Joining other people’s group boards on Pinterest is very important. But a much BETTER strategy is to create your OWN group boards. Why? Well, for one thing, you can be kicked off other people’s boards, but on your own boards, you can pin whatever you like, as often as you want.
Also, it gives you a LOT more visibility and will bring you a lot more Followers. It’s one of the few ways to guarantee you’ll get more Pinterest Followers. Don’t believe me? I have a number of very successful group boards and they regularly bring me in about 600 new Followers a month for my lifestyle blog – Adrian’s Crazy Life. My account for this site – HelpforNewBloggers is just starting out, so doesn’t have quite that kind of traction – yet…
If you haven’t guessed it, I am a big geek when it comes to Pinterest. I work as a Pinterest consultant and VA to a number of bloggers and other businesses and I am an enthusiastic pinner myself. And I’m happy to share some of the secrets I’ve learned along the way. Group boards are one of the few ways to get a big advantage on Pinterest – not only with getting Followers, but getting more visibility for your account AND your pins.
Why group boards need to be an important part of your Pinterest Strategy.
Having your own group boards helps people to recognize you as an authority in your field. You aren’t just a face in the crowd anymore – suddenly people are paying attention you YOU and what you are pinning.
It also helps you to get better visibility on the site. Here is an example of one of my Group Board Covers. It was very carefully designed for maximum visibility and branding. I may invite someone to 4 or 5 of my group boards and usually, they will accept. It’s like they are letting me put all these identical blue signs in their yard, like I’m a politician or something. Vote for Adrian!! And if you see a bunch of identical images, you’d better believe you’re going to start wondering what is up, so you might come over to see what all the fuss is about. Boom! These create instant visibility for me on hundreds of different profiles. That’s what great branding is all about!
And believe me, you should also be USING your Group Boards. They aren’t just there to look at, or for OTHER people to benefit from. I pin stuff to every one of mine pretty much every day of the year. Some are my pins, but I pin other folks stuff too. I have Tailwind Tribemates that I need to pin, for example because they’ve pinned my stuff. Or if I see a high-performing pin that I like – adding it will boost the visibility of my board.
You should have a board for every topic that you blog about, and maybe a few for topics that you don’t cover. If it’s a topic that your readers might be interested in, you should have a group board for that. For instance, if you are a food blogger, you should also have boards for parenting, organizing, social media, crafts, home improvement, etc. People don’t just like to cook, they usually like LOTS of things and you should indulge that desire. They’ll reward you, I promise!
My Disney board is HUGE! I don’t have a single Disney pin to my name, but if people are pinning Disney stuff, they’ll see me sooner or later. Same thing with food. I can’t cook to save my life and don’t have a single recipe on my site, but my friends do. I wanted some place to share their pins – enter Recipes from All my Foodie Friends. It’s one of my top boards.
How to Manage Your Group Boards
Of course, it is a bit of work to manage group boards. I have to set and enforce the rules for each board and I get a lot of requests for new people to join them. But it’s great because I get to contact new people and maybe sign them up for my newsletter – maybe sell them an Ebook or my Coaching Services. That’s a great way to grow your lists, just make sure you get their Email and their permission to mail them – most will say yes.
After a bit of trial and error, I landed on some standard rules for my boards.
Please, no spam and nothing for sale. 5 pins per day – stay on topic or you will be removed without warning.
Now of course, I don’t sit there and count each pin, but you don’t want people to throw out 20 pins in a row and shove everyone else’s pins down the board. And people who sell stuff can just get crazy, so I might let a few slip through, but if they get obnoxious about it – they get the boot.
People are mostly good about staying on topic except for my parenting boards. I finally had to get really tough on those and I boot several people every week. Parenting is PARENTING folks, not losing weight, crocheting doilies, getting rich, or going on a cruise. Argghh!
But you do need to monitor them. I had a client who found some pinners posting naughty pictures to his group boards. That was gross and could’ve gotten him in trouble if he hadn’t caught it quickly and reported them. That’s why you want to review each request carefully.
I decide who I want to invite and who I DON’T (anyone who looks spammy or has bad looking pins or nothing useful to contribute to the category). Then I go in and add 15 or 20 people at a time. I do wish Pinterest made that process a little bit easier, but it is what it is. Pinterest is getting rather strict on that, so don’t try to Follow too many people at once or add a huge group to your boards, or they’ll block you for hours or even days.
VALUABLE TIP. Sometimes I find it easier to just add most people to all my boards rather than remember that this one wants recipes and this one wants organizing, etc. I have close to a dozen group boards after all. But the interesting thing is that most of the people I invite accept every board I send them! That gives my Group boards much better visibility (more signs in their yard!), so why not? That’s pretty awesome since I mostly started going this because I was too LAZY to write down who wanted what.
Plus it makes my boards look really popular and active to Pinterest, which I’m sure gives me more “juice” as a user. I think that’s a pretty awesome payoff.
How to Create a Group Board
To create a group board, all you have to do is invite at least one other person. Once they accept – voila! You are a Group Board Owner! Here’s a simple trick to find those first few people to launch your group board. If it’s a food board, I search on names of my Followers containing cook, chef, eat, food, cuisine, etc. Eeeasy peesey!
As a rule, you want your group boards to be pretty meaty. No one is going to bother joining a board with only 50 pins – yuck! Usually I’ll take an existing board with a few hundred pins on it and switch it to a group board. Or I’ll build up a new board with Tailwind before I’ll release it to the public. My biggest board has 90,000 pins and my smallest is probably 3,000ish.
Hope that helps you to get going with your own group boards. I think you’ll be glad you did. If you are interested in joining my group boards, here is my new form to request to be added to my group boards and maybe my newsletter
Also, you might want to check out my related article – How to find the BEST group boards. And I’d love it if you could pin them for other people to enjoy.
Great post! You inspired me to take the time to create my own board and it’s doing great so far. Thank you for the nudge!
Thanks Karen. I hope they’re doing well for you.
Wow, I did not think I needed a group board at all. This is some really great advice. I will definitely be implementing it to my pinterest strategy!
Thanks! Group boards have gotten a bad name lately that I think is undeserved. They’ve done really well for me, so I’m glad you are going to get some of your own. Check out my Ebook for more tips on how to actually earn money from yours.