Are you using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website? If not, you definitely should be – Pinterest is one of the largest traffic generators on the web and more importantly, your prospective clients are on there.
Already have an account but not really utilising this social media giant to help your wedding or portrait photography business or just unsure what you should be doing to make it work… like I am.
Be aware that Pinterest is a massive search engine and it's important to “optimise” your images to be found. Can you see what these photographers are trying to rank for?
Today's interview is with a Pinterest expert, mover and shaker in the online world and super helpful Cynthia Sanchez from Oh So Pinteresting. Cynthia derives her full-time income working with Pinterest and when I say she's an expert, I'm not kidding… there's not much she doesn't know when it comes to using Pinterest for business.
To prove the point, I literally bombarded Cynthia with questions and covered so much ground, I'll have to re-listen to this episode to be able to implement all the things she taught. I started with the absolute basics, covered every “dodgy” tactic I could think of to beware of and moved into more advanced strategies for the power users.
Some of the topics we cover include:
Once you get on a bit of a roll, come back and listen again, use this interview as resource.
Things aren't so rosy with every wedding and portrait photographer
Also covered in this episode – I approached Rob, a photographer from the UK for a possible interview on the podcast. Rob was recommended by another business owner that I trust asa successful photographer and a great guy.
Watermarking your images is recommended if you are concerned about other photographers passing off your work as their own.
After checking his website, work and Facebook page, everything pointed to him being a fantastic shooter with a great business. Looks however, can be deceiving.
Rob replied to my email with a resounding “no thanks” citing a crap year in business and things not looking good at all.
His candid, honest and brief email was both disappointing but refreshing in an industry where many business owners seem to perpetually on cloud 9 with more bookings than they can handle and business never looking better. True or not… it's difficult to tell sometimes.
maybe you need to be part of a networking/mastermind group of like minded photographers to share real information to get a bette idea and gauge of how you're going. More on that in the podcast.
Links to Cynthia, Oh So Pinteresting and other things mentioned:
Premium Members
Can you see which photographer is making great use of the term “Sydney Wedding Photographer” – now do the same search in Google and see if they're ranking on the first page. Yes, Pinterest is powerful if used correctly.
The tip is made for photographers (because you need to know a little photoshop to make it work) and I have an example waiting for you in the membership area.
Are you enjoying the podcast?
If you're enjoying the podcast, the interviews or learning something along the way, can you do me a favour and tell just one person – another photographer – up and coming or established. The more listeners, the better the community, the better the show becomes.
To let someone know about the show, share it on Facebook, Tweet about it (do any of you use Twitter?) or email a photographer friend.
Don't forget too, if you have feedback, a suggestion, comments or gripes, use the comments below or email me: andrew@photobizx.com. I honestly would love your feedback, don't be shy, if you've something to say, let me know you're out there.
That's it for this week, hope business s going great guns for you.
Speak soon
Andrew
Thanks for the great interview Andrew and Cynthia. I’m surprised there’s no comments here the content is gold.
This was my second listen as there’s quiet a bit to take in here. I have a question for Cynthia. I have created a business account, verified it, added the plug in to my site so people can pin my blog images. My question is do I necessarily have to be active on pintrest with adding new boards or can I be a little lazy and choose to let people that visit my site start pinning my images to their boards? Is it the same effect but just slowing down the pinning process? Or am I missing something, this is totally new to me.
Regards Andrew
Hi Andrew! Thanks so much for your question.
Yes you can just let the visitors to your site do the pinning for you but I think you would be missing out on some huge opportunities. You could reach a whole new audience if you pinned your content to the types of boards you want to and attract people interested in the type of content you’re pinning thus bring more people back to your site. Hope this helps 🙂
Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
Best,
Cynthia
Thanks Cynitha, After playing with pintrest I have realised how easy it is to add new images to a board after I have blogged my images. After just a few day noticed images were getting pinned which is great. Like you said just add pins slowly to build up your portfolio, it’s not as scary as I thought it would be jumping into another social media.
Thanks again
Thanks Cynitha,
I have just finished your video series and made some major changes to my Pinterest account. I have also emailed you for more of your services to create a better integrated social media marketing plan.
Thanks Andrew,
You always manage to find great guests to interview and these are already starting to make major changes to my business.
Regards,
Samantha
http://www.samanthaohlsenphotography.com
No problem Samantha! You’re probably aware that Cynthia also has a podcast focussed on Pinterest for business – well worth a listen if you haven’t heard an episode.
Prior to listening to this podcast, I did not have a business Pinterest account set up. I love Pinterest for personal use, and have been an avid user for years. I knew that I needed to create a Pinterest account for my business, but hadn’t. I have not done much work since creating it, but that is in due time. This podcast gave me so much awesome information to chew on.
I subscribed to Cynthia’s podcast too, thank you for having her on the show!
Sounds like some great takeaways Kara. Cynthia is awesome! Since that episode, one of my team have done a “Pinterest for Business” course with her which I can definitely recommend. It’s a different and more focussed approach than a personal account but still fun.