Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Many of you might be wondering why we are going over creating boards before we go over creating pins and optimizing them. This goes back to our strategies and goals.

Depending on the platform, you almost always will have faster successes when going into it with experienced assistance or taking the time to learn it yourself. Almost anyone can get an Amazon account and spew up a few listings. But it takes a minimum of knowledge, experience. and effort to get those listings to sell and be profitable.

The Value Of Pinterest

Pinterest has value to you because it is a great platform to engage your potential audience. Leverage Pinterest's own systems to maximize exposure and generate the most traffic possible for your content or products. We do that by first exploring categories and topics, understanding how that functions.

Then we drill down to get additional details on our topics and keywords using Smart Search. Once we have those general parameters decided, we move to create our boards. We have them defined already for the most part. Then we move toward the actual pins. You will know exactly what you want to do with the pins when you get there.

Pinterest has the highest traffic referral rate of any social media after Facebook. Make use of this by providing your followers with strong CTA’s (call-to-actions) to guide them where you want them to go next. Whether you are promoting a blog with content or e-commerce product listings only, you want to have several boards per subject matter or product.

Target Pinterest Topics To Increase Engagement

How can you optimize your pins further to increase your chances of making it to the category cover? Remember, I mentioned pin signals. This is a great example of pin signals. I would take my initial mountain bike pin and use the keywords health and fitness in the Rich Pin title, in the pin description and pin it to the health and fitness board of mine. 

Let it season on that board for a few days and then come back and add it to all of the other boards that I would be adding it to as well. We are utilizing Pinterest to drive traffic, build exposure for our brand or products and increase engagement with new audiences. The more targeted you can get your signals, the better the chances of huge amounts of traffic.

Add descriptions to your boards (keywords)

For each board, you'll want to add a keyword optimized description. Tell followers what you share and how they'll benefit from the content on your board. Keep in mind that Pinterest is a resource and people tend to spend time scouring the site for ALL the posts they can find on a specific topic. The more helpful and valuable your boards are, the more likely they'll follow and re-pin your content.

Don’t underestimate pin descriptions. These are often overlooked, but pinners interact much more with pins that have descriptions as well as images. The sweet spot for description length is 200 words.

What is a Pinterest Group Board?

A thing of the past.  Pinterest announced last year that Group Boards would no longer be appearing in the search results making them pointless.  They have been replaced so it seems, by Pinterest Communities.

Smart Feed Phenomenon

When you first log in, what you see is the smart feed. Pins from topics that you told Pinterest that you are interested in. You do not see the most recent pins from people you follow. That is not how the smart feed works. Pinterest’s smart feed uses an algorithm to determine each user’s feed, with Pins being shown as “best first” rather than “newest first.”

Optimize For Engagement.   When creating boards and pins, ask yourself would this make me click and want more information?  If your answer is no or maybe, then continue working on it until it does.  How do you best achieve this?  You can start with a compelling call to action in the title.  Remember the easiest way to connect with a product or a buyer is to show them what using a product is like or might do for them.  Lifestyle images help a lot

Five Boards Per Pin:   Most Pinterest experts argue that a pin should live on at least five relevant boards in your Pinterest profile.  For example, if you blog about SEO, you should ensure that your Pinterest profile has at least five boards related to SEO (such as SEO, SEO tips, SEO for beginners, SEO WordPress and SEO for bloggers).

So you add Pin 1 to Board 1 and five days later to Board 2 and repeat the process monthly to avoid being spam.

Add featured boards:  Spice up your Pinterest profile by adding featured boards’ function, which showcases your most relevant boards.

However, you want your boards to be successful.  You should still review your boards regularly and add additional high value Pins to the under-performers to boost their value.  As far as under-performing Pins themselves, Pinterest suggests it is much better to go back to the original source itself, Pin directly from there, yet this time try a different title and description.

Pin4Ever does not look very fancy and can be a little glitchy, but the range of available options are much better than those offered by Pinterest itself.     While Group Boards still exist, they have lost some of their effectiveness.  When you use a tool like PinGroupie, it is difficult to find group boards with a lot of participation any more. 

Pinterest Communities

Creating Your Own Popular Community

If you’re ready to take charge and build a community of your own , now is the time to jump in.  Be on the ground-floor of change.  We have seen time and time again those there in the beginning of innovation come out on top.

Choose a topic

The best way to pick something that lots of people will be interested in and excited to join is to create a community related to your most popular board, possibly a little broader in scope. If your most popular board was kayaking, I'd suggest a community such as Kayaking and Canoes, or weekend Kayaking, something that would appeal to a slightly larger audience... Have you heard the phrase “the riches are in the niches?” Use your community name as a hashtag and search to see if it has traction as a hashtag. You may also check it on Instagram.

Write A Description (What To Share, How To Join)

Create a description …keywords  Tell users what they’ll learn and the types of content that are appropriate to share. Come up with some rules like what to to contribute, please stay on topic... A limit to self-promotion. Don’t forget to create a welcome message and pin it to the top

Invite Like-minded Collaborators Who Can Add To The Conversation

Once your community is ready to go, invite a collaborator or two that you know would add valuable content to the board. Going through your blog feed or your Twitter following can help turn up some influential partners as well. Take a moment to click on their pins to make sure the content they share is being pinned and relevant. Running a FB Group alone is a lot of work. Im sure a Pinterest community is as well. This will take some of the weight off of your shoulders.

Be The Best Conversation Facilitator In Your Community

Lead by example, facilitate the conversation.

Lesson Task:

Next Lesson: Dominating with The Smart Feed & Search