Pinterest Group Boards: Everything You Need to Know

I run a lifestyle blog, and don’t often write about blogging. However, I’m totally addicted to my blogging Facebook groups, and the support I get from them is priceless…. sometimes we just need to help, don’t we? Recently I have answered the same questions so many times within the blogging community that I thought it was time to get detailed answers down on virtual paper.  Pinterest group boards have totally transformed my blog reach, and over the last six month I have increased my traffic by 700%. Some of this is natural growth, but I honestly put a lot of it down to the use of Pinterest group boards. Here is everything you need to know:

 ** THIS PAGE CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS. THAT MEANS I MAY GET A SMALL COMMISSION IF YOU CHOOSE TO SIGN UP WITH ONE OF THE RESOURCES I USE.**

What is a Pinterest group board?

Any board created on Pinterest can be made into a group board by inviting ‘collaborators’. Pinterest group boards are like any other boards, but with more than one person pinning to them. The person that starts the board is the board ‘owner’, but the board can have a few, or sometimes thousands, of collaborators adding pins to the board. You can identify a group board by the icon next to the board name:

Why would I want to join Pinterest group boards?

There are many reasons why having multiple people pinning to the same board could be useful, but I’m going to focus on the perks for bloggers gaining more traffic. In order to understand how game changing Pinterest group boards can be for your blog you have to consider how the Pinterest landing page works:

• When you log into Pinterest, you see a selection of pins from those you follow, as well as suggestions from Pinterest. If you pin to one of your normal boards, your pin may well appear on your followers landing page, great!
• When you pin to a group board it does not appear on your followers feed because they are not automatically following the group board by following you. Despite this sounding negative, this is good news… because if you’ve already pinned your post to one or two of your personal boards, you won’t spam your followers by then pinning the same pin to several group boards.
• Here’s where the good news really kicks in… who does see the pins on the group board? Answer: Everyone following the board. That’s everyone that followers the board owner, and possibly some others that follow the board on its own. You may only have 200 Pinterest followers, maybe more… but the owner of the group board ‘Top Blogs – Pinterest Viral Board’ likely has more than you:

So by joining multiple group boards with different owners, you are massively widening the audience for your pins, even if you don’t have that many followers yourself… genius!

How do I find Pinterest group boards?

This is where a lot of people get stuck. I have heard many recommendations for PinGroupie.com and I have used it myself, with a little bit of success. Pin Groupie is a directory of group boards, so you can search by category and it even shows you how big the board is and what the repin rate is. Sounds amazing, right? Only, I have found these boards extremely difficult to join and I’m pretty sure any requests I sent on boards I liked the look of were ignored. Maybe I was unlucky.. I certainly would give it a go and see what you think.

Personally, I find it much quicker and easier to find boards by stalking similar pinner’s accounts. If you look at any of the big pinner’s profiles, they are collaborators on loads of group boards. I’m a member of 58 group boards… yup, 58… I love them that much! Take a look at the boards I’m collaborating on to see if any take your fancy (they’re at the bottom of my profile without the matching Twin Pickle board covers). Then check the profiles of the board owners of these boards for what other boards they are collaborating on… and so on. 

How do I join Pinterest group boards?

Not all boards are easy to join, and it can get frustrating. I would say about 2 out of 3 boards I try to connect with ignore me… Thanks guys. And not all boards work the same in how you join. But don’t panic and ditch the idea altogether, just be patient and you will find the perfect boards! Most group boards have clear instructions on how to join in the board description. Often the description will also explain rules such as a pin per day limit. I only own one group board of my own, and I simply ask for you to email me to join (my board is for Twin Mom stuff). You should also follow the board owner, otherwise they won’t be able to find you within their account to add to the board. 

Sometimes there are no instructions at all, or they are vague. I have no idea why people do this… is it a test? An initiation to be accepted onto the board? Who knows, but if you come across one of these, this is what to do:

• Find the board owner – that will be the profile picture in most left most position on the line of profile pictures (you can see me above with the kiddos). Click on the profile pic, you’ve found the board owner… follow them.
• If they have a blog linked, visit it and you should find a number of ways to contact them. I find email is best for full impact so check their ‘contact’ page if they have one. Write them a friendly message asking to join the board, leaving a link to your Pinterest profile. Name the board you’re applying for, use the board owners actual name if you can find it on their blog. Just like applying for a job, make it personal instead of sending a generic email to 100 boards. It doesn’t take long to change the name in a draft email and coming across like a human being gets you a long way.
• If you can’t find an email address, you can try commenting on one of their pins to ask the question. Just make sure it’s one of their pins and not someone else’s pin on the group board or they won’t get the message – It does not need to be a pin on that board, any of their pins will do! 

Occasionally, boards close themselves to new contributors because the board owner is happy at the size the board has got to. I’m not sure there’s a lot you can do about that, unless they specifically say existing board collaborators can add people. If so, click on any member and get in touch in the same way.

How many boards can I join and how much can I pin?

I don’t know of any limit that exists as far as Pinterest goes, join as many boards as you like. However, I would say if you’re pinning manually it will likely get difficult to keep track of which pins you’ve pinned where and when, if you join multiple group boards. You can just pin your new posts once to all your group boards the day you make the pin and be done with it, but you’re not making the most of them if you do this. Occasionally boards specify in the rules that they do not allow repins, however nearly all Pinterest group boards will not mind you repining the same pin multiple times as long as you use some common sense and manners, and don’t spam the board. If you’re struggling to decide what spamming a board looks like:

• If you scroll through the board in a normal browsing kind of way (say the first 50 pins) and see the same pin twice, that’s spam.
• If you pin the same image to the same board everyday, that’s spam.
• If you copy the entire contents of your blog board to the same board at once, that’s spam.

Some boards will give rules on the amount of pins you can add or how long between repins, most don’t so you have to use your judgement. If the board is small like my Twin Mom board with only 15 collaborators, don’t pin to it often and maybe only come back next month to see if your pins have moved down the board enough to repin them. If the board is medium sized with around 200-300 collaborators, you can probably pin 2-3 pins per day (although I would recommend spreading them through the day) and repin the same pin 2-3 weeks later without being spammy. For the huge boards with thousands of collaborators you could pin a couple more pins a day, but only if the rules allow it, and after about 10days you’re probably good to go back and repin the same content if you want to.

How do I pin to multiple group boards easily without losing track?

There are a number of different tools you can use to pin for you, and make life easier. I would highly recommend trying Board Booster – they let you do a free trail so you might as well give it a go. This is how to set up your scheduling once you’ve got your account:

• Go to –> Pinning tools –> Scheduler –> Add Boards
• Add your group boards, it can be slow to load the boards the first time, but after that it runs fast.
• Adjust the settings for each board. How many pins per day and when to pin them.
• Board Booster will have automatically added a secret (invisible to your followers) folder for each board to your Pinterest account. All you have to do is go back to Pinterest and copy over the pins you want to end up on the group boards and Board Booster will dip into it and pin at the appropriate time. Easy!

Alternatively you can pin from the ever popular Tailwind site, I’m a Board Booster girl but to each her own! One of the fab things about Board Booster is that when you log in and view your Pinterest group boards, the site shows you the repin rate of the board, so you can see which ones are the best performing. This also applies to your own boards – I scheduled pins to my Playroom board and realized it had a way higher repin rate than any of my other boards. This sparked the idea for writing ‘How to Create the Ultimate Playroom‘ which is my highest traffic blog post to date!

 If you have any more questions about Pinterest group boards, do leave me a comment and I’ll try to update this post with an answer. And if you’re looking for more information on starting, promoting and monetizing a blog, do check out my ‘Blogging Brain Dump‘ page because I tried to squeeze as much useful information as I could into one post. Lastly… I don’t blog about blogging very often and therefore keep it totally separate from my Twin Pickle subscribers. If you would like to get notified of new blogging posts specifically, sign up to blogging tips in the box above (rather than the Twin Pickle sign up at the top of the page). Good luck and get pinning!

THIS POST HAS NOW BEEN UPDATED AND PUBLISHED AT BLOGGING FUNDAMENTALS (MY SECOND SITE!)

---