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Board + Section Strategy

wildlifeelathome
Posts regularly
Labels (5)

Hey! How have you organized your boards and sections? And what helped you come to that sort of organization?

Other insightful questions for you, if you're willing.. 😎

I'm currently unaware of Pinterest's preference of what titles/topics should be a board vs a section, so any tips are welcome! I understand everything needs to use powerful keywords strategically, but is there a strategy to organizing it all? Better to have more boards or more sections? If it's better to keep more topics separated, then what are the big takeaway advantages to sections? When do you find it necessary to use boards with sections vs breaking those sections out to boards? Do you mix the strategy: some just boards and pins within vs. other boards with many sections? 

These are just questions to brainstorm and ponder. I'm simply interested in what you have decided to do (and why)!

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PinterestGabby
Community Manager
Community Manager

Loving this!! Tagging in a couple other creators who might have thoughts on this as well. 🙂 @therealsouthamerica, @AmericanoCrystals, @owlbbaking, @ShaundaNecoleBlog, @jfishkind, @typicallytopical . ❤️ 

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foodiehomechef
Jack-of-all-trades

@wildlifeelathome Hi Ash & welcome to the community! The way I have everything organized with my boards is after 6 years of experience & trial/error. In the past I was never a big fan of sections, as they have to be constantly maintained. However, I do find them useful for some of my boards that have a large amount of pins with a large variety of topics & helps to keep everything organized.

A few examples are my boards named "Vegan Recipes", "Thanksgiving | Fall", "Sandwich Recipes" and several others. I have loads & loads of boards... you can view them here: https://www.pinterest.com/foodiehomechef/_saved/

Hope that helps you some... and feel free to ask more questions if you need to 😊

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wildlifeelathome
Posts regularly

Thank you so much, Simone @foodiehomechef! You have such a great presence online and, of course, on Pinterest 😉 I am SO impressed with your account. Oh my goodness, I think you just became a role model 💗

I'm very happy to see this response, as these questions of mine seem to keep me up at night, hah. 

After a look at your boards/sections, alongside this reply, I do have a couple of questions. Thanks for that offer!

  1. Over your 6 years of trial and error, what helped you to measure whether any trials of yours were working vs knowing you ought to try something different? (Did you make the call to wait a few months before deciding to make a change if something wasn't going as well as you wanted? What were your main sources of measurement: follows, traffic conversion or monthly views?) 
  2. You mention sections need to be constantly maintained. In what ways have you found they need to be maintained more/differently than boards without sections?
  3. Aside from knowing your BIG topics which should be broken down into smaller subjects, was there any further data that you pulled from in determining which boards ought to have sections? Perhaps based on keyword research or trends? I struggle with making the call about what ought to be the big umbrella concepts (boards) to be left as is vs those requiring smaller subject matters within (sections). So I think a little more insight on this would help - tremendously! 🙏

With that, I'm sure I could stay busy for a long while! So, if you'd be interested in sending along thoughts on the above, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks, my friend, truly. 

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PinterestGabby
Community Manager
Community Manager

Loving this!! Tagging in a couple other creators who might have thoughts on this as well. 🙂 @therealsouthamerica, @AmericanoCrystals, @owlbbaking, @ShaundaNecoleBlog, @jfishkind, @typicallytopical . ❤️ 

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wildlifeelathome
Posts regularly

😍Thanks, @PinterestGabby, for helping to cultivate more community and support. These details can be tricky to grasp so I look forward to learning more as its possible. Hello to all who are mentioned! 👋 Hope to get to know ya in time!

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foodiehomechef
Jack-of-all-trades

@wildlifeelathome Hi Ash, good questions... give me till tomorrow morning to fully answer this, as I have a very busy Tuesday ahead!

Have a magnificent day ❣️ Simone

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foodiehomechef
Jack-of-all-trades

@wildlifeelathome First let me say thank you so much for your kind words about my Pinterest account Ash & I'm humbled by you holding me up as a role model, that's quite a compliment! I'll answer each question in order...

1. I usually knew within 2 to 4 weeks if something was working or not. My main sources of measurements varied with each change, so that's a hard one to pin down (pun intended lol). However I will say that I pay more attention to followers of my account, number of people saving each pin & also clicking through. I do pay attention the the monthly views, although I have to tell you that... monthly views give me a headache (lol) as that number varies wildly even within a particular month... AND because Pinterest is always making changes it plays havoc with the monthly views. My account has been as high as 1.3 million monthly views, only to drop down into the high 400k's (which is where it is now).

2. Ok... examples would be my Vegan, BBQ, Condiments & Thanksgiving boards... about once a week or 2, because I'm always adding other people's pins to those boards (amongst others), I have to open them up & move some of the new pins into their respective sections. It's a bit time consuming, but I feel it helps my visitors easily find what they're looking for without having to scroll through the entire board.

3. Really there's no other determination for me deciding to break a board into sections other than the Topic is too broad & as mentioned in #2 it make it easier on my visitors. However, once one of those sections on a particular board has a lot of pins, sometimes I'll also create a new board for that subject, copy all the pins to the new board & some of the time I'll also leave the section in place.

An example would be my "Meat Recipes" board. I had it broke into sections & then decided to make new boards for all the sections... such as "Lamb Recipes" "Pork Recipes" Steak Recipes" & so on... then I deleted all the sections.

Ones that I created new boards for, but also left the section in place, is my "Mexican Recipes". I made a new board for "Taco Recipes" and "Salsa Recipes", while leaving the section in place on the Mexican board.

Give me the link to your Pinterest account & sometime this week I'll head over there & see if I have any suggestions for you. Have a great day my friend! 😊

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AmericanoCrystals
Problem-solver

Thanks for tagging @PinterestGabby !

Hello!  @wildlifeelathome 

I tottally agree with @foodiehomechef  and @wildlifeelathome 

Creating sections can help you clean up your boards and can help your audience find the exact pin from you.You can section your boards and create sub-niche topics or you can look at your blog niche and see what main topics you have on your blog. For example I have a board named ETSY Shop and I have sections in this board which are mini boards of my products that I sell on Etsy.

Hope that can be helpful 🙂

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PinterestGabby
Community Manager
Community Manager

Thank you, ladies!! 💕

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wildlifeelathome
Posts regularly

Thanks for taking such thoughtful time with your post Simone @foodiehomechef !

Your first answer is an eye-opener, great insight and helps me to stay focused on what matters most over other more ..frivolous data perhaps 😉 and I'm glad to understand that, in your experience, it doesn't take too long to see if the board/section experiments are working or not. I'm all for that.

And what a great idea on #2. Save time and pull pins into sections at designated times. Love it! I find myself favoring the boards without sections just because I can utilize that '+' of 'similar ideas' while on a board without making a mess underneath well organized sections 🤓 💗 But hey, what's more fun than playing with a beautiful mess and organizing them at a scheduled time? Makes me quite the dork to admit it, but that sounds like a great Sunday morning to me. Thanks Simone!

#3 is my favorite tidbit of yours. Keeping the audience in mind + simply making the call to add sections once a board is too big will be mighty helpful for me moving forward. That loosens the anxiety for me.. whew. It makes me see that perfection isn't the goal here at all - its an ever evolving creation.

You are such a gem for all this. And thanks for offering to take a look at my account to possibly send along some tips, wow, incredibly kind! Great timing, too, because I just started shuffling things about. So your outside perspective would be - incredibly encouraging. Here they are: https://pinterest.com/mindbodyabode

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Ah, and @PinterestGabby - could you share with me how I can add a hyperlink to my signature here, like I see from others in this tread? I'd like to make it special, and join the cool folks 😎

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