What Content To Contribute
I only add my own original content to group boards. I used to re-pin other peoples content to group boards, but then I realized that that was not serving me. It was serving the board, but not me.
The only time I add other peoples content to group boards now is when Im participating in a re-pin thread in a FB group and the pin doesnt fit in any of my personal boards.
Forget About Board Covers
Youve probably seen tons of bloggers who create beautiful board cover images to make their profiles look more cohesive?
And hey, they look pretty cool!
But the truth is:
You dont need them. So, if you have the extra time, youre free to create some. But as a fellow blogger, Id assume you have better things to dothings that actually make a difference!
Should You Create Sections As A Content Creator Or Not
If you think, you need it. Then, do add sections.
For example, I have sections on my main board of shemeansblogging. I can easily move pins and find pins when I want.
Although, I havent created sections in my group boards.
First, its a lot of work. I will have to move and copy pins every day for a clean group board.
Second, even if I add sections, most of my contributors will not add a pin to the respective section. If you use Tailwind to schedule pins, then tailwind doesnt allow you to add pins to sections. It allows us to schedule pins to boards directly.
If you have been waiting to use tailwind for unlimited scheduling, I highly recommend going through my step by step tutorial. I showed all the steps I do to schedule my pins. When you use my link to upgrade, you also enjoy a free month. A win-win.
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Clearly Name Your Boards
While writing something witty might be tempting for your board titles, writing something clear and concise is the better route to go if you want clients and potential employers to find you. “Clearly naming your boards will help users easily find Pins they are most interested in,” Barilar points out. So rather than writing something along the lines of “FASHUN” if you’re a feminist fashion writer, change it to “Feminist Fashion Examples.” Not only is that keyword heavy, but it also helps the pinner understand your niche at a glance.
How To Find Group Boards
The best way to find good group boards is to find a top blogger in your niche and take a look at their list of boards, chances are they will own or contribute to several group boards. You can tell if its a group board at a glance because of the bubble overlay indicating multiple contributors.
Write down the group boards youd like to inquire about.
Then find the owner of one of those new group boards, and look at what boards theyre in. Repeat until you have a long list of boards to inquire about.
The owner of the board will always be the first person listed:
You can start by snooping through my list of boards if youd like!
Another way to find group boards is to participate in FB groups related to blogging or Pinterest. They usually have threads for sharing group boards. Try this one, or this one, .
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Include A Pin With Each Page You Publish On Your Website Or Store
And Pin it immediately after publishing! Here are some quick tips for pinnable images:
- At least 1 1/2 times as tall as wide.
- Bright, warm colors draw more attention.
- Simple design reads well on mobile.
For products, recipes, etc: Use one image, or create a simple collage of 2 to 4 images with a few words of text to explain.
Making Pins doesnt have to be difficult. Read some of my favorite ways to easily.
Create A Pin From An Image You Found On The Web
Start by downloading the Pinterest browser button. This Pinterest browser button helps you easily create Pins from the images you find on the web.
When you find an image youd like to save as a Pin, click the browser button on your browsers toolbar. Or you can press the Pin button that pops up over the images when you hover over it.
Once you select the Pin button, a list of images from the website will appear. From this list, select the image you would like to create a Pin of from the image list and click Save. Add or edit the description and then pick the board you want to save to.
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Take Inventory Of Current Boards
Just like organizing your closet, the first step is to declutter your existing Pinterest account. You probably have old stuff that youll likely never look at again, so lets get rid of those to make navigation a little easier.
- Archive Unneeded Boards. You may have old boards like First Birthday Party or Bathroom Remodel but those days have been long-gone for years. Pinterest has added an Archive feature for you to remove old boards from your main page without actually deleting them. This is way better than deleting because they wont take up space but can still be recovered if needed.
- Note any boards with very little pins. You can merge these boards with other boards if that make sense to do.
- Note your most-revisited boards. You can add these to a scrap sheet of paper.
Follow Your Favorite Companies
Just how companies sometimes use social media to release information on opportunities, they sometimes use Pinterest to do the same. So follow your favorite companies and brands to stay in the loop. “Spend time each day to scour the pins of your favorite companies’ accounts. You might discover that the event planning blog you follow religiously is hiring writers, or that your favorite movie studio is looking for interns,” social media writer Heather Fischel from tech site Digiwonk explained.
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Rearrange Pins Within A Board To Highlight Best Pins
You can also rearrange the order in which pins appear on your boards. This can be a great advantage if you are for example using affiliate pins you want to appear on top of a board or if you have certain really successful pins.
Simply press Organize once you are within a specific board and you can now move by drag and drop, copy or delete pins.
I recommend this strategy especially for boards with a ton of pins. You may have been pinning to this board for a long time but because the board is ordered chronologically you are just showing the latest pins instead of the most successful or helpful pins first.
Pin Good Quality Images Only
In 2013, Philadelphia-based startup Curalate, which calls itself the worlds leading marketing and analytics suite for the visual web did some intense number-crunching on a database of 500,000 images to try and figure out which images did well on Pinterest and why. On the request of Wired.com, they then undertook the massive task of that encompassed all the elements of a popular Pinterest image.
This image from cooking show host Paula Deen won out:
The image, called Aunt Peggys Cucumber, Tomato, and Onion Salad has been repinned 307,000 times, liked 8,000 times, and commented upon 300 times.
- No human faces
- Moderate light and color
- Portrait style
Youre not always going to be able to create the perfect Pinterest image. But incorporate enough of these characteristics and youll frequently be able to create a viral one.
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Create Beautiful Pins To Boost Engagement
Here are some of our top tips for creating beautiful Pins that your viewers will want to save and share:
Use high-quality photos: Make sure they are sharp, in focus, well-composed, properly showcase your product, and match your brand aesthetic.
Use portrait shots: Because , taller images perform better as they fill more of the screen as a user scrolls down through the explore page. The max aspect ratio for Pins is 1:2.8 so getting creative with the length of your images could make a big difference to your engagement rates.
Create Pins with multiple images: If youre skilled in Photoshop, you can edit multiple images together to create one, long Pin. However, we suggest you keep it to less than four images for clarity.
Keep text on your Pins to a minimum: Remember that your Pin is just a snapshot of the link youre sharing, so youll want to keep the text on your Pin short and simple.
Dont Get Clever With Your Board Names
Use your best keyword phrases! That way, interested people can find your boards via search engines .
Here you can see that my social media marketing tips board is 4th on the 2nd page of Google results.
The maximum allowed characters is 50, but they might not all show on your profile.
While its nice to have neat, tidy names that fit in the display area, its not required. Go with what best describes the board.
For example, Social Media Scheduling Tools & Tips doesnt all fit on the profile view of the board. But that tips keyword is still there for SEO purposes!
If someone should search Social Media Scheduling Tips this board would be more likely to surface due to that.
Dont concoct a name thats cute and unique. Use phrases Pinners are actually searching for!
From the top right bar, click the magnifying glass icon.
A search panel will pop up. Start typing! Take note of the phrases that appear.
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Consider Making A Professional Account
Rather than pinning your dinner recipes and Halloween decor DIYs, consider making a professional account separate from your personal one. “If youâd rather not mix business with pleasure, design your and set up boards for each section of your resume â Experience, Education, Skills, Volunteering, etc.,” You can also go further and expand those boards to include off-shoot topics from your career. For example, if you’re a chef you’d also make a recipe board, something seasonal like a “Halloween Treats” board, and also pick cookbooks you love.
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DO have an approachable photo of yourself as your profile picture. Using a graphic or logo as your profile pic can come across as a little corporate and at a glance makes you look like not a real person.
DO have at least 15 boards filled with a minimum of 30 high quality, re-pinnable pins.
DO have your description filled out with a link to your site. Your description should convey who you are, what you do and who you serve. Your elevator pitch as it were.
DO make sure the pins you design and create are beautiful. Check out this post on How to Create Pins for Etsy Listings.
DONT have any spammy, overly salesly or inappropriate content in your boards.
DO pin regularly to your boards. Check out my that gets me millions of monthly views.
DO make use of group boards as a growth strategy. Check out this post:
DONT have irrelevant boards. If you are especially obsessed with under-water basket weaving, thats fine but keep the board secret. Make sure all your public boards are on brand and relate your audience and business.
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Top Boards Every Brand Profile Should Have
A few ideas include:
- Mood board – These boards are perfect for sharing some of the inspiration that filtered into your new collection, campaign, or project.
- Educational board – Any helpful content is likely Pin-worthy. Save relevant tips, tricks, insights, and how-tos related to your industry or niche here.
- Product Board – Create a digital storefront with a shoppable product board. This ensures customers can easily discover, fall in love, and readily shop or support your brand! Note: Pinterest’s new feature Shopping List allows Pinners to automatically save their product Pins in one place, making it easier to keep track and shop the products they like.
Follow Brands And Bloggers You Love From Instagram And Facebook
Almost all brands and bloggers have Pinterest accounts, and if you love the content they share on social media, youll likely love their Pinterest content even more. Pinterest is typically the top traffic-driver for bloggers and brands so their Pinterest accounts are often updated multiple times a day. This is the best way to keep up with your favorite blogs because all of their content will be collected there.
How To Find and Follow Your Favorite Brands And Bloggers
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Pin Consistently And Frequently
As with most other social networks, consistent and frequent sharing can often be the key to building an audience and keeping them engaged with your content.
Timing can be important, too, though with global audiences, its often better to spread your content out over a span of the whole 24 hours so youre leaving out people in other time zones. This exposes you to more of your audience more frequently and often leads to more pins, shares, and comments as a result.
P.S. You can easily do all this and more with Buffer.
With frequency, more is often better, we find, with 5x a day being optimal. Some experts recommend as much as 15-20x times a day, but if youre a small company or brand, its better to pick a lower number and stay consistent than to do higher numbers intermittently.
Heres an infographic we created that tells you, in a glance, what kind of frequency and topics youd do well aiming for:
How To Organize Your Ideas
Its helpful to organize your ideas in a spreadsheet, for example with Google Sheets.
Step 1: Search boards with your main keyword
Start with your blog topic or niche its your main keyword. Type it into the Pinterest search bar and select to show only Boards in the search results. Take notes on what you see:
- What are those boards about?
- What types of pins can you see?
- Are they product pins, blog posts, recipes, or something else?
Step 2: Find a handful of relevant sub-topics
Now find 5 to 10 sub-topics from these top-level boards. Write them down in your spreadsheet, each in a separate column.
For example, heres a small spreadsheet with popular keywords for Gardening and a sub-topic Gardening Ideas:
Step 3: Search for popular content using your sub-topic keywords
Type each sub-topic together with your blog niche in the search bar and hit Enter. For example, if you blog about weight loss and you saw that motivation was a big sub-topic, type in weight loss motivation.
Now, see what types of pins pop up. Also, pay attention to the related keywords below the search bar.
These are the things people are looking for! Hence, write them down in your spreadsheet below the sub-topic title. This way, you will end up with a handful of ideas and keywords that are neatly organized into separate columns.
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What Is A Group Board
One person owns the board and can invite others to contribute to the board.
They are beneficial because the pins in the board can be exposed to the followers of all the contributors, not just the owner.
So if the board has 10 contributors and they all have 500 followers, your pins could potentially be getting in front of 5000 sets of eyes. Thats why they are valuable to your marketing strategy.
Create A Pin Using An Image Saved On Your Computer
To create a Pin from images on your computer, follow these steps:
- Select Choose Image and find the file on your computer
- Pick a board for your Pin and add a description
Heres how to schedule your Pins with Later:
- Drag and drop an image from your Media Library onto your content calendar to schedule it at the date and time of your choice.
Important: Your board settings must be set to Public in order to schedule your Pin to that board. When scheduling your Pin, you can search your boards by name, or simply scroll through a list of your boards
- Crop your photo, enter your caption, and add a link.
- Finally, adjust the scheduled time if needed, and hit Save to schedule your Pin!
Not signed up to Later yet? What are you waiting for! Start managing and scheduling your Pins now:
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Know What Your Audience Is Searching For
As I mentioned above, your boards are simply a way to put your content in front of people who want to see it.
So, start by thinking about how you can help people:
- Which topics can you help them out with?
- What topics do you want to be found in?
- How can you give them an impulse to read your blog?
- What topics are related to your blog?
Create An Arsenal Of Advice
Not sure on how to stand up to your boss? Need tips on how to become a morning person? Want pointers on how to network in a more meaningful way? You can find all of that on Pinterest. “A recent leads to articles on everything from tips to boost your career to specialized advice for young women to ways to make a great impression on the first day at a new job,” Arnie Fertig, a job hunter coach from US News, shared in an article. You can then create a board of job tips that you can look back on whenever you feel lost or uncertain.
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