One of the questions we get all the time is how to create the best boards for Pinterest. So today, I’m going to cover how to create the best boards for your brand and niche.

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laptop with pinterest screenshot and text overlay "how to create great pinterest boards".

What Are Pinterest Boards? 

Some of you are totally new to Pinterest and don’t know anything about boards.

Think about pre-computer days. Back in the day, we had magazines we would pull things out of and binders to place them in.

When Pinterest came along in 2010, we had a place to capture an idea from online and a virtual binder to place it in – that virtual binder is known as a Pinterest board.

These boards are able to be categorized. As a marketer, they are what you use to organize your content to tell help your audience understand what you are all about.

Personal Boards vs. Group Boards

There are 2 types of boards on Pinterest: personal boards and group boards.

Personal boards are those that live on your profile. You are the only person that can pin to them or edit them. You can move your pins around (even delete pins — but don’t do it!). You are the boss of your personal boards.

Group boards live on your profile but can be owned by someone else. Or maybe you created the group board and have several other Pinterest users that you’ve authorized to pin to that group board.

Group boards are a great idea for service-based industries, especially for photographers, wedding based businesses, or even branding businesses. The Pinterest board is a vehicle through which you can share ideas in a visual way with clients.

How to Create the Best Boards for Pinterest

Creating Your First Pinterest Boards 

If you are totally new to Pinterest and haven’t created any boards yet, here is the advice I always give:

Start out with 5-10 boards that fit your brand.

For example, if I just starting out with Pinterest marketing for Simple Pin, I would create the following boards:

• Simple Pin Media
• Simple Pin Podcast
• Pinterest Tips for Business
• Pinterest Marketing Ideas
• Pinterest Strategies
• Pinterest Marketing for eCommerce Business
• Pinterest Marketing for Bloggers
• Social Media Marketing Tips

Every single piece of content that I create can be pinned onto every single one of these boards.

Make a list of 10-15 ideas on notebook paper and take some time to create group board names that will serve you well in search. Search on Pinterest for board topics to see what board names comes up in the search results.

My best advice when it comes to board names — be niche-specific. If you make gluten-free pies, instead of just having “Best Pie Recipes” use “Best Gluten-Free Pie Recipes” as your board title.

After you create your board, immediately save 3-5 pins to each board. Don’t bother with scheduling the pins, just pin them straight to your boards on your computer.

Don’t spend time creating custom board covers. It’s a waste of time unless you do it while binge-watching Netflix. But it would still be better to use that time to update past content for Pinterest.

Related: How to Create a Business Account from Scratch

Group Boards Rules of Thumb 

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Here are a few rules of thumb about Pinterest group boards:

Look for a group board with a really awesome title. Make sure the board title is something that people are searching on Pinterest. The more niche-specific, the better.
Look for a low number of contributors. Less than twenty is ideal, less than ten is even better. You want to be able to work with the other users to share great content on Pinterest.
Make sure the content inside the board is really good and matches the title of the board. You want to make sure the content of the board is something you want your audience to see. You don’t need group boards to be successful on Pinterest, so better to not have any than to be part of bad boards.
Check to see if your pins are getting the results you want through Tailwind insights. If your pins on the group boards are getting no saves and no clicks, then leave the board and focus on your personal boards. You don’t want to be wasting your time.

laptop with pinterest home feed screenshot.

Don’t create a board just for the fun of it. You always want to have a purpose behind your boards and that purpose should always be sharing your content.

Want to learn more about Pinterest boards? We cover them in several other episodes (listen or read — you choose!):

Time Stamp:
Intro
2:35 – What Are Boards?
4:20 – Personal Boards and Group Boards
6:17 – Creating Your Boards
10:05 – Rules of Thumb for Group Boards

11 Comments

    1. If you are looking to rank high specifically in Pinterest, I prefer the Pinterest search bar tool. It makes it really easy to find primary keywords, and also related long-tail keywords (looking at the word tiles that appear just below the search term results).

  1. as of September 11th, 2019, I haven’t been able to delete groups of pins or move them to other boards. I only have a personal account. Can someone tell me what’s going on?

  2. I can’t believe I heard you right! I’ve been so frustrated wanting to join as many group boards as possible, and you are saying I don’t have to? You’ve taken a lot of weight off my shoulders! thank you so much for these insights.

    1. That strategy is no longer useful. My advice is to be very selective in joining group boards — target only high performing ones (look at your Tailwind stats to determine this) that are very niched-down to a specific topic. And take a close look at the content to make sure that the board’s moderator is actively managing it (keeping out inappropriate and off-topic content)

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