Leaving Your Day Job and Scaling a Food Blog with Pinterest with Sharlene Murrell

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

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Ann Morrissey: Welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. I’m Ann from the Food Blogger Pro team, and in this episode, Bjork sits down with Sharlene Murrell from Good Enough Moming to explore her journey of building a thriving food blog by mastering Pinterest. Sharlene shares how adopting a ready, fire, aim framework and overcoming early struggles with keyword research helped her rapidly scale her traffic and income after leaving her day job. The conversation also dives into actionable Pinterest strategies, including targeting broad keywords, creating multiple pins per post, and leveraging tools like Canva. They round out the conversation with practical advice on capitalizing on seasonal trends, maintaining consistency and overcoming imposter syndrome. No matter where you are in your food blogging journey, this episode is packed with inspiration and tactics for creators ready to take action. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Sharlene, welcome to the podcast.

Sharlene Murrell: Hi, Bjork. It’s so nice to be here.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, we’re going to be talking about Pinterest. We’re going to be talking about blogging, believe it or not, building a food site, but we’re going to be talking about it in a way that I think we need to do more of on the podcast, which is somebody who is early in their journey. It might not feel like that for you. You’ve been working hard at this. You’ve been in the trenches, creating content, building traffic from Pinterest, but a lot of times we’ll talk to somebody who’s been creating for 10 years, who’s been creating for 15 years. And it’s easy for anybody. It’d be easy for me if I was on the outside to look at that and say, “Hey, that’s great, but what about today? What if I started today? What are the things that I can be doing to realistically get some traction, to get some momentum, to start earning some money from the work that I’m doing?” And you have done that. So we’re going to talk about that, talk about some of the things that you’ve learned. But before we do that, talk about when you started and what was your mindset as you were getting started?

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah, so I started last February, so February of 2025, and a little bit of background. I quit my job when I had my baby, which was unexpected. I just decided I wasn’t going back. And I was going to start a business with my mom, didn’t work out. So I was looking for ways to start making money from home. And I was on Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone. I think you’ve interviewed her before, and she had her free blogging masterclass, so I watched it and I was like, “Well, this lady has nine kids, and if she can do it, I can. ” And so I literally just had a blog up and running the same day. It was crazy.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool.

Sharlene Murrell: I just jumped right in.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. The thing that I love about that that we often talk about is this idea of ready, fire, aim. And sometimes we’ll hear from people who are in the ready AIM fire stage and they’re in the aim stage. And you can get caught up there for a really long time where you think you’re ready and then you’re going to aim and you’re looking and you’re saying, “Okay, what’s my logo going to be? What’s my name going to be? ” And you kind of circle around that for months and months and you delay that fire stage, which is kind of like doing it. It’s pressing publish, moving forward. And that’s what really matters because the speed of iteration is so much faster once you get into publishing and once you get into the rhythm of launching. So what did those first few weeks look like for you as you were getting into it?

Sharlene Murrell: So my name is Good Enough Moming because I thought that I would be a lifestyle type of mommy blogger. I would talk about motherhood and cleaning and all the things that moms do, and then food would be included in that. But then I quickly realized I got on Pinterest and I realized everything I’m doing is food related or everything that was doing well was food related. So in the first few weeks, it was really just me figuring out, what should I even write about and talk

Bjork Ostrom: About?

Sharlene Murrell: And then from there, food became the primary thing.

Bjork Ostrom: It’s great because that as well is a really important variable, or skill, which is publishing quickly, launching quickly. And then when you are doing that, monitoring to see, hey, what’s performing? What’s sticking well? What’s resonating with an audience? And sometimes you’ll even see this with your site is broad enough where you can still talk about food and it fits under the category of good enough momming. But sometimes you’ll see even on Instagram, people who will have a handle and it’s like, wait, I think actually the anti-example of food content is there’s an account and it’s called it’s Grill Guy. And I think he started out posting food and grilling content and then he did a couple, this is my guess, I don’t know for sure. Then he did a couple humor videos, like comedy videos that did well, and now he’s a comedy guy. And I think it probably started as food and grilling, but evolved into comedy for him because he saw that he was able to create that and people were resonating with it. For you, it sounds like you were creating lots of different type of content. Some of that content was food content. And then one of the things that you were doing was posting that to Pinterest and then observing, how’s this doing on Pinterest? And it sounds like some of the food stuff caught on.

Sharlene Murrell: Yes. Yes.

Bjork Ostrom: Because

Sharlene Murrell: And when I first started my Pinterest journey, I wasn’t doing it well. It took me a little bit of time to understand the keyword research. And so because food is … The other stuff that I was posting about, you really do have to do keyword research properly for it to tick off on Pinterest. So I think I was an accident, but a happy accident because the RPMs are primo with food

Bjork Ostrom: Sites. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? So one of the things that happened within this first year is you’re able to grow, get accepted to Medivine and Raptive. With either of those ad networks, you’re able to see the RPM. So how much are you earning from a thousand page views that are coming to your site? How much are you able to earn? And it might be 25, it might be 50, it could be $100. And so man, if you have a thousand page views that are coming and you earn $50, you can kind of start to do the math on that. And that’s where it becomes really fun. The interesting thing is each traffic source earns you a different amount. And so talk about discovering that and what you learned from the process of traffic from Pinterest as you alluded to Pinterest being a more valuable traffic source from an RPM perspective.

Sharlene Murrell: So quite frankly, I have no clue. I don’t get barely any traffic from Google. So all of my traffic is from Pinterest. So I actually don’t, I can’t really speak on that, unfortunately. I mean, my RPMs are good. I can tell you they fluctuate right now and this is the beginning of the year, so it’s pretty good from 30 to $32, and it’s all from Pinterest. I don’t know what Google looks like. I think you’re better at talking about that.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure, sure. But basic idea is, and every site will be different depending on the type of ads that you run and where they’re running. And so that will always look different. But generally, the order of those earnings is going to look different or look the same. And so if you have, within Raptive, that’s the one that I’m most familiar with, you can see earnings by the source of the traffic. And within that, what you’ll be able to see is how much is each one of those sources earning. And generally speaking, Pinterest is going to be the highest. And so- Really? Yeah. And in ours, if I look at Pinch of Yum earnings, our rank order is direct right now, and this can change, this is for the last week, direct, then Pinterest, then Instagram, then other, I don’t know what’s in there, then Google search, then email, and then Facebook. And so now obviously if you have a high search traffic site, you might earn more overall because you have more traffic, but with Pinterest traffic, a lot of times it’s in that top one, two, or three is what we’ll see with sites. And so it can be a valuable traffic source for people because it pays out a higher RPM. And the other thing that’s cool about Pinterest is you’re able to get traction with it a little bit earlier than you are with search. So talk about what that was like as you started to discover the ability to get traffic, not quickly necessarily, but more quick than search.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. So I’m trying to think of the timeline. So I had a bread recipe because I mostly do sourdough. And I think with Pinterest, a rising tide raises all ships. So once that bread recipe did really, really well, I just noticed that Pinterest started to trust me more and I just started getting more and more and more page views. It was pretty quick because I was accepted to Journey by Mediavine at six months and I had 10,000 page views around then. And then I just kept going, but I got better at it. So I understood that you need to do keyword research to actually get your pins seen more broadly. And so every time that I would learn something, you talk about getting a tiny bit better, I would just learn and then it just kind of kept building on itself. And that’s the major thing with Pinterest is it’s going to be really slow at first and then all at once you’ll be like, whoa. And so it’s just patience, I think. I think that’s the most important thing with Pinterest is just kind of putting the pins out and then waiting for hopefully one of them to go through because then all of your pins start to do better after it.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, there’s kind of that trickle down effect of potentially, we don’t know exactly how that algorithm works, but similar to Google, if you have a site that has authority, is well known, the probability of a piece of content that you publish showing up in a search result is going to be higher than a site that was started a month ago and can look similar across other social platforms, Pinterest being one of them. One of the things that’s interesting with you talking about your story and getting started on Pinterest is it ties into something that Kate Ahl, I’m guessing you’re familiar with Kate or have you listened to any of the podcasts Kate has done? Okay. So Kate has … Yeah, great. So she has a podcast. She’s a Food Blogger Pro expert, so occasionally shows up in the forums as people have Pinterest questions, and she has a deep expertise, a decade plus of Pinterest experience. And one of the things she’s talked about is there is kind of this divide where for people who have been creating for let’s say 10 years and they’ve been able to get really great traffic from Pinterest, it’s been super reliable, and that has diminished over the years. There’s this sentiment of like, gosh, this kind of stinks. I was having traction with Pinterest, I had 200,000 pages from Pinterest, and now I have 120 or 80 or whatever it is. And I’m not saying that’s actually true for us. I’m just saying as an example, that’s what’s happening is those are made up numbers, but you had a lot of traffic and then it’s kind of going down. But what Kate was saying is there’s an entire batch of new creators who have a new site and they are starting to use Pinterest strategically. And for them, it’s like, wow, this is really cool. I’m creating content on my blog, I’m publishing it to Pinterest, and then I’m getting traffic from that. And because you aren’t anchored at some point of what your expectation would be, you are able to be more excited about it and invest the time into it and go from zero to 10,000. And then my guess is that has continued to grow 20,000, that you are getting more and more traffic and creating substantial income from that while being able to stay at home, be with your kids. So talk about, to the degree that you’re comfortable sharing how that growth has looked over the past year, and then I want to talk to you a little bit about your process and the things that you’ve learned along the way.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. So Pinterest, actually what you’re talking about, I’m kind of experiencing right now, it’s like an up and down and up and down and up and down. So I have never just been on a steady, it’s going up. There have been times where it’s going up and it’s going up, and right now we’re on it down. And I think you have to realize with Pinterest that first of all, it’s really seasonal. So when you’re coming out of Q4, you’re going to have a little bit of a dip. If you can have some pins there that are for the next thing, I had some football stuff, like Superbowl pins and things … Or not Thanksgiving, excuse me, Valentine’s Day ready at the helm, it kind of helped me stay consistent. So the seasonality is a really big thing for Pinterest and understanding that. And you just have to have the mindset of I’m going to go down. It never stays up. It goes down and then it comes back up. But I have found that by just staying consistent with my Pinterest and pinning, I recover and every time I recover, I end up higher than I was when I started going down. So I think just staying consistent and understanding that with Pinterest, you’re going to have downturns is the biggest thing I think. I really hope that in five years from now, I’m not like, I hate Pinterest. I used to get this much traffic.

Bjork Ostrom: Really

Sharlene Murrell: I hope I can …

Bjork Ostrom: But maybe not. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Yeah. But in terms of, would you have like, hey, a peak month would’ve looked like this. It would’ve been 30,000 pages from Pinterest or 40,000 or whatever it might be. Any kind of rough numbers that you can give to quantify what that looks like?

Sharlene Murrell: 42,000. I hit that this month and

Bjork Ostrom: Now we’re

Sharlene Murrell: Going back down. We’re at 39

Bjork Ostrom: Right now. Sure, sure. But also it’s shorter month and it’s pretty similar just in terms of numbers. And I think one of the things that’s important to think about is let’s say you were only focused on search, you would’ve had to have some kind of unique breakthroughs in order for content to be consistently giving you 1,000 to 2,000 page views a day. And you can start to play the numbers game with that a little bit and you can say, okay, if I can get 2,000 page views a day and maybe I can get to 40 RPM as I tweak my ads and stuff. Oh, well, what if I get to 3,000? That could be the equivalent of 30 to 40,000 a year. And you can start to see how within a year you have created a substantial income from one of the most flexible jobs that you can have. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of effort, but it’s extremely flexible. And I think that autonomy is one of the things that people are especially interested in in this type of work. So talk to me about how you fit this work in while you have also been momming and doing all the other things that you need to do. What has that looked like and what have been the tools that have been most helpful?

Sharlene Murrell: So I started my blog and I just worked it during my baby’s sleeping hours. So when I first started, my son was still nursing and he would wake up for his last night feed at 5:00 AM and I never could fall back asleep. So I would work from 5:00 to 8:00, and then he would take a nap. My son’s a really good sleeper, but then he would take a three-hour nap.

Bjork Ostrom: What a blessing.

Sharlene Murrell: I’m praying the next one doesn’t ruin it. But then three-hour nap, and then I would work from whenever he would go to bed to his first night feed, which was usually around midnight. So that’s what I would do. Now, I don’t get up at 5:00 AM. I

Bjork Ostrom: Was going to say, those are some short nights.That’s five hours of sleep.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah, but I had a goal. My goal was I’m going to be on Mediavine. I ended up choosing Raptive, but my goal was to be on Mediavine in a year. And so I was like, I can do this for a year. I was a tax consultant before this, and I would have 200 clients at a time. I was going to work at 6:00 AM, coming home at nine o’clock anyways, so I was used to the grind. This was nothing new for me. So that’s kind of crazy. I know, but I also did have a very supportive husband. So if the house was messy, you would help me. Or if I was tired one day, I’d take a nap. But it is crazy. Looking back, I’m like, “You were insane.”

Bjork Ostrom: But that’s what it takes. I think especially in a season like that where Lindsay and I started pre-kids, we didn’t have many commitments and it’s like we were working our jobs and we had to fit it in early mornings, lunch hours, nights, and we had jobs that had more flexible summers, and so that was part of it. But everybody’s in a different life season, everybody has different commitments. And I think the takeaway is you fit it in when you can fit it in and you can only do as much as you can do, but what you want to be doing in those stretches that you do have is work that is maximally impactful. And my guess is that you’re pretty strategic in figuring out what it is that you’ll actually do in those time slots where you did have time available. And in this last year of growing your business and getting it off the ground and getting it to the point where it’s making consistent income, what did that look like for you to figure out and optimize how to optimize those windows of time that you had to work? What was most helpful in those kind of work stretches?

Sharlene Murrell: So I think that part of the reason it took me so long is because I was learning. So I had to stop and ask ChatGPT, “How do I do this? ” Or, “How do I do that? ” But I did have … Every single weekend I still do this, I look at my husband’s schedule and I have a planner and I write down, “Okay, he has worked from this time to this time. These are my working hours. I can get this, this, this, this, and this done.” And then I just sit down and I do what I have planned for the day. That’s it. I don’t really worry about … I don’t have a logo. I don’t have a nice blog. It’s not pretty. It’s just a blog. And because I haven’t worried about any of those things, I get in and I get out. That’s it. I just have things I need to get done and that’s

Bjork Ostrom: So I love that. What are some of those things? When you say get the things done, get in, get out, what is

Sharlene Murrell: That? I guess I could walk through a weekly schedule. Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom: That’d be great.

Sharlene Murrell: I know that cooking to me is not work. So I will shoot the stuff on the weekends. In the morning when the sun is nice, I will kind of mix everything up and I’ll just have my son there with me. He’s with me and I’ll mix everything up. I’ll get the process done.

Bjork Ostrom: So you’re at the computer. You probably would be doing similar stuff otherwise.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. Yeah, I would be cooking anyway. So I will get everything shot and then I will edit them at night. I usually get in the bath, edit them, edit the photos because I take everything on my phone. I don’t even have a camera, nothing. And then so I edit them when I’m in the bath on a Sunday night and then Monday are blog writing days. So I just knock out all of my blog writing. I have decided that I don’t want to please the Google Gods anymore. I just write for human beings. And if Google doesn’t like that, then so be it. Maybe that’s a mistake, but whatever. And then Tuesdays I usually start getting the blog posts up. Oh, also I do some YouTube. So I will also film YouTube videos on the weekend too, just because I like to get all the content done on the weekends so that I can just spread it out through the week doing the work. And then so blog writing on Monday, and then I start getting the blog posts up on Tuesday. So I do Pinterest, I do Pinterest keyword research, and I make the pins, then I write the blog post, and then I put it up on the website, and then I pin the pin after that. And usually I can do … I do three blog posts a week right now. And then Wednesday … Are we Wednesday? Yeah, Wednesday, I edit YouTube videos. Thursday, I usually voice over the YouTube video, and then it goes up on Friday, and that is what that looks like.

Bjork Ostrom: And repeat.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah, and repeat. It’s just

Bjork Ostrom: Very

Sharlene Murrell: Easy.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. It’s the combination of finding the opportunities, doing something, you alluded to this idea of getting a tiny bit better every day, finding the areas to tweak and enhance, the combination of that plus the boring, methodical, get up, repeat, do the same thing, I feel like is such an unlock in the pursuit of growth, whatever that might be, growth in a relationship, growth in a business, growth in a blog. What about tools that you’ve been using? So let’s talk about Pinterest specifically. You’ve been able to find a cool way to access some level. I know you said it’s kind of up and down, but some level of predictable traffic from a platform and within the first year to the point where it’s like you’re earning consistent income from that. Are you using tools to help with your Pinterest scheduling? Are you doing it all within Pinterest natively? How many pins are you doing a day? Talk a little bit about your Pinterest strategy on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. So I just do everything in the Pinterest native scheduler. I don’t use any outside thing because I don’t want to pay for it. So there you go. And then number of pins, I do five to seven. And I will say I was doing at 1.10 and I was getting very similar results. So I don’t think- Sure.

Bjork Ostrom: 10 a day?

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah, 10 a day. I don’t think that you need to do high volume. Five to seven to me is very good and you can grow with that. And then in terms of tools, there’s this free tool, it’s by Tony Hill. He made pin clicks. I don’t necessarily think this is what he means for this tool to do, but this is how I use it. It’s called related pin analyzer. And whenever I’m doing my keyword research, this is how I do the keyword research. I will go to Pi first, and I’ll put in my keyword, and then I’ll copy and paste the URL into the Related Pin Analyzer, and then it gives you the annotations, which annotations are what Pinterest considers or what they call keywords. And so I will get the list of those. With my keyword research, I don’t know if you want me to go into that. Is that okay?

Bjork Ostrom: This is great. Yeah. And pulling up Tony’s site. I haven’t heard of Tony before, but looks like somebody who specializes in Pinterest. Yes. And can you say that again? So the PinClicks tool, the ultimate- Okay, so PinClicks is the key- I’m looking at it here, the ultimate Pinterest research tool for creators.

Sharlene Murrell: That’s his pay thing. I don’t pay for it. I use his free Pinterest analyzer. Again, I don’t know if that’s how he’s meeting people free to use this. He just wants your email. It’s just a way for him to get on his email list.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Sharlene Murrell: I don’t know if you … If I could share, I can show you what I’m talking about if you would like.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, sure. And we can talk over it for anybody who’s listening. So it looks like he has some tools here, PinClicks, Pinner Analytics, EasyPin Scheduler, PinnerPress. These are all different tools that he uses focused on Pinterest. And now you’re talking about the Pinterest analytics side of thing. Okay. So talk us through at a high level what that tool does and how you use it.

Sharlene Murrell: So I will send you guys the link to this, but when you go into Pinterest, you go to a pin and then you type it in or there’ll be a little search bar and you put the pin in and then you press analyze related pins. So sorry you guys can’t see this. And then it’ll have the annotations. So these annotations are specifically what Pinterest thinks people are going to search for basically. What people are actually putting into the Pinterest search bar. If you scroll down, you’ll see annotations. These give you the related annotations that are basically … To me, these are how I use my broad keyword. So if my keyword research is this specific keyword, and then I like to target broad keywords as well. So for example, if I’m doing a sourdough brioche recipe, I don’t want to only target sourdough brioche. I want to be targeting sourdough recipes, sourdough recipe with sourdough starter, sourdough homemade sourdough bread. You want to be targeting the broad keywords because think about what people on Pinterest are going there for. They’re going for ideas. They don’t know what they’re making for dinner. So they’re going to type in dinner idea. Well, you want that in your pin description because when someone types in dinner idea, you’re more likely to show up there. So that’s kind of how I do my keyword research. I don’t just target my specific keyword because that’s more of a Google thing. Google, you need to be targeting just that specific keyword,

Bjork Ostrom: But

Sharlene Murrell: For Pinterest, you want to target broader keywords. And whenever you go in there, you just have to scroll down and it’ll have this little blue bar and then it says annotations.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool.

Sharlene Murrell: So that’s how I do it. So I get a list of them and then I put it into Gemini because ChatGPT is really bad at this, doing Pinterest titles and descriptions, and I tell it to write me a Pinterest title and description. I believe you can go up to 800 characters, that is 800 characters and uses primarily the broad keywords because I really want to be targeting all of the broader things that people are typing in.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. And then what do you do with that? So you get that response from Gemini, super smart, I think. So the process is you have this recipe, you’re excited about it. You haven’t done keyword research on that. That’s just a recipe that you’re excited to make, you’re interested in, you want to feed your family, you’re going to make on a weekend, and so you’re already documenting it. You have the photos on your phone that you’ve taken after you’ve made the recipe. And then from there, you have the photo that you’re putting into this tool or you’re just You’re putting in the text.

Sharlene Murrell: You’re going into Pinterest and you’re getting the things that are

Bjork Ostrom: Already ranking off

Sharlene Murrell: Pinterest.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: And then from there-

Sharlene Murrell: I make a list of all of the annotations and I feed that to Gemini.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And then Gemini gives you this response. What do you do with that?

Sharlene Murrell: So then when I’m going to schedule my pin, I use the title that it gave me and then the description that it gave me.

Bjork Ostrom: And then are you also editing the image or just putting the image raw?

Sharlene Murrell: So the image, sorry, I do make Pinterest pins. So the Pinterest graphics that everyone makes, I use a template for that. I bought them on Etsy and I put in my own pictures and then the text on top.

Bjork Ostrom: And using Canva or?

Sharlene Murrell: Yes, Canva.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay, got it. So Canva, the image is created there. Yes. You’re using this process that you just described to do the keyword research on Pinterest and then using Gemini to help expand and extrapolate on the initial keyword research that you did, pairing all of that together and then publishing and scheduling to Pinterest using the native Pinterest scheduler. Let’s say if you have a new post that you’re publishing, how many different pins are you pinning off of that singular post?

Sharlene Murrell: 10.

Bjork Ostrom: I create 10. You knew the number. It was 10. And those are each-

Sharlene Murrell: Lisa.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Lisa. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then each one of those has a different image?

Sharlene Murrell: Yes. All have different images. I know that people say, oh, you can just change the background or you could change the color of the font or whatever. Anytime that I’ve ever done that, the other subsequent pins do terrible. So I don’t do that. Every single pin looks different and it needs to look different. And they all go to different boards. This is a really key thing that I learned. If you put it all on one board, you’re only targeting that specific group of people that may have typed in that search term versus putting it in all of these boards, you’re casting a wider net. So my boards are actually on the same thing, the annotations. I find these with high search volume. I wish I could show you what I’m saying. It’s so confusing. Just

Bjork Ostrom: Explain it. Most people are listening anyways, so yeah, that’s okay.

Sharlene Murrell: But when you go in there, you’ll see the annotation. So this is just a random one. It says Healthy Sweets Recipes. That would become a board for me because it has 85,000 search volume. Let’s see, what else? This is a random. I don’t even know. This is whatever pops up when you open the thing.

Bjork Ostrom: And I think maybe the best way is you could send over some screenshots and then we’ll include those in the show notes. Yeah. When you are seeing that search volume, where is that?

Sharlene Murrell: It is on the tool. Got it.

Bjork Ostrom: So

Sharlene Murrell: It’ll have the annotation and then it’ll have search volume next to it.

Bjork Ostrom: By annotation, do you mean the keyword? Excuse me.

Sharlene Murrell: I’m sorry.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. No, that’s all right. I just wanted to make sure I’m tracking. So it’ll show the keyword and then the search volume. And then you’re using that to inform whether you should create a board from it. If it’s like, “Hey, there’s actually a lot of people searching for this. I should probably be creating a board that then you are pinning all of your own content to or your content and other content to.

Sharlene Murrell: “ Most like 99% of the time it’s my own content. The only time I’ll pin someone else’s is if I am on the app and I’m like, ”Ooh, that looks good.” And then I’ll pin it.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Sharlene Murrell: But 99% of the time it’s just my stuff.

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And will you ever use those high volume search terms that you see in the tool to inform recipes you’ll make? Or do you only create a board if you know that content you’ve already created could go into those?

Sharlene Murrell: If I’m excited about something, I will create a new board. I will just create a new board. I don’t care if it doesn’t necessarily fit into what I have already. It mostly does because I do mostly sourdough stuff, but at this point, but I will create a new board. And honestly, I think that is a great strategy because I will create a new board and be like, “Oof, now I get to create new pins for all of the things I already have to target this new set of people. ”

Bjork Ostrom: So I- Do you have an example of what that would be, creating a new board that allows you to then create new pins for preexisting recipes that now fit under a new category in a Pinterest board?

Sharlene Murrell: I have a recipe for a copycat Chewy’s Palapino Ranch dip. I don’t know if you’ve ever had chewy’s. It’s incredible, but I just pulled up a- Is

Bjork Ostrom: It a brand? Chuy’s?

Sharlene Murrell: Chuy’s is like a Mexican restaurant. I don’t know if it’s only in Texas, but it’s just …

Bjork Ostrom: How do you spell it? C-H?

Sharlene Murrell: C-H-U-Y apostrophe S.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, I don’t know Chuy’s, but it looks great.

Sharlene Murrell: It’s so good. So I have a copycat recipe for that. And I pulled up, this was a very similar, this is a creamy cilantro garlic sauce that I pulled a pin from. Well, one of the annotations is DIY sauce recipe ideas. Okay. That’s one of the keywords that showed up. Well, I would create a new board so that I could create a new pin for DIY sauce recipes.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it.

Sharlene Murrell: See what I’m saying?

Bjork Ostrom: Yep. And then you’d create unique pins to put in that board that would match the … It would be the recipe, but it would be under the umbrella of this keyword category. And so you’re strategically, and this is I think the key takeaway, and I’ve been thinking about this for all of the content that we’re producing. We’ve been talking a lot about it for Pinch of Yum. You’re strategically repurposing and looking at your content from different angles and saying, “Okay, I know that generally I’m going to approach this, whatever it is, apple pie recipe from this angle. Hey, it’s an apple pie recipe. This is the best apple pie recipe ever.” But there’s a hundred different ways that people are going to be thinking about that recipe. Some might be thinking about it within the context of Thanksgiving. Others might be thinking about it for really easy recipes, or it might be nostalgic recipes. And all of those different angles present a marketing opportunity. And what we are doing is we are marketing the recipes that we are creating and what you’re doing in looking for these different boards on Pinterest on that platform is saying, what is the user intent? We think a lot about that in e-commerce or affiliate, people who are really good at affiliate marketing think about this. What is the intent of the user? And they want to … A really easy example is they want to find somebody whose intent is buying running shoes, not fixing running shoes.That’s a really obvious one where the buyer intent is like, oh, somebody who’s fixing running shoes isn’t in the mindset of spending. But when we have one singular recipe, the intent that people are going to have around that, it’s going to be very different. And we can market it differently depending on what the mindset might be of the different people who would interact with that. And so this on Pinterest, I think is a really great example. We’ve also been thinking about it. We did an interview with the Food Dolls and they talked about how they will create multiple different videos for Facebook that are a little bit different, but it’s the same recipe. And I think for me, that was like, oh yeah, for sure. But we had always approached, hey, you create one recipe, you post it to Facebook. And then even within the last few years, we’ve started to think more about, hey, maybe then you post it again three months later or the next year and have thought about repurposing that way. But there’s also, it’s almost like remixing. You have a hit song and you find all the ways to distribute it, but then you also remix. And then you do another version where you feature another artist and suddenly you have Baby by Justin Bieber, but then you have 13 different versions of Baby. It’s like acoustic and it’s the normal one and then it’s featuring whoever he wants to feature. That is what it feels like you’re doing a little bit, which is so smart and a good reminder for me and the content that we’re creating to think about what are the different ways that we can be remixing the content and then redistributing it on different platforms. And the result of that is I think a lot of times doing less work in order to achieve a similar outcome, which is growing your traffic, growing exposure because you’re focusing on the marketing piece. Is there anything that you’d add to that in terms of your mindset around how you view a singular post and how you can use it in different ways on Pinterest? Well,

Sharlene Murrell: Not even just on Pinterest, but on my blog. Something that I’ve been doing lately is I’m a year in. So I’m looking at my old blog posts and I’m like, okay, how can I make a spin on this without having to fully reproduce a blog post? So I have an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe. Well, I took out the raisins and I filled it and it’s an oatmeal cream pie now. And I have a sourdough scone recipe that I turned into a strawberry shortcake recipe. I’m really trying to be, instead of always producing, always, always, I got to come up with a new recipe. It’s like so much work.

Bjork Ostrom: It really is.

Sharlene Murrell: And so however I can, and I’ve also been starting to do this on social media. So I liked how you brought up music people, because music people will literally promote their music for six months, the same song for six months. So on social media, what I’ve started doing is I’ll post one video of me showing how soft the texture is, and then I’ll post another video of me actually making the recipe, and then I’ll post another video of it featured in a dinner. If it’s a hamburger bun, I’ll … So I’m finding different ways to always be marketing the content without having, because I feel like you would just get burnt out of just always producing, always always, always. So not only just on Pinterest, I’m doing this across the business to make my life as easy as possible.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s great. Yeah. It’s not only in the recipe itself, but then also the promotion of the recipe, all of these different ways that you can be doing that. Let’s say somebody hasn’t really spent much time on Pinterest, they’ve heard people talk about it. They’ve also heard people say like, “Hey, Pinterest is changing. There’s a lot of AI on there. It’s hard to get discovered.” What would your advice be for somebody who is kind of hesitant or maybe cautious around investing too much time on Pinterest because some of the conversations that have been happening around it as a platform?

Sharlene Murrell: Is this person established or are they-

Bjork Ostrom: Let’s say it’s somebody new.

Sharlene Murrell: Okay. New. New, I would say you have to do it. You don’t have a choice because if you want to grow quickly, I think Pinterest is the way to do it. I think your mindset becomes who you are. So before, I was not in Pinterest or I wasn’t in Facebook groups or anything like that, and I had no clue things were going on in the blogging world. I had no clue

Bjork Ostrom: That- For the better.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. I had

Bjork Ostrom: A

Sharlene Murrell: Clue AI was taking over. I had literally no clue. And because I just put my head down and I did the work and I shut out the noise, or there was no noise, ignorance is bliss, the old saying goes, then all of a sudden I grew and it wasn’t that big of a deal. I think yes, there is AI, but also people can tell and they avoid it. I actually was on TikTok the other day and people, she was showing a video and she was like, “AI, this is AI.” People can tell. So they’re going to know that your stuff is from a real human being, especially when they click. The girl clicked and she was like, it was like a grandma, but you could tell it was not an actual grandma. It was an

Bjork Ostrom: AI

Sharlene Murrell: Person. When they click, they’re going to know. So I don’t worry about

Bjork Ostrom: Any- You mean your point is maybe that the image itself is going to be-

Sharlene Murrell: They’ll know.

Bjork Ostrom: They’re going to

Sharlene Murrell: Know that it’s AI.

Bjork Ostrom: I also think it’s getting really good. At the same time, I think it’s … I do.

Sharlene Murrell: Maybe it’s because I’m Gen Z, but we can tell. I can look at that and be like, it’s so shiny.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Here’s my theory on it. I think that you can tell. I also think you don’t know if you can’t tell. I think that there are more and more instances where … I think you’re right. I think as things stand right now, there is an internet-savvy group of people who have the nuance around video, it’s easier, but then photos are getting a lot harder, but even then, maybe you can kind of tell. But I think that there’s the vast majority of people, 98% of people who are interacting, especially with photos and wouldn’t be able to tell. I think that you can tell a little bit easier if you get to a site and then you’re like, wait a minute, this feels a little bit weird. But I do think that that gap is closing and we will more and more not be able to tell. And I do think the other piece is like, we know when we know and we see it, and we don’t know if we have been duped because we just assume it’s real. But I think the proof is in food analogy, the pudding for you, which is you’ve been able to get traffic. And I think that is the piece to me that we should shine a light on. And it doesn’t mean that AI content doesn’t exist on Pinterest. It doesn’t mean that it’s not getting better and better. It does mean that you are having auto deposit into your account every month from Raptive from the content that you’re creating. And that to me is the piece that I think is important to point out.

Sharlene Murrell: I will say I have been doing some things to make sure that people know that I am a human.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Tell us about them. Tell us about them because I think that’s also important. I think not only is there the consideration do people know or not, but also how do we go above and beyond in showing our humanness?

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. So I put video with my face and fingers. If you can show your fingers that they’re not decrepit, that’s a good one. Video of me making it in my own kitchen, action shots. So the process shots, I usually am filming, so I’ll screenshot me rolling cinnamon rolls or whatever. Lots of things like that. And I actually commented on that video I mentioned and they were like, “That’s amazing. Keep doing that because then they know it’s human content.” So if you can just put your face in there. I did a carrot cake recipe a few weeks back and you could see my face. And so I just screenshotted the video of me decorating the cake and that it’s doing pretty okay on Pinterest. So I think video is helpful on Pinterest as well. I will do the collage style, so I’ll do the video and then the still image to show the final results.

Bjork Ostrom: I’ve done- That’s great. Yeah. Can you talk about the different types of Pinterest pins that, for those who aren’t familiar, what are the different types and what are the ones that you’re doing?

Sharlene Murrell: Okay. So there are the static images, which is what we all know, usually like a collage or you can do one photo with the text over it. You can also do no text, which does not perform well for me, so I don’t do that. You can do video pins. They have to be at least four seconds long. And I don’t know, they can give me 15 minutes or something. Don’t quote me on that, but they can be pretty long, which I don’t see people watching video on Pinterest, but who knows? Maybe. My video, actually, I have a Hamburger Helper recipe that is doing really well, and it’s a video. So if you’re already producing content on social media, just throw it on Pinterest. And then you can do collages, but I don’t do that. And you can also … There’s something else. I only do static in video. That’s what I do.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. But you said you also are doing a video and then a still. Oh, yes.

Sharlene Murrell: So on Canva, you can add a video. You can do a grid. So if you type in grid and it’ll be the top and the bottom grid, I bet if you make Pinterest images, you know what I’m talking about. And then you can put a video on top or on the bottom, whichever one, and then you can do the still image that’s just your beautiful hero shot.

Bjork Ostrom: Oh, cool. So you’re uploading that as a video, but in the video is a still image?

Sharlene Murrell: Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. Oh, that’s great. Super credit. It

Sharlene Murrell: Downloads as an MP4, so yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure. Yep. And then you upload it and you pin it as a video.

Sharlene Murrell: Yep.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. Cool. So tools that you’re primarily using, you’re using this tool from Tony, which we can link to. You get that from signing up for the email list. It’s a free tool. The Pinterest scheduler. I think more and more there’s something about just using the native scheduler within platforms. I don’t know if that’s universal or if it’s some conspiracy theory, but we’ve felt like that’s been true for Facebook. We’ve made that switch. So scheduling within there, using Pinterest to do the keyword research where you’re just typing it in and seeing what the auto fill is. Are you doing that at all?

Sharlene Murrell: I don’t do that. I did that.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. So you’re not doing that.

Sharlene Murrell: And I just feel like my reach is better because when you’re typing in the words, you’re only typing in that specific keyword. You’re not

Bjork Ostrom: Able to …

Sharlene Murrell: I think the

Bjork Ostrom: Keywords

Sharlene Murrell: Is the broader keywords. I think once I started targeting broader keywords is really when I saw more traffic, so I don’t do that.

Bjork Ostrom: Got it. And then so you have these boards that are related to opportunities that you see where there is a high search volume, creating those and also creating pins that match that focus of those boards. Even if it’s from a recipe that might have a different name, you’re still kind of positioning it in a way where it’ll fit under the umbrella of whatever that board would be. And then it’s the rinse and repeat. It’s saying, okay, each week, here’s how I’m going to create content. I have these photos documented. I’m going to be hustling while I’m also unwinding and editing photos in a bath and the ultimate dichotomy of two worlds coming together. And the result of that is not every month growth, but if you look back to last year, you were starting out, you’re trying to figure it out, and now you have a business where you are able to create predictable revenue, and you’re probably also able to see that chart of, hey, one month you made $400 and now is like $600. And what does it feel like when you break that four-figure mark, and you get $1,000, and you start to build confidence as an entrepreneur and as a content creator because you are now a pro. You have started to get paid for the craft of being a creator, which is really exciting. So can you talk about, was there a specific marker along the way where you made your first $25 or first $500, whatever it was, that felt like, wow, this is really cool.

Sharlene Murrell: It was $700. I made $700. I was still on Journey. When was that? October, perhaps. And I was like, wait a minute, I could pay a few things around here, sir. I could pay for that. Yeah. And so that’s when my husband was like, oh, he was like, “That’s just a hobby.” He would say that and I was like, “No, it’s not. ” When I wasn’t making any money, he would say it’s a hobby and I was like, “It is not a hobby. This is my job.” I treated it like a job from the start.

Bjork Ostrom: You’re in the startup stage. Every business has a startup stage. You might not be making money yet, but the intent is that you will, and you did.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. And so that $700, and it was like, I don’t know, it was three months into being on Journey. I am very blessed that month over month, I have not had a month where I had less page views than the last month. So even with the kind of downturn, I’m not going to have less month or less this month than last month. So I’ve been very blessed and I have seen that number just kind of keep going up and keep going up. And at this point, what I made this month, it’s like, oh, my blog, we are frugal people. We do not have crazy amounts of things. And so I can pay for quite a bit of the bills around here, which is-

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah, which is awesome. Super exciting. Yeah. This is bonkers when you think back to, it was slightly 15 years ago, 16 years ago, 17 years ago. But Lindsay and I bought our first condo when we were first married and it was low interest rates and it was like $78,000. So the payment was $485 a month or something. Oh my God. But I remember it’s like Midwest real estate. This was 2009. This was post-financial crisis. Only I was nine years old. And so the real estate world was really weird. But I remember for us, it was that point where it was like, oh, we don’t have much of a mortgage, but this could pay the mortgage. And that was a moment, whether it’s mortgage or rent or whatever where it’s like, oh, that’s a really substantial amount. And obviously that’s different for everybody, but for us it was like, this is really cool when you get to that moment. So how about for anybody who is starting out in the early stages, what advice would you give to them? Maybe they’re still in that aim stage. They haven’t gotten to the fire yet when they’re thinking of ready, aim, fire instead of ready, fire, aim. What would your advice be?

Sharlene Murrell: Number one, just do it. I think imposter syndrome, excuse me, is a thing. And it’s no, you are that girl or that guy, and you can do this. You can. If little me on my couch or in my bathtub can build out a business that pays a good portion of my bills each month, you can do it. So just do it. That is my biggest advice. Do it and stay consistent and you will see growth.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. That’s great. Sharlene, if people want to reach out and connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?

Sharlene Murrell: Probably on TikTok. I am on TikTok all the time. I’m a Gen Z, so you can reach out on TikTok. I’ll send you the link to that. It’s a good enough mom in I- N, but I’ll send you that.

Bjork Ostrom: Perfect.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah.

Bjork Ostrom: Cool. Sharlene, thanks so much for coming out. Super fun to hear your story and excited to follow along over the next year.

Sharlene Murrell: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

Ann Morrissey: Hey there, Ann again from the Food Blogger Pro team. Thank you so much for listening to that episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, we would greatly appreciate it if you could share it with your community and leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll be back next week with another episode where Bjork sits down with Emily Walker from a Food Blogger Pro team to recap the latest news and blogging trends from our blogging newsletter. We’ll see you back here soon. And in the meantime, we hope you have a wonderful week.