How To Clean Up And Organize Your Pinterest Boards

Once or twice a year, it’s important to make sure your Pinterest account is up-to-date and in complete alignment with your business. A whole lot can change in a year, am I right? I use a simple 5-step process to do this for myself and my Pinterest management clients and today I’m thrilled to be able to share this method with you! After reading this post you will feel confident about the next steps to take when cleaning up your Pinterest account and be back to business as usual in no time! Let’s dig in. 

1. Review and Update Your Pinterest Profile

Before you do anything, it’s best to look at your Pinterest account from a big picture standpoint starting with your actual profile. Check out your profile description and boards. Do they still align with your business? If not, let change them up. 

• Write a profile description that communicates what you do, who you help, how you’ll help them. Be sure you’re using strong keywords throughout. 
• If you’re just getting started be sure to switch over to a business account and claim your website. 
• Next, take a quick overview of your boards to find any that stand out as no longer relating to your business or that you are only using for personal reasons. 

2. Move Your Pinterest Boards

Once you’ve taken a good look at your boards, it’s time to move them around. Notice how I say “move” and not “delete.” I want to be clear – you should not delete pins or board while doing this clean up. If you do you’ll lose followers and may come off as spammy to Pinterest,  that’s not what we’re trying to accomplish here. 

• Most boards that no longer align with your business can be archived or moved to secret.
• Before you do this for a board you’ve used to pin your business’s content to, be sure there are no viral pins on that board. To check this, click on the board you are thinking of removing and look through the pins. Underneath each of your pins you will see analytics for impressions, saves, and clicks. If a pin has a buttload of clicks, it’s still driving traffic to your website. If you archive or move the board to secret, the traffic to your website from that pin will stop. If a board doesn’t have any viral pins, go ahead and archive it.
• If a board is strictly for personal use, move it to secret. By doing this you can still pin to the board for your own personal projects but it will no longer be visible to the general public. 

3. Optimize Your Board Titles and Descriptions

Both Google and Pinterest index boards, making properly keyworded board titles and descriptions really important if you want to turn up in search (they also help your pins rank in search). 

• Get rid of the cute titles and think like Google. No more boards that say things like “yum yum” or separating each letter with punctuation, these titles won’t do anything for you. The best thing to do when deciding on board titles is to think like your ideal client or customer. What would they type into the search bar when looking for products or services like yours? This is what you want to title your Pinterest boards. By using keywords in your board titles and descriptions, it will help your boards and the pins you pin to that board show up in front of the right people. 

4. Analyze Your Group Boards

If you’re someone who got their start on Pinterest before 2018, odds are you’re a member of some group boards. Nowadays group boards just aren’t what they used to be. They can still work, but finding a good one is like finding a good Hulu original to watch – truly a needle in a haystack. If you’re just getting started on Pinterest, I recommend you focus your time on Tailwind Communities (formally tailwind tribes). Tailwind Communities have a much better return on investment. 

For those of you who are members of multiple group boards, it’s important to note that a cruddy group board can actually hurt the overall health of your Pinterest account. It’s time to go through your group boards and analyze them to see which group boards are helping you and which boards are dragging you down and making it looks like your content sucks because nobody is engaging with it, here’s a short list of questions to help you do this: 

• Does the board still align with your business? 
• How many contributors does the board have? The best boards have around 10 or less active contributors. If a group board has 50+ contributors, odds are your content is getting lost in the mess. 
• Is the board active and getting repins?
• How many followers does the board have? If you have more followers than the board, you’re better off removing yourself from the group board and using a personal board on the same topic. If the group board has thousands of followers and a few active contributors this is great! But if a board has thousands of followers and thousands of contributors, odds are the feed is moving too quickly for it to be effective. 
• The easiest way to review a group board’s effectiveness is by using Tailwind’s board insights tool (unfortunately, the free version of Tailwind will not give you this info). This tool will give you the overall engagement score, virality, and repins of a group board to easily assess whether the board is beneficial to your Pinterest strategy or not. 
• You can also evaluate how your specific pins are doing on a group board within Tailwind by navigating to Insights ➝ Pin inspector ➝ filter by website and by board. 

If you find a group board ineffective, it’s time to say your goodbyes and leave it for good. 

5. Organize your boards:

Now that you know which boards will remain on your Pinterest account it’s time to organize them. Yes, you can move boards around and put them in the order you would like them to be in! To do this click and hold on the board you would like to reposition and drag it to its desired place. 

• I usually keep my branded boards top left and then follow those up with the most popular boards. 
• Take a second and choose pins for your board’s cover photos. 
• If you want a beautifully branded pinterest profile you can create your own board covers. Just add your newly created covers as pins to that board and then link them to the url of the board itself. 

There you have it, a simple 5-step process you can use to clean up your Pinterest account and get it revamped and ready to drive free traffic and leads to your business. Need help more help with setting up your Pinterest account for success? Snag your free copy of The Pinterest Quick Start Guide below. This guide will help you set up and optimize your Pinterest account to get you in front of your target audience and drive more traffic to your content from Pinterest.