If you’re super new to Pinterest or you have a business account that has not been touched in months and is dryer than the Sahara, I recommend you read Part 1, 2, and 3 of this blog series before jumping into this section. There you’ll learn how to create a Pinterest account for success and the best elements of a board and pin to make you stand out in your industry.
What are group board and should you use them
We briefly touched on group board is part 2 of this series but didn’t quite explain what they are and whether you should use them.
Group boards are boards managed by one or two accounts with multiple other brands and creative businesses in the same general field pinning to one board. The two main benefits of this are that the board shows on all the participants’ profiles and their following brings traffic to all the pinners involved. It has the potential to expand your network tremendously. The downside is that sometimes those boards are too broad and do not reflect your niche in that community. You run the risk of having content that isn’t fully on brand and out of niche showing in your audience’s feed and may lose followers that way.
I do participate in some group boards and they are all relevant to my niche in the fiber industry. They are great way to keep your profile a bit active when you aren’t. A few things to look for when participating in group boards is how active the current members are, how often do they pin, what is the repin ratio to fresh content, and will the board bring value to your audience. The answers to all theses questions maybe yes but if it does not bring value to your audience then maybe it is not the right one for you. By bringing value I mean, if you are a crochet designer and your niche is amigurumi, a crochet board where 99% of the participants pin and repin crochet clothing is not relevant to your niche. When those pins show in your followers feed, they will most likely be disregarded and may, in fact, make them unfollow you.
Do your research. Ensure the board is in your niche and bring value to your business and audience before joining. If you joined a board that used to b super active and brought great traffic to your page but over time it stops helping your growth, it’s more than okay to leave it.
What types of boards should you have
The boards on your profile should be niche boards with keyword sensitive titles. Each board should be focused; Crochet Patterns for Fall, Free Crochet Patterns for Women, Crochet Disney Amigurumi, etc. Think about all the different things your niche|ideal follower will be searching and name your board based on those. Now when you name your boards make sure the contents that you’re pinning and repinning are relevant to the title; nobody wants to follow a Crochet Disney Amirgurimi Patterns to be bombarded with crochet crop top patterns.
Your profile should have a mixture of group boards (if you choose to have any they should be about 2% of your boards), a couple of boards dedicated to your business and only your business, and 97% of the remaining boards should be sub-niches within your niche containing 80% of good quality repins and 20% of your own rich pins.
Secret boards…shusssssh
You can also have secret boards. We briefly touched on that in part 2 of this series as well. Secret boards have the same basic elements as every other board, the only difference is that they’re secret *duh* and only you and those you invite to it can see them and their contents.
When Pinterest first launched this feature back in 2010 I want to say, you were only allowed to create 3 of them. Now, you can have as many secret boards as your heart desires.
I use secret boards when I’m putting together mood boards for a project that I don’t want to share with the public when I’m planning things that I’m not ready to share or simply to keep certain things that I like or are relevant to my business but not my audience in a private area. In my private life, I have used secret boards to share my ideas for a photoshoot with my photographer. That way we both see my vision and can create it without sharing it will the whole world.
As a creative business, you can use it for the same purposes as mentioned above or you can use them for home improvement projects, planning your wedding and you don’t want all the attendees with Pinterest accounts to know all the details about your wedding before the big day, planning a client’s wedding, having your client share their ideas for a project with you privately, gathering Youtube video ideas, learning new skills to make your creative business better and much more.
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