What Boards Should You Make For your Pinterest Account?

So you’ve decided to use Pinterest to market your business and you’ve signed up for a business account. But now there’s this big space that is shouting out for some pins. That’s okay, you have a couple of cool templates and have them ready to do.

But what do you call your boards? It is an important part of Pinterest SEO so don’t just jump into something random. Let’s look at what boards you should make for your Pinterest account.

The first five boards

It might seem tempting to make a new board for every single pin you add but this isn’t always ideal. You want to start making the board regularly active, even if that’s a pin every other week in the early days. So it can be an idea to start with five boards.

So how do you pick the five boards? One easy idea is to look at the categories on your blog. You probably have a few of them, maybe a sub-category or two. These are great subjects for your first five boards because you can add pins from the posts to the board that’s the same as your category.

But what about if you don’t blog and have products or services instead? Well, you can work on a similar idea. Use the product categories within your business to help you choose those first few boards. Or think about the overarching type of service you offer and use these.

Naming the boards

There’s the temptation to have a little fun with the names of boards or to try to have something catchy and clever. But resist! Boards need to have keyword-rich names to help Pinterest understand what they are about.

Now you can definitely add words around them to make sense of the board. For example:

• Category: cocktails = board: Tasty Cocktail Recipes
• Category: blogging = board: Blogging Tips and Tricks
• Product category: handmade necklaces = Handmade Beaded Necklaces

Try to get 2-3 words for your board name but don’t go too long. The key is to ensure Pinterest can categorize it and know who to show your content to because the board name has helped with that.

Don’t forget the board description

If you’ve used Pinterest personally, I bet you never added a board description at all. And that’s fine it isn’t important. But as a business user, you need to add a description to the board for one simple reason – you can add more keywords!

First, you want to write in sentences and not just a list of relevant keywords. But do try to incorporate 2-3 variations or long-tailed keywords relating to the board topic. So for the cocktails example, a description could be something like:

Tasty Cocktail Recipes includes drinks recipes for rum, gin, vodka, tequila, and more. Learn to make easy cocktails at home, try classic recipes, and find the best seasonal drinks.

All of the words in bold are keywords that relate to or are relevant to the board title. But it still reads naturally and sensibly for any user that happens to visit the board. User experience is always top of the list for things we consider.

Add content to your boards

You don’t have to limit yourself to five boards but it is a good starter number if you are a little unsure. As the account grows, you can move pins to new, more specific boards. So that cocktail board could lead to Vodka Cocktail Recipes, Summer Cocktail Recipes, and more. 

But to start with, keep it simple and get those pins flowing.

Can You Make Money From Your Pinterest Account?

If you dive into a Facebook group or other place where bloggers and online business owners hang out, it won’t be long before you run into someone asking the question.  Can you make money from your Pinterest account?  Now the answer to this isn’t a yes or no so let’s take a look at what’s what.

How do you make money online?

Before you can consider if you can make money from Pinterest, it is worth thinking about how you make money online.  There’s tons of ways but here’s a few of the most popular:

• Services such as content writing, being a virtual assistant, a Pinterest manager
• Digital products such as eBooks, courses, printables, checklists
• Affiliate income where you promote other people’s products for a commission payment
• Ad income where you make money from people being on your site

Now there’s one thing that most of these have in common (or at the least the last three, the first one is a little different).  They all need the traffic to succeed.  Whether that’s people to see and buy your eBook, people to click affiliate links, or just people viewing your page to generate ad income, traffic is essential.

How you can make money from Pinterest

So it is clear that no matter what route you are taking to make money on your blog or digital business, there’s a good chance that traffic will play a big part in it.  And that’s where Pinterest comes in.

As a visual search engine, Pinterest has the potential to be a top traffic source, if not your top one entirely.  That means you can use your Pinterest marketing to drive traffic to your website to get those ad revenues, affiliate clicks, product sales, and more.

So while you don’t directly make money from Pinterest, you can make money from the traffic that you get from Pinterest.

Strategic pinning to make money

You can also take your pinning strategy a bit further when you get your account to start working for you.

One example is to create pins that lead either straight to your digital product or to an email freebie that has a tripwire product after it.  By getting people to see your product or freebie, you can either make money directly or increase your email list, with a side order of potentially making money on your tripwire.

Another example is affiliate pins.  Some programs allow you to pin an image to Pinterest that leads straight to affiliate products.  If someone clicks these and makes a purchase, you can make your affiliate commission.  You do need to make it very clear on the pin that this is an affiliate product and ensure your disclosures are in place.

Promoted pins to make money

The final way you can make money with Pinterest actually involves spending a little.  Promoted pins or Pinterest ads are the way to pay money to have your pins seen by a specific audience or people with certain interests.  

While promoted pins are a whole different topic, let’s just say you have that digital product.  You can promote a pin that leads to it using keywords that people would use when searching for what the product is about.  That way you could increase your sales – just remember to balance it with any ad spend to see what you are really making!

Making money from Pinterest marketing

While you’ll never see Pinterest as a source of money in your bank account, you can use it to make money by boost traffic to the ways you make your money.  From affiliates to ads, services to products, there are lots of options and ways to use Pinterest smartly to get more eyes on them.