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Transcription:

Good morning, internet fans. Ryan Perry here, Simple Biz Support. Today is Wednesday, June 22nd, therefore, it is Social Media Wednesday. I have the lovely and talented Sarah Giometti back from vacation. Good morning, Sarah.

Sarah Giometti: Good morning, Ryan. How are you?

RP: I’m doing good. I hope you had a great time. You were spending some time back East with your daughter who’d turned 21?

SG: I was.

RP: I’m glad to see you’re just wearing regular glasses, not sunglasses.

SG: Oh, I endured the South Carolina heat for her 21st birthday.

RP: All right. That’s a good mom right there. Speaking of enduring, and heat, and South Carolina, we’re going to talk about Pinterest and weddings. I have no idea what the relationship is there, but I’m sure there is one somehow, specifically, as far as using Pinterest to attract a local audience. I think people are pretty well-aware that if I want to do wedding planning, or if I want to find a barbecue, or if I want to whatever, design ideas for home, you go to Pinterest. But typically, that’s not a global, national level. I don’t know how many people really think about it from a local level, that we can actually target Sonoma County, which is a destination location for weddings because of all the vineyards around here, and the beautiful coast, and everything else that makes Sonoma County beautiful.

SG: And not just for weddings, it’s just utilizing Pinterest for your local audience for the small businesses where you’re not looking for a broad national audience. You want to get in front of the people that are going to buy your services, which typically are local in your, at least county, if not just your city. Pinterest also is indexed by Google, so it’s a win-win, not only if somebody’s in Pinterest doing a search that’s got some geographical information in it, you’ll pop up there, but it’ll help you be indexed for Google if somebody’s doing a straight Google search. It will drive them to your Pinterest, either board or pin, which could then drive them to your website. So it’s a much more targeted attack if you happen to be on Pinterest and that happens to be your target audience.

RP: Okay perfect. And so today you have three specific tips on how to make sure that your content has local intent behind it?

SG: Right, right. So if you’re using Pinterest, if it’s your target market, and you’re trying to find your local audience, the first one is adding geographical information to your profile. So if you go into your profile, go into the ‘About Us’ section where you can put your, what’s about you and your company. Having your geographical information in there is a way for you to show up, not only in the Pinterest searches, but in the Google searches. So for us, we would put either Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, Rohnert Park, California, that way, it narrows it down to where we are. Make sure it makes sense. Don’t just store keywords in there, use it in a sentence, ’cause the humans read it as well. But you definitely want to make sure you’ve got your geographical information in your ‘About Us,’ especially if your target audience is local.

RP: And that’s not like a field that you put in that says Location. You’re actually talking like in your bio, your description. And the one thing that pops into my head is if you’re going to do that is make sure that if you’re doing this for search relevancy, make sure you understand what people are looking for. So if you’re in Santa Rosa, California, as an example, and that you know people are searching for your service, product, whatever, in Santa Rosa, California, then go ahead and do that. Now, we’re using weddings as just kind of an example today, so it might be Sonoma County wedding destination or you might also incorporate not only Sonoma County but wine… What is it, wine weddings or vineyard weddings? I’m not sure. You have to do some keywords, but you can incorporate that also. And take yourself out of your own head, put yourself in your potential prospects, what are they going to search for. We also have North Bay, San Francisco. There’s a lot of different ways that you could spin it around here.

SG: Yeah, so it does. It all depends on who your target audience is and what you put there. So if we stuck with the wedding theme, it is a destination wedding, so you might want to have wine country wedding. However, if you’re a local shoe store that’s in Santa Rosa, then you’re probably just going to do “Santa Rosa Shoes,” so that people who are looking for… ‘Cause your target audience are the people who actually live here. So definitely take yourself out of the equation and see who would be looking for you most likely. If you’re wedding venue, a wedding planner, you’re probably looking for brides coming in here as well as the local ones too, but we are a destination wedding area. So think outside the box a little bit. Do a little bit of research and then have that as part of your bio in a way that makes sense.

RP: And makes sense is that it reads well. Because people are going to be turned off if you’re just keyword stuffing and it doesn’t read well. People are going to be turned off.

SG: Yeah, so make sure it makes sense, it reads well, and you have it incorporated in there. If you’ve got a keyword, you can write a sentence around it and then you can write a paragraph around it. It just takes a little bit of extra effort but definitely don’t keyword stuff.

RP: Okay, perfect. So I think we’ve got the destination, location part down. Step number two, or tip number two actually.

SG: Step number two, or tip number two is, optimize boards and pins for geolocation. So if we stick with the wedding thing ’cause it’s an easy one on Pinterest. It’s not all that Pinterest does by the way. But

[chuckle].. So Ryan rolls his eyes. Having a board that is, “wine country destination wedding” or something like that, naming the board with that geographic, or “Santa Rosa wedding locations.” Naming the board, naming the pins with a geolocation in it, that if somebody does that search either inside Pinterest search or on Google search, because the pins are indexed, then you have a higher opportunity of coming up for those local search results.

RP: Yeah, and the one of the things I’m thinking is that, since you have an unlimited amount of boards, hit all those different keywords, if it’s Sonoma County, then Healdsburg, and then Santa Rosa. Recommendation is, make sure the images are relevant to Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, as an example, Sonoma. Then you can do Napa County, Marin County, whatever your geographic area is, because you’re always going to be adding content anyhow, so I don’t think there’s an issue with having too many boards at that time.

SG: Not at all ’cause there’s plenty of content out there, and you can… It’s a way for you to segment, that you only put Santa Rosa proper venues and wedding ideas or other vendors, possibly. So if you’re a wedding venue, maybe pin stuff for a local photographer, local caterer, that are in the city of Santa Rosa on the Santa Rosa wedding board. Then you can go to Healdsburg, then you can go to… Then you do the wine country, where it’s the actual vineyards. So you can still have a lot of content and have a lot of segmentation that would be appropriate to have the geographical information in the boards, in the name of the boards, in the names of the pins, so that you come up.

RP: Okay. And then, option… Yeah, option number three. What else can we do?

SG: Tip number three is to re-pin and engage with other local businesses. So, do your own search and find other local businesses to engage with. Re-pin their stuff to your boards, and that way you’re getting exposure to not only that, you’re exposing their content to your users, and you’re getting exposure to their users, and you’re completing this local circle. And you’re getting engagement with other business owners where you can possibly build a relationship with.

RP: Yeah, definitely. And the smart thing is find people that overlap, but aren’t direct competitors, and those are going to be some of the best relationships. So, in this area I’m thinking wineries, I’m thinking catering companies, I’m thinking photographers, dress shops, all those different pieces that go into the wedding example that we’re working with is go out and search and find those people, and like you said, engage. And what’s really nice is that when you engage often enough, you start building relationships. And from those relationships, you can actually start coming up with marketing ideas of, “Hey, how can we work together to promote each other to each other’s audience?” And two is better than one type of deal, which is why you’re here.

SG: Yeah, you start building the relationship, you can start referring business back and forth, because you guys have cohesively worked together. And this works for any industry. It works for a service business. For Ryan and I, internet marketers, a graphic designer would be a great one for us, a web developer. Having a relationship with those people online, and finding local ones that we can help support and have a relationship with, is a great way to build that relationship. So you can do it if you’ve got a product business, a service business, it doesn’t have to be… Pinterest is more than just weddings, there are a 100 million people that use it, and it’s indexed by Google. So if your target audience fits that, there’s a lot of opportunity and creativity and think outside the box that you can do, and utilize it to target a local audience and get some more engagement.

RP: Right, definitely. Okay. So, why don’t we recap one, two, and three?

SG: Number one is add your geolocation to your ‘About Us’ section of your profile on Pinterest in a way that makes sense, using some targeted keywords. Number two is using geographic location on boards and pins, so that you’re coming up for that search. So we used the example, “Wedding Location Santa Rosa,” something like that. Then the third one is finding other local businesses to re-pin their content and engage with them to further build the relationship and exposure.

RP: All right. And so by doing these three things, you’re going to give yourself a better opportunity to show up locally, because you’re basically meshing with what Google wants and is expecting, and also Pinterest. I’m always blown away by companies, you just look at their website and it says, “Hey, we’re based in Santa Rosa.” And then you talk to the business owner and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I’d like to be found in Rohnert Park and Petaluma also.” Okay, well, your website says nothing about Rohnert Park or Petaluma, so how is Google or anybody supposed to know that you are also servicing these areas? So it totally makes sense to have the same thought process when pinning content.

SG: Right. And a quick thing on Pinterest demographics. It’s about 80% to 85% women, and about 15% to 20% men. So the men’s side is growing, typically affluent. So they tend to be, I don’t want to say older, but they tend to be more like the 25 to 45 crowd, and so they’re a little bit established in life.

RP: At 25? You’re older now, huh?

SG: I was thinking more like the 30 to 50, probably. That’s where I was like, it’s not older, but it’s not… You’re not going after the young teens.

RP: You’re not going after the tweens and all that.

SG: Right. You know the millennials aren’t quite on their… They’re slightly established, built on their career. They tend to be a little bit more affluent, middle to upper middle class and higher, so it’s not one to just go, “Oh it’s just women and recipes and weddings,” there is a lot more to Pinterest than that, and you got the added bonus of being indexed by Google.

RP: Right, okay perfect. That is it for today’s show on Pinterest. Sarah, as always, I appreciate the time and energy that you put into the show and looking forward to talking with you next week on social media Wednesday.

SG: It’s always a pleasure, Ryan. Thanks.

RP: All right everybody. That’s it for today’s show. Thank you very much for joining us. Looking forward to talking with you next week.