PBC Spotlight: Budget With Mel

[#1]

Budget With Mel, Small Business, Merchant/Shop, Creator

📍 Location: Iowa

💬 Description of business: Personal finance blogger

📌 Pinterest profile: https://www.pinterest.com/budgetwithmel/ 

👤 Community profile: About budgetwithmel | Pinterest Business Community

*Disclaimer: We recently announced an update to our content creation tooling on Pinterest that combines and simplifies our organic Pin formats. Due to these recent product updates, some articles posted prior to May 2023 may be out of date.

Hi! Tell us a little bit about Budget With Mel and how you started using Pinterest!

I’ve been on Pinterest since high school (wayyy long ago), but I didn’t start using Pinterest as a business tool until I started my blog in 2017. Even then, I was creating Pins irregularly. I took some breaks from my business as I started having kids, but have for the most part been a faithful Pinterest user for my blog business since I started it! I guess you could say I’m an OG Pinner ;).

What are some of your business goals? How has Pinterest helped you reach your goals? 

My main business goal (right now) is to find my audience and provide them with valuable information. Pinterest is a great platform to do so, not only to bring awareness to my actual blog, but to start serving my audience without them having to leave Pinterest (via Idea Pins). Additionally, it gives my audience a place to organize their ideas and inspiration- which hopefully includes my content! 

Why did you join the PBC? What have you found that’s been valuable about being a member?

I joined the PBC initially so I could check for updates/best practices from Pinterest and also collaborate and share ideas with other creators and businesses. I really like that the PBC allows you to share successes, challenges, strategies, and more with other creators. I love to learn from others.

Tell us about the success you’ve seen using Pinterest. Can you tell us more about your strategy and the results you saw?

I hopped on the Idea Pin trend right as Pinterest rolled it out, and started playing around. I immediately saw a huge surge in engagement, impressions, saves, and followers. At first, I just posted about whatever I felt like (related to my niche of personal finance). As Pinterest started rolling out more tools, like trends, I changed my strategy. I also started to focus on keywords and finding the right keywords by using Pinterest’s search bar, as well as creating an ad campaign and using the keyword tool within the ad generator to see what keywords get the most traffic in my niche. I also use Pinterest’s audience insights and Pin insights to get a general idea of what kinds of Pins perform well over time. Sometimes there’s a specific topic that performs well all the time, and sometimes there’s a topic that performs well seasonally.

What aspects of your business have you been focusing on recently?

Lately I’ve been focusing on publishing content regularly (easier said than done being a stay-at-home mom of 3 kids), building an online course, and expanding the digital products available in my shop as well as marketing those products, which I’ve been able to do via Pinterest by becoming a Verified Merchant and by tagging my products in my Idea Pins!

Why did you decide to become a Verified Merchant? What are some of the benefits you’ve seen being a part of the program?

It seemed like a practical way to put my products in front of more people. I like that there is an easily accessible “shop” tag on my Pinterest profile so people can quickly browse while staying on the Pinterest platform instead of having to click a bunch of links! 

Talk to us about your experience using Idea Pins, what have you learned? Do you have a top performing ad, campaign or Pin that you can share with the community?

I’ve learned to focus on providing value to my audience and the growth, conversions, etc. will follow. I always try to ask myself, “how can I best educate them on this topic?” I also look at my analytics to determine what type of content performs best. I’ve noticed that infographics do well, and content where I visually show what I’m doing step by step (like making a monthly budget) also performs well. People like to see exactly how you do it, so they can replicate it. 

Just a practical tip- I try to batch create content. One content creation day I’ll create a bunch of Pins about budgeting, do a bunch of keyword research specifically about budgeting, and then post those Idea Pins with different variations of keywords and content type (infographic vs video). Then I’ll move onto debt or retirement planning or whatever else. Batch creating my content has been extremely helpful for efficiency. 

Paycheck Budget Idea Pin 

How to Save for Your First Home

What tips would you share with other small businesses and merchants?

Don’t compare your progress to other creators! Be inspired and learn from them, but compare your progress to yourself. Everyone has unique challenges related to their business, personal life, etc. and it can be easy to think, “wow it seems so easy for them.” Or you can be tempted to think “wow I think my content is way better than this why am I not getting the same results as they are??”, just keep putting in the work, trying new things, learning from mistakes, and focusing on your progress (not someone else’s).

If you could request ANY feature for Pinterest, what would be #1 on your wishlist?

Sorry, I have 2 :). I would love it if I could link my Etsy shop and make a catalog, currently I don’t believe Pinterest supports Etsy. It would be helpful to be able to link your Idea Pin to a blog post somehow, and just put links in general (any link) in your Idea Pin. 

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Thanks for sharing your Pinterest journey with us, @budgetwithmel! 

**If you're interested in being featured on the PBC in our next spotlight, please fill out this form.**

[bodymindmood]

@PinterestJoan @budgetwithmel 

This was a great Spotlight thank for sharing this information.

I enjoyed reading this and I love your Tip to small businesses | merchants.

Thank You.

Lisa

[beautyholo]

thanks for sharing this information.

[anonlineguy]

Hi @PinterestJoan , thank you for sharing your nice picture and your long-run story with Pinterest. They are really inspiring 🌹

[mulberrycolors]

Both feature ideas are excellent. Adding links to idea pins would be helpful👍 Best of luck to you🙌 

[influencemagnet]

I really loved your exhaustive replies to the pertinent questions, which I am sure, must be hovering into every Pinterest member's minds.

Great Learnings!

Thank you very much for the experience you shared! 

[rakan03]

Thanks 

[xzouix]

"Don’t compare your progress to other creators! Be inspired and learn from them, but compare your progress to yourself."  Coudn't agree more! Your approach to finance planning is... admirable. You make it look so easy, and indeed - when taken step by step it becomes easy. Thank you Mel for sharing your tips.

I also agree it would be nice to have more way to connect Pinterest with Etsy. I have a standalone website with e-shop + two Etsy shops, and having some extra Etsy friendly features would save creators like myself a lot of time.

[CkRugCarpet]

Thanks