Strengthen Our Excuses?! COVID-19 and 468% Improvement on Pinterest

byTDenise

5.7K followers

4 years ago

It's crazy times we're in for sure!

I was in the military working as a Public Health Technician for 9 years. I participated in many illness outbreaks and investigations, but none impacted the world like COVID-19.

My kids are out of school. In my area, we're not on complete shutdown, but we're social distancing, and there's lots of fear and panic.

I like to see the precautions we're taking, but I don't like seeing people making fearful and illogical decisions. What makes me happy is to see the companies and individuals that are pulling together, being considerate of others, and extending a hand even in uncertain times.

I saw companies like Convertkit who raised $50,000 to support creators and companies like Quickbooks are providing alot of timely insight to help businesses and their companies get thru all of this. I also enjoyed seeing Kyle shed some light on how Wealthy Affiliate will be handling this and what he thinks about how this will impact online business going forward.

I know at this point, my company isn't the size of those, but I still wanted to participate in making the world a better place despite the times. As a result, I decided to:

1. Stay focused on my business mission (despite the times we're in)

2. Avoid participating in fearmongering or spreading panic

3. To continue to find hope and to share that

4. Challenge myself to be as helpful as I can

5. See how I can satisfy those who are watching me by giving good content that helps them to make the most of weird circumstances

The impact of COVID-19 on many audiences

As a result of COVID-19. many people are in the house looking for entertainment. Even if you didn't consider yourself in the entertainment industry, each blog post, video, podcast, or whatever you create is providing a source on entertainment for others.

Some people are really disappointed in the income plans they've made for themselves up to now. I have family members who have jobs that have reduced their hours to 0 without telling them how long it will be until they're able to work again--this uncertainty makes me and others disappointed in the "traditional" way of doing things.

Added to all of the concerns people with jobs might have, employers are also being given alot of pressure. Many businessowners have to provide hazardous duty pay, medical leave, sick pay, or ongoing paychecks without knowing when they'll be able to open their doors again! There's alot of pressure people are feeling: financially, for safety, and for health.

More people are looking for ways to effectively provide their services online or ways to make money online.

My gym and my church is even shut down! They're doing services online now using webinar software.

Like Kyle mentioned in his post, Amazon is now focused on essential products, and people are getting frustrated when they want to get "nonessential items" and don't know where to go.

Times are changing. It's like COVID-19 is causing a quantum leap growth into making the internet a more optimal choice for shopping, making money, participating in community groups, exercising, and providing other services. I think people are going to get spoiled by having more convenient access to normal day-to-day services--this will likely force many companies to learn how digital marketing and online business works.

I'm more grateful than ever for starting the type of business I have.

How I Decided to Implement my Challenge

I know I could be writing posts and taking advantage of the "Coronavirus" or "COVID-19" keywords, but that's not what I've done. Instead, I want to continue inspiring people with education/entertainment to help them take action and start or grow their businesses while they have time.

It's businessowners and affiliates (like us) who can help people to find new shopping alternatives, who can demonstrate new ways to solve old problems, and help our world move forward.

Now is a good time to think about things like:

• How service providers can offer their services from home using the internet
• How product suppliers can improve their customer journeys and user experience online
• How people can make a more well-rounded financial plan that's more bulletproof of emergency circumstances (like this one)
  
• Alternatives to Amazon shopping or other large retailers who have changed their focus due to the pandemic
• How families and businesses can make contingency plans so they're prepared for emergencies

And, these are all hot topics with lots of affiliate partnership opportunities. I plan to write and do videos on more topics like this: now and going forward.

Onto another topic...

The Ingredient for Viral Content

I've heard people say that a viral post consists of:

• Timely advice
• Distribution to the right audience
• and quality content

Timely advice doesn't mean to keep writing about Coronavirus per se, but how can our niches help the world to get thru this? Even if it's simply by sustaining or increasing our publishing schedules to ensure there's more entertainment to help them push to reach the next level with their goals.

My Pinterest Challenge

One cool thing I've been doing during the lockdown is publishing more content and experimenting with Pinterest. I took Jay's Pinterest marketing training and I've been reading more about how Pinterest works as well as experimenting to see what results I can get with it.

Pinterest recently changed their algorithm, so many people who were veterans on the platform, no longer have the advantage they once did. Pinterest doesn't want people to keep resharing old content. Instead, they want new content, and they're rewarding creators who can satisfy that.

Considering that I already publish content daily (between my blog, my Youtube channel, and here), I thought I'd have plenty of fresh content to share, so I started pinning. I've been designing 5 or more new graphics for each new piece of content I create and scheduling the content to trickle out on Pinterest.

I really love design and creating content for my site or Youtube channel, so Pinterest Marketing is enjoyable for me.

Since taking Pinterest marketing more seriously (around 9 March), I've been able to grow my Pinterest impressions 468%! I don't know about you, but my impressions on Google took months to grow to 200k impressions in search, but my impressions on Pinterest grew in weeks.

When the impressions goes up, it means more people are seeing the content in their feeds or in their search results--that's the first good sign before traffic. I'm already seeing traffic growth too! The number of clicks to my site from Pinterest went up: from 6-12 clicks to my site per day up to 91 clicks to my site in one day!

The results I'm having on Pinterest are really awesome to me considering that it's only been two weeks of persistent effort. I know that if I continue, it will compound, and it seems that it will compound quicker than it has for me on other platforms.

Starting on New Tasks and Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome

I'm really excited to see how my impressions, traffic, and sales will continue to grow on Pinterest, so I committed to a consistent set of tasks to see how it works out over the next 90 days. At that point, if my tasks are working, I'll decide how to update my marketing plan from there. Maybe I may reconfigure how much I blog, do videos, or engage on other platforms. Who knows!

For now, I'm sustaining all of the blogging tasks I was doing in previous months and the video marketing tasks I was doing before, and I've pushed myself extra hard by adding Pinterest in the mix. I recommend that if you want to change something in your marketing plan, you also test the new strategy "on the side" first before abandoning what may have been working for you and going for something else.

Shiny object syndrome is really easy to fall into especially when you think you've found something that may perform better than things you're currently doing. It's easy to want to jump "all in" because you're being optimistic.

You might hear people talk about great results they're getting, so you're tempted to think that if they're getting those type of results, you should try it, and sometimes, that's a good thing to do. It's like the dog (to the right) who is looking at the food and wants to eat it. Hahahaha.

Chasing other people's results, bombarding yourself with new tasks, monopolizing your tasks with experiments, or stopping and starting various tactics can delay your growth, dilute the speed of your growth, and overall, make you take much longer to see success. It's good to be flexible and willing to make changes for the best future, but it has to be scaled out in a sequential manner rather than jumping "all in" without proof the tactic or strategy will work well FOR YOU.

I know because I spent alot of time on experimentation early on. It wasn't until I buckled down and committed to one website and set tasks that I started to see results compound in my favor.

Now, when I want to implement something new (even if I think it may work better than what I'm currently doing), I do a "pilot test" type of thing. I make sure I sustain the old tasks, and do the new ones "on the side". If I see that the new tasks are giving better results than old ones over a period of time (like 90 days or more), then I consider reconfiguring how I manage my time--this helps to avoid shiny object syndrome.

The quick wins like daily growth in impressions or seeing my analytics change is making Pinterest really exciting for me. I haven't had this type of growth on Youtube or Google. It took me many more articles and many more videos to get the results I'm getting on Pinterest which I'm loving!

If you're looking for another place to promote your blog or Youtube content, and you enjoy graphic design, then you may really like Pinterest marketing.

My Challenge for You

Considering the times we're in, you may be experiencing more stress than normal, which can make you less productive or more resilient. You get the opportunity to choose which response you'll take. I think it's best to challenge yourself to stay productive even in tough times.

It will help you grow in character, resilience, and perseverance. Trials like this can make us stronger and more mentally tough, or we can give that strength to our excuses.

I want to challenge you to up your game for our world's sake. Decide on some tasks you can do to help others during this time. Could you:

• Publish one post daily?
• Create two or more Pinterest pins (or social media posts) to share?
• Publish one video daily?
• Increase your publishing schedule?
• Donate to a relief fund?
• Volunteer or get a temporary job somewhere that's getting smacked with higher demand?
• Become an affiliate partner and help companies who provide a high demand service to get the word out?
• Or, encourage and send messages of hope to people who are stressed out in this time?

Our businesses are here to solve problems and there are lots of problems arising in our world today. What better time for us to be alert and in position to solve them?

I'd love to hear what you decide to do to make a stance and conquer this in your business. Will you take the challenge? Leave your comments below.