lot more detailed. There is another service that I like, is it okay if I mention it here?

Andrew Hellmich: Sure.

Cynthia Sanchez: It's called Pin League, P-I-N L-E-A-G-U-E, and they have an analytic service. They have a free account that you can have, you know, if you're just monitoring your account, and you can also monitor a competitor's account, so you can see what they're doing, how things are working for them, that type of thing. But one feature that I really do like about the Pin League account that I have is that I can see my most influential followers. So within Pinterest, you can see who's following you, right? And unless you really click on it, and, you know, kind of check out each account and that type of thing. And you know, it's just one more thing to monitor, you know, it's not something that I find that I do a lot. But within Pin League, I can see, "Oh, I have a follower that has 10,000 followers herself, one that has 2000. One that has over a million." So I can see how influential those, you know, they're, how far their reach is on Pinterest. So if they have an account that I follow back and that has content applicable to my audience, then I might want to maybe re-pin from them a little bit more, show them a little bit more attention to kind of say, "Hey, I'm here.", you know, because they'll see who's re-pin their stuff. So maybe they'll, they'll return the favor back. And for that person that has a million plus followers, if they share my content to them. That's a lot of exposure for my content.

Andrew Hellmich: Definitely.

Cynthia Sanchez: And you can also see who, who's, like your biggest brand advocate, who's coming to your site and pinning things from there more. There's a lot of information that you don't get from either Google Analytics or Pinterest analytics, and for a free account, you know, you might as well.

Andrew Hellmich: Great. So that was Pin League.

Cynthia Sanchez: Pin League. They do require a credit card to sign up, but they don't charge you, you know, a monthly fee or anything like that for the basic account. If you want to monitor more competitors than just one, then they start charging you per month a little bit.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay, perfect. I'll add links to all that sort of stuff in the show notes. So anything that you've mentioned today, we'll add links to, so that's great. So Cynthia, look, we've covered so much ground. My head is spinning. Is there anything that I've missed that photographers should consider when they're setting up this account or if they're already, already underway?

Cynthia Sanchez: Well, main, main thing is the keywords. Use the keywords as much as you can. Hashtags, if you want to. Hashtags are really a shortcut within Pinterest. If you click on a hashtag in a description, it just is a quick way to search for that phrase. But if you create something unique to you, so let's say you had Impact Images as a hashtag within, you know, that you wanted, you know, "Hey, I used your, you let a bride know, I pinned your images to Pinterest this last week, just search for the hashtag, you know, impact images, everything lowercase," then she could quickly search for all those images, even if you put them on multiple boards.

Andrew Hellmich: That's cool.

Cynthia Sanchez: So that's the way to do that, if you're running promotions, that's another way. Pinterest did take away hashtags for a little while where they didn't function at all. So hopefully they're here to stay again, but as of right now, and I hate that, I have to keep on saying that, as of right now, that's, that's kind of how they're being used.

Andrew Hellmich: Okay. So if people, because you've said a few times, that's how it is now, and things have changed and stuff, so people want to keep up to date with what's happening with Pinterest. Now, you've got a blog that you, you're watching Pinterest like a hawk, aren't you? Because that's your everyday life.

Cynthia Sanchez: That's my everyday life. Yeah, come by the blog.

Andrew Hellmich: Yeah. How can people find your blog? And how can they follow what's going on with Pinterest?

Cynthia Sanchez: Sure, they can find me at, ohsopinteresting.com. As far as any big news that happens with Pinterest, if it's being really covered by Mashable and TechCrunch and you know, all the big news sites, I typically don't rehash things like that, have, you know, that are already everywhere on the web, but I will leave links to them in my Twitter account, which is at OSP Interesting. OSP I-N-T-E-R-E-S-T-I-N-G, that's a lot of letters.

Andrew Hellmich: I'll let links again.

Cynthia Sanchez: There you go. There you go.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect. And so, and with your blog that you've also got tips and how-tos and all sorts of different articles, don't you?

Cynthia Sanchez: I do, I do. I try to break down each one of these little things that we've talked about today in this, you know, little chat that we've had, and just try to look at one bit at a time. I know we have gone over so much information in it, and it seems overwhelming, but you don't need to do all of this all at once. It can be taken step by step. So don't, don't get too overwhelmed by it. It's a process. It takes time, as in with any other social media network, it's going to take time to build that audience, time to build that following. But if you kind of take the approach of being there as a service of providing, you know, either inspirational images, beautiful images that people just want to share because they are so beautiful or helpful advice or tips, or, you know, just kind of really filling one of those, you know, needs that people have. That's really what you should focus on primarily, aside from all the keywords, aside from all the other stuff we talked about, and those are the accounts that seem to do really the best on Pinterest.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect. What a great way to finish, Cynthia, that's great advice. And I really want to thank you for coming on. That's, um, it's so good to speak to you and have you on the show.

Cynthia Sanchez: Oh Andrew, thank you so much. And I'm just going to talk a little bit on my end, as far as my podcast listeners, because this podcast is going to be actually aired on the ‘Oh So Pinteresting Podcast’, because I thought this would be a really great way for people to see the photographers approach to Pinterest. One thing I didn't mention, I hope it's okay that I mentioned it now, is on, not only on the blog do I give tips, but on the podcast. I interview people who use Pinterest in different ways, who you know, from a therapist to a stay at home mom to a blogger to, you know, using it for nonprofit situation, I have lots of interviews coming up, lots that I've already done. Actually, I've just started them on my ninth interview now. But you can also find more information on the podcast.

Andrew Hellmich: And that's exactly how I found you, through your podcast, which I love listening to, and it's great hearing other people use Pinterest as well.

Cynthia Sanchez: Now, because even if you know, if it's somebody that's approaching this from, let's say, a product based businesses, they may get a lot of information or ideas on how somebody in another industry uses Pinterest, because it is so flexible, it is kind of a tool that you can use in many different ways. And, you know, use different approaches. So somebody in a completely opposite field that you wouldn't think that would have anything related to you might actually give you a really great idea.

Andrew Hellmich: Perfect.

 
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