328: Pinterest vs. Google: How Nadalie Bardo Gets 2x the Revenue

[00:00:00] Bree: I get to kick this episode off by saying that I have some good news and that is that Pinterest is working. Phew. We need something, something good to work over here, right? I am really excited to have Natalie Bardot back on the podcast. You guys know she is my go to Pinterest expert. She is our Pinterest VFF and she comes on to just talk about what is happening with Pinterest right now, how we can use it to grow our brands, not just traffic to our blogs, but also to digital products and everything else.

And why now is a really good time to hone in on your Pinterest strategy. Not only that, but Natalie has so many awesome things going on. We've done a workshop together last year, and I've got the replay for you guys in that. I'm going to link that in the show notes. We also are going to link to her course, PinPopular.

She is relaunching it with brand new videos and game changing new bonuses, including a custom chat GPT that writes flawless pin titles and descriptions. It's incredible. She's been texting me like, Oh my God, it's working. It's amazing. I can't wait for everybody to get their hands on this. It's going to save them so much time.

So if you're not in pin popular, you definitely want to check that out. So I'll link to all that in the show notes, but let's go ahead and dive into this episode and see what Natalie has to say about Pinterest this year. Welcome to the thrive podcast, where we believe creators deserve more. More money, more freedom, and even more love for what they do.

I'm Brie Pair, your coach for content creators, and I know the struggle. The long hours, the endless ideas, the feeling that success is just out of reach. But here's the truth. You've got what it takes. And this podcast? It's your shortcut to getting there. From strategies that actually work to behind the scenes insights, we're unlocking your potential one episode at a time.

So if you're ready to turn your creative hustle into a thriving business, let's get started.

Hello, Natalie. How are you? Welcome back to the show.

[00:02:25] Nadalie: Hello, my dearest Brie. How are you? I'm

[00:02:28] Bree: so good. Thanks for coming on to chat about Pinterest and specifically about Pinterest in 2025. I feel like we, there's so much going on on the internet that is just absolutely wild from, you know, Google's helpful content, not so helpful content update to the TikTok ban and Meta being crazy.

That's. You know, you and I were chatting and I'm like, you know what? Let's, let's do another episode talking about Pinterest. And just, I, I know that it is working because I'm besties with you. But I, I want us to like have that conversation and share that with everybody. Just, you know, like. Yes, it is a good thing to do to take care of your content.

So I'm just diving in as if everybody knows you already, which they should, but can you just tell everybody about yourself and where they can find you on the internet while they're listening?

[00:03:26] Nadalie: For sure. Hey everyone. So I'm Natalie Bardo and I love to say that I'm your pin coach. That's actually where you can find me at yourpincoach.

com. I am here to help creators to figure out Pinterest. I feel like there is all this mystery around this platform, but I firmly believe that if you want to level up your impact or your income, the number one platform you need right now is Pinterest. And, you know, I see it. Every single day. I firmly believe it.

I live it. I see my student succeeding. And I just know that when it comes to Putting our energy into something like we are putting our hearts our souls our dollars Every waking hour of ourselves into being creators. This is not an easy An easy choice of a life path. Let's be real, right? There's so many learning curves.

And then, you know, maybe you finally figure it out. Things are finally working. And then here we have, you know, the end of Google organic search being the way it was, right? We have the birth of AI, right? And the dominance of AI, we have. platform algorithms going awry, you know, possible bans, like, come on, what is like, can we just catch a break?

And if you feel that way, guess what? The break is right there. It's called Pinterest. You know, it's so simple when you just get started and kind of like, clear. The cobwebs and maybe even this feeling like another platform, trust me, like, this can be the platform, you know, I stake everything that I do on that very fact, you know,

[00:05:17] Bree: Yeah, like you're, you're not even posting on social anymore.

Like I'll go over there and I'll send you funny posts or something. And I'm like, Nope, she's just not posting. She's living her best Pinterest life and thriving. And I love that. You know, I, what was it? I think when Instagram did like their trial reels or something, they released something more recently and I commented over on the CEO of Instagram Adams, um, post about it.

And I was like, Awesome. One more loop that creators have to jump through. You just added one more thing to everybody's plate and it just gets exhausting. And we need a break and that's what I preach all the time. It's like that you as a creator get to choose the platforms. You get to choose how you grow.

Yes, social media might be the flashy, shiny object that it seems like everybody is on. But there are girls that are making a killing and they're not on social media. So Pinterest is alive and well, and so I think one thing is either they're using it, barely using it, skeptical of it, and, or just like really overcomplicating it.

So I would love for you, while we have you here, just to like, can you break it down for us? Like, I think overcomplicating it is what keeps happening. Is that we think if we're going to do it, it's got to be this big thing and we have to pin 20 times a day and it's so complicated. Can you just break that down for us?

Like, how can we easily do this?

[00:07:00] Nadalie: For sure. So I, the first thing you need to know and understand about Pinterest is It's not social media. It loves to get grouped in with that category, but it's not. It's a search engine, a visual search engine. And I'm sure you've heard that before, but what does that even mean?

Right? And it just simply means that the foundation of any Pinterest marketing strategy is keywords, right? And if you have any experience with trying to get your blog posts or your YouTube video to rank in any search results, you know that it's all about choosing the right keywords. So if we come at Pinterest from that perspective, you know that you just want to make sure you're creating.

A pin, which is an image. You know, there are also video pins, but a recent study by Tailwind found that 90 percent of, I believe they said 90 percent of the top ranking pins were We're pins that go viral. We're image pins. So even easier, just make images, right? You don't need to worry about videos unless, you know, maybe you have, you're making reels.

Maybe you're making TikToks. Great. Throw those up on Pinterest, but you want to make sure you just optimize them with keywords. So in your heading, in your description for your pin, you just add in those keywords and you're making sure it's optimized. This is just like, if you're publishing any content, like I'm sure the vast majority of your listeners Are used to writing blog posts.

They're used to creating YouTube videos, right? So anytime you publish that content, you know, there's a title and a description. So all you want to do is make sure you have those keywords properly in your title, in your description. That's how it's going to get found. Okay, Pinterest is a visual search engine, right?

So, we need to be designing pins. That's what we call them. They're images. You know, the best size that's recommended right now is the 1000 by 1500. You can even do like the 1080 by 1920 pixels, which is the Relu or the dimensions of any, you know, TikTok reel, right? Mm-hmm . As long as it's in that longer format, we wanna make sure that image is clear, right?

Because we've gotta remember, 80 plus percent of users are on their phones, right? They're using the Pinterest app. Yeah. So that's why we want our images to be longer, because they are going to take up a lot more. of the space of the screen, right? Which means that we're more likely to get the click. When it comes to designing pins, the best choice you can ever make is just get some templates, yo!

Like, just like with anything else. Like, Brie, you love templates. Yeah, why

[00:09:39] Bree: complicate it? Like, that's, you know, I think it's so funny. And this is like a small, like, side tangent. But. I went to school for graphic design and it was like you had to come up with these designs like out of thin air and from being inspired by this other random thing and that often felt really hard and it's made me want to like in, in, you know, all the, all the extra jobs that we want to start is like going back to school and teaching graphic design because it's like, my God, we were over complicating things.

And this is one of them. Like, yeah. You don't have to design your own pins from scratch. Why? Save yourself the headache.

[00:10:18] Nadalie: Yeah, get some templates. You know, I have pin templates. There are some pin templates available to you right in Canva. I would just encourage that if you are using templates. You don't want to forget about making them your own.

You want to add in your branding. What are we talking about with branding? You know, we're talking about visual branding here. So your colors, your fonts, just make sure it matches the vibe of all the other content you're putting out. And like, to me, this is going to be your biggest time investment is just customizing.

A handful of templates, just like you would for any other platform. Trust me, posting on Pinterest takes one tenth of the energy, if not less, than creating a reel. Okay? You want me to create a reel? You need to lock me in a cave for a month. Maybe. Maybe. Don't forget the flashlight. Maybe you'll get something out of me.

But I can't. I can't do it, okay? So It

[00:11:16] Bree: takes so long. It takes me so long to edit a reel. Oh my god. You

[00:11:20] Nadalie: don't need to do any of that. It's a graphic. And you can have a template. So have a handful of templates, know what your keywords are, and just get in the habit of designing them. So I'm a fan of Batch doing everything.

Right? So I don't know about you, but that is the fastest way for you to get things done. You know, if you do something once, you know, it's gonna take you, say, five minutes. But if you stack it and you design 20 pins in one go, you're gonna get faster. That's just how amazing the human mind and body is, right?

We get faster at it. So, sit down, you have your templates, design a bunch of pins. Here's another way for you to design more pins, right? So don't just have one pin per link, right? So when I say link, that link can be a blog post, podcast episode, YouTube video, it could be a product, you know, we've got all these links, right?

And when you're on Pinterest, it's a good thing to have many links, many links to your content, to all your beautiful products, whatever it is you're putting out into the world, your videos, your podcast episodes. So instead of just designing one pin for one link, You want to design multiple, which is why it's good to have say three to five templates, and then you can just crank those out and then schedule them out, like spread them out.

I'm a fan of waiting a week before I share the same link again, and this is how you can easily fill up your schedule and start to gain, gain traction.

[00:12:57] Bree: Overwhelmed with your content biz. Tired of doing everything yourself and still not seeing consistent income friend. It's time to shift shift is my high touch coaching program for bloggers and content creators ready to grow strategically, make more money and finally find freedom in their business.

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[00:13:38] Nadalie: what's that number one question you've been seeing Bree about Pinterest? Ask it.

[00:13:43] Bree: How many pins do I need to pin a day?

[00:13:46] Nadalie: All right, y'all. We need to talk about this. Okay. Controversial moment coming. Um, yeah. You do not need to pin 20 times a day. It is not 1990. It's not 1990.

[00:13:58] Bree: Sorry. When did Pinterest start?

Wow.

[00:14:00] Nadalie: Pinterest was born in the 1800s. Aren't you familiar? No. It's not. 2019 is what I meant to say. We do not need to pin that many times. And yeah, the tech bros might tell you that you do, but. Also, can we talk about that? There is a reason why every other tech bro is telling you about Pinterest marketing.

There's a reason why all these Pinterest podcasts are popping up, why left, right, and center. I keep getting emails about this new Pinterest tool, this new Pinterest AI thing. Why? Because Pinterest works. Do you think they would be putting money into building software? And launching courses if Pinterest didn't work, right?

So take that as a sign, right? But don't listen to what they say because you don't need to pin that much as a Pinterest coach I recently surveyed my audience and the number one reason Why they have not? Started with Pinterest is lack of consistency, right? So your goal right now is not to burn out. Your goal right now is not to do more than you need to.

Your goal right now is to make Pinterest a habit. Your goal is to insert it into your workflow so it just becomes the thing you do and it's no longer the thing you've been avoiding or feel overwhelmed by. So if somebody is telling you you need to pin 20 times a day, They're trying to burn you out or they want to sell you some crappy AI tool for designing pins that is just going to create low quality pins, you know, quality beats quantity when it comes to Pinterest.

And I think that's true for, you know, many platforms. So what's a realistic number of pins per day? If you're just getting started and you're like, Oh my gosh, I'm overwhelmed by Pinterest. How about we master pinning once a day? That's one. New pin. That's an image that has never been added to Pinterest before, right?

And if you design your five templates or you purchase them, right? You can for one link create five pins easily and then you're gonna schedule those out, right? And you can repeat that for say seven links and you already have a month. It's not that challenging To just sit down and get that done, right? If you're a little bit more ambitious and you're like, okay I can design a graphic, Natalie, you know, don't worry, Bri, I'm not staring at a blank screen.

Great. How about you challenge yourself to do two or three, right? If you are like, I want to be omega level pinner, like, yes. Okay. Go for five. But I don't even pin five a day. And I think I have like 7 million views right now. I don't pin five times a day because I strategically choose my keywords and to when to target them.

Right. So I think like, if you just know your keywords. When to pin to them, and you have your graphics, then you're good, you're golden, and this is how you can start. And to me, my goal of being on this podcast is to encourage you to start. And to give you a way that is not gonna burn you out. Bri and I've been burnt out, okay?

We've been zombies. Okay, we, we have been, there, there are, there's evidence out there.

[00:17:15] Bree: It's not pretty. Right?

[00:17:19] Nadalie: Literally zombies. I don't want that for you. And you know, that is not the price that you need to pay. I promise. It's not the price to play on Pinterest. It's not.

[00:17:27] Bree: No.

[00:17:27] Nadalie: You just need a handful of templates.

You need to know your keywords and you need to just begin. At a frequency that you can maintain, because it is a long term game, right? Just like everything else is, but you don't, to me, like, you don't need to give it 2, 000 percent of yourself. You don't need to burn out to make it work. You don't need to pay for some AI tool that's gonna pin 50 times a day for you.

You don't need to do things. Pinterest is a completely free platform. It costs you 0 to open a Pinterest business account. It costs you nothing to access Pinterest trends or to use the Pinterest search bar to see what keywords show up so that you can target them. And this is a message, especially for y'all who maybe lost a lot of your Google traffic.

I did too. Last March, I lost 70 percent of my traffic, but I did not lose my Mediavine income. Why? Pinterest. Right? And right now, Pinterest, the RPM for Pinterest is twice as high than it is for Google, right? So you just need half as many clicks from Pinterest to get back to where you were. So if that's not encouragement enough, I don't know what is.

[00:18:43] Bree: Yeah, I didn't realize the RPM was that high compared to Google.

[00:18:48] Nadalie: Yeah, I can tell you what mine is right now. So it says for me that my RPM for Pinterest is 27. For Google, it's 1211. Oh my gosh.

[00:19:00] Bree: Crazy. Yeah. Almost triple. Wow. That is so wild. Yeah. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, I think everybody just wants something that is going to be consistent and we want something that is going to work.

Right? And what is amazing about Pinterest is it doesn't have to take So much time, right? You're already creating content. You already have blog posts, YouTube videos, email opt ins, all of these different things that are just sitting there waiting for more views, waiting for more people to see it, right?

How many of us like promote like that piece of content when we first publish it? And then never share it again, right? Like, that's what we're doing over here is like, we have so many opt ins and so many blog posts and podcast episodes that we're just going through and grabbing those and putting them on Pinterest.

And we have pins for days. And so why not, like, Bring traffic to that stuff that you worked so hard to create. That's, you know, the beauty of Pinterest is like you're getting your thing seen again. Mm

[00:20:12] Nadalie: hmm. And not just like for the 15 minutes after you posted it.

[00:20:17] Bree: Exactly.

[00:20:17] Nadalie: But like, they will continue to be discovered, right?

And this is how we're going to build momentum. Right. And I see it. Honestly, I wouldn't be telling you it works if it didn't.

[00:20:27] Bree: Yep. I mean, you have helped hundreds and thousands of people be successful on Pinterest and take time back, right? Like, when you get frustrated by an algorithm or something, you know, being crazy or even Google, like That when that happened, that sucked.

I mean, there's, there's no other way to put it. That was really, really unfortunate. And we still are crossing our fingers. Some people have seen like a spike and seen it come back, but like not everybody. And so blogging is still not dead, you know, finding, you know, search engine, you know, keywords aren't dead.

It's just don't, you know, same thing we always talk about. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. So don't fully rely on Google. Because obviously Google can't be trusted to get their shit together. Um, so let's, you know, let's diversify. Let's put our content also on the Pinterest search engine as well.

[00:21:24] Nadalie: I, I honestly firmly believe it is the best choice you can make.

And right now is the time to make it. Stop putting it off. Stop waiting. Start designing pins, like add it to your content, make it part of your workflow. Like if part of your workflow is making a reel, okay, just make one graphic and start there. And then maybe when you have, you know, five pieces of content, sit down and batch design more, go schedule those out.

You can schedule directly on the Pinterest website. You can schedule 30 days at a time. For free, doesn't cost you anything. You don't need to purchase a scheduler. You can, like, if you have Canva Pro, you can schedule pins over there too. You can go get Tailwind, like just choose whichever one is going to work for you and work for your workflow.

I think another question is always like, what's better scheduling pins or manually pinning? What's better? Is you actually doing it? That's, that's the answer. Get it on

[00:22:22] Bree: Pinterest.

[00:22:24] Nadalie: Yeah. Like whatever is. It's doable for you. Go do it! You know? I

[00:22:28] Bree: can't manually stay consistent every single time, so I gotta schedule things.

Like, I don't, I can't work like that, because sometimes my brain is tired, or some days I'm feeling a little burnt out, so schedule it. Yeah, and that's what, you know, Pinterest is. Having that option where you can just schedule things in Pinterest now, you don't have to go pay for Tailwind. I love Tailwind, but you don't have to have it.

You can even just use the free version of Canva and you can make it all work. It works regardless of your budget.

[00:22:58] Nadalie: You may have heard we said free, free, free, free, free. Pinterest marketing is free. Organic Pinterest marketing is free. You do not need to pay. a dollar for advertising. This is completely organic and free leads and clicks.

This is how you build your audience. If you have a podcast, let's get you some listeners. If you have a YouTube channel, let's get you subscribers. If you have products to sell, let's get you purchasers. Okay. And you can do all of that on Pinterest for free.

[00:23:30] Bree: We

[00:23:31] Nadalie: love three voice on that one.

[00:23:34] Bree: They're gonna, they're gonna have a million questions after they listen to this episode too, right?

It is because they're going to go get started and then something's going to happen. We're going to get a little stuck and you are just, I mean, we've only been talking for 21 minutes, but, um, you are a wealth of knowledge and information and you have your website, your pen coach. com. You have a YouTube channel.

Full of tutorials. So can you just tell everybody like where they can find you? Tell us all the content that you've got out there. Tell them about the free masterclass, everything.

[00:24:09] Nadalie: Yeah. So your jump off point for this is to go to your pin coach. com. Once you go to the website, you'll see, you can sign up for my free webinar.

My masterclass is called the top three mistakes you're making on Pinterest and exactly how to fix them today So I break down the most common mistakes that i've seen I give you solutions and there's a sweet offer in there for you You can also access any of my free resources. I have a pinterest best practices cheat sheet Which breaks down what to do, what not to do.

I've got board cover templates for you. I've got pin templates. There's so many amazing resources on there. And also, this is a brand new site I just launched and rebranded. We have blog posts coming soon. You know, you can check out my YouTube channel. I, it is my goal, honestly, for this year to answer all of the top questions about Pinterest, right, and to help you to take action.

It's worth it. It's a worthwhile investment.

[00:25:09] Bree: It's your one stop shop for Pinterest. Like, you have any questions on Pinterest, you want help with strategy, you want to feel like you're not going it alone, like yourpincoach. com. Natalie has made it like the One stop shop for Pinterest. That's where we send everyone so you guys definitely head over there Get started just like she said just start with one pin a day Just but even more than that right like even sometimes that it's like, okay one pin a day but what you said of like You need to incorporate it into your workflow.

I feel like that is the only way you're going to stay consistent with it. At least for me, right? Like if I'm like, make it like a completely separate task from everything else, like, yeah, I could sit down and batch it, but. I, and I love batching days, but also like if you just make it a part of your workflow, right?

Like you write a blog post, you share it in these different places. Part of it before you can say that that blog post is quote unquote done is making your four pins and scheduling them.

[00:26:12] Nadalie: Yeah. Or honestly, I break it into two parts and. You all just have to figure out what works best for you because we're all all of our brains are different, right?

Yes, so When I publish a blog post before Even before I hit that schedule button in my social sharing plugin The pin is there the pin description is written so that as soon as that content goes live One of my actions is to save it to pinterest, right? So to me that blog post isn't done until there's at least that one pin and it's just a variation of the feature image, right?

We all know what a feature image is or what? I'm sure you even design like the social sharing image, right? Like I just also make sure there's a pin version of that and that it's embedded in the blog posts and it's good to go. So as those come out, you know, the pin is there it's pinnable. Then I will sit down and batch design pins for the season.

I'm all about. Seasonal content. So if it's spring, I'm creating, you know, I'm posting about the spring, right? I think people are way more engaged with you when you're actually giving them solutions to the problems they have now, right? When you're tuned in to where they are and what they need, right? So for example, it's January, right?

I've already done scheduling all my Valentine's Day stuff. all of my February stuff that's done. It's pinned. I'm like now moving on to like winter being over and spring. So I'll sit down and I'll batch design for all of my pieces of content that are relevant to the upcoming season. So like, it's not just new content.

Go look at your archives of all the amazing stuff you've created and go design some pins for that too, right? So I'll sit down, I'll batch design my pins, save them all to my computer. So that when I want to go to Pinterest and say, I'm gonna schedule out 30 days worth of pins, everything is already there.

I'm good to go. And I can just speed through it quickly. And I know it's done and it's doing its thing and I can just go enjoy the rest of my month. Right. So that's my workflow. You know, you can find the workflow that works for you, whether doing it all together or, you know, spacing it out in the batching and the creation phase.

You just got to find your workflow because I'm sure like many of your, you guys make reels, maybe you make TikTok videos, do you make them one by one or do you batch do them? Either way, just apply that same mindset to Pinterest, you know?

[00:28:38] Bree: Yeah. And it's going to last longer than those are.

[00:28:42] Nadalie: Oh, yeah. Give them legs,

[00:28:43] Bree: too.

Like, if you're putting your reels over there, like, sending traffic to your Instagram, even. Like, there's no rule saying you can't send people from Pinterest to social media. Do what you need to do to grow and make that money. Like, we're all about that. Like, we all need to make money. That's why we're doing this.

So, amazing. Okay, Natalie, thank you so, so much for being here. You guys head to YourPinCoach. com to get All the resources, everything you need, all the freebies, all the pin templates, and the support from our girl, Natalie, who is our pin coach. You're amazing. Thanks for coming on the show.

[00:29:22] Nadalie: Thanks for having me.

[00:29:23] Bree: All right, you guys, we'll see you back here in a few days with a new episode.

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