You’ve heard of a virtual assistant, but have you heard of a Pinterest virtual assistant? We’re going to talk about the definition of the role, responsibilities, and how you can hire one OR become one. And bonus, how I feel about the term.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
- The differences between a Pinterest virtual assistant and hiring a Pinterest agency
- The benefits of hiring either a Pinterest virtual assistant or agency/management professional
- Best practices for hiring a Pinterest virtual assistant or agency
No matter who you use to manage your Pinterest account(s), you want someone with a good understanding of Pinterest and Pinterest marketing, and who is up to date on the latest trends and best practices on the platform.
WHAT IS A PINTEREST VIRTUAL ASSISTANT?
A Pinterest virtual assistant is generally someone who is self-taught. A Pinterest agency or management professional will most likely have a proprietary system for marketing and more experience working with multiple clients.
A lot of people start off learning to be a Pinterest virtual assistant. It’s a great stepping stone, especially for people who want to go on and build an agency or a higher profile management business.
When you hire a Pinterest virtual assistant, the idea is often that you’re going to tell them how to do something or how you want them to handle your marketing. They come with more of a general understanding of Pinterest. However, you are going to guide them and give them direction as to what you want them to do. This is not always the case, but more often than not, this is what you’ll find.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM A PINTEREST MARKETING AGENCY?
A Pinterest marketing agency or management professional will often have more education, a lot of history and experience, and more real-time data from working with multiple clients.
For example, here at Simple Pin Media, we have someone on our team in charge of pulling and compiling a weekly education report. She spends time scouring publications, follows Google alerts, and watches webinars or other events put on by Pinterest.
We also have our proprietary Simple Pin Framework that we use to manage each account and client in the way that best works for their business. There’s a huge difference in how to pin for a food blogger, an artist who sells jewelry online, and a service provider.
We also have a big team who is really into the nitty gritty details. They’re in the data and immersed in Pinterest, day in and day out.
One important distinction I want to make is something we see here at Simple Pin on occasion. If someone has worked with a virtual assistant in the past, they will come into a discovery call with us and have the idea that they’ll be telling us what to do. This isn’t how our agency works (and typically isn’t for any agency). We have our system set up, we know and trust that what we do works.
When you hire a Pinterest virtual assistant, you bring them in and you share any specific requests you have on how they pin, what your goals are, programs you would like them to use. With an agency, most of this is predetermined. You’re hiring them for their expertise.
WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU HIRE?
First and foremost, they should have a good understanding of Pinterest marketing and how it works.
An important caveat here: they don’t necessarily have to have the most amazing Pinterest account for their own business. As Pinterest management professionals, often our account is the first to slide. The first person I ever hired when I started my business was somebody to manage MY account.
I was managing five other accounts, and they were the ones paying me. So that’s where I focused my attention.
Regardless of who you decide to hire, you should always do an interview in person or over Zoom. It’s a really good investment for your money long term, because you don’t want to hire somebody with limited knowledge who could really cause harm to your account.
If you have some Pinterest knowledge, you can ask questions like:
- What’s your philosophy on live pinning versus scheduling?
- What scheduling programs are you familiar with?
- Do you use group boards or primarily individual boards?
- What’s your philosophy on Pin share threads?
WHAT IF YOU DON’T HAVE PINTEREST KNOWLEDGE GOING IN?
Recently, I was on a podcast with somebody whose industry really focused on Instagram. The hosts told me they hired somebody to do Pinterest for them. They didn’t really know how to give direction, so they just kind of let the person run with it. The results were not great. The person they hired was using group boards like crazy, pinning the majority of other people’s content, and other things that go against the current best practices for Pinterest.
Most likely, this person had an understanding of (or had been taught) Pinterest marketing strategies from 2017 or 2018.
Some questions you can ask to avoid this:
- Are you up to date on Pinterest best practices?
- Where do you get your Pinterest updates and news and how often are you checking?
- How do you keep yourself educated on the platform?
NOTE: If their answer is that they follow Simple Pin Media and get our weekly Pinterest Made Simple newsletter, you’re all set. 😉
COMMUNICATION AND REPORTING
It’s also important to ask if they have a system for serving clients. Do they have a consistent reporting system? What’s their communication style and routine? How will you know if what they’re doing on your account is working or not working?
When I first hired somebody to manage my account in the beginning, there was no communication. I had no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it. Eventually, six months down the road, I did let them go. Their process just didn’t really align with mine, as I’m a big believer in communication. It’s our number one core value here at Simple Pin.
So whether it’s a Pinterest virtual assistant, or it’s an agency like us, you want a good quality monthly report. And truthfully, over time, this should be customized to you. You need to get the information that will really make an impact on the future growth of your Pinterest marketing plan, and whether you need to make adjustments.
So which one do you hire?
It’s really up to you.
Number one, you’re going to have to look at your budget. You want to appropriate funds for at least six months towards this project, whether it’s a virtual assistant or an agency. The main difference is how particular you want to be about what’s done on your account and whether you want to be the lead.
If you want to be more of the lead, I would highly recommend a Pinterest virtual assistant. They come with the knowledge, but essentially you’re telling them what to do.
If you’re looking to be more hands off and just want someone to take over that leg of your business so you can focus on other things, an agency or management professional is probably a better fit.
There’s a lot of great Pinterest management professionals out there. In fact, I coach a lot of them over on kateahl.com
I have witnessed a lot of students coming through my program who are passionate about Pinterest best practices. They are excited to really get results for their clients. They are up to date, connected, and committed to making sure that the marketing they do for you is in alignment with your brand and with what works.
If you’re someone who’s looking to move from Pinterest virtual assistant to being an agency owner, give a listen to my other podcast, the Empowered Agency Podcast. I share a lot of my story over there.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON HIRING
When looking to hire, you may see people who don’t have best practices or they’ve learned via a super quick course, and now they think they’re an expert. Pinterest marketing takes time. It takes a lot of different experiences, right? A lot of people treat Pinterest (or think of it) as a blanket strategy. But it’s not even close.
There’s so many layers to Pinterest marketing. There’s keyword targeting, pin images and how they’re laid out, the size of your audience and your niche factor in also. Honestly, you can’t even compare account to account in the food blogger space. A food blogger who specializes in gluten-free, easy recipes is going to have an entirely different audience than someone who develops gourmet recipes using super fancy ingredients.
You want somebody to really take care of what you have created. This is your business, this is your baby. This is the thing you pour your blood, sweat, tears, and all your sleepless nights into, right? You need somebody to catch that for you and say, I’m going to do everything I can to make this work with the goals that you have.
If you walk into a discovery call and say, I want my sessions to increase by 100,000, and that person tells you they can do it, run! It’s not possible to predict results on Pinterest with certainty. Or to even lay the groundwork for how they’d do that for you in a set period of time.
Let me clarify. If you’re listening and you’ve said that to a potential client in the last few years, let’s talk. Email me, because that is a really hard thing to do and it’s more a needle in a haystack than it is the norm.
WANT TO BE A PINTEREST VIRTUAL ASSISTANT?
If you’re just starting out to become a Pinterest virtual assistant or maybe you want to know how you can learn, here’s what I can say. Before you take a course, before you invest in something, really think clearly about how you’re wired.
This is a service position. You will be trading time for dollars. That’s just how this works. You can definitely scale it a little different when it comes to a course or a membership, but if you’re managing people’s accounts for them, you’re a service provider.
Some people are wired to teach through a course or membership, some are wired to do services. I just recommend really thinking through it before you get started. Over on the Empowered Agency Podcast, I talk all about learning and the nitty gritty details if you want some help thinking through it.
I am very passionate about service providers, not only teaching them to provide really quality service, but really helping them navigate these waters of what it’s like to BE a service provider. It is not easy. There are a lot of things that are really tough about it, but there’s a lot of things that are really great about it too.
I want to make sure I say that I don’t want you to drop names in the comments or DMs. Everybody has their bad moments, a lapse in judgement, or have screwed up on an account. I’ve done things wrong, for sure. But I would never want it to be used as a blanket statement about me forever.
I’d love to hear from you about this episode! Would you add anything or did something surprise you? Send us an email at hello@simplepinmedia.com or DM us on Instagram.
For future reading/listening:
- Simple Pin Media Pinterest Account Audit – E-comm, TpT, or General
- How to Balance Family and Run Multiple Businesses (podcast and show notes)
- How I Started a Pinterest Marketing Agency (podcast and show notes)
- How to Scale a Business (podcast and show notes)
