The Baking ChocolaTess
As a Pinterest manager I’ve helped a lot of bloggers over the years, but if there’s ever a chance to combine two of my favourite things – Pinterest, and chocolate – I’m going to jump at it. So when I met Kim from The Baking ChocolaTess and saw that chocolate is hardwired into her DNA, I knew we were going to make a good team.
Over the past 9 years, Kim’s work has been featured on Food Network, Brit & Co and Good Housekeeping to name a few. With over 10 million monthly impressions and 125 thousand clicks to her website, plus a blog posting schedule that ran like clockwork, we already had a good base to work with.
Kim’s Goal
Kim’s blog and home life keep her extremely busy. She works hard to bring her readers new chocolatey recipes multiple times a week and while she enjoyed creating for Pinterest, she was finding it hard to keep up with the ever-changing algorithm and her outbound clicks were starting to drop for seemingly no reason. What was working before, now wasn’t.
Kim’s goal was to get the account back on track, continue to increase her brand awareness through her strongest platform and get more eyes on her blogs each month.
Before
Before we dive into what Kim’s account looks like now, we should take a look at the health of her account before I started.
The Baking ChocolaTess sees the majority of their traffic over the holidays and in December 2021, Pinterest sent 163,153 people to the website. An impressive number but Kim explained this was down from 2020, she hoped hiring an expert would fix this.
When she joined me in March, this is what her account looked like:
Outbound Clicks: 125,699
Engagements: 518,983
Saves: 85,935
Impressions: 12m
Followers: 248k
Throughout
We started making changes to the account immediately. With all the best intentions, some outdated methods were still being followed so we updated the strategy to be more inline with the latest best practices and implemented better optimisation across the whole account. Since we were heading into a seasonal low for Kim’s niche, we intentionally stuck to working on keywording and overall account health with the aim of being in a better position in terms of Pinterest SEO once the holidays rolled back around.
We saw drops for the first three months which was to be expected with the seasonal swing. However, I also want to say it can take 3-6 months for a new strategy to start showing solid results at any point in the year. So with all of this in mind, we weren’t at all concerned. We maintained consistency and followed the predicted trends and by the time summer arrived, her account was starting to see improvements. July generated 127,037 clicks to the website – an increase of 19% when compared to June! From here things continued to rise considerably.
Remember the amazing results Kim saw through December 2021? Well, with the new strategy we had in place, when December 2022 came and went, Pinterest had generated 264,808 visits to her website… A huge 62.31% increase from the year before!
Fast forward to March 2023, a whole year of working together and the momentum hasn’t faltered. Yes we saw the usual tips through January & February but they didn’t drop as far as the previous years. Here’s what the account looks like now;
Outbound clicks: 171,755
Engagements: 629,747
Saves: 92,899
Impressions: 10m
Followers: 286k
While we have seen an 11% decrease in impressions, the website traffic is up by 36% and we’re on track for another holiday season that tops the last.
Growth chart for December 2022, showing a normal (and expected) dip for Christmas day.
Why It Worked
Having strong account optimisation and understanding the trends and seasons that the account goes through annually made a huge difference. Coupled with the years spent actively sharing high quality content, my stratagy gained the desired results.
Kim is now able to plan her blogs more efficiently, making her content ready for when Pinterest users start searching for it. This is usually sooner than you’d think and thanks to strategic keywording, you might have come across a pin (or a few) of hers. They rank at the top of several popular search terms including ‘chocolate chip cookies recipe’.
This success was achieved through well-thought-out and meticulously planned posts, pin designs, and, finally, strongly keyworded descriptions. This combination thrives on Pinterest!
What really contributed to this success is her beautiful photography and easy to navigate website. Thinking about user intent and user experience once someone lands on your website makes a huge difference to whether they’re a one-off reader, or someone who will stick around, join your email or follow your socials.
Tips For The Reader
- Prioritise high quality content that your reader wants and is actively searching for
- Make sure your account is well optimised with niche relevant keywords
- Don’t ruin your high quality content with low quality designs and descriptions
What Kim Says
“Leah has helped me out so much! With Pinterest and its funky algorithms changing so often, I couldn’t keep up and needed help to get my Pinterest pins and engagement back on track. She does an amazing job identifying issues and is a joy to work with as well.”
