How to Start a Pinterest Board That Succeeds

Are your prospects on Pinterest?

Do you want to start a Pinterest Board?

When starting on Pinterest, you'll want to fill new boards with quality starter pins.

Once you've launched your new boards, it's important to pin more content to them daily.

In this article you'll find out how to develop Pinterest boards for your business.

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#1: Choose Keywords for Your Topics

First, build a keyword list. Create a spreadsheet listing relevant main topics and then add subtopics.

For example, if you're creating a food-related board, your spreadsheet might look like this:

To expand your topic list, use a free tool like Keyword Tool. The image below shows the results of a search for the topic “burgers.”

Use these suggested keywords for content inspiration. For example, keywords related to burgers might be “breakfast burger,” “homemade burger” and “ranch burger.”

There are other tools available to help you find the best keywords for your business. The image below shows the results for a search with SEMRush. This tool lets you view search volume, which helps you prioritize your subtopics by user interest.

Next, use Repinned.net to help you find the most popular boards in your target category. With this tool, you can keep an eye on similar boards and determine which types of boards are working well in each category. The image below shows popular boards for the Food & Drink category.

This tool also gives you ideas for subtopics and content, and helps you find repins for your new board. You want a good mix of original pins and repins from popular users with related boards.

Unfortunately, Repinned.net doesn't have a search function. So you'll need to do a Google search for “your_keyword” site:repinned.net. (Replace “your_keyword” with the topic you're searching for.)

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#2: Choose Content Types for Boards

You can use a variety of content types on your board, including infographics, animated GIFs and videos. Create a new tab in your spreadsheet and list content types that would work well for each topic. Keep adding to this list as you continue your research.

Also look into which content types are being shared on Pinterest. To discover this information, you'll likely want to consider a tool like BuzzSumo's paid version. Their Content Insights tool provides data that will help you choose content types for your board.

Start with a domain search and then focus on your main keywords.

#3: Research Competitor Boards

If your competitors have pinboards, monitor them to get insight into the performance of different topics and content types. You can learn from your competitors' hits and misses, as well as improve your keyword topic list.

On a new tab in your spreadsheet, list your competitors and find their Pinterest profiles. Review the boards they've built, especially the ones that appear above the fold.

Document any content ideas. Also note which content types have the highest interaction and add that information to your spreadsheet. Do the same for topics and subtopics.

Next, identify the most popular pins from your competitors' domains. You can use BuzzSumo’s free Top Content search tool. Enter a domain in the search box and click Search. Then sort your results by Pinterest shares.

The image below shows the results of a search for “foodnetwork.com.”

In the results above, the high volume of recipes means there are a lot of pages to dig through. When this happens, narrow your search by including the competitor domain and main topic (from your keyword document) in your search query.

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#4: Find Pinners to Follow

Ian Cleary offers a great tip on how to use PinAlerts to track pins from your competitors and identify which users are pinning that content. These are the users you'll want to follow and repin.

#5: Curate Strong Content

For a new board, you'll likely want to start with 15 to 20 high-quality evergreen pins. These pins need to be valuable content that compels users to follow your board. From there, actively curate new content and repin related content.

Here are some ways to find and track good content sources.

Identify Relevant Blogs

Start your content curation by finding relevant blogs and other sources of content. You do this with a tool like BuzzSumo. In the search box, type in your main keyword and then sort your results by Pinterest shares.

The search results below include a list of blogs and the most popular burger-related pins from the past year.

Create another tab in your spreadsheet with the name of your board, and start a list of blogs that have popular pins related to your board topic.

Then perform another search but dig deeper with your subtopic keywords. For the burger example, search for “turkey burgers” or “veggie burgers.” Keep going until you have a solid list of domains.

Find Evergreen Content

To find evergreen content for your new board, check out a site like Reddit, which is a great source for popular social content.

Make a new tab in your research spreadsheet, and in the first row, type in the names of your boards. Below that, list subreddits (channels) that share content your audience will enjoy.

To find relevant subreddits, use the search tool metareddit. Type in your main topic (or subtopic) in the search box and press Enter. In the results below, you can see subreddits related to the search topic “burgers.” Subreddits with many members appear in a larger font.

With the word cloud above, you can identify the following subreddits:

• http://www.reddit.com/r/burgers
• http://www.reddit.com/r/cheeseburgers
• http://www.reddit.com/r/burgerporn
• http://www.reddit.com/r/food
• http://www.reddit.com/r/recipes

Because you're looking for evergreen content, sort the submissions by Top and then All Time. This allows you to see the best-performing submissions in the history of each subreddit. The image below shows the top results for the /r/burgers subreddit.

Track RSS Feeds

After you've identified great content sources, use your favorite RSS reader to build a dashboard of new content with custom RSS feeds.

The image below shows a list of RSS feeds in Feedly. There's a collection called “burgers” to match the related pinboard.

The goal is to add a variety of RSS feeds from blogs that perform well on Pinterest, relevant subreddits, influencer pinboards and other content sources you've discovered.

#6: Watch Your Metrics

As with every marketing endeavor, track your performance. When you start a new board or account, you should baseline your analytics.

Check out this post to get a crash course on Pinterest analytics. Determine the most important metrics for your campaign, and use them to decide which content sources you should keep and which you should scrap.

Conclusion

Successful Pinterest boards set the tone with high-quality starter content and provide fresh, engaging content daily.

How do you curate content? What are your favorite sources for new content? How do you organize and maintain multiple boards? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

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