Pin Power Podcast by Cara Chace

Staying ahead of the emails constantly streaming into your inbox can feel like a never-ending black hole. As an entrepreneur, your time is better spent managing your small business and delivering to your customers - not trying to find that Zoom link email or not knowing if you responded to that client request.

Every entrepreneur wants to sit down at their desk in the morning not feeling behind or buried in administrative work. You want everything you need at your fingertips and distractions held at bay.

The problem is that we sometimes have workplace culture expectations about responding to emails quickly and being available during non-work hours via our smartphones. When you combine that with not having the systems or tools in place to organize and declutter your email inbox, the time lost trying to manage your emails can take a significant amount out of your productivity time.

After several years in business, I have fine-tuned a few strategies for not only managing my email inbox effectively but also how to actually get to Inbox Zero consistently. The tips, hacks, and tools work with each other and protect my precious time and attention. I encourage you to try any and/or all of them and see what works for you!

Every online entrepreneur wants to learn how to market their business in a way that feels good and actually works to generate leads and sales. Somewhere along the way, you might have heard that Pinterest marketing is one of the best organic traffic sources to market your business.

Pinterest isn’t another social media platform - it’s a visual search engine that uses keywords to show the right content to the right users. People go to Pinterest when they’re looking to solve a problem or get ideas and inspiration for a project. By using the right keywords and having scroll-stopping graphics for your content, Pinterest will suggest your blog, or lead magnet, or product to the users it thinks needs it.

The problem is, there is a lot of old, outdated content out there for how to use Pinterest as a marketing strategy for your business. Many of those teachings rely on hacks and gaming-the-system advice that are now likely to get your profile marked as spam.

Some of the advice assumes that you are sitting around in your yoga pants all day with coffee that’s still hot, manually pinning your content several times a day. We all know that’s not real life, and your daily routine can’t revolve around Pinterest.

Add to that the fact that Pinterest has gone through some MAJOR shifts in their platform and algorithms in the last couple of years, and it’s hard to sift through what now makes a good Pinterest marketing strategy, and what routines or processes will get you nowhere fast.

We all want to believe we can better ourselves and change bad habits. Much like starting a new diet on Monday, New Years Day provides a starting point that the whole world can get behind. Much ado is made of January 1st and resolutions - and for good reason.

I have both stuck with and broken many resolutions over the years. But like with most goals, the idea and the vision in my head of what life would be like once I made those changes is far more romantic than the reality. The reality is we have deeply cut neural pathways that define our behavior - and changing those habits is a feat like no other.

I don't know about you, but although I know myself to be a fiercely determined individual - I'm not really keen on setting myself up for negative self-talk from the beginning of the year.

Anytime you realize something isn’t working for you, your business, or your life - is a good time to make a plan to improve.

More than any other technique or plan I have tried, I know that creating more simplicity in my life is the quickest path to improving habits.

Who doesn’t love a good productivity tip or hack? It’s easy to believe if we find the right app or trick, we’ll magically become more productive and check off the never-ending to-do list. But getting more done in your day is about more than the perfect tip - it’s about understanding your own ideal week and how you work best.

When I started my own business, I had part-time child care for my toddler and no idea how to structure my day. Then I read a few blogs about time blocking and thought I had discovered scheduling magic pixie dust. I mean, who doesn’t love a good system?

Have you ever wondered how you can better take advantage of the holiday season traffic spike on Pinterest? It can be hard to think of new and useful ways to market your business on Pinterest if your business is something other than DIY, decor, fashion, or food. This easy guide is actually helpful for those of you that aren’t in a classic Pinterest category to still ride the wave of Pinterest holiday traffic.

The holiday season on Pinterest is full of decor ideas, inspirational DIY crafts, and homemade comfort food recipes. Typically the amount of traffic coming to Pinterest spikes during the holiday season, and searches for all things Christmas and the Holidays start showing in summer.

One of the most challenging things about owning a small business or being an online entrepreneur is how to keep track of your time, tasks, and projects.

If you spend any time searching on Pinterest for planner inspiration, you’ll quickly see that bullet journals, digital and printable planner ideas, and creating your own DIY planners are everywhere.

If you’ve been feeling like Pinterest is an untapped resource for your business - you’re right. Pinterest marketing - both paid and organic - has a better ROI for your time and money than any other social media or digital marketing platform I’ve seen out there.

As an online entrepreneur or small business owner, you know the value of learning how to do less to get more results. Those results can be traffic to your website, email list building, and paid products or services.

In 2020 Pinterest came out with several big changes to their best practices.

Historically, their move towards what we now know as “fresh” Pins started when they essentially put Board Booster out of business.

Board Booster worked by looping your Pins over and over again across different boards and group boards. It was a set-and-forget system that many people found worked well for them to build their Pinterest profiles.

Problem was, this created a user-experience that wasn’t in line with Pinterest’s goals. Pinterest wants relevant, useful, new content for their users to see in their feeds - not the same old viral pins seen over and over.

So while Pinterest officially came out with the fresh Pins guidelines early 2020, this shift in best practices had been brewing for quite some time.

This week I am sharing something much more personal than I normally do. Having been in law enforcement, hyper-aware of the dangers of the internet, and a mom of a two littles - I keep my personal life pretty private on my official business social media accounts.

When I decided to start my own business after a few years in social media management, I was basically starting from scratch. I had managed millions of fans and more social media accounts than I can remember…

…but it was always for a brand or other small business - never for myself.

I had to build my online presence and expertise as quickly as I could, both through blogging and a social media marketing strategy.

It wasn’t easy or comfortable.

What I want to talk with you about is the importance of consistency and how you end up ahead of the game in the long run.

I’m going to do that by describing one of my most important self-care routines, and how I realized how similar it is for building an online business. Stick with me and I promise you’ll see how you can use these lessons to help your own entrepreneurship mindset.

If you’re an online entrepreneur, you probably know what a lead magnet is. It’s also called an opt-in, freebie, etc. It’s some sort of free, valuable content that you give to your audience in exchange for their email address.

The reality is, social media is a fantastic awareness tool, but it’s difficult to convert directly to sales. By providing a lead magnet to your audience, you are taking the first step in getting your potential customers into your sales funnel.

Do you pay attention to that scroll feeling? When the longer you scroll, the more comparisonitis sets in - or you feel like you should be doing all the things for your business and you're just overwhelmed.

Right now social media quite frankly, it feels like crap. So, I am choosing to refocus my business in a way that feels good to me and makes sense from a business standpoint. What my entire business comes down to, the whole reason I'm on a mission is to help you. I want to help you figure out this whole online business working from home world domination in our comfy clothes thing. And that means paying attention to where you are as my audience and what you need.

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Being an entrepreneur is far more of a mindset game than you probably ever imagined. The ups and downs of success, running your own small business, and staying positive can be a challenge. How do you stay proactive as you navigate your day?

You don’t have to let your day run you. YOU have to be the CEO and run your business according to your life and your priorities. It's all about focus and mindfulness - plus being willing to try new systems and ways of being productive.

Tune in to see if you do some of the most common things that make you a reactive entrepreneur, and how you can become more proactive little by little.

It’s always a good time of year for a gift guide! Whether it’s Mother’s Day, a birthday, Christmas, or just to find something special - I am rounding up my favorite gifts for women entrepreneurs in 2020.

Let’s face it, 2020 has turned out to be a little…weird. If you’re working from home, it’s so nice to have an environment that makes you feel inspired, creative and productive.

Whether you are looking for the perfect gift for yourself or someone else, you’re sure to find something special on this curated list!

Life is crazy right now! So many of us are figuring out how to navigate school closures, partners that are home, and still running a business.

Don't let self-care get lost - I think it's especially important right now.

In this POWER TIPS episode I walk you through some of the ways I make sure I get in self-care as a mompreneur - even just a few minutes here and there.

If you’ve had “use Pinterest better” on your small business to-do list for awhile, you might have realized that you’re overwhelmed with all the information out there and you don’t know where to start. This is the most common problem I hear from online entrepreneurs that keeps them from moving forward with a Pinterest strategy.

I know that feeling! We all have those “must-dos” that we know will help our business but feel insurmountable or just a gigantic pain in the pahtootie.

I’m here to tell you 2 things:

It’s getting real out there. Scary, overwhelming, and anxiety-inducing shizznit is happening in our world.

My daughter’s school is closed starting Monday, and I know many people who are dealing with that, plus figuring out how to earn a living and keep themselves and their families healthy and safe.

I was Voxering with my mastermind buddy yesterday morning, and she was in tears because she felt so out of control about it all. 

One of the things she said was that she didn’t know if she should go back to the store to get bread - that she had only gotten snacks and coffee the night before and was unsure if going to get bread was giving in to the fear, or if only getting snacks was too frivolous. I told her to go get the bread if it made her feel better and more in control.

I think so many of us feel that way about business right now. What should we say? What shouldn’t we say? Do we keep going with creating and earning a living? Do we bury our heads?

I don’t think there’s a right answer - you have to do what feels right.

But if you’re affected by being stuck at home, your kids being at home, worrying about sick relatives, having to figure out how you’re going to pay your bills, or any of this craziness - I want to give you some ideas.

Here’s a list of things you can do if business is slow or you need to take some positive action:

1. Go through your entire site on a mobile device (when was the last time you did that?) - check for anything that looks wonky and fix it.
   
2. Update as many blogs (or whatever content you create) as you can for better SEO and updated information.
   
3. Own an online store? Do some back end clean up to make sure your inventory and “back office” of your e-commerce setup is running smoothly.
   
4. Brainstorm ideas for how you can take some (or all) of your business online if you’re a brick and mortar business.
   
5. Talk to a handful of your ideal customers to get a better sense of what they need from you.
   
6. Create a new lead magnet to build your email list.
   
7. Learn something new - like any of the courses you’ve bought in the last year or two but haven’t finished yet.
   
8. Do as much “back office” cleanup as possible - like organizing your G/Drive, taking inventory of the apps and tools you pay for, or checking your website for broken links.
   
9. Rearrange your desk and/or office - there’s something that happens when you rearrange that lets in fresh, creative vibes.
   
10. Plan out your content calendar and batch as much as you can.
    
11. Review and journal about your business goals.
    
12. Reach out to your biz besties to see how they’re doing and how you can help each other.

I get scared and overwhelmed too - but I’ve learned to always, always look for opportunities to feel better and be inspired.

Sometimes it hard to know exactly where to start when you’re planning to launch a Pinterest marketing strategy. Sure, you might know you need a Pinterest business account, and you should probably create some pins for your own content or products...but after that it can get a little...well, fuzzy.

Which direction do you turn for best practices? How do you create pins? What boards should you have?

I don’t know about you, but it’s almost impossible to find the time to research how to start using a whole new marketing platform. That’s why Pinterest (or anything else you know you need to do) can keep falling off that to-do list - until it’s another year gone by and you didn’t take action.

I feel you, boss - and that’s why I created the Pin Power Roadmap™. 

Clutter… Mental clutter, visual clutter, physical clutter, emotional clutter. There are so many kinds of clutter and they all drag us down. Regardless of what form it takes, clutter saps our energy and determination - both key traits for being a successful small business owner.

The sneakiest form of clutter we deal with on a day to day basis is electronic/digital clutter. What does that mean? It’s the full email inbox of sales and marketing, the content-filled newsfeed, the overstuffed bookmarks bar, the files overtaking your desktop screen.

They are all little pings for our attention, whether we realize it or not, and keep us in multitasking distraction mode instead of focused priority mode.

A smart CEO, online entrepreneur, or small business owner knows that they need to see a return on investment (ROI) for anything they do for their business.

Some ROI is easy to see - like the amount of money you pay for advertising a product vs the profit from those sales. Some ROI is a little more difficult to track, like investing in graphic design or determining the value of an email address.

Once you decide to invest time and/or money into something for your business - in this case Pinterest Marketing - you need to understand how to analyze that strategy, figure out if it’s working or not, and know how to make adjustments to fix it.

As I’ve niched my services into Pinterest marketing and management, I’ve learned one of the two biggest factors in if a client’s Pinterest strategy works or fails - it’s their graphics.  A couple of weeks ago I re-published a blog on how I used Pinterest to completely re-brand and refresh my business graphics and style guide.

I knew from looking at my Google Analytics that something significant had happened to make my traffic from Pinterest slow to a crawl. Turns out it coincided with re-doing my Pinterest templates about 6 months prior. The graphics didn’t hit home with my Pinterest audience and people weren’t clicking through.

If you think your branding, graphic design, and marketing creative is not quite landing with your target audience, it can be hard to know where to start to refresh your brand.

You want to make your brand identity about who you are and what your business represents. It should speak to your ideal customer and draw them into your online business world.

How do you know which metrics really matter when it comes to your Pinterest marketing strategy??

One of my favorite things about Pinterest is it’s NOT traditional social media. Followers, likes, comments, etc. haven’t really mattered since 2014 and it’s truly the “introvert’s platform”.

Pinterest is a visual search engine that’s designed to get casual browsers to click through to your website - how refreshing is that??

Last year, Pinterest introduced (or I should say, re-introduced) a Following feed as part of its interface.

Does that mean followers now matter on Pinterest?

And what other metrics should I be paying attention to as an online entrepreneur?

You don’t need huge chunks of time to make headway on your Pinterest marketing strategy. All you need is 15 minutes (or less!) to accomplish and check off lots of items on your Pinterest to-do list.  

These are the perfect things to do when you’re waiting for that next appointment, waiting in the school pick up line, or just need that super satisfying feeling of crossing something off your list. Some of these things require only a couple of clicks and a minute or two! 

Multi-tasking is the bane of the solopreneur's existence. You have to wear all the hats: operations, client management, creative department and social media/PR/marketing strategy.

Add in spouse and parent, and you reach almost spontaneous combustion constantly. To use a favorite expression - YOU CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES!

As I get deeper and deeper into being my own boss, I am continually working on ways to be more productive and just not feel so scattered every day.

There are endless articles that assert how bad multitasking actually is for success and productivity.

As I work my way out of half-done and into accomplished, here are the best tips and tricks I use to stay on task.

It’s that time - a clean slate, a new start, big dreams - the New Year. You might be in the midst of business planning and laying out marketing plans for the year. You’re thinking about content and if you can finally outsource some tasks to give you more time to prioritize things you love doing.

Guess what? So is your target audience! While we don’t technically have to wait until January 1st to start improving something in our life, it’s a pretty universal date that everyone agrees upon.

I guarantee your audience is thinking of ways to better their lives, and I’m going to show you how you can unlock this mindset in a powerful and authentic way by using Pinterest strategies and marketing.

If you’re a virtual assistant looking to add Pinterest management as a service, or you’re a business looking to hire someone to manage your Pinterest marketing, you need to know the 9 things a Pinterest Manager must do for a business.

Maybe you’ve hired someone in the past who just pinned randomly with no understanding of your business’ goals.

Maybe you’ve realized as a VA that offering Pinterest services is the next lucrative income stream for you and you love being on Pinterest anyway, so hey - it makes sense.

Either way, read through these key responsibilities to really understand the big picture of Pinterest management. They’ll help you hire more effectively or blow your clients' socks off with your expertise.

As an online entrepreneur you know there are a couple of key elements to creating consistent content and maximizing your time. 

The first is re-purposing - meaning using one piece of content to create several pieces of marketing.

The second is batching - meaning taking a chunk of time to do one task that will last you for a while.

There is no better combination of re-purposing and batching than using Pinterest and Tailwind for your content marketing.

Ready to try running paid advertising campaigns on Pinterest? If you’ve been confused - or downright afraid - to try Promoted Pins, this blog is going to walk you through everything you need to know to run your first paid ad on Pinterest.

Learn:

1. What to do before you get started
2. The different types of campaigns
3. Ad requirements
4. Setting up your first traffic campaign (choosing your pins and step-by-step)
5. Evaluating your campaign + troubleshooting

If you’re anything like me, graphic design is not a natural talent. This doesn’t mean you’re not creative - it just means you need a little practice.

Clickable pin graphics are one of the most essential elements of a successful Pinterest marketing strategy. 

If you’re not able to hire out this piece to a professional, here are a few key elements for best practices on graphic design for your pins, plus a handy checklist for creating the perfect pin on Pinterest.

Have you ever thought about all those little things that make being an entrepreneur - especially a work from home business owner - really awesome?

This blog was originally published in 2015 and it was a fun one to go back and read and think about where I was as an entrepreneur then and where I am now. There have been some really big changes in my life (2 kids now instead of 1, plus my office mate passed away after a long, loving 16 years).

But on the whole - these 26 reasons still hold true and I still love every single one of them - I wouldn’t have it any other way!

You probably know that I focus on Pinterest marketing + management for my clients and agency services, but did you know I absolutely LOVE teaching about entrepreneurship and productivity too?

Inside Pin Power Method™, we talk a lot about owning a business and the marketing, systems, and lessons that come along with being an entrepreneur. Yes, it’s focused on Pinterest - but we support each other and collaborate on so much more - come join us!

How do you provide that great expert content that will convince people they need to buy/hire you?

Blogging. Or really - any “content” that you are creating to provide valuable information to your audience that lives on your website. So this could also mean podcasts, vlogging, etc. We’re just going to call all that content “blogs” for the sake of this article.

The purpose of creating blogs is to drive people to what you own - your website and email list.

But when you’ve been creating blogs for years, things can get messy.

I’m speaking from experience here.

Since I started blogging, my methods and graphics have evolved quickly. Keeping track of all your blogs, updating them so they're not dead-ends, and having a system around updating your blog is a huge process for sure.

It's totally one of those things that once you make the time investment up front, it will save you oodles of time in the future.

I want you to start next year by running a tight ship - so here is the step-by-step process I used (am using, because I'm not quite done) to update my blogs.

Want to create video pins on Pinterest but don’t have vertical videos to use? The good news is you can easily create vertical videos, using your existing square or landscape videos, using Photoshop.

In this quick Photoshop tutorial, I show you how to use your existing video content to create a “stacked” video pin. A “stacked” video pin is one where half of it is video, and half of it is a static image.

Watch the tutorial over on the blog and read on for why you need to be creating video pins as part of your Pinterest marketing strategy.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or you have a very important person in your life who runs their own show, CEOs need some extra TLC. We work with a passion and a drive that steers our priorities and sometimes that means long hours and not enough self-care.

Not only am I an online entrepreneur that works from a home office, but my favorite clients and students are as well. I’ve put together a list of favorites that will make any entrepreneur’s day brighter, more relaxing, and more productive.

This gift guide has ideas for all price points and both men and women!

In this episode/blog, we're going over how to plan a business planning retreat. Whether it's a day away, or 3 days holed up in a hotel, you need to create the space to plan the future of your business.

Away from the emails, the instant messages and text, the home to-do list, the kids, the...well...everything that’s part of day to day life.

Learn the 5 steps I take to plan for a successful business planning retreat.

In this episode/blog, we're going over what your need to do as an online entrepreneur on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to keep your small business neat and tidy. Why?

In this episode/blog, we're learning how to create a custom 404 page for your Squarespace website. Why?

It is a virtual certainty that you eventually will have a Pin out there that will lead to old content or sold out products.

Instead of worrying about it - because once a Pin has taken off on Pinterest there’s no going back - do your best to take care of your website visitors by directing them to what you have going on now.

In this episode/blog, we're learning more about how Pinterest marketing works, and why it's not social media.

Plus, learn the 5 core steps for a Pinterest marketing strategy.

These are the 6 books that have helped me grow as an entrepreneur in the most profound ways. In this episode, I not only give you an overview of what the books are about, but I relate why they were so impactful for me.

I find the books that spark my interest, motivate me, and make me think in new ways are usually more about practical advice and implementation, with a dose of mindset awareness.

Using your email list subscribers as part of your Pinterest marketing strategy can be one of the best ways to retarget your audience.

Lots of online entrepreneurs I talk to don’t even realize Pinterest has the capability of using your email list to create custom audiences. After a few years of running Promoted Pin campaigns for clients, I know it’s one of the most effective ways to get conversions with paid advertising.

You might have heard that using Pinterest to drive traffic to your website can help you set up an opt-in (aka, lead magnet) funnel for your audience. The goal of a traditional opt-in funnel is to provide your website visitor with something valuable and free to get them on your email list.

The idea is, once they’re on your email list, you can send them targeted and useful emails designed to build a relationship and eventually turn them into a paying customer.

But did you know this idea can work really well for product-based businesses on Pinterest too?

Learn the top 10 sales funnel ideas you can use for your Pinterest marketing strategy.

READ THE FULL BLOG POST: https://www.carachace.com/blog/top-10-pinterest-sales-funnels-products

Links Mentioned:

📌JOIN PINTEREST POWERUP ➜ https://pinterestpowerup.com

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Learn how to simplify your email Inbox system and get to Inbox Zero every week.

Use this 3-step system of 6 labels to declutter and organize your email.