Connor Brooke
One of the biggest challenges that business owners and marketers have in the early stages of operating their Pinterest business accounts is trying to figure out what boards to create.
As a business owner or a blogger attracting as many followers as possible to your business is one of the main goals of Pinterest. You know the saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day”… well that holds true for your Pinterest business account as well. As I’ve said time and time again you need to start with a solid foundation. You do this by making sure…
1) Your account is set up right…that username is so crucial to getting found on Pinterest! (Almost everybody blows this because they are in a mad dash to post images)
2) The account is fully optimized
3) You have a plan of execution
To begin with I recommend a few boards that cover a broad range of interests to increase your chances of being followed. It’s like meeting someone for the first time and connecting because you have similar interests. If you have nothing in common with that person your conversation probably won’t last very long and the chances of you exchanging phone numbers on your iPhone is probably very slim. That’s how it is on Pinterest.
People will follow you if they share similar interests. This is why you benefit by creating boards that are aligned to the most popular categories on Pinterest… and forget about pushing your products for a moment.
Here’s another reason why creating boards aligned to Pinterest’s most popular categories makes good sense.
According to a new study by researchers at the University of Minnesota and Georgia Tech the most popular topics on Pinterest for women includes:
- food and drink
- crafts
- home decor
- women’s fashion
Male Pinterest users pin more content about:
- photography
- art
- design
- home decor
“Food & Drink” is the most popular category for both women and men.
The findings also showed that women, in general, concentrate their pinning activity on fewer categories. Their top 5 categories account for just over 56 percent of all their activity, while the top five categories for men account for fewer than 40% of their activity.
Let’s have a look at another study of the major product categories for social-to-sale purchases.
As you can see these categories are also very similar to the first study with the exception of gardening. Choose the most popular categories that you think would resonate with your target audience. I know from experience “Inspirational Quotes” does very well on Pinterest. We all appreciate friendly reminders right?
Pinterest recently posted on their blog a list of which categories receive the most engagement on each day of the week:
- Monday: the week starts with good intentions in fitness
- Tuesday: next up, gadgets are all the rage in technology
- Wednesday: need a little something to get through the week —- inspirational quotes
- Thursday: threads lead Thursday with fashion
- Friday: GIFs bring some comic relief to the end of the week with humor. Humor is one of the fastest growing categories on Pinterest and holds the top spot on Friday. More than 3 million humor Pins are saved each day. And, in the five months since the GIFs launch, more than 400,000 GIFs are Pinned everyday. Here are some of the most Pinned GIFs:
- Saturday: summer vacations are top of mind with travels.
As of June 2014 there are now more than one billion travel Pins on Pinterest, more than 300 unique countries and territories are represented in the system, and more than four million Place Boards have been created by Pinners.A
Key takeaway: Make sure you create board in the categories mentioned above and include a minimum of ten images.
Here’s another study to consider. According to RJ metrics they revealed from a dataset of 50,000 random pinners and their pins that 92% of pins (images) are made by women on Pinterest. Here’s what they’re pinning:
- 20% Food and Drink category
- 12% DIY & Crafts
- 11% Home Decor
Key Takeaway: Create the top 5 boards as shown in the graph above. This is especially important when you are just starting on Pinterest. Creating these types of boards is like saying “hey we have the same interests as you”. It’s a starting point to engage with an audience that will hopefully turn into brand advocates once they get to know and trust you better. In time this will yield more Pinterest followers for you.
Key business takeaway, the more followers you get in general the greater the odds a growing % of them are your target audience. This is good.
In summary create the following 10 most popular boards on Pinterest:
- Food & Drink
- DIY & Crafts
- Home Decor
- Women’s Fashion
- Inspirational Quotes
- Health & Fitness
- Humor
- Travel
- Technology
- Hair & Beauty
I have one last tip for you her today.
Narrow your focus when creating titles for your boards so people will be able to see exactly what you have to offer. The more specific and unique you are with your board titles the more likely you will stand out and be noticed.
So instead of “Pretty Space” which is too broad you would change that to “Home Decor Office” – it’s specific and obvious right? To give it some SEO juice to get a higher ranking on Pinterest’s search results add the category in the board title which is why I added “home decor”.
I’m big on checking my Pinterest analytics and Tailwind analytics to give me the metrics I need to see to tell me which of my board categories are doing well and which ones are flat. This is important if you want to quickly grow your Pinterest followers.
Over to you…
Are you tracking your most popular boards? If so, which ones are your most popular?
Comment below.
What can I do to help you?
If anyone wants to learn more about how to leverage the power of Pinterest into their business please contact me to reserve a free 30 minute business consultation to avoid wasting time or get Chapter 1 from my Pinterest course for FREE.
Thank you and good luck. “Pin with a caring heart” and you’ll make more money with Pinterest!
Read more:
- Top 5 Pinterest Pins – Picnic Season Inspiration!
- Smart Ways To Use Hashtags To Get More Pinterest Followers
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Connor Brooke.
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Yes, I would like to see more pinterest follwers in the education field. This way hopefully it will become an educational topic that all teachers can provide their ideas so as to give a better education to children.
My favourite category on Pinterest is humour, but that’s just me.
How do I track how many followers I have for individual boards?
Hello Sue –
Click on the board and you will see the number of followers on the right side.
My most popular board by far is Halloween. I have decided I need to spread that out, divide into Halloween Food and Drink, Halloween Decorations and Halloween Costumes.
1. How do I “retire” current boards & replace them w/ the more popular categories?
2. Why have I been singled out for a lot of group boards?
3. How do I balance doing group boards w/ my own boards of special interest?
4. How do I find instructions in how to commmunicate on notifications, w/ group board leader, & sending comments through e-mails? People do it to me, but I don’t know how to do it myself.
Maybe it’s just me, but as I don’t run a business, I am just pinning for myself, things I don’t want to miss or forget. I absolutely don’t care how many followers my boards have. If this is important for you and you don’t have a business, think about your priorities in life – do you (really) need the acknowledgement of so-and-so many people you don’t even know that “follow” you? If you run a business, it’s a different story, as you want to lead people to your blog, online shops or whatever and want them to buy your stuff or you are paid for traffic on your page …
It’s funny Jule because I thought the whole point of pinterest was to pin things for one’s self and sharing with others (if they find that kind of thing interesting). Kind of like bookmarking but organized in a better way.
Thanks for sharing. Are there any similar strategy for instagram? I’m self-employed and it’s very important to me. Btw, are there any boosters for pinterest such as zengram.net for instagram, which provides real followers?
My four most popular boards are Adorable Animals, Funny Quotes, Travel and Luxury Watches. The one that I was hoping to do better is about Summer, the Beach and that includes outfits, best friend, things to do and beach views. I started it calling it “Summer Fun” and categorize it as outdoors, renamed it “An Endless Summer” and it did do better. Yet, I could pin the exact same content on my other boards and it would get noticed. I finally ended up feeling that is was some sort of Black Hole. I just renamed it “Beach Vibes” and categorized “Photography.” Hence the reason I looked up this subject. I shall wait and see if that makes a difference.