5 Steps to Launching a Successful Pinterest Group Board

This is a guest post by Vincent Ng, president of MCNG Marketing.

Launching a Pinterest group board has many benefits. It can help increase followers, increase the reach of your pins, and get more clicks to your website.  Here are 5 steps to launching a successful Pinterest group board…

1. Pre Launching with an Individual Board:

The first step to launching a Pinterest group board is to create an individual board first and to populate it with the best pins that are related to the board’s topic.

There are two ways you can go about populating your board. You can either do this by using a secret board and growing it in a quiet manner and then launching it as public board once there’s enough quality pins. The other option is to start it off as a public board and populate it with pins over time.

There is no right or wrong way, but having a public board that doesn’t have a lot of pins is most likely going to detract people from joining the group once they visit the board, so to launch it successfully, start off your group board as a secret board and then launch it to a public board.

If you start off a group board but it isn’t populated with any pins, you’re most likely going to drive people from joining the board.

An exception to this rule is that if you are trying to create group boards that are designed to be within a closed group such as for your own business association or within your company. Then there’s no need to pre launch. Food Bloggers of Canada does a great job of maintaining their group board that’s just for members.

2. Be Selective With Who You Invite to Your Pinterest Group Board:

Once your board has been populated by some excellent content, this is the time to start inviting others. The great news is that any board that you have can be changed into a group board. All you have to do is go to “Edit Board” and then invite other users on Pinterest.

In order to invite people to join your Pinterest group board, you must follow at least one of their boards and they should be following at least one of your boards. Don’t make the mistake of just inviting anyone. Make sure you invite people who are passionate about your topic.

One person who has done an amazing job with her group board is Jo Ann Hines, the Packaging Diva, who runs the group Pinterest board Packaging Pick of the Day. At the time of this writing, it has over 52,000 pins and over 18,000 members and has almost zero spamming.

Jo Ann gives excellent advice about inviting people to a Pinterest group board. Her advice is to invite only people who are truly passionate about the topic that your group board represents.

By carefully selecting people you invite, and by checking out their Pinterest boards in advance, see if they are just as passionate as you are, and will help you grow your group boards. Don’t randomly invite people just to grow your follower count. This is how group boards end up being spammed.

3. Make it Easy for Pinterest Users to Contact You:

If you want to grow your board, one of the best things to do is to make it easy for people to contact you to join the group board. Kevin Gorsline, of your Social Media Company, makes it simple for people to contact him to join his group board, “Everyone’s Social Media Resource”. He does this by adding his email address in his board’s description and asking people to send him an email for a group board invite.

4. Set up Rules and Guidelines for Your Pinterest Group Board:

Whether your group board is on Linkedin, Facebook, or Pinterest, it’s very important to set up guidelines and rules from the very start. The guidelines you set up for your group should reflect the values of what you want the group to stand for.

Let people know what the rules are within the board’s description.

For most boards, including MCNG Marketing’s Pinterest group board, Creative Advertising Group, ‘no spamming’ should be clearly put in the board’s descriptions. And it should be added that if anybody does spam they will be automatically booted from the group.

Other group boards will have specific rules limiting the number of pins that can be posted on a group board per day, such as the example with Food Bloggers of Canada. They limit their members to pinning two pins a day at most.

Whatever guidelines you set out for your group, make sure that you put them clearly in the description of the board.

5. Monitor Your Pinterest Group Board for Spam:

The hardest part of making a group board successful is actually monitoring it for spam and making sure that it doesn’t get populated with unrelated pins.  This is why it’s very important to grow your group steadily and carefully.

Below is a screenshot of a group board that’s dedicated to Pinterest, but sadly, has pins that are completely unrelated. This kind of activity will detract followers and may even get your board banned.

One of the downfalls of creating a group is that once a person is part of a group, he or she can also invite other users to be part of the group. While this may help grow your group board, it can potentially lead to spamming disaster.

At the moment, there isn’t any way of preventing other members of your group from inviting people to a group board, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Pinterest is working on this option.

The great thing about maintaining a group board is that you’re able to see who invited a potential spammer.  You have the option to kick off, not only the spammer, but also uninvite all the users that person invited, as well as delete all pins that the spammer posted on the group board.

As your group boards get larger, you should always do your best to check them out every day and make sure that they aren’t being spammed.

One of the big dangers of not monitoring your spam is the potential to have your whole Pinterest account shut down. If too many people are reporting spam on your group board, Pinterest could potentially shut down your account all of a sudden, and it could take weeks before the account is reinstated if at all.

This is why as your group boards get bigger, you need to be even more vigilant to ensure that members follow the guidelines.

Creating amazing group boards is truly a journey that never ends. You will be able to connect with more enthusiasts and people who are just as like minded as you.

Do you run or contribute to a Pinterest group board? What helpful tips and hints do you have for creating and launching a successful Pinterest group board? I’d love to hear your answers in the comments section. 

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