Around here we love to share our best Pinterest growth tips. We also love to hear and tell other people’s stories. We believe there is so much power in learning from other people. So today, we invited Gwen from Meraki Lane to share her story of starting a blog and her best Pinterest growth tips of how she leveraged the platform for her marketing.
When Gwen started her blog, she intended on using the money to pay for a weekly cleaning service. But once she started it, she realized it was much bigger than covering just weekly cleaning. Her story follows a path of taking one step at a time and following the things that worked for her.
Before becoming a mom, Gwen worked in corporate marketing. She worked long days and crazy hours. So when she and her husband welcomed their first daughter, she knew a shift needed to happen. It was a challenging transition to go from working long hours and feeling so accomplished at the end of the day, to hardly finding time to shower.
While her daughter would take naps on her, she found herself reading so many blogs and began to connect with a bunch of women online. Through their funny stories, tips, and tricks, she felt connected to people she had never even met before.
One day, she decided to start a blog herself. She started in the world of mom blogging, and her eyes were quickly opened to all the ways she could make money by partnering with different brands.
Building Her Business
What started out as an online diary, quickly evolved into a real business. With a real business, needs to come a name. Meraki in Greek means “with soul, love, and creativity”. That summarizes everything Gwen is about on her blog.
Then came time to build her website. She got an initial quote of $1,200 from a website builder. At the time she wasn’t even making that much, but after talking things over with her husband, they both agreed to take the leap. She initially set out to make enough money weekly to have a cleaning service come so she could really focus on managing her blog and writing more. Blogging brought her joy, so if she could just make enough to sustain the blog itself, that would be a win.
Over the years, Meraki Lane has grown from a one-woman business into a larger team. Below are some of Gwen’s best Pinterest growth tips.
Pinterest Growth Tip #1: Pinterest Is A Search Engine
Gwen was one of the early adopters of Pinterest. Back when the platform was just beginning to rise in popularity, content creators had to be invited to join. Meraki Lane received an invite in 2010, and Gwen thought it would be a great way to expand her business. She was amazed at how much traffic came her way.
Early on she noticed that Pinterest really was a search engine. She paid close attention to keywords, pin descriptions, and different styles of pins. She started learning what worked and what didn’t.
Pinterest Growth Tip #2: Stay The Course
Over the years there have been a lot of changes to the platform, but Gwen has never thought to jump ship. It is still her number one traffic driver with 75% of her overall traffic coming from Pinterest. While she has definitely worried about if things were to change, since Pinterest can be unpredictable, she reminds herself that there are seasons and change happens.
Like with any account, there are dips in traffic at different points in the year, but Gwen doesn’t focus on those. In fact, she hardly looks at her stats. When she does look at them more frequently, she starts to get hyper-focused on them and can get bogged down. She suggests looking at your year-over-year analytics every 3-6 months, but don’t spend too much additional time checking on them.
Gwen’s best Pinterest growth tip for anyone using it as a marketing tool is to be open to trying new things, but if it’s not for you, don’t force it. What works for one person, might not work for another. As your navigating all these different things, it’s easy to take in information from other people. Don’t be afraid to put your blinders on. Keep focused on your end user, and what you know they want to see.
Gwen admits that she has struggled with imposter syndrome over the years. When she first started out she didn’t want people to know what she did. Pinterest was the perfect place to market her business because she didn’t have to show her face. Even as her business has grown, Pinterest has remained the easiest platform for her to leverage.
Related: Pinterest Business Tip: Embrace The Changes
Pinterest Growth Tip #3: Find What Works For You
For anyone new to the blogging or the Pinterest scene, Gwen encourages them to find what works for them. Figure out what your passionate about, and go all in on that one thing. Don’t pay attention to all the outside noise from others. Remember that there isn’t necessarily a “right” and a “wrong” way to do marketing, especially on Pinterest. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you aren’t going to be successful because it’ll feel too difficult.
If you are interested in hearing more from Gwen, head over to Meraki Lane or follow her on Pinterest and Instagram.
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