In case you hadn’t noticed, Pinterest has been in the news a lot recently. In November last year, Pinterest started courting the business community with the creation of its business-specific accounts and a dedicated business support page. Then earlier this month, Pinterest quietly raised a cool $200 million at an astonishing $2.5 billion valuation – not bad for a company that has yet to make a profit! Most intriguing of all though was a study published last week by research center Pew.
It suggested that Pinterest has grown so quickly, it’s now on course to catch Twitter in the battle for second place behind Facebook in the US social networking market. These events indicate that Pinterest is quickly evolving from being last year’s hot new upstart to a legitimate social network that should be part of your marketing mix.
How can you maximize your time on Pinterest?
But how can you maximize your Pinterest activities without spending a ton of time on it? Well, along with scheduling your pins, one of the most effective but underutilized strategies to get more exposure from Pinterest is by using group boards. Now, if you’re new to Pinterest, you may only know of regular boards that only you can pin to. You may have never have heard of group boards. Or maybe you have but you don’t know how to use them or don’t think they apply to you. I’ve been dabbling with group boards over the past few months and have seen a dramatic increase in followers since I strategically introduced them to my Pinterest marketing.
What Are Pinterest’s Group Boards?
A group board works like a regular Pinterest board. The only difference is that long with the board creator, other people are also allowed to pin. Group boards go under many different names – shared boards, contributor boards, community boards and collaborative boards. Regardless the term, they are all exactly the same thing. There is currently no directory of Pinterest group boards. In order to distinguish a group board from a regular one you need to look out for the group icon at the top of a board when you are browsing someone’s page. This snapshot of a personal page of choices shows the group Pinterest page icon with the little people under.
Key Benefits of Using Group Boards
Group boards are not only a great way to organize ideas and bring people together, but they can also have real tangible benefits for your brand and business.
#1. Dramatically boost your followers
If users select to “follow all” of any contributor’s boards, then they will be added as followers to a group board you are part of. The increased exposure and visibility you get through group boards will increase your follower growth at a faster rate.
#2. Exponentially increase the number of repins
The more followers you have the more likely they (and their followers) are to see your content, repin your pins and click through to your website. This means more traffic to your site and potentially more subscribers, customers and clients.
#3. Put your pinning virtually on autopilot
Implement this strategy correctly and you could get other people creating content for. Certainly at the start, Pinterest can be time-consuming but managed well, you could soon have a team of people perpetuating your content for you across their networks.
#4. Increase engagement and create brand ambassadors
Your customers may already be “liking”, commenting and sharing your content with their followers on Pinterest. But inviting them to pin to your brand’s group board will get them more engaged and involved in your online conversation. It will also elevate them to the role of brand ambassadors, who their followers are more likely to take note of.
CONCLUSION
The Pinterest blog recommends that you should only send invitations to Pinterest users who have expressed an interest in your pins and to avoid sending out repeat requests.
One way of encouraging people to join your group boards is to add a line in the board description. You could state that you welcome contributors and that anyone interested in joining the board
should add a comment against a pin. So there you have it, a whirlwind tour of Pinterest’s group boards.
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