345 | The Complete Pinterest Strategy For Service Clients On Repeat

Most service providers who try Pinterest either post randomly and quit when nothing happens, or post consistently without ever understanding how the full strategy connects. This episode is the full picture, the complete Pinterest strategy that works as a system, so Pinterest keeps sending you the right clients even on the weeks you barely touch it.

In this episode:

• Why Pinterest is a search engine, not social media, and why that changes everything about your strategy
• How to set up boards that act as amplifiers for every pin you post
• The 5 places keywords matter most on Pinterest
• What to actually pin, and why you're never creating brand new content just for Pinterest
• Why consistency beats volume, and the pace that actually works long term
• How long it really takes to see traction, and why the first few months feel quiet
• The one metric worth tracking (hint, it's not impressions or saves)

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Transcript

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Most service providers who try Pinterest do one of two things. They post randomly whenever they remember, they get frustrated, they think it doesn't work, and because nothing happens, they end up quitting. Or they hear it takes time and they post consistently for a while, but they never quite put together the full picture of how everything connects together. This is the full picture. It's the full picture. The complete Pinterest strategy that works as a system so that Pinterest keeps sending you the right clients even on the weeks that you barely touch it. Welcome back to Marketing Strategy Academy Podcast, where we help female entrepreneurs go from marketing overwhelm to an easy streamlined strategy and system that includes Pinterest and repurposing content to grow their businesses when they have very little time. I'm your host, Jen Vasquez. Let's jump right into it. I've been using Pinterest since 09, before Instagram even existed. It is the number one source of traffic to my website. Not Instagram, not Facebook, not YouTube, Pinterest. And it's oftentimes more than all of those put together. And everything I know about what makes it actually work for a service business like my own is what I am going to be sharing with you today. The foundation. Pinterest is a search engine. Everything about the strategy starts from this one idea. Pinterest is a search engine, not social media. This changes how you even think about everything that you do on it. On social media, you post to your followers and hope that the algorithm shows it to even more people that have not seen your information. On Pinterest, people come actually looking for what you have to offer. They find it through a search, they click through to your website, they do not need to follow you first. They do not need to even know that you exist. They just search for something and you show up. Pinterest has 631 million monthly active users. That's 631 million people who are on Pinterest every single month. And they do 80 billion searches, B 80 billion searches per month. And 96% of those searches are unbranded, meaning people searching for topics and solutions, they're not actually searching for specific accounts or specific business names. Both of those pieces of information were included in Pinterest's earnings report. That means the playing field is wide open for service providers who set up their account correctly. When you think of Pinterest as a search engine, the whole strategy clicks into place. Your job is not to post engaging content and hope that people choose to follow you. Your job is to be findable when the right person searches for what you do. That is a completely different game and a much more sustainable one, also. Tell me in the comments right now, has Pinterest ever sent you a client or a lead? I want to know if it's already working for you or if you are still waiting for it to click. Drop that below because that will help me in creating new videos moving forward. Boards, your contents filing system. Think of your boards as filing cabinets. Pinterest uses them to understand what topics your account covers and who to show your content to. Each board needs a keyword-rich description, two to three natural sentences about what that board holds, the pins and the content that are going to be in there. Not a keyword list, a paragraph, a human-red paragraph that reads like something a human would write. And here's the strategy that most people miss. Your boards act as amplifiers for your pins. When you pin to a board, Pinterest uses the board's topic to help decide who to show that pin to. So in a well-named, well-described board makes every pin you put on it more discoverable. Keywords, how you get found. Keywords go in five places on Pinterest. I mean, it goes in a billion other places, but today I'm covering the most important. Your profile name, your bio, your board names, your board descriptions, and your pen titles and pen descriptions. The more consistent and specific that your keywords are across all of those places, the clearer the signal you are sending to Pinterest about who you are and who you serve. For your pen titles and pen descriptions, the rule is always the same. Use your keywords naturally in a human readable way. A pen description that reads like a paragraph beats a list of keywords every single time. One keyword per pin. Do not try to rank for everything on one single pin. Create five pins from your one piece of content. That could be a lead magnet, it could be your services, it could be a blog post, it could be a YouTube video, whatever. So you want to create five pins for that one piece of content, each targeting a different keyword, each reaching a different audience, depending on what they're searching for in that search area. And I did a whole video on finding the right keywords for your Pinterest account if you want to go deeper on that. I'll link it in the description and somewhere up above. Content. What to pin and why. Everything you pin should link to something on your website. Pinterest is a traffic driver, not a destination. The goal is always the outbound click. Your content strategy on Pinterest mirrors your content strategy everywhere else. If you publish blog posts, those become pins. If you record a YouTube video, those become pins. If you host a podcast, the episodes, show notes, become a pin. You are not creating new content for Pinterest. You are making sure that your existing content is findable on Pinterest. For each piece of content, you create five different pins with different images, different text overlay, different titles, and different keyword angles. It's the same URL. And when you pin these pins, you're gonna space them out every seven days apart so that you're not flooding Pinterest with the same link on all pins all in one day. This is the system that makes Pinterest sustainable for service providers. One blog post can generate five weeks of consistent pinning and five different audience segments finding you. If you want to grab the free resources that go along with this whole entire strategy, the keyword cheat sheet, the pin checklist, the foundations checklist, they are all in my free visibility vault, and you can grab them at learn.genvasquez.com slash resources. Consistency over volume. Here is the strategy truth that saves so many service providers from burning out on Pinterest. You do not need to post a lot. You need to post consistently. One to three fresh pins a day on a consistent schedule will outperform 10 pins in one week and nothing next. Pinterest rewards accounts that show up regularly. It instills a trust. They trust you more, so they're gonna send your information out to more people. It learns your content and it distributes it more widely over time. The reason most service providers feel like Pinterest is not working is one of two things. They quit before the three to six month mark when pins actually start to gain traction, or they post inconsistently. So Pinterest never really builds a clear picture of what their account is about. Set a sustainable pace. Batch your pins, schedule them, and leave them alone to go to work. A pin I created in September of 2014 is still in my top 10 pins right now in 2026, almost 12 years later. That is what consistent keyword-optimized content does on a search engine. It keeps working long after you stop even thinking about it. So, how long it takes and what to watch for. Pinterest is not a fast platform. That is the trade-off for the longevity that you're getting from Pinterest. Most pins take at least three to six months to properly index and be distributed by Pinterest. The first few months can feel quiet, and that is totally normal. Where some people think, ugh, it's not working. It's actually working in the background. You just don't know it. So what this means for you is that you plant seeds now and you harvest later. Unlike social media, where the harvest is done in 24 hours, on Pinterest, the harvest can keep coming for months and oftentimes, like my situation, years, like years and years. While you are waiting for traction, the one metric worth watching is those outbound clicks. Not impressions, which just tell you that your pin appeared somewhere in the search results. It could be five pages down that nobody even gets to, but it's there. It's an impression. Not saves, which are super nice, what Pinterest loves, but it doesn't tell you if the person ever even became a client. Outbound clicks are the people who actually come to your website. That's the number that you are gonna directly connect to whether Pinterest is working for your business. So go to your analytics, change the sort from impressions and sort down in that drop-down menu to outbound clicks and look at the patterns. What keywords are those pens using? What images, what text overlay? Do more of what is already working for you. Here's the reality. Understanding this strategy is one thing, right? Actually setting it up correctly for your specific business with the right keywords, the right boards, the right pen templates, and a real content plan, that's a whole other thing. And if you want it done with you so that you can walk away with everything set up and ready to go, I have something called Pinterest in a box where you get custom keyword research for your business. The board names are gonna be created with keyword-rich descriptions for you, 30 custom Canva templates in your brand. Your first 30 days of pins are gonna be done with those Canva pins that you can then reuse over and over and over again, and a 90-day content calendar. And the best part, the part where my clients are loving, is the two months of Voxer coaching so that you can have me right there as you find your rhythm. Pinterest works for service providers because it's a search engine that meets people at the exact moment when they are looking for what you do, not scrolling, not doom scrolling, actively searching with intent. Your job is to be findable. Keyword optimized profile, specific, well-named boards, five pins for each piece of content, consistent daily pinning, and outbound clicks as your North Star metric. Plant the seeds now and Pinterest will keep sending you traffic and clients. And if you want to keep learning Pinterest with me week by week, my membership, the club, is where I go deeper with members every month through live sessions, masterclasses, and QA's. Link is also in the description. Tell me in the comments what is the biggest thing that has been holding you back from getting serious about Pinterest? I see you watching my video and following along and wondering if it's gonna work. So tell me in the comments what is holding you back because I would love to make a video just for you. Subscribe because next week we are talking brand photography and how to use your brand photos on Pinterest to drive outbound clicks.