I adore Colie James and was beyond honored when she asked me to come on the podcast and talk about building a steady stream of potential customers through SEO and Pinterest. I have a recap of the interview below (it was SO good), but make sure to read her show notes here (and tune into the entire Marketing with Intention Series!).
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Table of Contents
Everyone’s got an origin story – what’s yours?
Oh, it’s such a fun, typical, not-a-straight-line journey. Actually, I started a blog when I was planning my destination wedding. I was like, “oh, there’s no information on planning destination weddings” at the time. So then, that blog turned into a destination wedding planning business for other people. And then during Covid, obviously business for destination weddings was a little slow, and so I was like, “okay, what can I do now? What works really well for me?”
Then, I realized that I was always getting asked about how I get clients for my destination wedding business, which was almost exclusively blogging and Pinterest. Which, honestly was a wake up call, because if you asked me where I was spending the most time, it was Instagram. So basically, yeah, since 2020 I’ve been doing it for other people and it has just been so fun. Working with other business owners is the best.
How Do You Come Up With Blog Topic Ideas To Get Potential Customers Through SEO?
Yeah, I always think one of the things people struggle with the marketing is you kind of have two types of marketers, you have the creative type and then you have the data type. I’m more the data type. So that’s also another reason why I love blogging and Pinterest, it’s 100% based on keywords. I’m looking at what is going to rank on Google, and what is related to content that you already have. Then, I’ll just go down those rabbit holes, find keywords that I think will be best, and then create a topic around that really solid starting point.
And you, Colie, are good example because you have a ton of content already, right? I feel like for anyone listening that is just dabbling their toes, it’s really easy to find the first 30 keywords. It really is. And then as you go, it’s not that it gets harder, it’s just sometimes you then have to get a little more creative or how do you combine topics or collaborate with people or stuff like that.
But really, it just starts with keywords. So you could use something free like Ubersuggest or something paid like SEMRush or Ahrefs and go from there.
Why should someone blog if they are marketing exclusively on Instagram right now?
I think about blogging like investing in the stock market—everyone kind of knows they should do it, but not everyone is making it a priority for whatever reason.
So the reason I think people are so attracted to Instagram is such a quick win kind of platform. Even if you’re not getting the ROI you used to from your Instagram marketing, you’re still getting the likes and the conversations and it really makes you feel good and like you’re moving the needle in your business.
Compare this to blogging where, let’s be honest, you’re sitting in a room by yourself, you’re hitting publish, you don’t even know if anyone’s going to read it in the near future. It’s not surprising why people choose Instagram, is it?
So the reason that blogging is so important is first, it’s so much longer lasting than Instagram. So I have blog posts from 2, 3, 4 years ago. They’re still on page one, still ranking very well, still bringing in new clients. So if you’re going to focus on creating content, why not invest in something that is going to have that longevity versus some people have a thousand Instagram posts that they’ve posted over five years that are doing nothing for them now.
The second reason is that it really compounds. So like I was saying, with a thousand Instagram posts, let’s say you have that, it’s really hard to make lemonade out of old posts. But with blogs, every single time you blog, you have a new chance to rank for a keyword and not just one keyword, but sometimes multiple keywords. So if you blog once a week for the next year, you have 52 blog posts at the end of the year. So even if then 2025 is crazy and you slow down, you still have 52 that are potentially working for you.
How long do you think it takes to see an ROI from a single blog post?
On average, it takes 90 days for a blog post to get indexed. However, if Google trusts your website, if you’re being consistent and putting out weekly blog posts and stuff, Google scans your website a lot sooner. It gets ranked a lot faster. Compare this to if you have this one singular amazing blog post, Google might find it at 90 days, but it’s not shooting you straight to the top because it doesn’t trust the blog post or the source yet.
On average, when somebody is looking to make blogging a strategy, I always tell them 6-12 months of consistency, which I know feels like forever. But it also goes so fast though. It really does.
How can we make sure Google is finding us?
Getting more backlinks. It can be hard to get backlinks when you’re looking at getting other websites quoting you, but you can always create backlinks on Pinterest, even if you’re not using Pinterest as a Pinterest marketing strategy. Having links to your website from Pinterest will automatically boost your authority of your website.
Next, also just heading to Google Search Console and submitting your blog post is a key. Then you’re telling Google, “hello, I have a new blog post. Come find it”. Then, you can kind of check back a week or so later, and sometimes you’ll get data there where Google will be like, “I found this but I didn’t index it”. That’s typically a sign that you need to make some updates and add more “value” because it’s like, okay, Google found this, Google’s not interested.
That’s OK! You can add value in so many ways. It doesn’t necessarily mean more and more text. It can be adding more resources. If you’re writing a blog post about Dubsado, and you’re linking at the end of your blog post to more Dubsado posts, or it can be something like updating your images. Plus, you should also check, is there some sort of tech problem that needs to be addressed?
You Mentioned Pinterest, Let’s Switch Gears. Why should we care about Pinterest?
Yeah, so Pinterest, it’s such a unique platform in that it is very top of funnel. So before you start Pinterest, you need to make sure your website is set up to convert in some way. I also always find this is where we always have to check our vanity because so many times people are like, I want to grow my Pinterest, I want a hundred thousand, a million monthly impressions, whatever. And especially with local businesses, it’s so hard. You just have to get comfortable seeing smaller numbers and being like, but those are the people that I want, and that can be so challenging.
Then, the other thing to remember is that pins show up on Google. One, your boards will show up on Google if people are searching for stuff, and two, they’ll show up literally in the image tab on Google. So sometimes people, if you have a solid Pinterest strategy, sometimes people are finding you on Pinterest, but they’re not attributing Pinterest to the source of how they found you. So it can be tricky to track, like you kind of mentioned earlier, UTM codes can help with that.
What else do we need to consider when marketing on Pinterest?
Just keeping in mind, one, you have to have fresh content, whether that’s blog posts or podcast show notes or new products being added to your shop or something. Pinterest doesn’t want you to just keep pinning to the same link over and over again, and Pinterest traffic doesn’t like that either. They want to binge your content and have something there to consume, and then you as a business owner need to realize that they’re brand new cold traffic and you need to get their email address. Or if you’re not great at email marketing, I always like to include a find me on Instagram.
If you are an extrovert especially and you love having your conversations on Instagram, having something to help you drive cold, fresh eyes onto a platform that you like that’s already working for you is a great idea. It’s also easier to outsource because it’s not your personality. Outsourcing Instagram is hard.
One thing I love about podcasting or blogging is that I can update it later as things change. Should we be tweaking things as we go?
For anyone listening that’s struggling with perfectionism or anything like that, it’s so nice to be able to put blog posts out into the world and like you said, update them later, but also just not spend eight hours on every single one. See which ones of rank and start performing and then update those ones and put your effort there.
Actually, to your point about Pinterest, I had a pin go viral about five wedding packages under $5,000 for my wedding business, and it’s like it was bringing me a bunch of American traffic. I’m in Canada, we can only work with Canadians. Obviously I have a team that handles Love at First Travel now. However, at one point, I was like I have this blog post that’s getting a ton of traffic, so I whipped up a little ebook for $17, started selling it, and I’m not getting rich on it or anything, but it’s like a few hundred bucks a month. It was well worth my time to do it once three years ago.
It’s a good idea for you to be like this blog post is doing well, so I’m going to focus on just updating that one to see how I can get whatever I can out of it versus if I tried to make every single blog post perfectly. I’m not saying that you want to put out garbage, but I just mean put it out and then as things do well, look at how you can make them even better.
Pinterest has static pins, video pins, idea pins. What should we be focusing on?
So Pinterest has made a bunch of changes. They have a new CEO that’s, I feel like simplifying it because it was getting to trying to compete with the other platforms, and it really is its own thing. So they got rid of idea pins or story pins, and now it’s really just standard pins or video pins, and here’s what I would say about that. Video pins operate similarly to reels. They might get seen more, but they rarely get clicked on.
So I might post one or two video pins a week. Usually it’ll be a repurposed reel of face to cam usually because anything with music, the music’s going to get taken down. So voiceovers don’t really work. Plus, if you think about Pinterest users and buyer behavior, they’re not really looking for that kind of content anyway. So definitely 95% of my effort is going toward static pins.
If you have the bandwidth, how many times should you blog or pin per week?
For blogging, one post per week. Then, for Pinterest, I usually say anywhere, depending how much content you have, it can be like five to 20 pins a day. But it can be, when I think of a pin, it can be one image to three to four different boards. So it’s not necessarily like you need to create 20 new graphics a day. You can repurpose them.
That is usually what I would recommend, just because Pinterest is like blogging, it’s already slow, I say 6-12 months of consistency. So if you’re doing one to two pins a week, it’s just going to be very, very slow to see results for you. And yeah, I just don’t want that for you, is basically it. So I will try to, on average, do five per blog post-ish!
How long does it take to do Pinterest or Blogging each week?
Realistically 2-3 hours per week to do it well.
How much time do you spend marketing on your Instagram?
Oh God, very little. I feel like I go through phases, other people, but Instagram is not a huge marketing channel for me, honestly. So it’s like if I’m on there more, it’s just personal. I have extra time and I’m having fun with it.
Do you have any tips for anyone about marketing with intention versus throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what stick? How can we all be more intentional with our marketing?
Yeah, I feel like the whole topic of this episode was just putting maybe not all your energy into things that don’t pay off right away, but some of it, right? Also just be mindful, I guess, of your time spent on other platforms. Before you’re like, I don’t have time for another platform, remember that chances are we all have time that we could scale back on other things that are the “feel good platforms”.
I’m like, I just want to beg every single person to take blogging and Pinterest seriously, because it makes such a difference. And like I said, if you can stick to it for 6-12 months, I know it’s a long time, but once you see the momentum, you’re like, I’m never stopping.
I would also say, if you’re like, I can’t give up those quick win platforms right now because I do need clients immediately and I’m not in a position to necessarily invest in the long-term, starting with just blogging and using that as a cornerstone piece and then using the content that you create on your blog post to create reels and to pull carousels from is such a good way to reuse that energy.
