This spring has been a time of experimenting, tweaking and expanding my marketing. I’ve been tweaking my Pinterest strategy and, for the first time in four years, added a new channel to my marketing ecosystem.In this post, I’ll take you through the changes I made, why I decided to start experimenting with YouTube, and how I’m using it in my own slow and gentle way.
And, if your marketing is in need of a review too, I made a new (free!) workbook for you—the marketing audit—that you can download below.
Join the newsletter for more like this
Sign up with your email address to receive strategies, experiments and tips to create a slow, gentle and profitable business–no hustle, no hacks.
Experiment #1: tweaking
I’ve been using Pinterest for years, happily so. In May in realised that my impressions and clicks on Pinterest were down quite a bit. After talking to Laura, the digital strategist I work with, I learned that this dip happened to lots of people in early 2026, probably as a result of changes Pinterest was making to combat AI-generated content.
There’s a limit to how far I’m willing to go to please an algorithm—if I, and various experts, can even get clear on what the algorithm wants. So I wasn’t about to completely change how I use Pinterest in my business. But I felt like reviewing it nonetheless, and do some tweaks.
When I took a really good look at my boards in May, I realised that for some boards, even I didn’t know how to distinguish them from other boards. What was the difference between ‘business ideas’, ‘business mindset’ and ‘business motivation’? Why did I have two boards on how to use social media in small business, even though my content is pretty much only about how to market without social media?
In order to help me clear about each of those confusing boards, I did some keyword research. Doing this for ‘business ideas’ was most eye-opening: whereas I, when I set the board up 5 years ago, meant ‘ideas for running your business’, the search results on Pinterest showed ‘business ideas’, i.e. the kinds of business you might want to start. This was reflected in the board’s stats: it was my most popular board by impressions (i.e. how many people view it), but that wasn’t reflected in the number of clicks at all. In the case of my ‘business ideas’-board, people landed on it, only to discover that this wasn’t what they wanted.
Because I don’t rely on one single channel, dips are not a disaster.
I ended up merging the three “business”-boards into one board—“slow business”—with clearer rules about what would go where. When I started on Pinterest, I aimed for broadness; right now, I’m more interested in specificity. It’s more important to me that a pin goes to a relevant board, than that it goes everywhere.
These changes most probably won’t fix the dip—my guess is that for many people, impressions will remain lower for a while. So it’s not really my goal to fix the problem, as it is to see whether over the long time these changes and refreshes make a difference.
And primarily: I’m playing, I’m experimenting, taking this lightly—because I don’t rely on one single channel, dips are not a disaster. They are data that I often don’t have control over. I’m fine with tweaking and changing, but not with bending over backwards.
Experiment #2: something new
The big thing this spring is that, for the first time since 2022 (!), I’ve added a new channel to my marketing ecosystem: YouTube. This is when a longtime participant in Grow asked me, “But I thought you said you don’t like video” 😂. Indeed—for the longest time, I was sure I wouldn’t use YouTube for my marketing. I didn’t even use YouTube personally: it felt loud, too opinionated, flashy to me. And the thing that changed that was…knitting podcasts.
Watching way too many knitting podcasts over the past six months showed me that, like any platform, we can choose how we use it—as consumers and as creators. I got curious about video and recorded a video journal for paid subscribers in March, before exploring whether I could create the small business equivalent of a knitting podcast.
It’s been interesting, it’s been a learning curve and it’s been a continuous going back and forth between the ‘standard’ YouTube video, what the ‘experts’ say I should do, and what I need it to be.
It’s been challenging me to get to the point sooner, and develop my thoughts after that. It’s been challenging me to find my way in choosing topics that might do well, and still staying close to what I want to talk about. Oh, and it’s been challenging my design skills: I’m currently on my fourth or fifth thumbnail design 😅
→ Check out this, a behind the scenes on how I plan gentle launches
My rules for YouTube
In order to make YouTube a sustainable, intentional part of my marketing ecosystem, I set myself some rules:
- I want it to continue to feel playful and light: no putting pressure on myself;
- Draw on my existing content for topic inspiration;
- I need a schedule that works for me: currently I’m aiming for once every two weeks;
- Minimal editing afterwards;
- Low-stakes: it’s just one channel—I want this to be another discovery-engine (like Pinterest is), but I’m not aiming to go viral;
- In order for YouTube to be truly part of my ecosystem, it needs to go somewhere (i.e. to a product or service I’m selling; to my website), and it needs to be woven in with my existing channels. So much like my newsletter, the videos end up living here on my blog too, to which I then pin. I don’t want content to be just in one place—I want what I create to go further and work harder, beyond the platform.
The tension I’m still feeling, and that I’m working through, is between offering value—the how-to format—and showing more of myself, being more personal. I know that this is something I felt during the early days of my newsletter too, so I trust that small steps (being more off the cuff; getting more relaxed; sharing more small details that make it mine) will be the answer here.
Both of these experiments came out of a burst of energy and creativity I’ve been feeling since early May. While I’ve tweaked my marketing over the past couple of years, I did so within my existing channels—I didn’t feel the need to expand, and certainly didn’t have the capacity to.
Your marketing audit: what works, what fits, what’s next
If you feel like your marketing could use a review, or that you want to make change—check out the new resource I created.
In this 16-page workbook, I’ll walk you through evaluating your current marketing channels, and help you map out next steps. As with everything I teach, the focus is not just on pure numbers—the clicks, likes, downloads or signups your channels gather. Instead, your energy, skills, desires, needs and creativity are central to this audit, from evaluating which channels work for you, which ones to tweak or cut, and whether to expand on your marketing (and evaluating whether a new platform fits you and your business).
More marketing resources 📚
→ If your marketing is in need of some more love—or more focus, more ease, more results—I’d love to invite you to check out Grow, my gentle marketing programme. It launches for the waitlist only, so if you’re curious make sure you’re signed up. You can do so by signing up for the marketing audit, or directly here.
→ Dive deep in my blog and read more gentle, easeful and effective marketing strategies.
I’d love to know what resonates with you from this post.
Please feel free to share this post it with business friends, in your newsletter or elsewhere. 💛
I’d love to support you in all phases of your business. Providing clarity, focus and next steps is something that my clients tell me I’m really good at. If you’re curious about how we can work together through 1:1 mentoring, check out what I offer or send me an email–no strings attached. I have payment plans available, and flexible options for mentoring calls.
Join the newsletter for more like this
Sign up with your email address to receive strategies, experiments and tips to create a slow, gentle and profitable business–no hustle, no hacks.