Learn How to Start a Group Board on Pinterest. Grow your blog by getting more page views when you collaborate with other bloggers!
I'm excited to share with you all of my tips on how to start a group board on Pinterest and how it helped me grow my blog!
Pinterest is absolutely essential to my blog traffic. I currently receive about 85% of my traffic from Pinterest, so I've invested a lot of my time into learning more and more about this amazing platform!
You've probably heard that group boards on Pinterest are a great way to grow traffic to your blog. When I first learned this, I was excited to jump in and find some awesome group boards to join. When I finally landed on a few that looked to be a good fit for me, I ran into a huge problem...
The most popular group boards were...
A) At maximum capacity (meaning, they were not accepting any new members)
B) or the admin was unresponsive to my message asking to join.
How am I supposed to grow my blog traffic through group boards, if I can't join any?
I figured, if I can't even get the opportunity to join, I'll do it on my own. I decided to make my own group board. TAKE THAT! 😉
How To Create A Group Board
Here are the steps on how to start a group board.
- Create a board on Pinterest
- Be sure to set the Category and create a description!
- Create a set of rules (more on that below)
- Add pins to your board (you don't want to invite someone to an empty board).
- Click on "Invite"
- Search for people to invite to your board.
- Click on "Invite", or send the link to them directly.
How to set rules for your group board
You should set some ground rules for your group board and for the members.
- You should include instructions on how they can reach you to request to join (make sure they also follow you!)
- What types of pins will you allow? Make sure this is clearly outlined in your rules. Here are some characteristics of good pins:
- Vertical only
- 2:3 pin size ratio
- High quality photos
- Text overlay
- No SPAM pins or pins that don't fit the board's niche.
- Be sure to mention that repeat offenders will be removed from the board without notice. You should maintain the right to do so, as spammy content or poor quality pins will drag down your ratings.
- You should also include a note requesting that for every pin posted, members must re-pin at least one from the board. This will help maintain engagement on the board and boost your visibility on Pinterest.
How to find members to invite to your new group board
Creating the actual board is the easy part. The harder part, is finding awesome members to grow your group board.
There are a few ways to find new members to invite to your group board.
Avoid inviting anybody and everybody; this part of the process should be a little more strategic in order to benefit your traffic counts.
If you have other social media accounts, start there. When I first created my group board, I invited blogger friends from my Instagram account. I had a good response since I interact with these bloggers daily.
You can also search through members of existing group boards in your niche. One way to do that is, search for related group boards on Pingroupie (a site that aggregates top group boards on Pinterest) and search through members who are a part of those boards.
Tailwind is also an excellent source for finding folks. If you are unfamiliar with Tailwind, check out my other post to read up on it and why it's one of my top tools for blogging success (scroll down to to #6).
It didn't take me long to realize that since I was already a member of Tailwind Tribes (similar to Pinterest group boards, but on Tailwind), I had access to a plethora of people to invite to my board.
Members on Tailwind Tribes are great to reach out to because they are likely pinning high quality content, part of your niche and overall, highly active pinners.
I look for those who have already saved my content via Tailwind; I see that they enjoy my content, therefore there's a higher chance they would want to join my board. Then, I find them on Pinterest to make sure that they fit some of my criteria. Then, I follow them and invite them to my board.
Member criteria
Here is some of the criteria I look for when reaching out to new potential members:
- Does their content match your niche?
- What type of content do they pin?
- Do they belong to other group boards?
- If the answer is no, they may not be interested in joining yours, but that's not always the case!
- How many followers do they have?
- When scouting out friends to invite to my board, I like to check out to see where they are at with their followers. I have a mix of 'follower levels' on my board. Because I had such bad luck as a newbie with getting added to group boards, I of course like to find newer bloggers to invite. They almost always accept my invitation which is great. As long as they are active and growing, I'm happy to have them join! I also scout out bloggers who are at a bit of a higher level than me. They help bring traffic since they're more established.
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- Does that mean if someone has a million followers won't accept your invite? Definitely not! There's always a chance they will, but keep in mind, this may not happen until your board has reached a higher level of maturity.
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Do not feel like you have to accept every invitation that comes your way either. You ultimately want to be strategic on who is participating on your group board. They should be active, they should contribute high quality content and they should be re-pinning from your group board as well.
How to maintain your group board
- Frequently check the pins that are being posted to your board and be on the lookout for any that do not fit within your set of rules. Remove repeat offenders as necessary.
- Be sure to check your email or messages (or however you request to be reached) to be on the lookout for new requests from people who want to join.
- Don't forget to consistently post to your board and share other pins from your members!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial on How to Start a Pinterest Group Board!
Happy Pinning!!
