#238: Rethinking Social Media: Clients Are Searching, Not Scrolling with Jana Osofsky

Michelle Leotta:
All right. Hello there Health coaches. Today we are going to rethink social media just a little, little bit. It's a really interesting conversation when you consider how much darn time coaches are spending on social media. I have done it too. I know exactly what it's like and often, not always, but often without any results to show for it, which is the pit.

So, if that's you, if you're here live, go ahead and tell us in the comments like approximately how many hours per week do you think you spend on social media for your business and how's that working for you? Oh my gosh, if I added up all the hours, I didn't want to think about it. My goodness. Before we go any further, I got to let you know that this episode is brought to you by my favorite client management tool. Practice Better and you can save 30% off your first three months of Practice Better at healthcoachpower.com/practice and use code HCpower, and the number 30, HCpower30. Now I'm thrilled to be joined this week by my friend Jana O, who is my go-to Pinterest marketing expert, and just an all around really smart cookie. Thanks for being here, Jana.

Jana Osofsky:
Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today and talk about this.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is a conversation that just needs to be had, but before we dive into the deep end, tell all of our listeners just a little about yourself and the work that you do.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, absolutely. And I totally agree this conversation for sure needs to be had because whatever numbers people dropped in the comments or they're thinking about dropping in the comments as far as how many hours a week we spend on social media, you should probably multiply it by at least 1.5 or two because I think we underestimate it too. We end up spending more than we really think we do. But so hi everybody. If we haven't met before, I'm Janna O, and my full name is Jana Osofsky. My company's Jana O Media, and I'm a Pinterest marketing educator and expert. And I work primarily with coaches and course creators and digital product sellers. And most of my clients are health and wellness coaches and in the health and wellness arena, if you will. So, I have a very specific little kind of corner of the Pinterest world that I teach in. And I teach coaches how to attract clients using the platform, using Pinterest, though that's kind of me in a nutshell.

Michelle Leotta:
I mean so much about our industry and what we're up against. So I just think this is a really good match and everything about this idea of should we be on social media, our clients actually scrolling and finding coaches and hiring coaches that way? And if not, what is a better way? You're the first one who pointed out this idea to me, cause I never thought about it before, that there really is such difference between scroll, scroll, maybe you're in line at the grocery store, maybe you're at a red light. And the difference between that and when someone's like, Hmm, I need an answer. I'm going to go to my computer, I'm going to go find a solution. It's just a different mindset. So I would love if we could just dive into that.

Jana Osofsky:
For sure. And before we do too, I just want to say I am a big proponent of using multiple platforms for your business. So you can probably guess if you're listening that I believe, and I think Michelle's on the same page with me, and a lot of you probably are too, if you really think about it, that we would rather have at least some of the people who are finding our content be people who are already looking for it because they're going to be more action taking. That's the idea here is if people are already actively looking for the things that you help with and coach around on search-based platforms, we want to get in front of them because those are going to be the people who are the most action taking and anxious to solve those problems, right? Because they're out there looking for them.

And then on social media, we're really getting our messages in front of people who aren't necessarily actively looking for them, but are scrolling and looking for, I mean, I'll say it in a nice way, maybe as we get a little more comfortable, I might loosen up and say it, say it how say I really think it, but they're looking for, they're not necessarily looking for things to take action on. They might be looking more for distractions or entertainment or whatnot. And of course that's not across the board. But if you think about it that way, it starts to make sense that you want to get in front of people who are really actively searching for what you offer. And on social media, I'm sure that some people who've listen who are listening have gotten clients by being active on social media. And there's definitely no, that's totally, and I like that happens.

But as you were mentioning toward the beginning, Michelle, people spend a lot of time. And so think about the ratio of the time you're spending on social media and the results you're getting. And with anything, obviously if it's working great, but if it's not working or if you feel like maybe you want to spend a little less time and get a little bit better results, maybe rethinking how much time you're spending on social media versus maybe some other ways to market your business is in order. I guess so. Yeah, I just wanted to say that too. It's not like don't do social media, but maybe we can pull back on it a little bit and get better results with less time.

Michelle Leotta:
Everyone is loving the sound of that because especially in this field, I mean nobody wants to waste all day doing something that is highly or for them has been ineffective. But we are very aware health coaches that we know the detrimental effects of social media. Maybe we're trying to break up with our phone, we're not trying to get those dopamine hits of likes all day long. We can just, for ourselves, it can be a healthier thing to maybe not be so tied to the button and that instant gratification of social all day. So I agree with you, yes, I have an Instagram account. It's true. I use Facebook for various things and some of our coaches in our community have done really well on various platforms, social platforms. But because I have the amazing opportunity to hear and get feedback from so many individual coaches, what they'll leave and say behind the scenes, I know that the ratio you were talking about, Janet, is way off the time spent versus the return for the vast majority of health coaches. So yeah, I think that's really what this is about. It's not like a all or nothing, it's just maybe a reprioritizing.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. Shuffling things around a little.

Michelle Leotta:
Exactly. Yeah. So if we're not interested quite as much in the person who's idly scrolling on their phone, what are the options for getting in front of somebody when they're like, yeah, I got a problem. I need a solution.

Jana Osofsky:
So really what it comes down to is diversifying a little bit into doing some search engine marketing or marketing your business, showing up and being visible with your messages on search engines as opposed to only on social media. And there's really three big search engines right now, the way that things are working on the internet and things are always shifting and changing. But right now, Google of course is the largest search engine on the internet. YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, which is interesting in and of itself because Google owns YouTube. So there's like that connection. And then the third largest search engine on the internet is Pinterest. And that's one of the reasons why I teach it. And a lot of people don't realize that They either think Pinterest is social media, which we've talked about before on this podcast, or they think that Pinterest is just this tiny little spot.

It must not be, they don't realize how significant it is in the big picture, in the sense that it's literally the third largest search engine on the internet. And so I always encourage people from a macro kind of perspective when they're marketing their coaching businesses and they want to set up a system or systems in their business to make sure that some of their visibility is on a search engine and some of their visibility is more low maintenance and they have more of a little bit of a longer term mindset, they want this to be easy over time and get even easier really, because that's kind of how search engines work is your results on them kind of snowball over time. They get easier and more effective as opposed to being these sinkhole that you have to just keep pouring into day after day. Social media sometimes feels like.

Michelle Leotta:
Post three times a day or else the algorithm's going to start to hate you and...

Jana Osofsky:
And God forbid you take two weeks off and don't post anything, you come back and it's crickets and whatnot. So, it's those three, the big three. And so, from a macro perspective, of course I'm a little partial to Pinterest. I don't know if I'm partial to Pinterest because I teach it or if I'm teaching it cause I'm partial to it.

Michelle Leotta:
Probably that one.

Jana Osofsky:
Probably, or both. But really I would encourage anyone who is marketing their coaching business and in this doesn't plans on continuing to do this for a while, the next couple of years at least to be looking at diversifying into search engines. And it's because it's easier and more low maintenance and gets easier over time. And there's more of that sustainable factor. I call them sailing platforms instead of the rowing platforms where it feels like you're constantly rowing on social media, but also because of what we're talking about. Because being on a search engine gives you this amazing opportunity to get discovered by people who are searching for what you offer. So someone searching for foods for more energy or someone is searching for Pcos remedies or someone is searching for information about fertility and you're actively, you're showing up when they're looking for the thing that you help with. That's really, really powerful. So that's another reason why one of the big three I think should be in everybody's marketing plan.

Michelle Leotta:
One of the big three. So that really does surprise me because I don't know about anybody else, but as soon as I hear somebody say search engine, for many years of my business, I just wanted to stick my fingers in my ears and go, I don't want to hear about search engine optimization. It sounds so nerdy, it sounds so hard mean, especially maybe a lot of our coaches don't even have websites. So even though I had a website, just felt like I cannot even deal with that right now, but doesn't not what we're talking about here. We're not talking about optimizing your website for keywords or showing up first in your Google's search terms and all. I mean, there's a whole science to that. Absolutely. And to hear that Pinterest could be so right in that third spot in terms of the size of its search engine is amazing.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, I mean I think one of the reasons that my clients and students over the years have gravitated towards Pinterest, once they see the value of getting in front of people who are looking for what they need, what they have right in the moment, and finding them and being the action takers, they start to think, okay, well Google is this whole beast and some people do it, and that's cool. And remember, your stuff can be found on Google too if it doesn't have to be your website that gets found on Google, other things can get found on Google and get you discovered. And then YouTube obviously requires a certain set of skills, video editing, lighting, things like that, that some people love and other people are not as into. So Pinterest definitely of the three probably ends up being the one that people feel like is the most accessible. And it is, it's the easiest to get started on, and yet it's super powerful because people really are actively looking for information all the time, inspiration, ideas about wellness, self-improvement, all of those things that we just mentioned, food for sure. Yep.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, I mean, this is so in our wheelhouse. So I'm just going to pause real quick and let everybody know that we are, Janet and I are hosting a follow up training to this podcast episode all about Pinterest. Specifically today we're kind of talking about search and this whole idea, but if you want to learn more about how to make Pinterest work for your business and some secrets to having it be effective for you, I want you to sign up for that right now. You can go over to healthcoachpower.com/pinterest and register for free to join us there. You said something earlier, oh yes, that's right. How another time, we talked about how Pinterest is not social media, but I think it would be worth just recapping real quick why we don't consider Pinterest social media.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, yeah, there's a few reasons. The main one is that when we are approaching it, we need to remember that because we want to be found when people are searching for our topics. We want to incorporate a keyword like strategy essentially. So we need to, and it's not as complicated as it sounds, but basically it means that you need to find out what people are searching for on Pinterest about your thing. So that's what we call keyword research. And it's actually not too complicated on Pinterest. If you have a plan to follow, it's not hard to find. And then you need to use those keywords on four different areas of your profile and at least three, sometimes four different areas of the pins that you create for your own business. So basically it's finding out what people are searching for around your niche or your specialization, and then using the right keywords so that when people are looking for those things on Pinterest, your pins and your profile and your boards can come up in their searches and also be presented to them in their feeds as well, because Pinterest matches people's interests based on their searches and what boards they have with things that they put in their feed.

So it's really, we want to use keywords. So that's the first way. And then the second big way that comes to my mind when I think about the difference is that on Pinterest, because it's a search engine, we don't have to spend hours or really any time at all engaging with people on Pinterest in the way...

Michelle Leotta:
Hallelujah.

Jana Osofsky:
...in the way that we do on social media. And that means a couple things. Sometimes people are surprised by that and they go into Pinterest and they're like, well, where do I have conversations with people? It's like, that's not happening on Pinterest. It's really people looking for things and you showing up with helpful information, inspiration ideas for them that help them discover you and your content and your offers. So we don't have to spend those hours going in every day and systematically engaging or paying somebody to do that and feeling a little icky about it or whatever happens when you know that we do, for example, on Instagram or even on other social media channels. So you can cross that right off your list of things to do on Pinterest, which gives a lot of people a lot of relief about it and also makes it much more doable to add it to your repertoire if you think about it.

Because some people say like, oh my God, I can hardly keep track of my Instagram and my Facebook. Now you want me to add another thing? But keep in mind when you add Pinterest, you're adding something where you're just creating content and it lasts on the platform for longer too, which is a whole nother conversation. Yeah. You're not adding a whole bunch of having to engage with other people to your to-do list. And for a lot of people, that's the most draining part of social media. So it is a big difference between the different social media versus Pinterest as this lovely little positive place search engine that we love to spend time in.

Michelle Leotta:
Let's just say I have never received an unsolicited message from anybody, especially not a creepy one on Pinterest. And we receive those what daily on Instagram and just even in the conversations and the back and forth political stuff, all the stuff that makes people go, Ugh, I'm going to take a break from Facebook, and they shut down their account for a couple months because they're just so angry about what's going. Yeah, it is. It's all in the back and forth and the sometimes toxic things that people will say when they're behind the screen when things they wouldn't even say in person. And it is like, can I just share good stuff without getting into these stupid conversations and arguments? And none of that happens on Pinterest, so it feels safe and calm to your nervous system, and I just adore that exists.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, it's nice. And also the other layer of that is that on social media, we feel, and rightly so, we have to engage in that engagement activity in order to be successful doing what we want to do, which is get clients. And on Pinterest, that's not part of what you have to do to successfully use the platform to get clients. So on top of it being a healthier placement, I think for most people and more palatable in that way, it there's that piece too. You can have a successful client acquisition strategy on Pinterest without engaging, and in fact, you wouldn't want to engage. It's not part of the culture over there. So

Michelle Leotta:
Say no more like we're all sold. Yeah. Yeah. Sold. Sold. Okay. Anna Jean is a question, and I think it's a good one because you mentioned that content. I guess in any search, in any search engine, once there's content there, it can be found today, tomorrow, next year, whatever. So if we have created antigen and says, can some lovely fleeting previous Facebook content be reused on Pinterest?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I teach in my programs a bunch of strategies that incorporate repurposing what you've already created. So things like the copy from your posts, graphics for sure, if anyone is doing reels on either of the two platforms, Instagram or Facebook. If you're doing tos, not everybody is, and you don't have to be. But if you are someone who does enjoy that type of thing, you absolutely can repurpose content you're creating in other places onto Pinterest in a few different really effective ways. So yes, good question. And yes, yes,

Michelle Leotta:
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I like that. Sometimes when we reuse stuff, it looks reused. You're like, oh, that was originally made for a different platform and they just reposted it here. But on Pinterest, there's like, you can do it in and you can do it in a way where it feels, right.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. I always say that you want to do it artfully and strategically. So artfully is kind of what you're talking about. You want to do it in a way that doesn't feel like you just slapped it up on the other platform. And sometimes that can happen if you just kind of strategize before you create it so that it'll be versatile for different platforms. But other times you can just do a little tweak, couple tweaks, things that I teach and make it more platform appropriate. But that starts with understanding what that even means, what is platform appropriate. So you just have to get to know the platform and what's expected and what people like and respond to on this platform, Pinterest, and how that's different from other platforms. And there are some nuances about that you want to know. And then the other part is strategic, because remember I mentioned the keywords. The other mistake people make sometimes when they repurpose their content is they'll put it on Pinterest from another platform, but they skip the part where they put some keywords on it. And so that falls flat too, because it won't kind of like the tree in the woods, that'll be like the tree in the woods, but no one will be there to hear it because no one will really be able to find it when they're looking for your topics if you haven't intentionally added some keywords that you know people are searching for. So, yeah.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. Yeah, super powerful stuff though, Jean says. Awesome. So we, how this sounds, I mean, I've probably shared this story before and I will share it again because it was probably one of my most surprising moments in any kind of online marketing I've done for my businesses in the past 14 years was when I went onto my Google Analytics. This was years ago, you guys, and I wanted to know where traffic was coming to my website, how are people finding me, which blog post was performing the best? That kind of thing. And I was shocked fall on the floor, shocked when Pinterest came up as my biggest driver of traffic to my entire health coaching website, which was all the more surprising because I was not using Pinterest. And that's the point. Other people are using Pinterest and are, I don't want to say doing the work for you, but doing a large amount of the work. And I figured, gosh, if that can happen without me ever even looking at the damn thing, what if I tried a little bit?

Jana Osofsky:
Yes, I love that. I love that. And it's really true. You only have to really try a little bit. So that's why we love it. And it also brings up the other piece we kind of talked about for a second, but because it's a search engine, your pins, when you create them, they can surface in people's searches and their smart feeds on Pinterest for months and years, whereas on social media, our content is fleeting. Sometimes somebody, I think it was image mentioned, the word fleeting. Well, it really almost always is. It's just always kind of getting knocked down the feed by whatever somebody just posted last. But that's not how Pinterest works. It's actually more based on relevancy. So if someone searches for PCOS diet or something like that, the pins that come up, they're not the most recent ones. They're the ones that Pinterest believes based on various factors are the best match for that person's query. So that's a big part of understanding how it works too, and part of why we love it.

Michelle Leotta:
Definitely. So if you feel like, oh, it's just another thing that I got to add, another thing that I have to think about, I believe you've already said number one, maybe it's a matter of just shifting some of your time so you don't have to spend seven hours a day on social media and another seven hours a day on Pinterest. It's not like that. Let's pull some hours, let's reprioritize your time. And then we talked about if you have content in other places and other on social media platforms, there's ways to repurpose them. Do you have any other advice for someone that's just like, ah, God, not another thing?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really just a question of setting a boundary around it. And with anything, we could say, well, I'm going to pin, I don't know, X number of pins a week, but if you just pin even one or two pins a week on a regular basis and even take some time off here and there, it's starting small and just getting things kind of cooking so that when people do look for your topics, they can find you is really the name of the game. It's just starting small and getting your stuff on the platform, just really almost parking it there because it sounds kind of obvious, but if you don't put your content on Pinterest, then when people search for what you help with, they won't find you. And people are searching all the time for things in the health and wellness and self-improvement area. So it's important to realize that,

Michelle Leotta:
And maybe all of us have probably been there where there's something going on, we get a diagnosis or we notice something weird about our body today or whatever. Do you go look for it? You go search it As my kids would say, search it up, mom, search it up. It's like their lingo. It's so funny. And yes, and then these are the people that are like, I want to do something about it. I'm not just kind of interested. It's not just something that I clicked on a hashtag one time, but I really don't care. It's like, I'm interested, I'm now and then you're there. Yeah, they're search. They're literally searching for you and you're there.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. That's why I like to say Pinterest is a place to get in front of action takers because they're people who are ready to take action. They literally just looked for the thing that you're helping with.

Michelle Leotta:
Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So good. I mean, it was so funny because the blog post that was getting the most traffic from Pinterest at that time was something that I wrote about why you should eat the skin on chicken. I made a whole argument for naturally occurring fats, and, to be fair, it was a good blog post.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, sounds like it.

Michelle Leotta:
Hilarious. Years and years later, it's still the blog post that was getting the most traffic. People were searching for that.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah. And do you still recommend that eating chicken? ...the skin on chicken?

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, I do. I do. Well, that's good. I was like, wow, I didn't write that on purpose. I didn't, wasn't strategic and going, well, what are people searching for? But it turns out I learned after the fact a lot. I guess a lot of people want to know, Hey, should I eat the skin on chicken? Because a lot of people say no, and now here's this one person saying yes. And so it's maybe a little controversial and it got a lot of uptick. So...

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, I think people generally respond well to things that are either a little sometimes surprising or a little polarizing. So, if there was any element of that to it, I'm sure that helped.

Michelle Leotta:
Exactly. Now imagine if I had been strategic and that actually had a direct correlation to what I do as a health coach and how I can help you. And I wasn't being strategic back then, but that's why we have you so that we can be smarter about these things.

Jana Osofsky:
Happy to help.

Michelle Leotta:
Thank you. Thank you. I'm sure everyone who's listening and everyone who's watching is cool, and they're typing up pinterest.com right now, and then you're going to get there and you're going to be like, all right, now what? So what should somebody do? Should they set up their profile first or they should they start creating pins?

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, I mean, I think there's room for either approach, depending on what feels fun. I like to incorporate fun and whatnot into business. I personally am the kind of person, I'm very orderly and I like to see the whole staircase before I start taking the first step kind of thing. But I know there's a place for sometimes taking that first step, just regardless. So I personally like to recommend to people that they set up their profile because I think that gives you a really good kind of place to get started in a way that is strategic. You're going to need to find some keywords to do that, and that's going to set you up really well. But if you're the kind of person who just wants to jump in and start creating some pens and see how it feels first, get the hang of it and then go back and optimize your profile, I think that's okay. But I lean in the direction of setting up a strategic profile that has some keywords and is also strategically set up for conversions too, like conversion friendly profile,

Michelle Leotta:
Meaning we don't want someone to just go, oh, cool, blog post about chicken skin, Michelle, we want them to end up on my mailing list.

Jana Osofsky:
That'd be good. That'd be good. Yeah, exactly.

Michelle Leotta:
That would be much smarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If I could rewind my business a bunch of years, I would do a lot of things differently, but that's why we're here to develop all new.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, shortening the learning curve.

Michelle Leotta:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So in that spirit, again, as a follow up to this podcast episode, Janet and I are offering a free live training. We're going to be sharing more about Pinterest, and I realize it may be new territory for some of you, or maybe you're like, you know, just used Pinterest to find recipes for what you're going to make for dinner tonight. And there's so much more strategically that you can be doing for your business. We want to help you ease into it so you can get started quickly. You can get started easily and effectively. So make sure that you sign up and you join us for this training. It's completely free. And again, the url is healthcoachpower.com/pinterest. It happens April 26th. So go get signed up for that. And in the meantime, Janet, thanks so much for joining today. I just love this topic.

Jana Osofsky:
Yeah, me too. Thanks for talking about it with me.

Michelle Leotta:
Amazing. Thanks everybody. If you have questions about this, hit us up in the Facebook group because I feel like there's a lot of more to be said here, and I'll just leave it at that for now. Have a great day, everybody. Take care.