Pinterest board sections have been around since November of 2017. Pinterest initially tested them with a small group of beta users. Since then, they have rolled out the functionality to everyone.
Pinterest Board Sections are an awesome tool for typical users (i.e., the regular pinner), but not necessarily if you’re using Pinterest as a marketing tool. Let’s drill down a bit and focus on board sections so you can understand their purpose.
Pinterest Board Sections: A Primer
What are Board Sections?
Board sections are a way to create just that —sections within your Pinterest boards. Once you create a board, you can divide it into sections to categorize and organize your Pinterest board content.
For example, if you have a board for Bathroom Remodeling Ideas and you find a style (or two or three) you love, you can organize pins by style by categorizing them into a section within that board (e.g., modern farmhouse design, minimalist design, or modern).
By doing so, it makes it so much easier for you to find what you’re looking for later. Pinners were looking for a feature like this because some had been on Pinterest for years and their boards had thousands of pins. Having board sections allowed them to organize their pins more efficiently, which helped them to find the pins they wanted to reference frequently.
Related: How to Create the Best Boards for Pinterest
How Do I Use Board Sections?
To use this feature to organize your board content, go to the + sign and select “Add section.”
From there, pick the pins you want to add! You can save new ideas to the section like you always have.
When Should I Use Board Sections?
Remember what I said about this not being a marketing tool?
We recommend that you divide your boards into sections for your personal boards (either secret boards in your business account, or boards on a personal account). For example, let’s say you have boards for gluten-free recipes for each meal of the day (gluten-free breakfast, gluten-free lunch, gluten-free dinner, etc). You can move all the pins from those boards into one board with sections.
Just head to your board, tap “Organize” and pick the pins you want to move.
Then you can select a section you already have created or create a new one.
Here are a few more ways you can use board sections to organize content in personal boards:
- Secret Santa – Start a secret board with sections for each person who’s getting a gift
- Friendsgiving – Organize a Thanksgiving board (by main courses, sides, pies, and beverages) and share with your friends
- Spring Fashion – Move your spring styles to a new board with sections for light sweaters, spring accessories, and raincoats
- Summer Decor – Embrace the warmer weather with outdoor decoration ideas organized by each of your outside spaces.
When Should I Avoid Using Board Sections?
Board sections are an organizer’s dream, but they are NOT a great tool for a Pinterest business account. When you are sharing your content on Pinterest, you want to eliminate any barriers may prevent a pinner from clicking through to your site.
Board sections are a barrier.
Why Are Board Sections NOT a Great Tool for My Pinterest Business Account?
Some of you may still be asking:
Why can’t I use this for my business marketing?
Having a section within a Pinterest board creates three problems:
- It is one more click for the pinner to take action on before they get to your pin (assuming they came to your board first).
- You cannot add descriptions to a board section. As a consequence, you lose out on the keywords you could have gained if it was a new board instead.
- Board sections are not searchable when someone is trying to find a board that fits their search terms. This means that you are losing valuable opportunities for pinners to discover your great content within a specific section.
Enjoy organizing your private (aka “Secret”) boards with sections to your heart’s content. Just don’t use them on your visible boards.
Additional Resources
Create a Pinterest board section
Spring Cleaning Pinterest Boards
How to Organize Pinterest Boards
How to Create the Best Boards for Pinterest
Very interesting thoughts on Sections. Would you be able to explain # 3 on why Business Users should not use sections a bit more? I am confused on what you are saying. Are you saying that Pins that are ON a board, that when then get moved into a section ON that same board are no longer searchable on Pinterest? Are they kind of archived when you add them into a section? OR can they still be found on an individual level (as a single pin)?
I have lots and lots of pins on my business pinterest account boards and i have sectioned many of them off for ease of others finding them. Now your reason # 1 does makes sense and i have always had this in the back of my mind, if this is something I should but. BUT I move forward with it because my thought process was that, if someone comes to the board and they see that there are 1000’s of pins on on 1 board and they hit the “sections” part first, would they maybe not look at the sections for ease of finding what they want? Instead of scrolling a board with 1000 pins? And if the pin is still searchable on Pinterest would it then not matter too much if it’s in a section that is grouped with many similar “sub topics”? Unless you answer to my first question is that the pin is no longer searchable when put into a section.
I hope this is not too confusing. I am just wondering if I should take the time to remove all my sections and move pins back or leave them?
Thanks for an interesting posts.
It’s a confusing topic, so let’s see if we can explain it a bit more. To clarify, individual pins are always searchable, but the section itself isn’t searchable based on the name of the board section. Board titles ARE searchable, but since section titles are not, you lose out on those as keywords. Any valuable keywords you have for board sections won’t benefit you in helping users search your content so you miss out on the potential benefit of those keywords by having them in sections instead of making them into new boards. Users can always find your individual pins, but should they come to your board first, you are requiring them to take another step to click into a section to find content. I would encourage you to create new boards for the sections you have so you get the benefit of the keywording and have your pins separated for users to find what they want more easily.
Hello Kate. I just stumbled across your web connection. I have had it with any real assistance from Pinterest advisors. My immediate issue is with the reduced horizontal positions of sections on my board. The symbol providing an option for “default” or “minimize” produces two sections across for “default” and three sections for “minimize,” when yesterday the
default produced three sections, and minimize allowed for four. This happened previously, but then the staff restored the original configuration. Not so this time. They want screen shots. Any advice?
Pinterest is always working to improve their site so we see changes and new formatting being tested all the time. The best options are to reach out to them through the community forum and thing hang tight. https://community.pinterest.biz/
I have dog training and puppy training boards in my pinterest business account. I’m a marketer. I was thinking of adding sections for specific issues like barking, potty training, etc. But reading your article makes me realize i shouldn’t.
Should I just continue to post all the dog training issue pins into the main dog/puppy training boards? Or should I also create specific boards like Barking, Potty Training, ets and pin in those boards instead – or in addition to – the main boards?
Hi Debra!
You could definitely create some additional boards around those topics. If you feel that your audience is searching for a topic and you have multiple pins/posts on the topic – its probably worth having a board for. Hope that helps!