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How I Got an Interview with a Bigger Blogger – with little to no traffic

When you first start out as a new blogger one of the things you can’t wait to accomplish is your first guest post. Whether that is someone guest posting on your blog or you on posting on theirs, either way, it just makes you feel like an official blogger.

Well, I feel pretty official to share with you that I landed an interview with a bigger blogger! It’s not quite the same as a guest post. She didn’t write the post for me but I did get to ask her whatever questions I wanted and now I get to share those answers with you!

Still feels pretty good!

How I got to this point

I had come across a free Pinterest course and decided I could definitely learn more about how Pinterest can help drive traffic to my blog and not just teach me how to decorate my living room so I took it.

There was so much from this course but I had a few follow up questions so I reached out to the creator of the course.

I didn’t know that she was a bigger blogger really, I just knew I had questions. She was wonderful and answered them all right away!

She has an even better Pinterest Course that I knew I wanted to be able to offer to my readers so I asked about that as well. Once again, she was wonderful and helped me out with all of that as well.

Now that we had emailed each other back and forth I decided to do some more research on her and realized she had a huge following and was helping all kinds of bloggers learn how to use Pinterest to leverage their blog traffic!

Her name is McKinzie Bean with Moms Make Cents!

Here is a quick (updated) look at McKinzie’s Pinterest profile:

She has over 500,000 monthly views and over 20,000 followers!

(Update: when I first wrote this blog post in Jan 2018 she had 6,800 followers so this speaks volumes on how much she has grown since then making her an expert for sure in Pinterest!)

The Interview

At this point, I realized who she was and I reached back out to her to see about a possible guest post or different ways I could share her product with my readers to help benefit them as well.

That’s when she suggested doing an interview! I loved that idea! I got to pick the questions and share her answers with my readers!

Here is what she had to say to my question:

How long have you been blogging?

I started my first blog in June 2012, so five and a half years now! My current blog, Moms Make Cents, I started in June 2016.

What is your favorite part about blogging?

I absolutely love the community. I’ve been able to connect and collaborate with women from all over the world. Blogging has brought some of my best friends into my life and I’m forever grateful for that. I also love that through sharing my passion and creativity I am able to make money from home. It has been a huge blessing for our family and has allowed me to stay home with my little boy.

What advice do you have to new bloggers?

Be a sponge and then go and do! I feel like sometimes new bloggers get super overwhelmed with all of the information that is out there and it can result in analysis paralysis. I would recommend taking a month or so to learn everything that you can. Read blog posts, books, take a course, etc. and then go and implement everything. I am a huge advocate for learning but sometimes it can actually get in the way of producing content, creating systems and networking in your business.

My second bit of advice would be to focus on 1-2 social platforms. If you try to be present on every single platform, creating different social media posts, graphics and engaging with your audience you are going to burn out. It is more effective to really kick butt on 1-2 platforms. I personally recommend Pinterest (this has been by far the most effective use of my time) and then either Facebook or Instagram depending on your niche.

What is one quick tip for those new to Pinterest?

Make sure to have strong pin descriptions right off the bat! Pinterest is really more of a search engine than social media and we need to treat it that way. It is much easier to do it right the first time on Pinterest vs. going back through all of your pins and making edits. You can check out how I recommend optimizing your pins for Pinterest SEO here.

What are some results people have had from your Pin for Profits course?

I’ve had hundreds of students go through my Pinterest courses and have had amazing results, here are a couple of examples. Jessica – Shades of Blue Design – Within 48 hours of changing up my Pinterest strategy I had a sale and traffic to my shop increased by 80-90%!

Jennifer – Women Winning Online – “Using McKinzie’s BoardBooster strategy I doubled my Pinterest traffic and increased my blog income. ”

Angela – Natural Born Mommy – “Within a month, I gained almost 200 email subscribers and earned my first few dollars by applying the affiliate strategies outlined in the course.”

Amanda – Mommy Imagines – My first month following McKinzie’s Pinterest advice I boosted my impressions by 1630%!

How can someone sign up for your Pinterest courses?

I know that everyone’s knowledge and experience with Pinterest is going to be on a different level, so I’ve broken my signature course into five smaller courses that you can purchase individually based on what you want to learn more about.

The five courses are:

Pin to Profits: Foundations
Pin to Profits: Automation
Pin to Profits: Affiliate Marketing
Pin to Profits: List Building & Sales Funnels
Pin to Profits: Promoted Pins

Or you can choose to purchase all five courses here in a bundle and get access to the private students only Facebook group.

My results

McKinzie has been an amazing help for me and growing my blog traffic! I have done like she says and I have become a sponge and listened to other bloggers and their advice on Pinterest as well.

Pinterest Primer is a perfect free course to start with, it walks you through how to set up your Pinterest business account for success.

I didn’t realize all the important details that make a huge difference in ranking high on Pinterest.

The biggest walk away I can say is signing up for Tailwind because it has made a dramatic difference for my blog.

You have to have all the pieces of the puzzle put together for the best results. Great Pinterest business account set up, great pin images, and tailwind.

Again, Pinterest Primer will get you set up for success but implementing Tailwind strategies has blown up my blog traffic compared to what I was getting before.

You can sign up for a FREE month with Tailwind right here. They have training videos on there to show you how to use it. It is very user-friendly!

By using Tailwind my blog traffic went from 300 views for the month of December to over 2,000 views already for January and the month is only half over!

(Update: I gained over 7,000 page views in 30 days after implementing what I learned using Tailwind!)

I hadn’t focused on blog traffic yet, I was more worried about getting my blog all ready and functioning. Then after the Holidays, I focused on traffic using Tailwind to drive it from Pinterest and I was shocked!

What You Should Do

If you are looking for ways to grow your blog traffic then I highly suggest using Tailwind and Pinterest! If you already use Pinterest and you don’t feel like you are getting any traffic then you definitely need to take McKinzie’s course to get your Pinterest account set up correctly.

Or if you are completely new and don’t have Pinterest then again I would highly recommend taking Pinterest Primer and taking McKinzie’s advice on setting your business account up correctly and using Tailwind to drive traffic to your blog!

Then you can check out my free course on how to create beautiful Pinterest images!