Pinterest Group Boards {How to Use Pinterest for Growing Your Blog}

Like it or not, if you’re a blogger looking to monetize, Pinterest should be a significant part of your strategy.  My own Pinterest account has about 25K followers, and sends approximately 100K people to my blog each month. I love Pinterest for many reasons, and today, I want to talk about one aspect of Pinterest for business that is vital to your growth and success-Pinterest group boards!

Pinterest group boards are boards that the owner opens up to collaborators, meaning, the owner of the board allows others to pin to that board. When you pin to a board owned by someone else, those pins can now show up in the feeds of the owner’s followers!

What does this mean for you? Most importantly, finding relevant and active group boards can significantly increase your Pinterest following and reach, essential if you’re using Pinterest for business or blogging.

How to Find Relevant Boards

First up, let’s talk about how to find relevant group boards. One of my favorite sites for this is PinGroupie. With PinGroupie, you can search boards by topic, and sort them based on category, # of pins, # of collaborators, and # of followers.

Another way to find relevant boards is to look at the profiles of bloggers in your niche. Their group boards will show up on their profiles, and you can take a look at them to see which may be a good fit for you.

There are also groups on Facebook where people can post their open Pinterest group boards that they’re looking to add collaborators to! If you see a board you want to join, just read through the post and follow the directions to get accepted.

How to Get Accepted to a Pinterest Group Board

You’ve found some group boards you want to join. Now what? Time to contact the owner of the board and ask to contribute to it! First though, take a look through the board description. Oftentimes, the owner will post instructions on how to get an invite to the board. If the board is closed to contributors, that will be noted as well.

Don’t see any information on joining the board? When you’re looking at the board you want to join, look at the list of collaborators. The pinner listed first (far left) is the owner of the board. Send them a note or email asking if their board is open to new contributors, and, if so, if they’ll add you.

When I ask a board owner if I can join, I like to include my Pinterest URL (if I’m sending an email) so the owner can get a feel for whether my pins would be a good fit. I also make sure that I’m following the owner’s boards. I will say, as well, that board owners get many, many requests a day. Give the board owner a couple of weeks to get back to you before re-requesting. A lot of group board owners (myself included) only read requests and add to their board once a week or once every couple of weeks.

3 Pinterest Group Board Tips the Big Bloggers Won’t Tell You

All of this being said, exploding your Pinterest reach takes more than being added to a bunch of group boards (sad, but true). Pinterest is a long game, and simply joining every group board you can just won’t be enough to get you the engagement you’re probably looking for.

Here are three, lesser-known tips to further take advantage of group boards and all that they have to offer!

Pay Close Attention to Collaborators on a Board

Obviously, everyone is looking for group boards with the most followers. Just as important, though, in my opinion, is how many collaborators on are a particular group board. A board with hundreds of collaborators can be harder for the board owner to monitor, often leading to less-desirable pins and more spam. This, more often than not, can lead to less followers and engagement on your own account, therefore hurting your own reach.

Before asking to join a group board, pay attention to the types/aesthetics of pins being pinned to that board. If they’re not high-quality, chances are, it’s not a board you want your name attached to.

More Isn’t Always Better

Personally, I aim for no more than 20% or so of my boards to be group boards. Over the last few years, it seems as though the reach of group boards has been decreasing slightly. You want them to be a part of your Pinterest strategy, not the whole enchilada.

Along those lines, one strategy I’ve followed (though many do not) is to not join any group boards with less followers than I have. I have about 25K followers, so I make sure any group boards I join have more than 25K followers. This, as you may imagine, limits my group boards considerably, and helps me focus on relevant, engaging boards with pins I want to show up in my followers’ feeds.

Pay Close Attention to Group Board Stats on Pinterest, Tailwind, etc.

A Pinterest group board is only as good as the engagement it garners. It’s vitally important to keep track of how your boards are doing (all boards, not just group boards) via Pinterest analytics, Tailwind, etc.

If you go into your Pinterest analytics, I like to pay most attention to the stats on the far right of the screen-activity from www.yoursite.com. After clicking more, you can see which pins and boards are doing the best. Personally, I’m most interested in clicks to my site, so I’ll hit “clicks”, then look at which boards have the most clicks.

To take this a step forward, I’d also consider a Tailwind subscription. I talked about Tailwind in this post about growing my Pinterest traffic, but specifically, you can go into your Tailwind app and see a ranking of ALL your boards (you can filter it by just your group boards, too, if you’d like). I keep an eye on all my boards, and, every so often, delete the ones performing least well.

No matter what, it’s always a good idea to continually monitor your boards, deleting ones that get less engagement, adding in new ones based on trends, your blog’s focus, etc. The more engagement your boards get, the more Pinterest sees you as a Pinterest rockstar!

Made it this far? Thanks for sticking around; here’s a little treat for you! I often get asked about which Pinterest group boards are my very best, and the ones hosted by Better Homes & Gardens are near the top of that list. Here’s a link to become a BHG Insider; if accepted they’ll reach out about joining their group boards when space opens up!

Thanks for reading all about Pinterest Group Boards {How to Use Pinterest for Growing Your Blog}! I know this was a lot of information, so please leave a comment with any questions you may have!

Have a fantastic day!