Ready to Learn How To Make More Money Online Using Pinterest?
Today I have an amazing special guest here to chat with you about Pinterest, Rachel Ngom. She is an entrepreneur and Pinterest strategist. She went from having zero traffic on her blog to over 36K monthly visitors. She’s going to share some serious, FREE traffic strategies (like, no Facebook ads!) and she’s about to blow your mind today.
Jen Casey (JC): So Rachel, I would love to just start with hearing a little bit more about how you got started in entrepreneurship.
Rachel Ngom (RN): Yeah! It started with getting my Master’s in Social Work. We moved to Florida, and I couldn’t find a job even with my Master’s from the number one program in the country. And, my husband was just starting his business. So… we were broke. I was pregnant, we were on food stamps, and it was really freaking stressful. We had negative $100 in my checking account.
And I was like… something’s gotta give. I had to figure something out, because I don’t want to bring a baby into this situation.
I was actually part of a network marketing company at that time. I saw that other people were having success, so I just decided to run with it. I went from where I was to earning $80K the next year to the following year over $100K. And I was having so much success on social media.
I had 50K followers on my Facebook page, 20K on Instagram. I started blogging and getting all of this traffic on my blog. I’m like, “Wow, my Facebook page is really working!” I looked at my Google Analytics and I was just shocked.
36K people were viewing my blog every month, but 34K were from Pinterest…. and it was for free.
As I started to realize that this Pinterest thing was working, that’s where I put my attention and starting using it a little more strategically. I started building my email list, which is now to 14K on my fitness list. I grew it without paying for ads or anything. this is like it from just my e-mail. I launched a little e-book on my blog that crashed my website the day it launched. I made $1K that first day. And I still have people that come from Pinterest and buy my book every day.
So I started having all these entrepreneurs asking me, “Rachel, how are you doing this?” And all I can say is: It’s Pinterest.
So, I actually started another business, teaching entrepreneurs to use Pinterest to grow their influence and income impact.
It’s been friggin’ awesome!
JC: Oh my God. OK. So many questions! First, you were on food stamps. From a money mindset perspective, how did you go from being on food stamps to saying, “Yeah, I can build a six figure business.”? Were there some things that you needed to do to make that big shift?
RN: It was definitely a big jump. It was really scary and really stressful at the time.
I actually was following some social media gurus at the time, and one of them launched a social media training course. At the time, it was like $450 dollars/month for a six month minimum.
We were making two thousand dollars a month, and our mortgage was $1500.
I just remember going to my husband, tears in my eyes, and I said, “I just have this gut feeling that I need to do this course.”
So, I invested that money, and I ran with it. I was the best student. I showed up, I took notes, I did everything. I went all in, because that was a hell of a lot of money at the time for us. But, that course investment completely changed everything.
JC: It’s amazing what happens when you get that skin in the game. You show up like CRAZY.
RN: Yeah! This was our only option. It wasn’t like, “Hey, you can go try this, Rachel.” It was like, “Nope. I HAVE to make this work.”
JC: I love that. Is that when you stumbled on Pinterest?
RN: It was actually when I started having success with Facebook. I was building my Facebook page, then Facebook began to make changes with organic reach. I had 50K followers but I wasn’t getting the same business. In our network marketing company, I wasn’t getting all the sales and stuff that I was getting before. So I was like, “I need to figure something else out.” So, I started the blogging thing and just putting my stuff on Pinterest.
JC: Can you explain to us a little bit about how this works? So, you are pinning all of your stuff back to blogs, right?
RN: Yeah. So I teach a couple different strategies. The one that works really well for me is just creating content every week.
So, I create the blog posts. I just upload that blog post on Twitter and that same blog post is repurposed on Facebook and Instagram. I also turn it into a YouTube video, but you can do the same thing. So, if you’re doing this interview right now, you can easily save it, embed it on your blog, and create like a Pinterest graphic. Or, you can create a Pinterest graphic that leads to this live video on Facebook.
There’s a lot of different ways we can use it just to increase your visibility and get more traffic.
JC: I love it. So, is there a specific formula for how certain pins are supposed to look; where certain things convert better than others?
RN: Yes. So, I have a lot of blog posts about this. The images that convert are the long and skinny ones. Because, when those show up in the News Feed, they take more space. You obviously want good images (…you should see some of my old stuff…)
You want long, skinny images with text that is easy to read. People need to know what they get when they click on something.
And also, have a juicy headline on that image. So, I actually use something called the AM Institute, have you ever heard of that?
JC: No, I haven’t actually!
RN: It’s AMinstitute.com. It lets you test the emotional impact of your headlines. It’s awesome. I use this when I’m creating blog posts and my Pinterest images, too.
And finally: the description is super key.
If you take away anything from this: it’s that Pinterest is not social media.
It’s a search engine just like Google.
You want your pin descriptions to be something that someone is searching. You can actually go to the Pinterest search bar, and you can start typing in something and Pinterest will start to finish that sentence. An example: me and one of my awesome students were dominating Pinterest in the intermittent fasting space. So, if you search “intermittent fasting for women” that is the key word that we use in our pins, in the descriptions, in the title of our boards and you’ll find both of us. Like, every other pin is us. So many people come to my blog because they’re searching for intermittent fasting for women. If they’re searching for that keyword, they find me on Pinterest & then come to my blog.
You want to be strategic with your keywords, and then I always give a call to action in the pin’s description, too. I’ll say, “Repin and come grab your cheat sheet!” or whatever freebie I have on my blog at the time.
JC: Amazing. So, how much research do you do before you, say, create a YouTube video that you’re going to embed into your blog? So you want it to rank for YouTube and then you also want to rank on Pinterest, but ALSO on Google for the blog. So, what type of research you do, or how do you reverse engineer? Research descriptions and Google adwords?
RN: Yes. I actually have a little mini course on my blog about my entire strategy.
I really do think the research is almost as important, or more important, than the content.
I see a LOT of entrepreneurs who are blogging every single day, they are so consistent but they’re not using the right keywords. And, they don’t know how to use SEO, so no one sees their stuff.
So the first thing I do: I go to Pinterest and I just start typing to see what people are actually searching for. I go to that search bar and I pick a longtail keyword. So okay, these are the topics that people are searching for. And I just write that down in a Google doc. Then I open up Google adwords and the keyword planner. I put that keyword from Pinterest into the keyword planner to see what pops up. And, I use one that has a low amount of people that are searching for it.
It’s so hard to explain, especially for visual learners…
JC: I was just going to add, in terms of the search ability, guys you can literally just go make a free Google Adwords account. You don’t have to set everything up, just go to the keyword planner. And then you just type in, like, “intermittent fasting” and it’ll tell you how many people are searching for that. So, is there a certain range of numbers that you look for? Like, you don’t want 10 million because you’re probably going to get buried. But, you don’t want 100, because nobody’s searching for it.
RN: I actually go for the lower searches, so if it’s like a hundred and a thousand, that is what I go for. And I even do some that are between 10 and a hundred, because I’m like, if I could do a a series of blog posts about this, I could dominate that search.
Doing the planning before actually doing the thing is so, SO important.
JC:This is so good. When it comes to figuring out what things to talk about or what content to focus on, do you feel like there’s a specific group of niches that works best on Pinterest? Or, do you feel like anybody could crush it?
RN: I feel like anybody could crush it. Because, think about personal behavior.
A lot of people are using Pinterest as a search engine for any topic.
A lot of people think it’s only for recipes and decor and that kind of thing. So obviously, I’ve crushed it in this recipe/fitness/health department. Like, my pin has been repinned 140K times or something? It’s crazy. So, when I started my social media Pinterest business, some of my blog posts are already two months old. But, they’ve already been repinned over a thousand times and generating traffic to my blog from Pinterest. So I really think it can work for so many different niches. It’s not just for women who want to do decor things.
JC: I love it. So aside from getting the searchability of your pins up and running, what are some other ways that you’ve been able to maybe use group boards or different strategies that you have that helped to get your pin in front of the right audience?
RN: Yes. So there’s a feature called Tailwind Tribes. Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling app. So, you can go to TailwindApp.com and they have a feature called Tailwind Tribes. This is magical. You can search for tribes related to your niche. And so, if you are in the entrepreneur space, you could search for female entrepreneurs or social media marketing or whatever you want. Then you can join a tribe. And basically, it’s like a group board but it’s a little bit different.
The tribe has specific rules. You share one or more pins in the tribe, and then you have to share someone else’s pin in that tribe. To give you an idea of how many people you can reach: from one tribe, I’ve been able to reach almost 2 million people from using that feature for a month.
JC: Wow. This is crazy. I hope anybody listening to this who maybe doesn’t have an understanding of what the numbers should look like or could look like… When you’re doing something like a Facebook post, or an Instagram post, or Facebook ads or even getting like somebody to share your stuff. When you’re creating a Facebook video, how many views are you getting? You can see it right on there. This is crazy. This is crazy.
RN: Yeah, I mean think about Facebook and Instagram. So, you’re creating the video or the post and it disappears within 24 hours. But, the way this algorithm works now, most people aren’t even going to see it. With Pinterest, it’s just like YouTube. It works for you all the time and you’re posting a fraction of the time. So, I did a blog post about intermittent fasting a year ago that people are still searching for. They’re still finding me, still on my blog, still opting in, still buying my courses and e-book. It’s mindblowing.
I’m all working smarter, not harder.
Pinterest is definitely the strategy to help me do that.
JC: Oh yeah. And it’s funny, so many entrepreneurs – even people who really have it together – don’t have a YouTube set up. They don’t have a blog, a Pinterest, a podcast… and, all of those are the more searchable platforms. Those people are just building things solely on Instagram and Facebook. And there are some people who they can batch create and they’re fine. But man, there’s some serious scalability and sustainability to just even using Pinterest.
RN: Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
JC: I mean, it’s been around for a while. I never got into Pinterest. And every time I talk to somebody who’s like, “I’m crushing it on Pinterest!” I’m always like, OMG I need that strategy. I think that it’s amazing what I’ve seen people do and the numbers that are coming in with Pinterest.
RN: It’s crazy. You don’t need to spend a ton of time on it. So, with my fitness business, I spent like an hour a month. No joke. And every time I do a blog post I would just pin it, and then would be amazed at where the traffic was coming from. They were from pins I created MONTHS ago.
So, with anything, it takes a couple months to start getting traction and start getting people to repin your stuff. But, after three months, my new blog is just getting so much more traffic.
JC: But if you don’t blog, can you create a pin straight back to your Facebook?
RN: Yes, you can. I have a tutorial on how to do that on my blog. But it’s actually so easy. You just upload a pin and then you can actually edit it and change the source URL. So, you’ll just go to your Facebook or whatever you want to share, copy the URL, paste it to the pin, upload it and that’s how you can get traffic on Facebook.
JC: Yeah, and you can do it for your YouTube videos as well. Maybe you don’t have a blog set up right now where you’re taking the videos and getting them into the blog post. You can just drive traffic directly to your YouTube and the YouTube video will pop up. And, I mean, you don’t really want to have a whole Pinterest of just YouTube videos. You want to probably have some pins as well.
RN: You could do a board of YouTube videos and obviously title it a little more specifically with keywords and stuff. Two automation systems to highlight: Zapier and If This Then That (IFTTT). It’s basically automation systems. I have my Pinterest automated so every time I pin, it links to my Twitter.
So I Tweet every time I pin, but I’m not a Twitter person at all. I don’t think I’ve logged in for like a year. But I logged in this past week, and I’ve had SO many people retweeting me and following me because of my Pinterest!
So, you can set it up for every time you do a Facebook post or an Instagram post, it automatically uploads to a specific Pinterest board.Just set it up and forget about it.
JC: If you were to set up something, like you created a new YouTube video and it automatically went to a specific Pinterest board for YouTube videos, would there be anything that you would then need to go in and edit or change? Or would it transfer over pretty accurately?
RN: It also probably had the description that you put on YouTube. I would go and just change the description, because it might cut it off. On YouTube, you have this whole area. On Pinterest, the description is shorter. So, I would just go in and change it and put some extra keywords in there.
JC: So in terms of boards, are there specific key boards that people should have?
RN: I definitely suggest having boards that serve your client and are not for your personal use.
What I would suggest doing is just going into your Pinterest account and cleaning up some of the old boards that you know would not serve your ideal client. If you have a bunch of recipes, you can actually go in and make those boards secret. You can still pin to it, but your following is not going to see it.
JC: Yeah.
RN: That’s something I would do right away. And then, I would create the boards based off of what value you can add to your ideal client. So I have boards like, Pinterest marketing strategies, social media marketing strategies, blogging tips for entrepreneurs. It’s all very specific those longtail keywords that I know are going to help my audience.
JC: Love it. Do you have two separate accounts; one for fitness and one for business?
RN: I do! I had to separate because, like I said, they are SUCH different businesses. If I’m on my fitness account and I’m talking about Pinterest tips, my followers are going to be like, “What? I want weight loss tips!” So I have two separate ones. My fitness one I started less than two months ago, and I just logged into my Pinterest analytics… it reaches over 700,000 people per month!
JC: OH MY GOD, THIS IS CRAZY! That is so awesome. So this is a really timely question. What’s the best way to build a following on Pinterest? Say, you just started with a new account and you have a strategy. What were the first things that you did to establishing that account to get 700000 views in two months?
RN: Pinterest is really not so much about how many followers you have, so I wouldn’t hustle for followers.
It’s more about creating awesome content that people are searching for to get them to come to your blog.
So if you’re just starting out, set your profile picture to a photo of you and make your bio very specific. “I help _____ get started with ____.”
Also, for your name on Pinterest, you can do a dash and then put keywords next to your name. And then I would just start creating five to ten boards that have the proper keywords based off of what is done to serve your audience.
A couple examples… for my fitness business, I have like Keto breakfast recipe ideas, Keto recipes ideas, Intermittent fasting for women. These are all different boards and then I can load them up with quality content.
And if you’re like, “I only blog once a week! How am I going to come up with all this content?!”
What I do is: if you’re using Canva.com, you can create an image and duplicate it. So I’ll duplicate that image, change the headline or the color or just make it a tiny bit different, and then every day I go and upload it to Tailwind Tribes and Pinterest just to get more traffic and more visibility. Not making anything new.
JC: So you take one blog post and create multiple pins that open back to that blog post?
RN: Yup.
JC: Brilliant.
RN: There’s also an app called MiloTree and you can put that on your blog. It’s kind of like a little pop up that says, “Follow Me on Pinterest!”, OR you can embed your Pinterest boards into your blog’s sidebar.
There’s a lot of ways you can get started on Pinterest and CRUSH it.
JC: Lots of really cool things. This is another question that someone had: they’re asking, “How often do you pin your own stuff vs other people’s stuff? And why is it helpful to open other people’s content on your board? And do you have specific boards that you keep just your stuff?”
RN: Lots of questions there; you might have to remind me! I do have one board that’s just my blog posts. I title it, “My Blog Posts,” “Social Media Marketing Tips,” etc.. I think if you’re going to ask a Pinterest strategist, they might say something different because it used to be: repin 80% of the time, 20% of the time create your own stuff. And I’m like, 60/40 or 50/50.
It really depends on your account, and if you’re just starting off maybe go for more 80/20 until you have more content to share. But, something that you can do through Tailwind is schedule pins to go out. I recommend pretty often, like 20 to 30 times a day.
Trust me; I’m not on Pinterest all day! I just schedule it out so it seems like I’m pinning all the time.
There’s another app called BoardBooster.com. You can set it to loop your own pins. So, it’s like repinning your pins on autopilot throughout the day. You can set it to how many you want to do per day, what time of day.
JC: So, the idea of repinning. Where are these pins going? I’m not a Pinterest person, and I know my tribe is also doesn’t know much about it either. This might be new lingo for some people. So, when you’re saying that you’re repinning 23 times a day, are you taking an already added pin & adding it again to the board? Or, where is it going?
RN: Okay, so, if I’m repinning someone else’s content (from my news feed or it’s on my channel) I’m taking it from its original source and repinning it on my own board. That would just make the most sense. So, if it’s another creator’s pin that is about Pinterest Marketing, I’ll add it to my own Pinterest Marketing Tips Board. Make sense?
JC: Totally. So the whole idea is that…
Community is a huge aspect of Pinterest. You can’t really grow it just with your own stuff.
RN: It would be really hard. I don’t know any Pinterest experts that have grown all on their own. So, I think that a lot of the community aspect, and especially group boards and Tailwind Tribes; sharing other people’s stuff and sharing your own stuff. It gives them credibility, it gives you credibility, and that’s value.
JC: What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see people making with Pinterest?
RN: I’ve seen this a lot: their boards are just, like, “recipes” or “tips” or “stuff I love.” And I’m like, nobody’s going to find that because you’re using those keywords. That’s the first thing I do is go in and change the board titles. The longtail keywords that I know are going to serve my ideal clients. Then, change the description and the bio so it’s very clear on what the account does, who it serves, and how they can help.
Another mistake: inconsistency.
As with anything, you’ve got to be consistent.
And especially now with the apps I mentioned previously, you could spend one day a month just creating a bunch of pins, and then be done with it.
Another mistake: not making a “call to action” or being specific with a pin description.
You want to give it a juicy description with the right keywords, so people will WANT to click through. Your whole goal is to get them to click through to come to your blog, right? So, make sure that you’re using that description to the fullest.
Here’s an example. One of my blog posts that has been repinned 150K times is about Keto Peanut Butter Fat Bombs.
Before, it was just like the recipe and that was it. My bounce rate was huge: people were just looking at the pin and then leaving. So, what I did was, I created a little intro to tell them a little bit about me at the beginning of the post. Then I said, “If you’re new to eating keto, here’s some super helpful blog posts that you can check out on this site.” I put all of my different keto resources at the top, too. So, that would get them to stick around and get to know me a little bit before they bounce back to Pinterest.
You want them coming from Pinterest to your blog and staying there.
That really comes down to creating a space on your blog that is incredibly valuable.
JC: Do you have pins that go directly to a landing page?
RN: I have pins that go directly to a landing page, but I also have pins that go to a blog post that have an opt-in right there, too. I can’t tell the conversion rate, like which one converts better, but I have a feeling it’s the blog post. The post is adding a ton of value. If someone comes to me from Pinterest and all they see is my landing page, they’re like, “Who the heck is this chick?”
If I give them a reason to trust me and to want to learn from me, I think that’s more powerful.
JC: And you’re creating content very consistently. One of the things that I hear from a lot of new entrepreneurs is, “How do I come up with new ideas? How can you create so much?” What’s your strategy for that?
RN: First thing: I ask people. I’ll do a poll or or post on Facebook and ask, “What are you struggling with? What kind of content would you like to see from me?” And then, if I’m stuck, I’ll go to Pinterest and I’ll just search for my topics in things that I usually cover. I’ll see what other people are writing about and get inspiration. You can see what experts are doing and then you could put your spin on it.
As far as being consistent, every Monday is blogging day. So I set aside the entire morning and I don’t schedule any phone calls or anything like that. Monday is the day that I sit down and write my blog posts. You gotta make sure you have time in your schedule consistently every single week for that.
JC: Now, do you find that you’re doing mostly blogs for Pinterest, or do you do a lot of video content as well?
RN: So what I do is I do the blogpost and then I take that same blog post and I’ll put bullet points to it for a video. I’ll go live on Facebook with that content, and then I’ll actually shoot a proper YouTube video. And if you have like 6 different bullet points within that blog post, you can break it up and you could share one of those bullet points on Instagram or Facebook every day. You could create a little graphic on Canva for each of those bullet points. So I mean, you can use a couple hours one day that you spend making content in the morning, and then you have an entire week being on all different social media platforms.
JC: That’s exactly what I do, just flipped a little bit. I start with a live video, get a transcription, and then repurpose across everything.
Just before we wrap up, I would love for you to just give a couple of little basics about SEO? With so many people really into different social media platforms, maybe they’re not bloggers and they’re not super aware of what the deeper strategy is.
RN: So, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it’s creating content that has the right keywords. You can search the keywords on Google adwords, the keyword planner. And when people are searching on Google, Pinterest, whatever…. they find your stuff.
Some super simple tips. There is a plugin that I use: Yost SEO and it’s free. You can download that plug in and when you’re creating a blog post, it’ll actually show you what to fix to improve your SEO.
What really changed for my business was when I niched down.
Instead of trying to appeal to the masses and just being a fitness expert, I started talking more about high fat/low carb and intermittent fasting. I started using specific keywords for the SEO and I began to show up more for that one topic. Everything changed for me! So, I don’t think you can niche down too much. If you’re struggling with your business, try to niche down a little bit and get a little bit more specific with what you’re talking about.
JC: Yeah! I always suggest creating content that is really specific and clear to serve a very obvious audience. So, what are you working on right now? What’s next for Rachel?
RN: Well I’m working on a free Five Day Pinterest Challenge! Basically, every day I’ll be going live and sharing a few different strategies that you can implement right away.
JC: Where can they go to sign up for that? I will link that up in the show notes as well.
RN: Go to RachelNgom.com. Of course you can also find me on Pinterest! Pinterest.com/RachelNgom. On YouTube as Rachel Ngom. I’m all over the place, just Rachel Ngom.
JC: Any last quick tips?
RN: Just jump in. Don’t get overwhelmed with all the different social media things. Pick your thing that you’ll be good at, and just dive right in. Pick one place and dominate it.
JC: I love it. Thank you so much for being here today. I so appreciate you giving us some really juicy nuggets to start implementing. I just appreciate what you’re doing.
RN: Thank you, I had a lot of fun being here! See you in the online space!
Rachel Ngom is a Pinterest strategist who gets over 700,000 monthly viewers on her Pinterest account. She went from being on food stamps with negative $400 in her checking account to earning $80,000 the following year, to over $100,000 the next year. It’s now her passion to share her pinning secrets with other female entrepreneurs so they can grow their influence, income, and impact! Rachel has lived in Kenya, met her husband in Senegal, got married in Morocco, and spent the last year living in France.
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