2021 was the first FULL year in business, and I learned so much!

I’ve taken the last few weeks to reflect on last year hoping to find areas for improvement in 2022. So often, it feels like businesses only share their success metrics online. This means we’re only seeing a piece of the puzzle, instead of the whole thing. That can lead to a toxic mentality about the online business world! In this blog, I want to go over ALL of my business metrics with you—from the wins to the losses. That way you can see the full picture.

I gathered up allll the metrics for you and made them into easy-to-read graphs and charts, so let’s get started! Don’t worry, I included pretty much everything that I look at to evaluate my business on a quarterly basis. If you’ve never done an evaluation like this before, feel free to use this as an example! I got my inspiration from @thepassionscollective on Instagram!

Clients

My Clients & their Niches

Firstly, I wanted to start with my clients, because without clients there would be no business. Not to mention, questions about niches, clients, ways to find clients, etc. are what I get asked about the most. As you can see, my highest category of clients is service-based businesses and, more specifically, wedding photographers.

Interestingly, product-based businesses came in a close second with a wide variety of different businesses following in third. Oftentimes, I find that new Pinterest managers don’t include product-based businesses in their target market. This is a mistake! Product-based businesses are the perfect candidates for Pinterest Marketing because they’re constantly selling products, updating their offerings, and often have new content or products.

How my Clients Find Me

The next part of my evaluation looked at how most of my clients found me. The majority of my clients found me on Instagram. HOWEVER it is important to note that none of my long-term or ongoing clients are from Instagram. Instagram clients, on average, have typically hired me for 1-3 months at a time. The clients I’ve retained the longest have been from referrals from previous clients, or via Facebook groups.

Remember: If you’re struggling to find clients on Instagram, widen your reach. Facebook groups are a great way to showcase your expertise to potential clients who already know they need your services. Once you have 1-2 clients, create a referral program to encourage referrals.

Discovery Call Deep-Dive

Discovery calls, get-to-know-you calls, coffee chats, regardless of what you call them, they’re stressful when you first start your own business! However, seeing this breakdown of all of my discovery call data gives me a confidence boost. Even though I typically assume the worst, the data shows that I’m killing it. In fact, I have a 64% success rate, which is pretty great if you ask me!

I wanted to make sure that I included discovery call stats because it’s important to remember that everyone has unsuccessful discovery calls. I’m sure I’ll have even more of them in 2022! However, it’s important to keep booking them regardless of your success rate. You never know when the next one will be a new client! If you need tips on how to nail a discovery call, check out this IG post! (link)

Client Relationship Timeline 

The last part of client metrics that I tracked was how long I worked with each of them. The majority of my clients hired me for about three months, which is just long enough to start seeing traction on Pinterest. Almost all of my 5+ month clients are still working with me, which speaks for itself.

This metric is very important to evaluate because in 2022 I want to retain clients for longer periods of time by improving my client experience. Knowing that the average client length is four months also helps me plan my income, workload, and timeline for lead generation.

Finances

Income Breakdown

Some months are better than others. Because this is my first year in business, I can make any trend predictions based on time of year or season; however, I am excited to have this graph to refer back to in 2023 when I do next year’s breakdown!

At the end of the day, just because you have a few bad months doesn’t mean you won’t have an amazing next month. Looking at this graph, I’m sure you can tell when I was feeling down in the dumps about my business. But what brought the higher income months was determination, re-evaluation, and implementing new strategies. Don’t give up! Not every month will be an 8K month, but when you have one, it’ll feel GREAT.

Job Type Breakdown

Clearly, the majority of my work in 2021 came from Pinterest Management. In planning for 2022, I’m going to use this breakdown to figure out how I can better market myself for a more even distribution of work. While my specialty is Pinterest Management, I also started a coaching program in Q3, and I’d love to do more of that in 2022. Comparing this with the income breakdown is a great way to plan quarterly goals and create a marketing plan for each quarter in order to hit those goals.

Total Income & Total Expenses

I am proud of my 2021 total income. I went from making $1.6k a month–before starting my business–to the occasional $8k month and a consistent $4 – $5k month. That is massive growth, and it’s something to celebrate. Looking at my total take-home income, I’m definitely not RICH by any means. Unfortunately, running a business is costly. But I am comfortable.

I’m dedicated to being one of the best in my field, which means constantly reinvesting in my business. On top of that, there are so many subscriptions and services that are absolutely essential to my current business and my ability to scale in 2022, like my VA and tools like Notion, Canva, Click-Up, and Tailwind.

Looking for some business support?

Whether you’re a new Pinterest manager, or you’re interested in starting your own Pinterest management business, I want to help you! When I was a new business owner, I struggled a lot with self-doubt, and I almost gave up a couple of times. The success I’ve experienced this year makes me feel so relieved that I kept going, and I want to support you through those difficult times too. My 1:1 Pinterest Coaching Program is the perfect way to get started. I wrote a comprehensive Pinterest Management Workbook with 70+ pages of juice Pinterest management hacks and how-to’s for you, so that you will be successful! PLUS the 1:1 Coaching Program includes 4 strategy calls with me and 2 months of Voxer support.  Click here to apply for my next round of coaching, starting in February!

Are you experiencing slow growth on Pinterest? Or have your client’s analytics suddenly dropped? You may be making one (or more) of these Pinterest mistakes. Remember, Pinterest is a seasonal platform, and analytics can trend differently depending on your Pinterest marketing goal. If you see something in this post that you’re currently doing, try switching it out for a Pinterest best practice, and see if your growth starts trending up again!

1. Pinning to the Same URL More Than Once per Day

You don’t want to get caught in Pinterest’s spam filter, do you? I didn’t think so! When you pin to the same URL more than once daily, Pinterest flags this as possible spam. Instead, follow this rule: If your account is 1 year or older, only pin one time per URL  per day, and if your account is younger than 1 year, only pin one time per URL every other day. 

2. Not Writing Board Descriptions for Each Board on Your Account

Despite being a visual search engine, Pinterest heavily relies on keywords for pushing your content out to others, and I’m a big proponent of maximizing the areas where we can add keywords. Board descriptions are one of the most-missed spots to optimize your profile. Use this space to your advantage, and never leave it blank! 

3. Not Claiming Your Website

This is the #1 Pinterest mistake I see with clients and students. You NEED to claim your website on Pinterest. If you don’t, you won’t be able to track your click-through analytics. One of the main goals I have for my clients’ Pinterest accounts is driving traffic back to their websites. Without claiming your website, all of that data is completely lost and you won’t be able to track your website referrals from Pinterest. Claiming your website also makes your pins more click-able because your link is verified (aka less likely that your pins are spam). 

4. Pinning 1-2 Times per Week

Fresh content will take you super far on Pinterest. So maximize it! Pinterest encourages accounts that create fresh content because it means you’re adding more valuable content to their platform. Posting one or two pins per week simply won’t cut it for a long-term strategy, and your account’s growth will become stagnant very quickly. 

5. Not Updating Your Keyword Research (at least) Quarterly

As I said at the top of this post, Pinterest is a highly seasonal platform. Trends, seasons, and useful keywords change depending on the time of year. Don’t expect your keywords from January to still be 100% relevant by next December! It’s super important to update your keywords quarterly at the very least. 

6. You’re Re-Pinning Too Much Content

While re-pins are popular among regular, non-business Pinterest users, re-pins should be minimized for business accounts. Pinterest prefers it when you have something new to contribute to the platform, so re-pins aren’t great for your growth. Don’t spend too much time re-pinning other creators’ pins OR your own pins. Your profile could seriously suffer for it!

A Few More Quick Pinterest Marketing Tips… 

Here are a few more quick tips you can start implementing into your Pinterest strategy today:

• Your Pin Format: Make sure all pins are vertical. Horizontal pins go against Pinterest’s posting guidelines

• Don’t use hashtags

• Don’t forget to optimize your bio and title

• Don’t use keywords that aren’t relevant to the copy of the linked URL in a post

Tired of Trying to Figure Everything Out on Your Own?

If you need help managing your client Pinterest accounts, or your own Pinterest account, I have a 1:1 Pinterest Coaching Program that might be perfect for you! With a comprehensive Pinterest Management workbook full of 70+ pages of juicy Pinterest management hacks and how-to’s, you’ll be set up for Pinterest success! PLUS, the 1:1 program also comes with 4 strategy calls and 2 months of Voxer support! Click here to apply for my next round of coaching, starting in February!

Surprisingly enough, how I onboard clients is one of my most asked questions in my Pinterest 1:1 coaching program! With that being said, I figured I would put up a blog post detailing my onboarding process from client inquiry to a signed contract & paid invoice. I hope that this blog helps all of you new business owners not only feel more confident in your ability to onboard clients, but also answers all of your questions! Here we go!

Step 1 in Onboarding Clients: The Client Inquiry

The client inquiry can come in many different ways: as an Instagram DM, an e-mail referral, a comment on a Facebook post, or even (but surprisingly rarely) as a filled out client application! No matter how this inquiry comes in, the most important thing for you to do after you receive their inquiry is get them into your system as a lead. When I get an Instagram DM inquiry, I will express how excited I am to potentially work with them & ask them to fill out a client application so that I can get to know more about them and their business. Once I have their E-mail address via the client form, I will outline what I offer, send them a welcome packet, a link to book a discovery call if they would like to and allow them time to get back to me before I follow up.

This first step is the step that I like to use in order to weed people out that I don’t think I will work well with or who are not ready to make the required monthly investment. Consequently, in my client application and in my preliminary discovery call questionnaire, I state up front that the investment begins at $XXX per month and ask whether this is an investment they are ready to make at this time. If they are, they’ll fill out the application and send it back to me. If they’re not, they more than likely will not finish the application & that’s okay because they just saved both of us a ton of time!

Step 2 in Onboarding Clients: The Discovery Call

Sometimes, if you get lucky, this call doesn’t even have to happen. Sometimes a referral is so warm, they already know they want to work with you. Send them the contract, send them the invoice, hop on a kick off call, and off to the races. However, this isn’t always the case. Most of the time, people will want to chat with you before they commit to working with you. So, after your lead fills out a client app and you have all of their info, if you believe that the two of you would be a good match, draft an e-mail or DM letting them know how excited you are to potentially work with them and share a link to you discovery call scheduler with them so that they can book a call. This step can also be automated within a Dubsado or Honeybook workflow if you’re fancy like that!

Step 3 in Onboarding Clients: The Commitment

I try to warm my clients up so much that by the time we get on a discovery call, it’s basically just to discuss a start date rather than determining whether we actually want to work together or not. One way that I do this is by pre-vetting them with both my client application & discovery call questionnaire. By the time they have scheduled a discovery call, they have seen my prices at least TWICE and have not walked away. Another way that I do this is with my welcome packet. In my welcome packet, I cover my policies, timezone, some fun facts about me, and a service sheet.

So, by the time my potential clients and I actually make it to the discovery call, they already have so much info, their only question is typically “when do we start?”

I encourage you to streamline the first phase of your onboarding process with a welcome packet and pre-vetting forms so that you don’t have to deal with being ghosted or told that you are out of budget after waiting 3 weeks for a discovery call. However, even after all of this, sometimes clients still aren’t quite ready to sign with you immediately after the call. Maybe they need to check their budget, pay off a debt, or finish a course before they’re ready to commit. If they don’t give you a “yes” on the call, wait two days and reach out to remind them.

Step 4 in Onboarding Clients: From Lead to Job

Woohoo! Your potential client just became a REAL client! Now it’s time to get this party started. First thing you should do after you get a “yes” is send your client an invoice and contract. I personally use Dubsado for project management; however, Honeybook is also amazing! Now on to the much awaited step 5….

Step 5: Onboarding Your New Client

Onboarding a client can be super intimidated when you first get started. What questions should you ask? What all do you need from them? Images? Logos? Calendars? Stop right there! That’s why I created my onboarding freebie! Click here to download a list of questions to ask your Pinterest clients when you’re onboarding them.

How should you create this form? I used to create my onboarding forms in Notion! I know, random right? But it actually worked REALLY well. In fact, I recently switched over to Dubsado and designed out a ton of fancy forms and proposals, but I think I actually preferred my old Notion onboarding system! With Notion, you can share certain pages with certain people and allow them to edit the document themselves. You can also embed your calendly, a google drive folder, and even add an editable calendar for them to add important dates to!

If you’re not a fan of Notion, you can also create onboarding forms via Dubsado, Jotform, Honeybook, or you can even just e-mail them and ask them to send you responses. Don’t stress yourself out!

Step 6 in Onboarding Clients: The Kick Off Call

This is the fun part! Now you have all of their info & assets, their contract is signed, their invoice is paid, and they’ve scheduled a Kick-off call via your onboarding form (or e-mail). I like to use the kick off call to answer any last minute questions, let them know what our first week is going to look like, and make sure all of the Usernames and Passwords that they supplied me with work! It’s a super short & sweet call. Once this step is finished, your onboarding process is complete and your new client is officially a part of the team! Congrats!

If you want Pinterest & business tips weekly, then head over to my Instagram and give me a follow!

If you’re a new VA or Pinterest manager and you’re not feeling super confident in your ability to get results for your clients or feel like you could use a bit of extra help, fill out a client application for my 1:1 Pinterest coaching! The next round begins in January but applications are always open. I will also put my “How to Become a Pinterest EXPERT” workbook back on the market at a reduced rate for Black Friday, so keep an eye out for that if you’re not quite ready for 1:1 coaching!

Looking for more Pinterest related content? Check out my last post about the Pinterest Spam Filter & how to avoid it!

Have you heard of the Pinterest spam filter? If you’re a Pinterest manager or someone that markets their business online, then the answer is more than likely “yes!” And it’s such a pain isn’t it? You’re just minding your own business, posting your regularly scheduled content and BAM your impression drop to nearly zero out of nowhere! Where did you go wrong? Why did this happen? How can you fix it? Keep reading to find out!

What is the Pinterest Spam Filter?

The Pinterest spam filter is exactly what it sounds like—a spam filter. It does its’ best to keep all of the bots, fake accounts, and scammers off of Pinterest. Recently, Pinterest altered their spam filter to be a LOT more strict. So now, it’s way easier to get caught up in it even if you aren’t a fake account or a spammer.

What can I do to avoid it?

There are a ton of ways that you can avoid the spam filter! Here are my top 5 tips:

1. If you’re working with someone that is in a different country, be sure that you are posting for them with a VPN. It can appear pretty suspicious if an account that claims to be a business in Australia is “pinning” on a daily basis from halfway across the world in the UK! I personally do NOT work with anyone outside of the US, so I haven’t had to do this; however, if you are someone that works with people outside of your country, a simple google search will help you get one set up!

2. Don’t post to the same URL more than once per day if you’re trying to avoid the Pinterest spam filter! Much like pinning the same exact pin over and over again to one board multiple days in a row, pinning to the same URL more than once per day can also get your account flagged. If you’re an older more established account, it’s okay to post pins that refer back to the same URL every day of the week; however, if you’re a newer account, it is recommended that you post pins that refer back to the same URL every other day maximum.

   1. Pro-tip: You can make sure that none of your pins that link back to the same URL are posted on the same day by utilizing the Interval scheduler.

   2. Pro-tip #2: If you have a ton of blog content back-logged, use this new rule as a way to put out more diverse content each week. For one of my client accounts, I’ll create one new blog post per week. Then I will pin referring back to that URL M, W, F, & SN + another blog post that same day. On T, TR, & SA I will schedule pins referring back to 2 different URLs and so on. This way I will have at least 2 fresh pins going out per day on her account.

3. Don’t use hashtags. Pinterest has said themselves that they do NOT like hashtags anymore and that there is NO benefit to using them on the platform. If you do use them, this could contribute to a spam flag on your account!

4. Limit the amount of re-pins on your account. This doesn’t just mean other people’s content either! Did you know that every time you schedule a pin to more than one board or all relevant boards, every time it is posted after it posts to that first board, it is considered a re-pin? If you didn’t, now you do! So instead of scheduling the same pins over and over again, try pinning more fresh content.

   1. Pro-tip: Per Levee Road studio’s Schedule Smarter course (I highly recommend investing in it), you can make one pin design register as a “fresh” pin after posting it to the first board by editing your design in Tailwind or altering the design slightly so that it appears to be a NEW image within Pinterest’s algorithm. This way, you don’t have to create 40 fresh pins a week, you can create 7 (one per day) and create duplicates of the design that are slightly altered or cropped to pin to other relevant boards. Depending on the amount of relevant boards you choose to schedule these 7 pins out to, you could be pinning up to 70 fresh pins a week with 7 pin designs!

5. If you find that you ARE caught up in the spam filter, get in touch with Pinterest support. E-mail support about the account you suspect is caught in the spam filter and keep pestering them until you get a response from a HUMAN. They will typically work with you once they realize that you are, in fact, not a bot!

Thanks so much for reading and I hope that these tips have helped you feel a bit better about getting caught up in the Pinterest spam filter! It doesn’t have to be the end of the world and it IS a solvable & avoidable problem. If you don’t have time to care or learn about all of this pinning non-sense but you still want to market you business on Pinterest, you’re more than welcome to outsource that task to me! If you want to hire me as your Pinterest manager, click here to fill out a client application!

Want Pinterest tips and updates weekly? Click here to follow me on Instagram. And keep an eye out for my HUGE Black Friday sale on Pinterest 1:1 coaching, my “How to Become a Pinterest EXPERT” Workbook, and strategy calls. Coming soon!