Pinterest isn’t only for brides planning their wedding or bloggers writing about DIY. Pinterest is an incredibly effective (and cost-effective) way to market your business online. The search engine has space for every niche, although certain niches do perform better than others.
If you love organizing as much as I do, you’ll adore Pinterest’s user-friendly way to organize your saved pins into boards.
If you’re a casual pinner, knowing what a board on Pinterest is will help you really enjoy creating and using your account. For aspiring Pinterest account managers, understanding boards and creating a board on Pinterest is fundamental to the management of client accounts!
Let’s dive in!
Why Do We Use Boards on Pinterest?
I’m presuming you’re generally familiar with what pins are and what we do with them. If not, visit this blog that’ll give you a short overview of the basics.
There are a number of reasons why you’d want to create a board on Pinterest. The top three are:
- To organize your pins
- To collaborate with other brands/people
- To optimize your account with keywords (Board titles and descriptions) so that Pinterest can index your account and show it (and your pins) to the right Pinterest users.
What is a Board on Pinterest?
For the casual Pinterest user:
A board on Pinterest is like a virtual (wicker if you like!) basket to collect all your favorite pins in. You can create as many boards as you want to!
The idea is to create boards with specific titles for specific topics. If you use Pinterest to find workouts and exercise routines, you could create boards called Lower Body Workout, Easy Yoga Poses, Cardio Workouts and At Home Workouts. It’s all up to you and the kind of pins you like to save and collect.
As you browse Pinterest, you simply save your pins to the relevant boards. The next time you’re ready for a morning workout, head on over to your board called ‘Morning Workouts’, scroll your saved pins and pick one that catches your eye!
For the more serious Pinterest user or Pinterest Account Manager:
Pinterest boards are marketing bread and butter! They’re fundamental to an effective marketing strategy for our clients.
We need to be very deliberate over what we name our boards, do extensive keywords research to include in these boards, and arrange our client boards logically.
For Pinterest Account Managers, while it’s not an exact science, here are some tips that will help you optimize your account with proper use of boards:
USE KEYWORDS IN THE DESCRIPTION AND TITLE
Any board on Pinterest should be optimized using keywords related to your brand or business. Pinterest provides us with 500 characters per board with which to write a keyword-laden description.
It’s best practice to write sentences (not keyword stack) to describe the board, add some brand language and get in long-tail keywords. Once you’ve researched a specific title for keywords, include these in creatively written sentences. Add some short tail keywords right at the end to use up any last characters. You want to use ALL 500 characters provided!
Always include your business name in the description of the keyword to help Pinterest associate you with these keywords.
Remember that your board titles should clearly describe what types of pins you’re saving in that board. This makes it easy for Pinterest to index the board and doesn’t confuse Pinterest users when they read the title.
While sadly uncreative, it’s best for businesses to have a board titled ‘Website Design Tips’ rather than “Amazing Tips” or something vague. Use your researched keywords in your titles!
DESCRIBE YOUR BUSINESS WITH BOARDS
Identify some key aspects of your business to give you an idea of what types of boards to create. If you’re a food blogger that creates recipes, you’ll want to create boards for different meals, different food types and different styles of cooking.
Don’t deviate too far from your business topic to avoid confusing Pinterest and making it difficult for the search engine to categorize your account correctly.
(For example, I wouldn’t include a board on wedding dresses on a food blogger’s Pinterest account.)
Create multiple boards that you can easily pin your relevant content to. For a health coach, this may include boards such as ‘Healthy Living Tips’, ‘Healthy Eating Tips’, ‘Wellness Tips’, etc. You can repin other bloggers’ pins in these boards too which helps to reinforce your chosen keywords (and makes you easier to find).
Importantly, create one branded board named after your business to which every single one of your pins will go. You won’t repin any other pinner’s pins to this board.
ARRANGE YOUR BOARDS LOGICALLY
Of course, you can arrange them in whatever way you want, but to keep things organized it helps to have a system.
I always put the branded board first. That is your business board to which all your pins are exclusively pinned. This makes it easy for users on your profile to see where they can get more of you.
Next, pin the most relevant boards related to your account. If you’re a website design agency, arrange all boards related to website design next to your branded board.
After that, add boards that are next in relevance, perhaps boards with marketing tips, productivity tips or home office inspiration.
Next, arrange boards with the least relevance such as a quotes board if you have one. And finally, arrange all your group boards right at the bottom.
Learning how to optimize a board on Pinterest is actually easy! With a little research into your keywords, you’ll have Pinterest boards that really serve your business and talk to your target audience.
If you need more help with figuring out how to optimize your boards, let’s chat!
