One of the biggest challenges that pinners have in the early stages of setting up their Pinterest business account 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 that 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’d 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 connected 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.

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 five categories account for just over 56 percent of all their activity, while the top five categories for men account for fewer than 40 percent 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.

I have one last tip for you here 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 ViralTag gives me the metrics I need to see which of my board categories are doing well and which ones are flat. So what do we do with those boards that aren’t getting many followers? Well that’s what I’ll be covering in the next blog post! So make sure you check back next week or you can follow our ViralTag blog posts on Pinterest!

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? 

To find out how you can save time & have a higher performing Pinterest account email me at anna@whiteglovesocialmedia.com and I’d be happy to give you a free 30 minute consultation / coaching session.

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