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Ready to use Pinterest boards to elevate your business and skyrocket your sales? Want to know how to create Pinterest boards for your business that get seen?
Pinterest is a huge opportunity to find customers and clients, as well as readers for your blog! And boards are one of the most important parts of nailing your Pinterest marketing strategy.
Today, we’re breaking down exactly why boards are so important and how to use them, with this ultimate guide to Pinterest boards for businesses.
We’ll cover:
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Pinterest boards are places where you can collate and group related pins into a collection. It allows the user to easily find things they’ve pinned and makes Pinterest more functional for everyday use.
For example, you might have a Wedding board with all of your wedding inspiration pins in. You might have a desserts board, where you add any sweet treat recipes you’d like to try.
Boards are a great way of organising your Pinterest account!
Pinterest also allows you to search for boards and follow specific boards! That way you can follow the one board that interests you, rather than follow the whole account.
As a business owner, boards provide you with a great way of organising and showcasing your products, services, and content.
Because of the way the Pinterest algorithm works, boards are also an incredibly important factor in getting your pins to rank top in the search results (but more on that later!).
The long and short of it is, boards are a must for your business Pinterest strategy. So let’s take a closer look at how we can use Pinterest boards for businesses.
You can find your Pinterest boards on your profile. Near the top of your profile, just under your name and description, you’ll find two tabs (created and saved).
Your boards are in the ‘saved’ tab of your profile.
The first board you’ll see is ‘All Pins’. This is automatically made for you by Pinterest and contains all of your pins.
Then you’ll find all of the boards that you’ve ever made and any group boards you’ve joined.
Making a Pinterest board is easy! And there are two ways you can create a Pinterest board for your business.
The first way is to go to the saved tab on your profile. Select the ‘+’ button on the right hand side and then select ‘board’ from the drop down menu.
Alternatively, you can create a Pinterest board for your business as you’re pinning. This can come in handy when you pin something new and don’t currently have a relevant board!
For example, let’s say you see a gardening pin that you really want to save. But you don’t currently have a gardening board.
Click on the pin you want to save. Select the dropdown list next to the ‘save’ button. Here you can choose which board you’d like to save the pin to. At the very bottom, you’ll see an option to ‘create board’.
Click ‘create board’. Add your board name and select ‘create’. Now you’ll have a brand new board, ready to start pinning to.
To add new pins to your board on desktop, hover your mouse over the pin you’d like to save. Then select which board you’d like to save the pin to, from the dropdown menu. Then click ‘save’.
That pin will now be saved to the board you selected.
To add new pins to your board on the mobile app, tap the pin you’d like to save. Then tap the red ‘save’ button at the bottom of the pin and select which board you’d like to save it to.
Pinterest have a great ‘more ideas’ feature that helps you to find new relevant pins for your boards.
Simply go to the board of your choice and select the ‘more ideas’ button at the top of the page. Pinterest will bring up a whole host of relevant pins that it thinks you might like to add to your board. This is a great way to find new useful content!
Pinterest allows you to have up to 2,000 boards (including secret boards and group boards).
Would I recommend having that many boards for your business? Absolutely not!
That is a lot of boards! And it would be virtually impossible to consistently post to each of them.
Instead, aim to start with between 5-10 boards that are relevant to your business. You should have plenty of content for these boards. As a result, you’ll be able to pin to them consistently.
It’s much better to have less boards that are filled with great pins than 2,000 almost empty boards. Having fewer boards also makes your Pinterest much easier to navigate for any potential clients and/or customers.
You can always create more boards as and when you need them!
If you realise that you’re creating pins that aren’t relevant to your current boards, create a new one!
Your Pinterest boards should directly represent your business and your specialised knowledge.
Here are some ideas of the kind of Pinterest boards you could create for your business:
1. Broad Niche Board
It’s a good idea to have a broader board that encompasses a lot of the work that you do. This tends to be a board about your larger niche.
For example, as a social media expert, this board might be a social media marketing board.
Or as a wedding photographer, this board might be a wedding photography board.
This is somewhere you’ll always be able to add your content to because it encompasses all of your work!
2. Services You Offer
Create boards all about the services you offer. The number of boards you’ll need for this will depend on your business. For example, if you’re a Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll probably only need one board – Facebook Ads!
But if you’re a social media manager, your services may vary a little more. In this case, you’ll want to create a board for each of the services you offer e.g. Instagram Marketing, Instagram Reels Creation, Facebook Page Management etc.
As these are very distinct services, they’ll each need their own board!
3. Products You Sell
Make boards that categorise each of the products you sell. For example, if you were a cruelty-free makeup brand, you might create different boards for cruelty-free lipsticks, cruelty-free eyeshadow etc.
This type of board will showcase the different types of products you stock.
On my Pinterest profile, you’ll see that I have a board solely dedicated to my Notion Content Planner. This is a product that I sell and this board helps drive traffic to the sales page.
4. Your Content Pillars
Create boards for each of your content pillars.
Content pillars are topics within your niche that all of your content falls within. Creating a board for each content pillar means you know you’ll always have a relevant board for your pins.
If you want to learn more about content pillars are and how you can use them for your social media strategy, check out this video.
5. Seasonal Topics
Add seasonal boards that are relevant to your niche.
Not all boards will be useful all year round. Often certain things will only be searched for once a year i.e. Christmas gift ideas, Easter recipes, or summer outfits.
Have a think about what your ideal audience/clients will be searching for throughout the year. How will their searches be affected by the seasons or holidays?
Try to make boards that they’ll be searching for during these periods!
6. Your zones of genius or areas of expertise
You’ll probably have certain areas of expertise that would be perfect board topics. What do you:
a) know a lot about, and
b) make a lot of content about
These areas of expertise deserve their own boards!
Giving your Pinterest board the right name is really important if you want your ideal clients to find your pins! Which is the key to success if you’re using Pinterest for business.
The key to finding the perfect name for your Pinterest board is doing keyword research. I have a whole blog post about my exact method for Pinterest Keyword Research here. It breaks down exactly how you can find the right keywords for your niche.
In short, keywords are the terms and phrases that users type into the Pinterest search bar to find content. We want to use these keywords in our boards, so that people can find them!
The easiest way to do this is to use the Pinterest search bar. Type in your board topic and see what suggested searches pop up. These are the things that other people search for when looking for content on that topic. Use one of these phrases as your Pinterest board name.
This lets Pinterest know that your board is relevant to that search term!
It can be tempting to use fun, cutesy board names that fit with your brands style or tone of voice.
Things like ‘spooky szn’ for a Halloween outfits board. Or sassypants for an empowering quotes board.
As fun as they are, people likely aren’t searching for these phrases!
They’re also quite vague. This makes it difficult for Pinterest to get a good understanding of what your board is about. It’s imperative that Pinterest understands our boards properly so it can show them to the right audience!
Instead, try to stick with more literal words and phrases that users are actually searching for!
If you’re not sure what these words and phrases are, take a look at my Ultimate Guide to Keyword Research!
Just like our board titles, our board descriptions let Pinterest know more about our boards. This helps it to categorise our pins correctly and show them to our ideal audience.
You can add up to 500 characters in your board descriptions. The more information you can add in here, the better!
Try to write in full sentences and include a variety of relevant keywords. These keywords are what helps Pinterest to understand what your board is about! If you’re unsure of what keywords to use, take a look at my Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Keyword Research.
You may decide that you want to edit your boards after creating them. Perhaps you want to change your board description, for example.
To do this, go to the board you want to edit and select the three dots at the top of the board. Then select ‘edit board’. Here you can:
Adding board covers are a great way to keep your boards looking cohesive and on-brand.
That being said, board covers are not strictly necessary. And if you do decide to use them – commit to it! Make sure that all of your boards have matching covers. Otherwise it can look unfinished and messy!
To change your board cover, select the board in question and click on the three little dots at the top of the board. Then select edit board and click on the image below the heading ‘board cover’.
You’ll be able to select any of the pins within that board as the new board cover. If you want to create a custom board cover, you’ll need to upload this image as a pin to the board. You’ll then be able to select that pin as the board cover.
You may have Pinterest boards for business that you don’t want others to see. This could include boards for:
To keep a board private, you can make a ‘secret board’.
When saving pins to a secret board, the person you saved the pin from won’t get a notification and the pin’s repin count will not increase. Nobody but you will be able to see your secret board (unless you invite them as a collaborator).
To make a Pinterest board private (or secret!), go to the board and select the three dots at the top. Select ‘edit board’ and then tick ‘keep this board secret’. You can untick this later if you decide you want to make the board public again.
If you’re not using a board anymore and don’t want it on your profile, you can archive it. Once you’ve archived a board, you’ll no longer be able to save pins to it. Pinterest will also hide the board from your profile and won’t use it for recommendations.
To archive a board, select the three dots at the top of the board and click ‘archive’.
If you decide that you’d like to start using this board again, you can un-archive it.
If you know that you definitely don’t want to use a board ever again and no longer have any need for it, you can delete it.
There’s no way to get a deleted board back, so make sure you’re certain before deleting!
To delete a Pinterest board, select the three dots at the top of the board, go to ‘edit board’ and click ‘delete’.
If you’ve got two boards that are very similar, you might think they’d be better off as just one board. If this is the case, you can ‘merge’ the boards together.
To do this, go to your board and click the three dots at the top. Select ‘merge’ and then the board you’d like to combine with.
A few things to bear in mind before you merge a board:
You may find it useful to add sections to your boards. This helps you to organise your pins even further.
For example, if you had a wedding board, you could add sections within that board such as, wedding dress, wedding stationary, wedding decor, bachelorette party.
To do this, select the ‘+’ button at the bottom of your screen and click ‘section’.
Though sections can be very functional for personal use, they’re not always the best options when using Pinterest boards for businesses.
This is because they don’t aid your search engine optimisation. In terms of making your boards and pins easy to find on the platform, it’s much better to create more boards with a smaller niche. This is because the board title and board description provide Pinterest with so much information about the content!
Each niche board will have its own board title and description with keywords that reflect the content. This is super helpful to Pinterest – telling them exactly what is on the board so they can show it to the right audience.
A larger board with lots of more specific sections isn’t going to have the same power. Because each of those sections don’t have their own descriptions!
If you want to use Pinterest to market your business or content, always opt for new boards instead of new sections!
As a rule, it’s best to avoid having personal boards on your business account. This account is for your ideal audience/customer. It should be filled with boards that will interest and serve them.
If you like to use Pinterest for personal use, I’d recommend setting up a separate personal Pinterest account. Here you can create whatever boards you like (and won’t have to worry about search engine optimisation!).
You may have heard that it’s useful to create other boards that your ideal client might be interested in. For example, you audience insights might show that not only are your audience interested in business, they’re also interested in gardening!
It might be tempting to start making gardening boards to entice your ideal audience. I wouldn’t recommend this though!
In my opinion, it’s much better to be very clear on your niche. That way your audience will become very familiar with who you are and exactly what you do. Having boards across multiple different niches can be confusing!
Are you a business expert or a gardening expert? On first glance, it might be hard to tell!
If you’ve only got boards dedicated to business, it’s very clear what you do and where your zone of genius lies!
There are 3 ways you can organise your boards:
We’ve already covered how you can (and whether you should!) use sections. So let’s take a look at ordering your boards on your profile.
Pinterest allows you to change the order that your pins show up on your profile. You can organise them by:
To do this, go to the saved section of your profile and select the slider icon. On the mobile app this will be on the right-hand side. On desktop it will be on the left. You can then select one of the above three options.
The custom drag and drop option will allow you to put your Pinterest boards in whatever order you like.
I’d recommend putting your most valuable and content-filled boards at the top of your profile, followed by your other boards. You can then keep any secret boards at the bottom, so they’re separate and easy to find!
Group boards can be a great way to share ideas or plan projects. They allow multiple people to contribute to one board. This can be useful if you have a team of people in your business that are planning a launch or project together.
To create a group board:
Group boards aren’t necessarily the best way to get people looking at your pins (and can be a lot of work!). But they are perfect for planning projects within a team!
Make sure to make these boards ‘secret’ if you don’t want everyone to be able to see them! That way it will only be you and your team that can access them.
Ready to make 2022 the year that you nail your Pinterest strategy? Implement the power of Pinterest in your marketing funnel with my free Pinterest Strategy Roadmap. This lays out the steps you need to take to create a Pinterest strategy that works for you!
Find out more & get your FREE roadmap here.
I started Atlas Social Co. to bring the power of Pinterest to businesses, bloggers, and brands with the aim of increasing traffic and decreasing stress! We're here to make Pinterest marketing a breeze.