Pinterest for Podcasters with Jenny Suneson

Hey everyone, Ashley here with RSS.com. In today's episode, we're chatting with Jenny Seneson, who's host of the podcast manager Power Hour. We're going to be talking all about using Pinterest for promoting a podcast. Enjoy the show. Well, Jenny, welcome to the show. I'm so excited you could be here today. Could you do us a favor and tell us what it is you do? Yeah, I am Jenny and I have a podcast management and marketing agency.

We help podcasters launch and grow their podcasts through podcast launch services and monthly management services, and we do marketing as well. Kind of all-inclusive for podcasters out there. That sounds awesome. Now, how did you get into podcasting? Okay, so I'll keep this brief because it can be quite long. Before I started my podcast, I was a virtual assistant slash social media manager, and that's how I got into business in general. I was looking for some more connection.

I was looking for a community. What else can I do in this business? I got really into listening to podcasts. My first podcast, as most people's first, or a lot of people's first, were serial. Then from there, I just really fell in love with podcasting. I listened to A Town of True Crime. Then I discovered some businessy podcasts and really liked that. I was like, wow, maybe I can start a business podcast. I did just that, and I really fell in love with the platform.

I am an introvert to my core, and it was a really, really scary thing for me to do because I was like, I don't always feel comfortable talking to people. I surely did not feel comfortable in solo episodes because I just felt scary like I was talking to myself, and I didn't know what to expect. But yeah, that was back in 2018. I've been podcasting since 2018, and the industry has evolved so much since then.

Obviously, I loved it so much that I pivoted from being a VA social media manager to actually helping people with their podcasts. Clearly, I am in it for the long haul. That's awesome. I like to hear the journey of how people got into the industry. So basically, you came onto my radar because I can't remember if it was a blogging concentrated or an ultimate bundles course or something like that, but something led me to you.

I joined your email list, and I thought that some of the stuff that you were sharing was really cool. One of the things that caught my attention was Pinterest. You were talking about podcasting for Pinterest. I'm curious as to when Pinterest became your strategy for promoting a podcast.

Yeah. It actually goes back to my VA social media management days. That was one of my focuses as a social media manager was Pinterest because before even diving into business as a whole, I had a blog. My blog was a lifestyle blog, so I did fashion, beauty, home style stuff, home living, and all that stuff. I used it for that blog, and then I saw really good results with it. I was getting 30 opt-ins a day to my email list for this one freebie based on this one pen.

Obviously it's evolved a lot since then. That was back in 2015, 2016. I decided if it works so well with blogging, why not try it for podcasting? When you are a podcaster, you typically do some sort of blog post on your website, but you call it show notes instead of a blog post typically. I started experimenting with that, and I just found it to work really well.

It is a little different because people are accustomed to landing on your website and just reading a blog post, but they get that benefit of having the audio there too. They can either listen or read. It gives people the best of both worlds. You may convert someone into a listener because of that pen, but even so, if you don't, they can at least read it and become a fan of yours and follow you along elsewhere as well.

I know that one of the big things that's happened recently is Pinterest has been making a lot of changes to its algorithm and the background coding and things like that. A lot of people in 2021 were starting to refer to it as the dumpster fire known as Pinterest. I'm curious, since that transition began, have you noticed an uptick or how is it going in terms of podcasting with Pinterest? It's been pretty much the same. I haven't seen anything down.

I haven't seen anything super up, but that's social media across the board. Really, Instagram is like that. Every single social platform seems to have some crappy algorithm that either works or doesn't. It's all based on luck a lot of the time. I feel like it's been pretty consistent. It's been pretty much the same. It hasn't grown exponentially, but it's been nice to get in front of more eyes and more ears I guess. I would have never probably had those people find me without Pinterest.

I think it's still a really good tool. You just have to be strategic about it. You can't be doing what worked in 2016 and 2017 and even 2020 because things have changed since then. Now, not to be difficult, but you said you can't be doing the same things. What exactly does that mean? Does that mean you need to change how you're doing your descriptions, your titles? Can you give us a little bit about what it is you do to use it?

Yeah. Back in the day, you used to be able to have 30 different pins leading back to the same posts and that all was counted as different types of pins. But now they're like, don't do that. Try not to do that. They want to see that fresh new content, which is hard because no one is sitting there creating daily episodes unless you're a news outlet. That wouldn't obviously be the best use case for Pinterest because it expires so quickly. Pinterest is great for evergreen content still.

This podcast, as long as it's evergreen, can be a really good fit for Pinterest. If you're creating weekly episodes, that's what most of our clients do. You have what? 52 weeks of content, maybe 50 if you take a couple of weeks off for the holidays. That's 50 pins you can do.

Sure, you can do multiple pins that lead back to the same thing, but you can even test it, have it lead back to the blog post, maybe have it lead back to an Instagram post or have it lead back to a freebie or something that's kind of relevant to that episode. Kind of use it that way so you can still see what's working. Maybe the one that's leading back to a freebie that's similar to the episode, maybe that converts better.

Obviously, that's going to be good for you because those people are going to get in your email list. All these different marketing channels like Pinterest or social media or anything like that, the main thing is you want to get people to your website. If you're a business owner, ultimately you're wanting to get them on your email list so that you can talk to them more because if they're just hanging out on your website, you don't really have any other way to contact them. Same with social media.

If you drive them to social media, sure, they can DM you, but unless you reach out to them, most people aren't going to just DM you out of the blue. It's just not people's nature because they don't feel safe doing that. They don't feel comfortable. It's not their natural pattern. To me, Pinterest is all driving it back to your podcast essentially, but then really getting them deeper into your funnel with your email list.

I'm really glad you said all of that because we hone in a lot. We've done a couple blog posts on it about how you do not own any of the different platforms. You don't own Pinterest. You don't own Instagram. You don't own Facebook. If for some reason you were to lose those accounts, you then lose that audience.

I'm so glad you said the things about the funnels and the getting people onto your email list and we'll definitely leave a link to our article in the show notes, basically talking about why as a podcaster, if you don't have an email list, you're missing out. You've got to get them on your email list. You had said something about audio and Pinterest. Can you actually load audio to a pin? I'm not 100% sure if you can do that. I feel like they're rolling out new things every day.

I'm not in the weeds like I used to be as much with Pinterest because I don't do that for clients anymore. However, I do use it for my podcast and some of our clients do it too. I know you can do those idea pins. I think you can hear that sound. I don't know, but it has to be like you have to have some kind of pin design. I would say what I was more so referring to is linking it back to the audio itself or the audio.

You know how Libsyn and those other platforms have the little mini website thing situation. I never use that because it's kind of ugly. I'd rather use my website, but even trying that and seeing if that converts better too. And then it's really like anything. You have to just kind of see what works best because what works for someone down the road is probably not going to work for you. It's going to depend.

I mean, it might work for you, but it's all about testing and trying new things and seeing what converts because all these social media platforms are just changing on a daily basis, it feels like. It's hard to keep up. That's a fact. And one of the things that I've started seeing, the reason I mentioned the audio is I've seen some people start using… Oh, goodness, what are they called? I'm going to totally space out now. Oh, audiograms.

I've seen some people using audiograms because that way they at least can put the audio and this thing onto the Pinterest pin. So with the Pinterest pins, do you spend a lot of time in design or do you just create a template?

How do you do that? Yeah, I mean, I always have been a template person just because it's easier. So I usually have a couple of different templates that I rotate out and stuff just to make it easy because if you're like sitting there doing everything from scratch every single time, it gets to be time consuming. And if you're spending all this time designing this pin and it doesn't convert, it's like, well, you just wasted your time.

So I am a huge proponent of templates and every part of my life for Pinterest, for email, for everything, honestly, I am all about saving time. So templates, I think they still work pretty well.

The thing that I've noticed about just graphics for Pinterest in general is the ones that have people's faces on them, for example, if I had my face and your face of who are doing guest episode together on my show, those don't convert as well because people, they're not interested in that, especially because people who are on Pinterest, they're usually used to going to a blog post. So if they see these people's faces, they're like, what is that? And you know what I mean?

And just generally from Pinterest, just research in the past, people don't want to see faces. They like to see, stock images are great or if you can take your own kind of stock images too, but people's faces just don't perform that well as they would on Instagram or something because Pinterest people are looking for information. They're looking, obviously with podcasting, they're looking to learn, right? So they're looking to learn from blog posts and things like that.

So if they see your face, they're kind of like, okay, is this going to be an article about this person? How is that going to help me? So I've found that if you just put the title of the episode and a nice background image and your URL at the bottom or whatever, that does a lot better than if you have the headshots and stuff. And I've tested both ways and I find the headshots, it just doesn't convert as well, no matter what the pin is about.

I'm sure a lot of people just breathe a sigh of relief hearing you say that. So what advice would you give a new podcaster who's trying to use Pinterest? What advice would you give them to use it to promote it?

I would say start small because if you go all in with it immediately and you don't see all these results, you're going to be annoyed and feel like you wasted your time. Pinterest is a long game. It always has been. I've said that since 2016 when I started working in it. It's always been a long game. It's not something you can just pin and all of a sudden people are flocking to it. It's just like it lasts a lot longer than a lot of the other social platforms.

Like I know like an Instagram feed post is like super short shelf life. I want to say it's like a day maybe, maybe two days max. It's really short. So Pinterest is like months, months and months and months. Like that is really important. So like if you're pinning like images, you know, we're recording this in January.

So if you're pinning images in January, like I wouldn't expect to see them start taking off until February at the earliest because it just takes a while for the algorithm to pick it up. So start small. Don't have like super crazy expectations. It's not going to go viral as easy as it used to back in the day just because the platform has evolved. Just like it's not as easy to go viral on Instagram or even TikTok anymore.

So you just have to set your expectations and you know, just be in it for the long haul. And you know, if after six months you haven't seen any traction, then obviously I would you know, reevaluate if you want to continue spending time there. But don't just give up after like two weeks because that's not going to do anyone any good. I say that about podcasting too. Don't give up if you don't get a bunch of downloads after two weeks. Podcasting is also a long game.

I think some of the best tools are long games, so we just all need to be patient. And in this society it's really hard to be patient because like Netflix gives us like bingeable episodes that we get a whole season dropped in a day. But like you just need to be patient. What do you mean I can't get rich overnight?

Well, so one of the questions I have for you regarding like, you know, if I just get started now with Pinterest back in the day, you know, because I used to use Pinterest myself for blogging and so back in the day you had to engage with other printers. Do you feel like you still have to do that these days or is it more about putting the content out there? No, I don't think that's as important.

I know like back in the day they had like Tailwind had their tribes and stuff and you had to share other people's stuff and to get kind of that and there was group boards and all that fun stuff, which is like kind of not even I think they have group boards. It's still a feature, but like it doesn't do what it used to do. They used to be like massive for people's visibility, but now it's like, you know, not worth it.

So I think it's just, you know, just kind of going and going in there with that, you know, mindset. I want this to work for me and you know, you don't really need to worry about doing pinning other people's stuff. Sure, it's helpful and nice. Like if you want to save that post for the future, it looks good. Great. Do that. But like you don't have to do it anymore just to for your stuff to start kind of populating elsewhere. It's not as crucial as it used to be.

It used to be like share two pins and then, you know, it's going to show that you're pinning a lot. You're an active pinner so that everything is going to work in your favor. But now that doesn't really matter.

That's actually good to hear because I know one of the big things that used to annoy me is if I had to pin a bunch of people's stuff, then it was no longer my brand. It was no longer my page. It belonged to, you know, the masses. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and it was, you know, and sometimes like when you, especially with those tail end tribe things at the time is what they were called. I don't know what they're called now. I think they're groups or something. I don't know.

They changed the name a couple of years ago. But you had to like pin like two per every one you did or three per every one, whatever. They had different rules and stuff. And it's like, sometimes you would have to sift through like a ton to just find one that looked good because like I obviously the content was important to me, but like if the pin was ugly, I wasn't going to pin it either. So it's actually like I said, it's kind of good to hear that they've almost streamlined.

So maybe the problem isn't so much that it's a dumpster fire. It's that people don't understand that things have changed and you have to evolve with the platform. Yeah. Like anything, you really just need to see what's working now and evolved and, you know, test and try different things and don't be afraid to be innovative with it. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then, you know, that's just how it is.

I mean, you just can't, you can't sit there and get frustrated that you're trying strategies that worked in 2016 and 2022. It's just life. Things are going to change. Like platforms are going to change, especially since we don't pay for any of these social media platforms. None of them are. You can pay for advertising, but like the platform as a whole is like free. So like you got to, you got to be, you know, you got to expect them to change because they need to make money too.

So well, speaking of advertising, have you ever used Pinterest ads? Like have you ever done that? I did a long time ago, like with my blog, but I haven't tried it with the podcast just because it's just like, I've just, I've never been like a paid ads person. I feel like it's, you know, it's, it's useful, but like I didn't, I was always scared to put money behind something.

And then like, you know, I know it can set limits and stuff, but I was like, what if it like all of a sudden like malfunctions and they spend me, send like, you know, a thousand dollars on this one thing. I'm like, I know that's not going to happen, but like, it's just like something that pops in my mind.

So I've done it in the past and you know, it worked pretty well then, but that was a long time ago, so I can't really speak to you like if paid ads are the thing now, but I know there's a lot of people that still teach Pinterest paid ads. So I imagine that they're not a bad strategy if people are still talking about it.

So well, I think that everything that you've been sharing is kind of insightful and helpful because you know, one of the big things that, that people always fear is that, okay, I'm going to have to do all these things just to promote my podcast. But it sounds to me like what you have said is it's just kind of a cog in a wheel. It's not a whole, you know, it's not something that you put all your eggs in this Pinterest basket.

No, and you never should. You never should. I mean, when it comes to social media, even though Pinterest isn't like a traditional social media, it's, you know, it's a search engine more so, but you shouldn't put all your eggs in SEO's basket. You shouldn't put all your eggs in Instagram's basket. Like you shouldn't put all your eggs in your podcast basket. You need to like diversify.

And I'm not saying you need to be on every single platform ever because that's just exhausting, but like at least do like, you know, if you're doing the long form content with your podcast, do two social media channels because then you have like, you know, say you picked Pinterest and Instagram, you get two different kinds of like audiences you get.

It's not impossible to keep up with because you're not trying to do TikTok or Twitter or any of the other ones out there, but it gives you kind of, it lets you diversify where that traffic's coming from. So if like Pinterest isn't working, maybe Instagram's doing better for you. And you're not just like relying on that one platform to drive all the traffic to your podcast. I mean, even with podcasting, I always recommend like guesting on their podcast too.

That's a really great way to get, you know, grow your downloads and stuff like that too. So don't put all your eggs in one basket because you're, you know, in life generally, because that's just, you're going to get burned. Okay. We're going to repeat that again. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah, a hundred percent. That's really important to hear. So because you're a subject matter expert in this whole thing, I just have to ask your advice.

Would you say that it is okay to kind of repurpose those pins as Instagram content or TikTok content or should you just strictly focus on if you create a pin, you use it for Pinterest? I think you can repurpose it, but like obviously the image sizings are going to be different. Like the Pinterest pins are like longer and Instagram posts are like, you know, square and things like that. So you can repurpose it.

I think you can take it, it's more, you know, if you have like Canva, I know Canva has like, if you have the paid version, you can like resize it super easily. So you could do that if you wanted to. Um, and you know, also like kind of tweaking, like the description and stuff and making it into a caption so you can repurpose it, but it does need tweaking as anything would just like you wouldn't want to post the exact same thing on Instagram and Facebook.

You'd want to tweak it for that particular platform, but it can definitely be repurposed and you know, I think it should be, I am a huge proponent of repurposing because so are we. No one has time to be doing all different kinds of strategies on different kinds of platforms. There's too much. Well, this has been fantastic. Well, um, where can people find you online? Yeah. So the best place to find me would be Instagram. My handle is at jenny.sunnison. So that's j-e-n-n-y dot s-u-n-e-s-o-n.

That's where I hang out the most. Um, and then my website is just Savvy Podcast Agency. So if you're looking to launch your podcast or even take it to the next level with someone who helps you with not only like the back end editing and stuff and show notes, but also like the strategy and marketing piece of it, um, we offer those services as well. So that's, those are two places that we hang out or I hang out the most.

Now is there anywhere that we can direct someone if they want more information on using Pinterest for podcasting?

I don't have a resource on that yet. Um, I think, I think I should create one because it has been something that a lot of people have been asking about recently. Like I know I did an email a couple of weeks ago and that's the one I think you responded to and a lot of people responded to that one. So I was like, hmm, maybe this is something I should do this year, but I don't actually have like a physical freebie or anything right now, but I'm considering it.

Cause like that was my bread and butter back in the day and I love Pinterest. I still do. So I think, I think that might be something I'll work on this year. Like I said, it's kind of refreshing to hear that Pinterest is not basically dead in the water because you know, you read all these, these, uh, these reports of, of how it's like a dying platform, but it's good to hear someone have a refreshing perspective.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, like anything, like I, I'm sure people have said Facebook is dead and I think people said Instagram is dead too. And then like, here we are, they're still rocking and rolling. Um, it's just, I think it's not that it's dead. It's just, you need to adapt. And a lot of people don't adapt. They just try what they tried five years ago and expect it to still work. So well, before I let you go, I do actually have one more question with the, with the whole Pinterest thing.

Do you think that you need a separate Pinterest account just for your podcast or is it okay to have a Pinterest account that's for your entire brand? I think it's fine to just have one honestly, like because I'm all about making it easier. And if you have two Pinterest accounts, are you going to long into the other one? Probably not. You're, you're never going to, you're never going to do it.

You're just going to be like, you're going to find a reason why you shouldn't do it or you're just not going to do it. So like having everything in one thing, it like just gets the barrier, it makes the lower barrier to entry because you have that everything on that one account. So especially if your brand is related to your podcast, like for me, my podcast is about podcasting.

So like, it would be weird to have a non separate account, but even like if you're a business owner listening to this and your podcast is, you know, you say you are like a brand designer, but your podcast is for business owners, like that's still relevant in some way. And last year, like a hobby podcaster and you're, you don't have a business attached. Obviously you probably wouldn't want that on your personal account or like your business account.

But for the mass, for the most people, it'll, it'll work to be on one account. So I think that makes a lot of sense, especially if it's an extension of your brand. I say, why not just keep it all under the same umbrella? Yep, exactly, because it's confusing. Like I mean, I know for me, I have like separate Instagram accounts and stuff because like it didn't make sense to put some things under one, but with Pinterest, it's, it's different.

It's not, it's not like you're having conversations with people about one thing, but your accounts about another thing. I think that's the difference because it is, it is more like a search engine and it's not, you're not like having these conversations and you know, confusing people that way. So good stuff. Absolutely good stuff. Well, all right. So last question that I ask everyone before I let them off my show, and that is what is one question I didn't ask that you really wish I had.

This is so fun. I think, I think honestly, you really did cover it all, but I just want to give like one last thing and it's just like, if you are listening to this and you've thought about Pinterest, but never like went in, did it for whatever reason, we're all busy and you know, like some, I know for me I have like probably 40 things on my list of that I want to do, but I haven't yet for whatever reason, just, just give it a try.

You don't need to like, like I said earlier, you don't need to put your like your heart and soul into it and like dedicate 30 hours a week to it because that's ridiculous and it's not going to give you any better results, but just give it a try and see if it works for you. And if it doesn't, then you know it, you did it. So that's, that's kind of my last little caveat that I'll give you guys.

Well, Jenny, I think everything that you shared today has been pretty awesome and we're going to leave all of your links in the show notes and I just want to thank you one more time for being here with me today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I had so much fun. Well, my fellow podcasters, we hope you enjoyed the insights, tips and ideas shared in this episode to learn more about launching and growing your own show, head over to rss.com backslash blog.

And if you're ready to launch a podcast of your own, you can get started for free with your first episode on us. Thanks for tuning in.