I’m Making Pinterest My Entire Marketing Personality
"So what do you do?"
"Marketing. Kinda. Well actually I'm kinda shit at marketing. Would never get a job in it. Useless on social media. But yeah, marketing."
The group of freelancers I'm chatting to burst out laughing because if that doesn't sum up creative industries in 2026, what does, honestly?
The thing is, we had just been speaking about reinventing the wheel as freelancers, whilst we went for a sea swim and slowly sipped coffee at mid-morning on a Friday.
We spoke on our conditioning and how we are wired to work and the ways we have been dismantling that to run businesses that serve us as well as others. Not working during our periods. Slamming the screens shut when the sun is out. Taking a 2-week break just because we want to. Letting ourselves be "left behind" by AI.
And I realised that it's the same with marketing too.
Because I'm not bad at it at all. I'm actually pretty good at it, if we decondition the belief that being "good" at it means going viral on social media, being able to package the work you've embodied so deeply into one single standalone sentence, or performing well on posts you were performing on.
By an employer's standards, I'm fucking hopeless at marketing. Truly. I know nothing about TikTok. I don't know how to optimise my process with AI. I cannot for the life of me adhere to consistency if my body says "no" to creating.
But I think this is the whole point, isn't it?
Our purpose in our business is not to simply do the work it demands of us, but to rewrite the way we do it, too.
The sea of sameness in marketing.
Something I've been sitting with, and honestly, talking about with almost every client lately, is how tired everyone feels. And it's not from the work itself. Often, the work is the energising part. It's the tiredness that comes from the ways we express and market that work that's draining people dry.
I watched a video recently of a creator breaking down how they go viral all the time. The advice included things like 10 clips within the first 10 seconds, a certain cadence in the voiceover and specific ways to stitch visuals together. I just sat there thinking: that looks absolutely exhausting.
And it’s all starting to sound the same, too. A friend and I were joking the other day that we've seen the same video a hundred times. Someone must be selling a course on a certain style of content because they are all starting to look exactly the same and throw AI-generated creative content into that mix and we are literally scrolling through a sea of sameness.
This is why so many people are coming to me saying: I just don't want to show up in these spaces. And the reasons are really valid. They're not inspired by them. Sometimes being on them feels like a direct contradiction to the work they do.
A sentiment a friend of mine, who is a person-centred therapist, shared when she described feeling this deep dissonance around what she sees therapists post online. She notices big, complex issues reduced to sweeping statements, advice-led content that performs really well, but is such a contradiction to how you'd actually sit across from someone in a therapy room. It doesn't feel right. It feels at best uncomfortable and at worst, harmful to the work itself. And yet the pressure to do it anyway is relentless.
What if we're allowed to do marketing differently?
Because there is a better way than what we've been shown and our role is to create it. Messily. Without evidence. On a total whim that may make zero strategic sense. Following a nudge you could never explain in a pitch deck.
That is genuinely how I started marketing on Pinterest.
My mum has an online craft studio, and I posted and ghosted a bunch of her content on there. Then, we logged back in a few months later and she had 1.1 million monthly views. Her patterns had exploded. She'd gone viral. She'd added thousands of people to her mailing list.
All whilst she locked herself in her studio listening to ABBA's medley album for the billionth time and just creating whatever the hell she fancied that day.
She built the bones of her business accidentally, but oh so intentionally too, because she had no desire to run a business the way she was "supposed to." She's the most creative human I know, of course, she didn't.
She was living proof that you don't have to. And I wanted to be a part of that proof.
So I did what I do for her, for myself, which is always the hardest thing to do as a business owner, isn't it? Why does your work come so easily when you're doing it for everyone but you?
And the same thing happened to me.
My consultations booked up without advertising. My mailing list grew by 500 subscribers in a matter of weeks. My Substack monthly views climbed. My podcast listeners spiked every time pins were posted. My website added an extra 1,500 monthly visits.
And I want to be clear: this isn't because I mastered Pinterest marketing. It's because I focused on what actually matters first.
A message that genuinely captures you, what you do, and who you do it for. Ways of creating that I actually enjoy. Being so in tune with my own embodiment of this work that people can see it naturally. And then using Pinterest as the tool to make sure it reaches people, without me needing to be on and performing and showing up in ways that don't fit how I actually live and work.
Why Pinterest marketing feels different
I create most of my marketing in one spot on the headland near where I live. It's completely sheltered from view, a bit of a climb to get to, but once you're there it's right by the water. My marketing lives in my journal and my notebook. Hidden from the world.
That tells you something about who I am and how I create. I'm a second line in Human Design, very hermit-like in the way I work, deeply creative, but not built for the constant visible performance that social media rewards.
Pinterest doesn't ask me to perform. It's a search engine, not a stage. People are in a different energy when they're on it, slower, more considered, actually looking for something. They're not doom-scrolling past your most heartfelt piece of work at 11pm; they're searching for something that speaks to them.
And here's what I love most: my top-performing pin is two to three years old. I created it a long time ago and it is still what brings people into my world today. Contrast that with Instagram, where something you poured your heart into has essentially disappeared within 48 hours and suddenly you have a sigh of relief when it comes to sharing your work.
I already support people with the part of the process that uncovers what you have to say and how you want to say in my messaging containers here. But I also knew I needed to support people with helping that message reach people without it feeling like a constant uphill battle.
So I created a Pinterest marketing course: Rooted Reach.
I want to be really clear here, because a lot of what exists in the Pinterest space is noise of the "post pins, make passive income, quit your job in 30 days" variety and that is not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is getting genuine reach to the important work you've already created. Half an hour a week, built entirely from content you've already made, that works in the background whilst you're doing literally anything else.
I was asked to create a Pinterest course many times and I said no every time. Then it kept niggling. Because what I realised is that I couldn't just teach how to use the platform, I had to include what I know about creating a window into your work that actually invites people to lean in. That requires understanding yourself, your approach, what lights you up, and how to let small pieces of that breathe in a space where people are genuinely looking.
So that's what I made. It's broken down into three parts: what to post (with genuine intent and purpose), where that then takes people (how a pin translates into someone actually working with you), and the practical side: templates and a walkthrough that means once you understand the strategy, the doing of it takes less time than finishing your cup of tea.
And if you want to hear more about my journey with using it, you can listen to my latest podcast episode here.
Or, just hope right in….
