Does your Pinterest account need a tidy up? I ‘attacked’ mine last night. I knew I hadn’t pinned to a few boards for a long time and have been planning to delete them, I wanted to check the descriptions of all of them and planned to change the cover images too.
Why clean up your Pinterest account?
- No Optimized Description: If you create a board from the pin it bookmarklet by simply adding a title and clicking ‘create board’, you may find that you totally forgot to write a description for that board which means it is unlikely to show up in a Pinterest or google search. Your description should contain some keywords in order to optimise it (makes it easier for others to find and for you to get click throughs to your website).
- No Category: As above, you may find you haven’t allocated a category to that board. This means it is harder for people to find as Pinterest can’t categorize it. That will mean less repins and it certainly wouldn’t feature on repinly.
- Inappropriate or Ineffective Shared Boards: You may have agreed to join shared Pinterest boards which don’t fit your brand or perhaps they aren’t followed by many people or aren’t active. It can be a good idea to remove yourself from these boards. However, do check first if they have a significant following – if they do, it could be worthwhile remembering to pin to it.
- Impulse Boards: You may have created boards on impulse because you saw some nice photographs and didn’t have an existing board to fit them. If you haven’t pinned to it in a while and it’s looking dormant, you might as well delete it. Again, check first if that individual board has a significant following as there may be quite a few people who are only following that one board.
- Moving Boards: Move your pinterest boards around on the boards page – this is particularly important if your business is seasonal e.g. if you sell items for Hallow’een or Christmas.
- Changing Board Cover Images – change your cover image to an appropriate and recent pin (preferably one of your own pins). If someone clicks on the board to find that pin, they won’t have to scroll too far to find it. Plus, it updates your board page.
What I ended up doing:
- Deleted Boards: Deleted some boards that were becoming disused (checking first in case they were hugely popular) I had a board for ‘fabulous photographs’ but hadn’t pinned to it in months so I deleted it. I actually deleted 8 boards!
- Group Boards: Removed myself from some group boards that either weren’t active or particularly relevant to my boards. (you can do this by clicking ‘edit’ under the board and clicking ‘remove’ beside your name)
- Changing Cover Image: I changed the cover image on many of the boards. Partly to freshen up my boards and partly because if someone clicks on a board looking for the cover image pin and it is way way way down the number of pins, while it might suggest that you’re a busy pinner, it doesn’t suggest good housekeeping. See our post How & Why You Should Change Your Pinterest Covers
- Re-arranged my Pinterest boards – just to bring the most popular boards to the top and give them more visibility.
Pinterest Tip - If you are unsure when creating a new board, you can create it as a secret board first (maximum number is 3 secret boards) and then make it public when you are happy with it.
We have two Pinterest courses – Beginners Pinterest and Pinterest Advanced – starting next Monday on our sister website. Both are delivered online so you can learn how to use Pinterest more effectively for your business from the comfort of your own home or office.
