Pinterest is a powerful tool to drive traffic to your blog. It’s great for brands that cater to women in many fields: beauty, make up, decor, blogging, business, parenting and lots more. For me, Pinterest is driving about 27% of my traffic to my blog so it’s a social media platform that I pay extra attention to. In order to thrive in Pinterest, you need to get acquainted with the smart feed and the algorithm. Pinterest acts like a search engine and is more of a discovery platform than a social platform. In fact, no one is social on there. There are no chats and hardly anyone is really commenting or sending direct messages.
But there’s one social aspect of Pinterest that’s a great ally in getting your pins to go viral. That thing is group boards!
What are group boards?
Group boards are just regular boards that have at least two contributors who pin to the board. Anyone can create a group board, and it’s the same process as your usual board—all you do is invite collaborators. You just hit the plus sign and invite others to collaborate. See photo below.
The beauty of group boards is that if you have ten people contributing to the board ( for example), then your pins can get seen by all contributors’ followers, and it can land in their feed as well. So, there is power in unity and looping pins (repinning the same pin across several boards is vital).
The most common question Pinterest users have is: how to find group boards to join?
There are a couple of ways:
First, there’s a directory created called Pingroupie. You can search based on interests, how many collaborators there are, and how many pins there are. When I started out with group boards, I tried to find some that were not too huge to increase chances of my pins actually being seen, and not pushed down an alley of loads of pins.After I got some experience and after Pinterest did a big spam cleanup, I then started joining boards that were way bigger.
Second, many creatives ask in different Facebook groups for boards related to their topic. One great Facebook group solely dedicated to finding group boards is Pinterest Boards. People post requests and info about the groups they run or want to join. For regular Facebook groups, there are promo days that you can ask if anyone knows of any group boards related to your topics.
Thirdly, you can use Pinterest to find new group boards. All you need is to find influencers, people who you follow that have topics related to yours, and see if they have any group boards of their own or group boards they are a part of. How do you know if it’s a group board? You will see the icon of two people.
How to join group boards?
Each group board leader has specific instructions in the profile text telling you exactly what you need to do to join. Usually, you just have to email them and make sure you’re following the group board leader. The top left photo next to the group board description will show the leader’s profile so make sure you are following them.
TIPS FOR EMAILING BOARD OWNERS.
Keep your email short and make sure you put the board name in the subject line. Make sure you give them your Pinterest email, which is sometimes different than the actual email you are emailing them from. In case you find a great board but you don’t see instructions, try and find the board owner and follow them on Twitter (or another platform) to see if they are still accepting contributors.
Tips for participating on group boards.
Respect the board and don’t spam and of course add value. Programs like Tailwind allow me to set intervals for pinning the same pin across many boards, which is great. Many times, you will have the same contributors on those boards, and you don’t want them to feel as if they have been spammed. Tailwind allows me to set intervals by hours and even days. I love using it to grow my Pinterest account and if you want to try it for 30 days, sign up here ( affiliate link).
What I also love about Tailwind is that you can create board lists based on specific topics. So, for example, I am on 15 group boards related to blogging tips, so I create a blog list called “Blogging.” ( see the list on photo to left) Then, when I create a pin of my own related to that, I can schedule out that pin across those 15 boards. Or, if I find a great pin to repin to those boards, I follow the same process. So with one pin, it becomes 15 pins which is awesome. This is how people schedule out 30-50 pins a day.
Once you get the hang of group boards, you will also start getting requests by group board owners that love your content and want you to contribute to them as well.
Last but not least, you can totally create a group board of your own, and I strongly recommend you do so for two reasons: #1 you will start being seen as a leader in that niche, and you will start being found in Pinterest for your board. #2 it will give you pins you can share in your other boards, giving you great relatable content that your audience will love.
Be sure you are sharing great content. Overall, group boards can be a great way to get your pins to get spread out on Pinterest quickly.
Download the Pinterest SEO Checklist here.
Also, I have an upcoming Get Found on Pinterest for the Holidays webinar with the lovely Jess Behr: You can sign up for FREE webinar here.