The ONE Pinterest Mistake You Don’t Know You’re Making + How To Fix It

Pinterest Group Boards Analytics

A funny thing happened a few days ago, I analyzed my food blog’s Pinterest account and discovered that most of my boards were performing better than all of the Pinterest group boards I had joined, together. I think you can imagine the look of shock on my face when I saw that!

Do The Math

When’s the last time you looked at your Pinterest group boards analytics? I don’t know about you, but my background is in psychology so most of my college career was spent analyzing data. I like to say that, while I majored in Psychology, I actually earned a degree in Statistics! Anyways, data science is my friend. And, it can be yours too! If you take the time to look at your stats in your Pinterest business profile, that is.

Pre 2014

What’s interesting is that I often see people jumping on the Pinterest group boards bandwagon. So many bloggers mindlessly pinning away to one group board after another, oftentimes totally ignoring their own boards! They read a pin that says to join all the boards and don’t question the sources(s) one bit!

Algorithm 101

First things first, let’s briefly discuss algorithms. Did you know, that back in 2014, Pinterest did away with showing pins in chronological order to users? It’s true. Think about that for a moment. Prior to 2014 you could join group boards with thousands of followers and every time you pinned to that boards all the followers saw your pin in the order it was pinned! Meaning, thousands of people would see your content, driving massive re-pins and click-throughs to your blog. Then came the Smart Feed and a shiny new algorithm.

2014-Today. Enter the Smart Feed

Not any more! Since Pinterest released the Smart Feed this group board advantage became, well totally obsolete! Now, you have to work smart to make the Pinterest algorithm notice you, then and only then, will it show your pins to your followers. You can learn the exact tactics to ensure Pinterest shares your pins in my Pinterest Pro e-Course, which is launching in just a few short weeks. Sign up below to receive 50% off this e-Course now.

How Toxic Group Boards Harm Your Profile

Not all group boards are made the same. Or, more realistically, most group boards aren’t created with Pinterests current algorithm in mind. Which is really, really bad for you. Let’s just put it this way, Pinterest knows which boards perform better than others, and they naturally share those boards more often, and show the poor quality boards (and dinners saving to them) much, much less.

How Toxic Pinterest Group Boards Pins Hurt Your Pins

Pinterest also knows which group boards promote poor quality pins. And, guess what? They take that into account to! As well as all the other pins on that board, and profiles pinning to that board. How does that affect you? The algorithm associates your pins and your profile with low quality content, and pushes all the content and pinners on that board down drastically in search and smart feeds. You content is basically considered spam. Pinterest works hard to eliminate spam.

But What If The Group Board has Thousands of Followers?!

Pinterest doesn’t care! They want to show high-quality content to their users to maximize their UX. In the design and development world UX, or User Experience, is critical, in fact it can make or break your website or blog. Period. If you’re on a group board that has a low re-pin rate with thousands of followers Pinterest’s algorithms will do the math and discover that no-one re-pins this boards pins because they are poor quality!

Do you really want to be a part of that board?

Or would you prefer to pin to a board (group or your own) that has a low follow rate with an excellent re-pin count, proving to Pinterest that your content is amazing so they share it more often to more people? I think we can agree what choice makes the most sense!

Traffic Tailspin

Notice a drop in traffic or earnings since you joined Pinterest group boards? I did!! Which left me dumb-founded. However, once I dug into these analytics and discovered the truth it all became clear. The group boards I was pinning to were toxic. They had hundreds of thousands of followers, one even had half a million followers. It’s re-pin rate? ZERO re-pins in 30 days with a total of 586,001 pins. The board with 137,000 followers had 3,877 impressions, 8 total re-pins and 6 clicks in 30 days with a total of 383,203 pins. My board with 671 followers, 24,202 impressions, 222 total pins had 140 re-pin and 78 clicks in 30 days. Math doesn’t lie!

Algorithm Basics

As a website developer I’m pretty confident writing algorithms. Basically they work like this:

If (insert conditional) occurs, then (insert action).

I imagine Pinterest’s is something like, If (pin is of low quality) then (share it to 1% of audience).

Or, If (pin has high engagement) then (share it to 99% of audience).

It’s Not About Followers. Get It?

Notice that has nothing to do with follower count. In fact, Pinterest has also gone away with sharing re-pin counts to users. Why? They don’t want social proof to affect our pinning choices. More proof that your pinterest follower count on your profile, boards and group boards is irrelevant!

Remarkable Re-Pin Rates

What truly counts with Pinterest, and it’s infamous alogarithm, is re-pins, because that’s what proves (mathematically) what content is considered high quality amongst users and what isn’t! More on this in the Pinterest Pro eCourse.

Don’t Associate With Toxic Group Boards

You know the boards. The images are terrible, the titles aren’t engaging, in fact, the boards have thousands of followers but no one re-pins anything. Why? The content is spammy or just plain useless! Think about what happens when you pin to that board. Pinterest wants their users to have a fantastic user experience, as I mentioned earlier, that keeps them on the website longer! Do you think if you post to a board with thousands of other low quality pins that Pinterest will share your pin? Not likely! They associate your pin with all the other bad pins on that board – and it goes straight to the bottom of the feed, where, thank god, no one will probably see it. The last thing Pinterest wants is for its users to bounce aka, leave Pinterest. The goal is to make people happy so they stay on the platform for as long as possible.

Effects of Pinning to a Toxic Group Board

If you chose to continue pinning to toxic Pinterest group boards your traffic and income are likely to take a drastic hit. What bloggers wants to risk that? Not this one! Thats why I keep a close eye on which boards are performing best and only pin to those. Learn how I optimize these boards in my Pinterest Pro eCourse.

Performance Boards

Like I mentioned above, my boards with hundreds of followers consistently have re-pin rates, clicks and impressions that are significantly higher than the group boards with thousands of followers. This is because I perfected my Pinterest account so that my followers, impressions, re-pin rates and clicks grow rapidly week after week. If you want to learn how I optimize everything, including my blogs to accomplish this, make sure to sign up below to be first to know when my Pinterest Pro eCourse launches. Bonus: you’ll get a significant discount if you pre-register!

Choose Wisely

Stop engaging with toxic boards today. You can recover quickly! I can teach you how to do so quickly, and effectively. Learn how to drive massive Pinterest traffic to your blog using smart strategies, not ones that worked in 2014, so you can dramatically improve your traffic and earning power!

Click the image below to get early access to my fresh, new Pinterest Pro eCourse now.