In this episode of Six Figure Business Mastery Podcast, Kirsten and Jeanne from Six Figure Business Coaching interview Mackenzie Armstrong of Armstrong Virtual Solutions. Mackenzie, a former educator turned Pinterest expert, shares her insights on how to effectively use Pinterest to organically grow your email list. Discover why Pinterest is an underutilized strategy for many businesses and how it can be a powerful tool for audience building.

Main Talking Points:

1. Introduction to Mackenzie Armstrong

• Kirsten and Jeannie introduce Mackenzie Armstrong, a Pinterest strategist and former educator.
• Mackenzie's journey from teaching to becoming a virtual assistant and ultimately specializing in Pinterest.

2. Pinterest as a Search Engine

• Discussion on Pinterest's unique role as a search engine rather than a traditional social media platform.
• How Pinterest encourages users to leave the platform and discover content on external websites.
• The significance of Pinterest's focus on inspiring and educating users.

3. Pinterest Content and Longevity

• Mackenzie explains the longevity of Pinterest content and how it continues to bring in traffic months or even years after initial publication.
• The importance of consistently pinning fresh content and repurposing older pins.
• Tips for using keywords effectively in pin descriptions and other Pinterest elements.

4. Ideal Businesses for Pinterest

• Mackenzie shares her insights on the types of businesses that can benefit from Pinterest, including online businesses with blogs, podcasts, and products.
• The role of consistency in Pinterest success and how Pinterest compares businesses to their own performance, not competitors.

5. Using Pinterest to Grow Your Email List

• Mackenzie provides strategies for capturing email leads through Pinterest.
• The value of promoting URLs to your website's homepage, blog, podcast, opt-ins, and more on Pinterest.
• How Pinterest allows you to nurture and own your audience through email marketing.

6. Utilizing Video Pins

• Discussion on the effectiveness of video pins on Pinterest and how they can capture attention.
• Mackenzie's recommendations for creating quick and digestible video content for Pinterest.
• Tips for using various media types to engage different types of Pinterest users.

7. Pinterest Scheduling and Strategy

• Mackenzie advises on pin scheduling, recommending at least one fresh pin per day and repurposing older pins.
• The benefits of using scheduling tools like Tailwind and the importance of not overusing third-party scheduling for Pinterest.
• Tips for optimizing your Pinterest strategy and utilizing Pinterest's native scheduler.

8. Mackenzie's Pinterest Course

• A mention of Mackenzie's upcoming Pinterest course, offering in-depth knowledge on Pinterest optimization and strategy.
• Information on where to find Mackenzie online, her website, and how to connect with her for more insights.

In this informative episode, Kirsten and Jeannie discuss the potential of Pinterest as a valuable tool for organic email list growth with Mackenzie Armstrong. Her expertise sheds light on the unique aspects of Pinterest as a search engine and how it can drive long-term traffic to your content. The tips and strategies shared in this episode offer valuable insights into harnessing Pinterest's power for audience building. If you're looking to supercharge your email list growth, Pinterest could be your next frontier. Stay tuned for more episodes on Six Figure Business Mastery Podcast as we explore different facets of business coaching and digital marketing.

Helpful Links:

The Marketing VA Advantage 

Six Figure Business Coaching 

Mastering Online Marketing for Entrepreneurs

Double Your Income with a Marketing VA, even on a tight budget

I'm Kirsten with Six Figure Business Coaching and that's

Jeannie, my business partner.

Jeannie, would you like to introduce our guest today?

I would.

I'm thrilled to introduce Mackenzie Armstrong of Armstrong Virtual Solutions.

She's a former educator turned Pinterest maven, she teaches entrepreneurs with

blogs and podcasts to fill their audience with ideal clients using Pinterest.

She believes that Pinterest is an underutilized strategy

for most businesses.

And I totally agree.

So welcome Mackenzie.

I can't wait to hear, all of the insights and tips you're

going to share with us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I can talk about Pinterest all day.

I'm so excited.

You had Jeannie with the word Maven.

That's always been one of her favorite words.

So she we still use the word marketing Maven sometimes.

I got to meet you very briefly before this interview, and you

used to be a school teacher.

From school teacher to Pinterest, Maven, tell us a little bit about

that . I started out teaching, and I taught several grades and

several states, and when I had my little my 1st, oldest little 1, I decided not

to go back to the classroom because I didn't feel like I could give 110 percent

at home and 110 percent in the classroom.

So I decided to stay home and from there.

It led me to teaching online, which kind of helped me get my feet wet a

little bit with the whole online space because that's something that was very

new to me, I never even considered doing online business at all.

So from there I went and I jumped into becoming a virtual assistant and

decided that main tasks of virtual assistants are usually social media and

I am not a fan of Facebook or Instagram personally for utilizing for business.

I like it for like fun, but that's not my favorite place to be.

So I jumped headfirst into Pinterest, which contrary to

popular belief is not social media.

It is actually a search engine.

So that's where I landed and I never looked back.

Fantastic.

Yeah, I think we think of Pinterest as both, right?

It is social.

But it is definitely a search engine, which we love because you can take

advantage of those keywords and definitely help people find you.

So we're excited.

We're going to start off with you telling us just a little bit about

Pinterest and why you chose why Pinterest for so many business owners?

Pinterest again is a search engine, and it does have that aspect of that

social media where you can like things, save things comment, but ultimately.

Pinterest main goal is to inspire its users.

And because of that, which is something that I really relate to

as being a teacher, is I'm always wanting to learn new things and

help people learn new things.

And because Pinterest main goal is to inspire, they want people to

put their content on their platform.

They actually, it's the only platform that is cool with you leaving

interest and going to a website.

So they want you to leave the platform and get the information

that you are wanting to learn, consume, help you grow and whatever.

Avenue that is that you're wanting to learn about and, I just feel

like it's just more genuine, if you will, in that aspect of things.

It's not , no, you need to stay here on this platform and utilize it here.

They really want you to go off and learn and give you the tools to help

you get to where you want to be.

I think of it, like you said, other social platforms, where it's very

chit chatty and very, I don't know, it's share this and comment on that.

And let's debate this, but it's really not.

No, and it's really just that's the cool thing about it.

Because as a search engine, you're using keywords, you're not getting

lost in a feed or the algorithm is not just showing you to like the

25 people in your list of whatever the algorithm is telling it to do.

It's ultimately driven by people searching.

That's the 1 thing that I love, with Facebook, you could be

talking to your blue in the face to everybody on your list, but they

might not be your ideal audience.

Whereas with Pinterest, people are actively searching for what

you're teaching or what you're providing, whatever information it

is, whether it's a product or DIY or business strategy, anything.

In that spectrum, they're actively searching, they're using those keywords

that you're talking to the people that are going to want that information.

It's not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it sticks with some

person, they're looking for you through the keywords that you're using, which

is as a business owner and not just because I'm specifically in Pinterest,

but I don't have time to just talk to everyone and hoping that I can

talk to hoping I reach that 1 person.

Pinterest really gives you the avenue to draw people in with the

information that they're wanting.

Those genuine people that are actively searching for the

topic you're talking about.

Now, do you consider Pinterest content to be evergreen?

Because it does have longevity, doesn't it?

Yes.

Amazing point.

First thing is, there's two sides to that.

With your specific content, your evergreen content, the things that

are doing fantastic on your website or even on your social media, you can

continuously put out on Pinterest.

It's not a one and done with Pinterest.

It's okay, especially if it's seasonal or just like that amazing

content.

You can always freshen it up, put new, put a new graphic with it and send it back out

to Pinterest, regardless of how old it is.

So you're always going to get that traction and you're always going

to draw people in and a newer audience with different keywords.

If you decide to try different things and then also with the

longevity of things with.

Facebook, I believe it's 48 hours.

Your content lasts with Instagram.

It's 24 hours with Tik TOK.

It's instantly deteriorating.

Whereas, with Pinterest, you have four plus months and that four months

is like the bottom of the barrel.

If you're getting no traction, you did not do good keyword research.

Like you have four months of longevity on that content that it's going

to live there and think about it.

And I use that stereotypical, I go to Pinterest to look for recipes, which yes,

Pinterest has a crap ton of recipes on it.

Don't get me wrong, but you pick that.

That chocolate chip cookie recipe.

It might be from 2017 and it's what 2023.

It's still bringing people in.

It's still a top ranking pin, just something that's that old.

It's still bringing people to your website, to your blog, to your podcast,

to the content that you want to provide and I've talked to many people that

utilize Pinterest before and have weaned off a little bit and they're like, I

haven't used Pinterest in a few months and I'm it's still bringing me leads and

it's still bringing people to my website.

I'm still getting emails saying that people found me from Pinterest.

It's a platform that

I feel like people sleep so heavily on with it within their business because

they always want that Facebook and Instagram, quick growth, but you're

having to constantly recreate the wheel.

You're having to constantly put out new content, whereas Pinterest helps

you helps your content work for you a little bit harder without having

to add more work to your plate.

And, I will say that is the 1 downfall with Pinterest is it does take a

little bit longer for you to grow your audience grow your platform.

But once you're there, and once it's rolling, it's just going

to keep building and building.

So you want to give it a good six months to grow that account.

Sorry.

That was like super long winded.

No, that was great.

You made me think though, is there a place that you go to do your keyword research?

Are there, resources out there to find what keywords people are looking for?

So you can always use keywords that people are using.

You can do keyword research on Google, but I highly recommend

that you just use Pinterest.

You go in and say, you're talking about business marketing or business strategy.

You go into that search bar.

You type in those keywords that you're talking about in your blog

or podcast and see what pops up.

See what that gray box that drops down to help you.

To help you decide what to pick those are the active.

Those are what people are actively searching for.

And then you type in that broad , keyword of business marketing and whatever

the bubbles at the top are popping up.

There's colored bubbles when you hit enter or hit search those are keywords as well.

And when you're using keywords like you have 500 characters in a

description, you don't want to just Keyword stuff, everything you want to

actively create sentences that people are going to read and say, Hey, you'll

learn X, Y, and V on this blog post.

Here's my call to action click through or whatever you want

your call to action to be.

And Pinterest goes back and forth about hashtags.

And if there's a little bit of extra space, I might put 1 or 2

very broad hashtags and your hashtag can be clickable on Pinterest.

Some people will tell you they won't.

Some people will tell you they are, but in my experience, I

have been able to have clickable hashtags within pin descriptions.

But I use that sparingly if, I don't have enough if I'm like, super niche and don't

have keywords that I can really pull from.

But ultimately, you don't want it to be keyword stuffed.

And the tip anywhere you can type on Pinterest is a place to put keywords.

So your pin descriptions, your pin titles, your board descriptions, your

board titles, your profile description, because as you can, when you go to

search on Pinterest, you'll see that.

Boards pop up for when you're searching as well as profiles pop up.

So you're able to find, so people are able to actually find your

full profile, which is cool too.

That's awesome.

So what kind of businesses do you feel are ideal?

Or what kind of, if Pinterest is ideal for what kind of businesses in your

opinion and your, in your experience?

So in my experience, anybody that's putting out content regularly, so blog

posts, podcast, yes, brick and mortars can have, do well on Pinterest if they're

putting out like if they're doing their products online, or if they just want to

grow awareness with their products, but ultimately online businesses with blogs,

podcasts, products, something that they're putting out regularly and consistently.

That's something that's relative to the actual person.

So Pinterest is not going to compare you to somebody else in your niche.

They're not going to compare you to Sally down the street.

They are going to compare you to yourself.

So if you're putting out one blog post a month and creating pins around that,

and you continue that consistency, your account is going to grow.

If you put out a whole bunch of content, and then you dwindle off.

, then that will also reflect on your account, your analytics are going

to tank because Pinterest is oh, no, I have to relearn what they're

doing in their account, so then I know who to show their content to.

And that's another thing with the fact that Pinterest is a slow

and growing a slow grow platform.

It's because Pinterest really dives deep into the content that you're putting

out to a, make sure that you are saying what you're you're promoting on your

pin, we don't want clickbait , I'm talking about business strategy, but

there's a picture of a puppy on my pin that, we don't want that, but they also

really vet what you're saying, so that way they know who to show your content

to, they're finding who they're learning about you and your content just as much

as everyone else's, that way they know who to put your content in front of.

And I know you're a fan of, using Pinterest to grow your email list.

So can you tell us a little bit about how we might go about that for sure.

So with Pinterest, so the one thing that I love about Pinterest is, versus

like Facebook and Instagram is, you build your audience on Facebook and

Instagram, but if you get put in Instagram or Facebook jail, you can't

reach your audience for X amount of days.

However long it takes you to get out of that pickle that

you're in with that platform.

What the cool thing about Pinterest is because they're so in tune with

wanting you to go to people's websites.

It's a really it's a great opportunity to capture that email from the person

that's visiting because, , we don't own our audience on Facebook and

Instagram, but we actually own our.

Our email list.

So if we ever got locked out of any platform, even if we for some reason

got locked out of Pinterest, we would still have that email list to be able to

nurture and really start people to get to know and trust you to then in turn

either buy from you or work with you or however you're running your business and

wanting clients to interact with you.

And that's another great way of Hey, I have a new blog post out, you can

send in and nurture them that way.

So ultimately anything with a URL on your website , your homepage, your about

me page, your blog, your podcast, your opt in your freebies, your resources,

whatever your services page, whatever you have a URL for, you can create pins for.

And it's not a one or done.

You don't.

You don't want to just create 1 pin for it.

You just you can create multiple pins for it.

I like to create at least 7 to 10 pins per blog post or podcast.

But remember, you only want it to go out once a day.

You don't want to put all of those out on the same day.

You want to stagger it out each day.

But again, that just gives.

Different avenues for people to find you out, you can utilize different

keywords in those, or, you can utilize different types of graphics

because, as a teacher, I know that, not every kid learns the same way.

So people might not consume information the same way.

So you can really utilize, stock photos in your pins or just

plain background text overlay.

And another fun tip is I know everyone loves script font, but it

is not your friend on Pinterest.

You want people to be able to read what you're writing in a scroll.

If it's scripty, people are just going to bypass it because they

want to know they're looking for some type of information.

They're there to find a specific answer to something.

You want it to be easy, easily read, quick to the point, nothing fancy,

nothing like fluffy when you're putting that content on, this is X, Y, and Z.

That's what we're talking about.

That way people click it.

Jeanne, yeah, this is the scrolling fonts and everything that people can't read.

Really quickly.

I know our videos do really well on Pinterest.

We find that is our, it gets the most views of the most pens or our video clips.

Is that something.

That you recommend for business owners.

For sure.

I recommend you utilize all different medias.

I recommend, static pins and I also recommend you using video pins.

Remember, we don't want them to be super long because people's

attention span are very short.

And that was like the idea behind idea pins, but now everything through

Pinterest is just considered a pin.

There isn't.

Technically, they say a differentiation between, static and video pins now,

because before they were pushing idea pins and video pins, really hardcore.

But now, I guess they're on an even playing field, but

people are drawn to video.

That's the big thing now with every platform is video.

And you want to make sure that it's something that's quick and consistent.

Digestible that somebody can learn quickly or give information about

something quickly, and then people can move on or they can save that

to go back to it, or they can click through and see the full video.

So yeah, you want to be mindful.

You alluded to something that I just want to clarify.

Do you recommend people pin just once a day?

I wrote, so depending on how much content you're producing

and pushing out, I recommend.

At a bare minimum, at least 1 freshman a day, so you create a pin a new

pin graphic and put it out each day.

And then you can always go back and repurpose.

I'll create a freshman.

Say, create a freshman today and I put it out today.

I'll put that same pin out 21 days to a month later to a different board because

essentially, when you create a pin, you're pinning it to 1 specific place in your

account into 1 board, so then you can take that same fan and

put it to a different board.

I like to say, 3 to 4 weeks later.

You don't want to look spammy with it because you don't want

the graphic to repeat itself essentially is to like, too early.

But you can repin I suggest at least 1 freshman a day.

That's what I do bare minimum.

But if you're pumping out content, go for 2, 3 fresh pins a day, if you want to,

if you can again, that's that it's not like a necessity to grow your account, but

you want to have between what your fresh pin and a pin you are repurposed pin.

You want to have a, I like to say, at least 4 to 5.

Going out each day, and you can use that do that with a tail and

talent, which is a scheduler.

You can do it with other schedulers.

I've not worked with other schedulers because what I found is.

It's.

Yeah, when it's been the most robust, you can really go out multiple

months, which is nice and it has the ability to do that easier.

I would say at least 1 freshman and at least 1 idea pin a week,

if not more daily would be great.

They're a little bit harder.

They take longer more time.

But yeah, so Pinterest, it's interesting because, we interview and vet and train

virtual assistants for our clients to take care of all of their marketing for them.

Video, social media, all of that.

But what's interesting is we stayed away from Pinterest for a

while just because we didn't have time to wrap our head around it.

So when, this podcast will get repurposed and broken down into lots of little clips.

Which will go obviously to our Pinterest account, but it's interesting because

even though we have the interns that are in our paid internship scheduling

these in advance, we actually have someone on our team full time who

actually manages the Pinterest account.

And helped us, get it started, and she loved it.

She was so in love with Pinterest really quickly, and she ultimately

has turned that over to her assistant, because we actually got her assistant

a few weeks ago, just because we were having her do some other tasks for us.

So she's amazing.

But now this young lady is loving Pinterest as well.

So it's really funny, having all of this information, because Jeanne and I do want

to make Pinterest a priority for 2024.

And so getting some of your great ideas and thinking about

how we can work with our team.

To even, really focus on building it.

And so I love the idea of, it seems like a lot of posts, but again, if you

have a virtual assistant, it's pretty easy, but just figuring out a way to

have great new, fresh content going out.

And then what content we should repurpose on what boards actually,

our virtual assistant who is doing it now, was wants to learn more.

So we talked to her about classes and things.

And I think you actually have a course that's coming out really soon.

So May maybe we can put her in your course.

Oh, yes.

I love it.

So I am launching my course for signups, probably the end of November, early

December, for it to start in the new year.

So I'm super excited and it's gonna be a d i y ,I teach you everything that you need

to know for, optimization and strategy for your own personal account, or.

If you're a

VA.

and basically how to manage it.

And then so in turn, if everything is set up correctly, you should

really only be spending 4 to 5 hours a month on your Pinterest marketing

after everything is optimized and strategize and everything like that.

So that's brilliant.

We'll definitely put a link to that in the descriptions and show notes.

Tell everybody about your website.

Where can they reach you if they want to connect with you?

For sure.

My website is Armstrong virtual solutions.

com and you can learn all about me and my background and, services and

things like that there as well as any information for the VIP, my VIP

day and soon my course information.

You have been such this has been so amazing.

I love learning about Pinterest.

I need to play learning how to.

Become more successful on it.

What Pinterest is looking for and how people can find you.

So Mackenzie, this has been fantastic.

Thank you for coming on and sharing all of your knowledge with us.

Of course, anytime.

And like I said, if anybody has any questions, feel free.

, you can usually find me I hang out on LinkedIn, the least , I feel like the

least social media platform that's out there, but oh, I hang out on LinkedIn

or you can always just email me.

It's Armstrong virtual solutions at Gmail.

So I'm always game to answer some questions for anybody.

Perfect.

Well, do you have Darla here who was asking the name of the scheduler and

so I told her that was Tailwind, right?

Yes.

It's relatively cheap too, which is nice.

It's not super, it's not going to break the bank.

And I believe you can do Instagram on there as well.

So if you want to combine.

Oh, you can schedule from Tailwind onto Instagram?

Nice.

I think you, I can't remember.

Can you schedule from Canva direct to Pinterest or no?

You can.

I don't know if that will, because Tailwind is affiliated with Pinterest.

. So I don't know if that.

Yeah, so I don't know if that might ding you or make it harder for you to grow.

I haven't tested that.

But yes, you can definitely do that.

But I suggest if you are using a scheduler, you can put all your

content on there if you'd want.

But especially your repurpose content, stuff that you've already

pinned, but I ultimately suggest that you dabble with Pinterest

native scheduler within the platform because they love when you use their.

Their stuff.

I usually put the first pin out there, the fresh pin on Pinterest, and then

I'll use Tailwind to reschedule it to other boards later down the road.

Ah, that sounds like a smart strategy.

Again, thank you Mackenzie and you can find her, like she said at

Armstrong Virtual Solutions and we look forward to hopping onto Pinterest

and trying out all your strategies.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

Okay, thank you.

We'll see you all soon.

Bye.