While it’s important that your pins are user-friendly and easily searchable, you also want to spend some time naming, organizing and populating your boards in ways that make them inviting to visitors.
Messy boards with big discrepancies in the number and kinds of pins found within them, and no clear branding, are simply not worth wading through.
Your potential followers will look elsewhere, and your outstanding content will go unseen.
Below I have some suggestions for you of different ways to improve your Pinterest boards for maximum engagement!
Stay Relevant
When just starting out, you may think it’s best to follow Pinterest’s suggested topics for your boards like books, fashion or places. This really isn’t necessary if these things aren’t relevant to your brand or of interest to your audience.
Instead, choose themes related to your niche in order to make it clear what your business is known for. In addition, focus on evergreen subjects over holiday or seasonal ones. You’ll want to put the most effort into the areas that will stand the test of time. Ramp up seasonal boards in the months prior.
Categorize Strategically
Start with general boards. Come up with a list of possible broad categories related to your brand. Then choose the most relevant. After that, you’ll want to start adding more specific boards that will appeal to small groups of your potential customers.
For example, a high-end beauty salon would want to first focus on the types of services they offer by creating a board for each. These could include “hairstyles”, “hair color”, “manicures” and “facials.” Niche boards might be things like “kids’ cuts”, “hair trends”, “styles for long hair”, “ideas for short nails”, and “aging skin tips.”
In order to use terms that more people are searching for, take some time to check out your Pinterest analytics to see which terms are leading users to you if you already have some Pinterest boards or simply type some brand-related queries into the Pinterest search bar and take note of which terms are generated.
Clean and Organize Regularly
Once you start pinning, you’ll soon see how your boards can begin to take on lives of their own. They can become messy, overflowing and outdated, which makes it pretty difficult for your users to find your best stuff. It’s a good idea to do a Pinterest cleanup at least a couple times a year, if not quarterly.
First, look over your boards to see if your categories still represent you well. If one or two don’t, that’s fine. You can eliminate them. Simply start a more relevant board, move the pins you’d like to keep from the outdated boards to the appropriate new ones, then delete the old boards.
Next, take note of which boards are overrun with pins compared to the others. See if you can narrow that category down even further. Chances are, you can. Create a new, more specific board and move the pins as needed. Another option, if you don’t wish to narrow the boards, is to simply delete the pins that seem outdated or not as eye-catching. You’ll be left with a much more appealing board with content that shines.
Create Custom Board Covers
Custom board covers can help with your branding, encourage viewers to stay on your profile longer, and maybe even increase the number of followers you get.
They also give give the eyes of your visitor a chance to ‘rest’ amongst all the visual clutter of the boards. This ‘visual rest’ is pleasing to the eye, and for visitors viewing your profile, it will be a more pleasant experience.
Custom Pinterest board covers also allow you to make a great first impression with your branding.
Incorporate your colors, fonts and any other graphical elements of your branding to give the board covers a cohesive look-and-feel that’s similar to your website and other social media accounts.
If you include your board titles in your cover images, it’s easier for someone to quickly look at the different boards you have and what types of things you’re pinning. This helps them decide if you are someone that they want to follow.
They can spend less time clicking through all your boards, where they can easily get distracted and leave (or worse – leave right away because it isn’t clear what your boards are all about).
They can instead make a quick decision – while they’re viewing your profile – to follow you.
Pinterest changes up the size of board covers quite regularly. I recommend doing a quick google search of “pinterest board cover dimensions – year” to get the latest dimensions.
You can make your board covers in Photoshop or Illustrator, but if you don’t have these programs, Canva is a fantastic option for board covers. You can create a file using the ‘custom dimensions’.
(If you want easy-to-follow instructions on how to create gorgeous branded board covers for Pinterest using Canva, have a look at this tutorial I created just for you!)
