320 Pinterest Marketing Strategies for Home Builders - Julia Bocchese May 20 2026

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse

Greg Bray: And we are excited today to be joined by Julia Bocchese. Julia is the founder of Julia Renee Consulting. Welcome, and thanks for being with us today.

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Greg Bray: Well, Julie, let's start off, just give us that quick background. Tell us a little bit about yourself for those who haven't met you yet.

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, so my business is [00:01:00] Julie Renee Consulting, and I do SEO, Pinterest, and now AI search for small businesses. So, helping them rank higher, get recommended more often, and get in front of the right kinds of people who want to pay them money.

Kevin Weitzel: That want to pay the money. I like that because not everybody wants to pay anybody money.

Julia Bocchese: True.

Kevin Weitzel: Alright, Julie, before we get started and jump down this rabbit hole of awesomeness, can we get one interesting factoid about yourself that has nothing to do with work, family, or the home building industry at all?

Julia Bocchese: I have my master's in history with the focus on the Viking Age.

Kevin Weitzel: Vikings. Argh. Or no, those are more pirates.

Julia Bocchese: Those are pirates, yeah.

Kevin Weitzel: Goal. Goal is more viking like.

Julia Bocchese: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Greg Bray: How does one decide to research Vikings at the graduate level?

Julia Bocchese: It was just something I was always interested in and I was in a really boring corporate job and wanted to go back to school. So, I was like, oh, I'll go back for something I'm interested in. Maybe, you know, pursue a PhD and become a professor. When I went [00:02:00] to grad school, I quit my job to have a flexible schedule. So, I was a freelancer and then accidentally built my business in grad school. Ultimately, chose my business over going for a PhD. So, the Vikings are how I got into SEO, I guess.

Greg Bray: Tell us a little bit more about your agency, and the details of kind of how you go about working with your clients.

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, so I work with my clients either on SEO slash AI search or Pinterest. Some of them do want to, you know, start with both, or oftentimes it's just kind of like one or the other. But for SEO and AI search, I really focus on helping my clients set up their SEO foundations. I don't do a lot of like ongoing SEO. It's usually kind of, you know, fixing any problems that need to be fixed, making sure all their foundations, all the SEO basics are set up. And then show them how to kind of manage their website going forward, give them recommendations for where to focus their marketing.

And then especially with AI search, there's so much off their site with like PR and brand visibility. So, giving them some [00:03:00] specific recommendations on what they can continue doing to help their website grow. For Pinterest, I do a lot of Pinterest management. So, that is ongoing. So, for people who want to be active on Pinterest but don't wanna have to do it themselves, I totally take over their accounts, do all the keyword research, do all the profile optimization, board creation, things like that, and create pins ongoing to help them rank higher on Pinterest and drive more traffic back to their websites.

Kevin Weitzel: We don't hear the word Pinterest on this very often. Like I only go on to Pinterest occasionally for like vintage scooters and woodworking stuff and art deco, you know, architecture and vintage pinup calendar art. But hey, that's a different story. Whole different topic. Anyway, how are home builders using Pinterest? Because Greg, have you heard?

Greg Bray: That's why I invited Julia, because I want to learn more about Pinterest. We don't talk about Pinterest very much, and I think there's an opportunity. So yeah. Julia, what are you seeing out there, especially kind of in that home builder world?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. So, there are lots of different ways that you can use Pinterest. A lot of people [00:04:00] kind of in the home industries will use Pinterest as kind of double duty for like a portfolio and then also to help plan client projects. So, you can definitely have like a portfolio on your website, but if you want to have it more specific to maybe different styles that you do, or different rooms rather than just like, you know, portfolios of each house that you've done before, pinterest is a really good way to kind of like separate different styles and different rooms that you've built and things like that.

Also with client projects, a lot of people will have kind of what's called like, private boards that aren't visible to the public but you can, you know, have you and your client like going back and forth, pinning some ideas for what the client wants, what you recommend. And then kind of the third way for kind of building your business on Pinterest is to have more of a strategy behind it. So, that would be pinning content that you have created. So, if you have blog posts, portfolio pieces, videos, all of those can be pinned on Pinterest and linked back to your website.

So, making [00:05:00] sure that you are kind of thinking of Pinterest more as a search engine than Instagram, where you're not just going to say like, Hey, look at this project I just did, and all of your followers are going to like the photos and say, good job. It's more of a search engine, so using keywords in the pin titles and pin descriptions to describe the project that you're doing. Or if you're doing a video that's showing like the progress of a project or before and after, something like that. Making sure that you are describing it for like more of a cold audience on Pinterest who isn't familiar with your business and getting them interested in visiting your website to learn more. So, that way they're not just looking at pretty photos that you have and saving them for, you know, inspiration, but they're actually interested in learning more about your business and the projects that you do.

Greg Bray: So, in that context, personally, I've always thought of Pinterest as a place to go see, like you said, some of these galleries and boards and things there, and maybe look for some inspiration, oh, I want to find that kitchen that I'm [00:06:00] after and see who's put up, you know, great kitchen designs or whatnot. Can it really drive business results? You talk about traffic. Can people get traffic off of Pinterest? You used the word search engine even. So, tell us a little more about that view of Pinterest that maybe we don't all have.

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. So, Pinterest is built to drive traffic back to your website. So, back in the day, you could upload a bunch of photos and people could save them or you could just save them to your boards, but now you have to add a link to every pin. So, you can't just like upload a bunch of photos without links. They have to lead somewhere. So, obviously, as an SEO person, I want them to go to your website because I want your website to get the traffic. But that's how people are going from Pinterest to websites because Pinterest are actually like encouraging people to do it. Whereas on Instagram, they want to keep you on the platform, Pinterest wants to get you off of the platform and onto these other websites. So, it is really a great platform for traffic. But yeah, you do need to think of it more as a search engine to reach people who are [00:07:00] searching for what you have.

Greg Bray: So, if there are folks who just kind of uploaded pictures in the past and nothing really happened, you know, is it because they didn't tag them right or is there an organizational tip or trick to it all? Or what is it that makes good Pinterest different from bad Pinterest?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. So, lots of different factors, but kind of the main ones would be the visuals. So, if it's a low quality photo, those probably aren't going to perform super well. Pinterest really likes vertical photos because those take up the most space. So, if it's like a small horizontal photo, that's probably not going to stand out very well. If there's no context behind the photo or the video and it's just like literally just a picture of a house, you don't give any information, Pinterest doesn't know what to rank that pin for when people are searching so it's probably not going to perform very well. So, it kind of comes down to the visuals and then also like the keywords that you're targeting, your pin titles and pin descriptions that you're using on the [00:08:00] actual pin itself.

Kevin Weitzel: Okay. I'm going to touch on something that's going to strike a nerve with a few people out there that are listening. Do you ever have any builders, any clients that are completely oblivious that the content that they're supplying to you is absolute garbage, that are just horrible photography? IE, do you have to give them advice on, Hey, here's some examples of how you guys should be taking your photography because the stuff you're giving me is craptastic?

Julia Bocchese: I haven't had any that don't have very good photos. Usually the problem is they have too many photos or photos of like smaller details. So, I usually have to like, ask them to give more photos, but they're usually not bad photos. I haven't really run into that too much. I'll say oftentimes for videos with clients, I run into this more with, maybe like interior designers. They like to send videos of them, like speaking to the camera. So like, you know, the talking head style that they might do on Instagram. Those typically do not [00:09:00] perform well on Pinterest, so I'll tell them not to do that, or, you know, try other videos.

Because again, people on Pinterest, they don't really know who you are. They don't really care because they're a cold audience. They want to see more what you are doing, the projects that you're doing, what information that you have to share with them. So, they're more interested in the actual content and less about who you are. So, there's some things that don't resonate on Pinterest like they would on like Instagram or Facebook. But so far I haven't run into any problems with like terrible quality.

Greg Bray: So, to that, is it okay to be taking these pictures on a cell phone versus doing a professional photo shoot?

Julia Bocchese: I would say test it out. If you only have a budget for cell phone photos right now, use what you can. But if you do have a budget for more professional photos, I would definitely encourage that. The higher the quality, the better. One thing I would steer away from most of the time is like AI created images, because there are more AI filters on Pinterest. So, if you're using AI generated photos, [00:10:00] they might not actually be seen by anyone if they're not ranking well. I would encourage cell phone photos over like AI generated one.

Greg Bray: So, in that vein, not that these are AI generated, but what about kind of the photorealistic, you know, renderings of homes that haven't been built yet? Do you feel like there's a place for those in Pinterest?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. Bcause I mean, and people expect that when they don't have a physical house that you're, I don't know, copying and pasting. They are expecting a rendering. So, I would also say like in the, you know, pin title or description or wherever it makes sense, make sure it's clear that it's a rendering, just so people know that this house maybe doesn't exist yet. It's in process or something.

Greg Bray:  Hey everybody. This is Greg Bray from Blue Tangerine, and I am so excited to let you know that the registration is now open for the 2026 Builder Marketing Summit. We're gonna be in Dallas, Texas this year on September 23rd and 24th, and we are working on an amazing lineup of marketing OSC and leadership content for you. Please check it out@buildermarketingsummit.com and get your registration in today. Remember, there's limited seats available, so don't miss out. Again, builder marketing summit.com. Can't wait to see you there.

One of the questions that I've wondered about as we were kind of thinking about this conversation is the idea that Pinterest is so national and most builders are local. They have a very limited geography where they can build. Do you have the ability to kind of put in the location type keywords as well in these descriptions that would [00:11:00] help narrow it down? Because if I just want inspiration, I don't really care where it comes from, but if I want to work with that builder because I found their stuff, all of a sudden, location matters a lot.

Julia Bocchese: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so you can definitely use your location. I will say, even if you're using your location, you still will show up nationally. So, if you're in Philadelphia and your pin is about, you know, a house that you're working on in Philadelphia, someone in California can still see it. So, you can't like only target Philadelphia. But you can definitely use the locations so that when people are searching more for those local searches or more for information about their local area, you can rank for more local specific searches.

Greg Bray: Is Pinterest now continuing to push the search concept in the sense that not only do we do SEO for Google and now we have to do AI visibility, is Pinterest a project unto itself when you start talking about the optimization, and can you see like rankings the way that you would for Google and things like [00:12:00] that? Take us a little bit more behind the scenes on elevating somebody above somebody else in your effort.

Julia Bocchese: Right. Yeah. So, you can't rank number one like you can on Google. If you ever use Pinterest, when you start searching something, you'll see that it's a row of images on top of a row of images. So, like even quote, the number one spot would be kind of like in the left corner. So, you can't really like have a number ranking per se. But when you are doing searches in Pinterest, you can see what types of content are, you know, ranking towards the top. In Pinterest analytics you can also see which pins of yours are performing the best. So, if you're getting, you know, a lot of traffic from one particular pin, that can kind of help you decide different types of content that you should focus on or different types of imagery that seem to be resonating with the Pinterest audience.

There is also a Pinterest keyword research tool. It's called Trends, so trends.pinterest.com. It's free. I will say it doesn't have the most data for like really specific [00:13:00] searches. So, if you are trying to search for like home building in Philadelphia, something like that. It probably doesn't have that, but you can get a general idea of phrases around home building or house planning, you know, things like that on this Pinterest trends tool and see about how many people are searching that.

I think they break it down by week. So, you can also see when. If there's anything seasonal, you can see when things are trending seasonally or when there are fewer searches throughout the year. So, it doesn't have as much data as like an SEO keyword research tool would, but you can at least get a general idea of what people are searching for and when they're searching, if that matters.

Kevin Weitzel: Here's a question for you. Is that a growing list of those search criteria? So, therefore, if I don't have homes in Philadelphia, could I put in homes in Philadelphia and then boom, now that's now a new search and a new criteria, so I can add that to my criteria for my images?

Julia Bocchese: Or like the Pinterest trends tool specifically?

Kevin Weitzel: Yeah.

Julia Bocchese: Or Yeah. So, [00:14:00] it's kind of hard to explain over audio. I would recommend checking it out because you'll kind of see what I'm talking about. But it doesn't give you the like monthly search volume and the, you know, competition score and things like that, like you would see on an SEO keyword research tool. So, even if the searches for that term are zero, it just isn't going to show you information if it's not a keyword that they're showing the data for. It's a newer tool, I think it's like two years old, so it doesn't have all of the data for every single keyword ever. They have been improving it, but it's more of seeing the seasonal trends for those types of keywords, rather than kind of getting that like nitty gritty data.

Greg Bray: So, you talked about getting traffic and tracking that traffic. I'm assuming we're talking about refer type tracking within your own analytics, oh, we got these clicks over from Pinterest. Can you add like UTM type codes and things into your links to get more refined or does Pinterest do that for you automatically? Or what are some tracking, recommendations that you would make?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, so you can add UTM [00:15:00] codes. I've also seen Pinterest has added it automatically recently. I haven't seen them talk about it. When they start making changes, they roll it out slowly in the US first, before like they introduce things to other countries. So, this could be something that they're like literally just rolling out now. But you can add your own UTM codes, especially if you're trying to track things, you know, in different ways or if you're trying to track links for different content in different ways, things like that.

But yeah, you can definitely see the information in Google Analytics. Again, it's hard to like explain over audio, but when you go to like the traffic acquisition tab, you can see like, you know, organic search, organic social, things like that. If you break it down by source, you'll see where it breaks down, like, you know, Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest. So that way you can get a really specific idea of how much traffic you're getting from Pinterest, how long people are engaging on your site, you know, what the engagement rate is and things like that.

But in Pinterest analytics you can get pretty detailed with your overall traffic to your [00:16:00] website, overall individual pins, how they're performing. They have lots of different metrics that you can sort by, but kind of the main ones I recommend are impressions, which are just the number of people who have seen all of your pins. Which can be kind of like inflated because it's just people seeing your pins. But at the beginning, it's important just to make sure that your pins are being seen by people because that means that Pinterest is starting to rank your pins.

The other ones are your saves. So, this is when someone sees your pin and then likes it and saves it to their own account, which will help your visibility because they're sharing your pin, essentially like with their audience. And then the outbound clicks, that's the traffic that is going to your website. So you can see the overall traffic to your website from all of your pins.And then you can also, there's a section where you can see how each pin individually is doing, and you can see how much traffic those are getting.

So, you do want to make sure that you are getting traffic from your pins, you're not just getting impressions or not just getting, [00:17:00] you know, saved because that means people aren't like taking action to visit your website. So, that's making sure you have, you know, context behind whatever the images are. Making sure that your pin titles and pin descriptions are really clear to get people interested in visiting to your website will help.

Greg Bray: What about things like watermarking your images or putting little branding in the corner, or some of those kinds of things? Is that cool? Is that frowned upon? Just to get a little more like, oh, this image came from XY Z builders.

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. You can definitely add your brand. I do this for all my clients. I'll add like their logo or like the URL to their website kind of like in the corner or like at the bottom, not, you know, in the middle of the pin. I typically wouldn't recommend watermarking because people get kind of annoyed with that. Like, you're not going to go to Instagram and watermark your images. So, kind of similar to, you don't really need to do that to Pinterest. But you can definitely add like your brand logo, URL, whatever it is.

Also, you kind of add more than just images. So, if you're creating like graphics, especially [00:18:00] if you have like blog posts or if you have even like your portfolio project pages, if you want to like have an image and have like a text overlay. Make sure everything is cohesive with your brand, like with your fonts and your colors and things like that, so it is very clear that it is your business's pin, your business's image, and not some other image that another business is using.

Greg Bray: What are some of the best practices on the linking side? You know, we're trying to drive traffic, I'm going to guess and postulate that it's not the best to just send everybody to the homepage, regardless of what's there. So, what are your thoughts on how to kind of decide where to send people?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. So, people on Pinterest really like content. So, that would be blog posts, videos if you have like a YouTube channel, podcast. Or if you are using Instagram, you know, kind of primarily as your social media, if you can like repurpose maybe captions that you've made on Instagram into blog posts or into like different portfolio pages. So, people on Pinterest really like [00:19:00] content. They're not searching for like home builder near me. They are searching more for inspiration and for ideas. So, you want to make sure that whatever you're pinning is going to some sort of like blog post or portfolio page. Or if you have like an email freebie, you know, you can have like a landing page for that and link to it. But yeah, people typically don't like to go from Pinterest to a homepage or a contact page, so make sure you're primarily linking to whatever content you have on your website.

Greg Bray: I've never done Pinterest. I want to start. What's kind of the first three steps to kind of get into it and try?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah. First thing would be to focus on the content on your website because if you have no good photos, you have no blog posts, you have no portfolio page, you're not going to have anything to create pins from. So, you want to make sure that you have some good content to work with because you do need to be active on Pinterest every day. So, even if that's just one pin a day, just to kind of get you started, that's going to help [00:20:00] Pinterest see that you're an active account, that's going to help you have more content to put on Pinterest to be seen by more people. And there are pin schedulers, so you don't have to like manually be on Pinterest every day like you do need to be on Instagram. So, there are schedulers that you can use. So, you can just schedule out a bunch of content for a month or two and not even have to look at Pinterest if you don't want to. So, content would be the first piece.

The second one is you do need to create boards on Pinterest. So, these are essentially just different categories that are related to whatever content you're putting on there. So, you can have a board that is maybe like the home exteriors or a board for kitchens, a board for living rooms, things like that. So, think about whatever content you have, different categories that it could fit into. And pins can go to multiple boards over time. Like you don't need to just have one pin go to one board. If it fits within, you know, a few different boards, you can definitely add it to different boards.

And then the third thing would be to create pin templates if you are going to use like pin [00:21:00] graphics. Canva has tons and tons of free templates. Again, make sure everything is cohesive with your brand, with brand colors and brand fonts, your logo if you want to add that. And then if you're just going to use images, make sure they are usually like a two to three ratio is what's recommended for Pinterest. If you have a horizontal image that it doesn't really fit when you crop it, you can do square images and see how that performs. But I wouldn't recommend like pinning a horizontal image. So, make sure you kind of have that structure with your images going forward. If you have any videos, kind of same thing, two to three ratio. So, get all of your content, your boards, and then get some pins created and get a system for your templates.

Greg Bray: Julia, you hinted at scheduling. What is the right frequency for Pinterest updating to kind of stay looking active and not having it become totally a burden and yet something else we have to do in the marketing department?

Julia Bocchese: Right. Yeah. So, I recommend at least once a day just to kind of like have a baseline [00:22:00] for being active on Pinterest every day. I typically aim for like five to 10 a day if you're able to. That can be a mix of brand new pins. It can be a mix of pin graphics, photos, videos. You can also go back and re-pin pins that you've pinned before. I wouldn't go back and pin a pin that you just pinned the day before, but if it's something that's like a month or two old and you kind of want to give it a bit of a boost, you can re-pin it. So, it can be a mix of all of these different things. It doesn't have to be, you know, 10 brand new pins every single day, and it can be something that you build up over time. So, if you want to start with one or two a day, and then as you have more pins, after six months, you can ramp it up to three to four a day and build it up over time.

There are lots of pin schedulers. Tailwind is my favorite. It's the only scheduler I know of that was built specifically for Pinterest. A lot of these other schedulers, they were built for other social media and then they've added Pinterest on. But Tailwind has a lot of kind of like bells and whistles that make it easier to pin for Pinterest. If you want to get started with a free one, Pinterest has their [00:23:00] own native scheduler built in. You can only pin, I think, 30 days ahead. So, you can't go and pin two months in advance. But yeah, you can schedule things out. You don't have to manually pin things every single day.

Greg Bray: Well, Julia, this has been really interesting. I really appreciate your time. Do you have any last thoughts or words of advice for those who are thinking about Pinterest and what they should consider?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, so again, just make sure you're in the mindset that it is a search engine. You are trying to reach a cold audience, so people aren't familiar with your brand. And then also very similarly to Google, you do need to give it a few months before your pins start to rank and start to gain traction on Pinterest. So, it's not going to be you pin tomorrow, and then you get 5,000 hits on a pin. It's something that you do need to build up over time. It's a really good form of sustainable evergreen traffic, but it's not something that's going to happen overnight.

Greg Bray: Well, Julia, if somebody wants to get in touch and connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Julia Bocchese: Yeah, so my website is juliareneeconsulting.com. You can find me on [00:24:00] Instagram @Julia Renee Consulting. And I do have lots of blog posts, of course, on my website if you want to get some more information on Pinterest and see how you can use it for your business.

Greg Bray: Well, thank you and we really appreciate again, your time today and appreciate everybody for listening to the Builder Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.