English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Pinterest is a visual content sharing site that’s a valuable tool for small businesses. One of the fastest growing social media sites, it’s no longer the domain of visually oriented niches. It now appeals to all kinds of users.
One of its best Pinterest features for engaging your customers is Community Boards. Community Boards allow users to collaboratively make your boards with you. No other social media network allows this level of interaction. It engages your customers and they help you by curating content for you.
Creating Community Boards
The best community boards are those that are narrowly focused but not so narrow that there’s nothing to pin. Since Pinterest is all about users’ interests, it’s difficult to get too narrow. The more specific you make the topic, the more focused and therefore better it will be as a board. It will also appeal more to your collaborators and followers.
You don’t need to create a special community board. You can take any of the boards you already have and open them up for collaboration. Pick a board you want to turn into a community board and click Edit. It will take you to a settings window. Choose ‘Me + Contributors’ and then write directions for contributing in the Description field.
When someone wants to become a contributor, they’ll email you asking for your permission. Once you approve them, they can contribute as much content as they want to the board. You can also invite users that you’d like to contribute. In the settings window, there’s a place to add users. When a user is added, it will send them an email inviting them.
Engaging Your Customers
There are several ways to increase customer engagement on your community boards. One way is to seek out boards on related topics and invite users who post the best content.
You can increase your exposure by joining other people’s community boards and posting content there. This level of collaborating creates a true community where users routinely pin content to each other’s boards.
You should advertise your community boards on other social networks and on your website or blog. Include a direct link so that other users can go directly to your board to collaborate.
Being a Good Community Manager
As Pinterest Community Boards become more popular, there’s more spam. However, if you’re a good board manager, you can keep it to a minimum. Approving new contributors will help. You can often spot a spammer before they have a chance to pin something irrelevant or sales-oriented. Make sure you’re signed up to get email notifications when there’s a new pin (this is the default setting) and be sure to monitor new content.
You can cut down on spam by being clear in the board’s description about what’s allowed and what isn’t. It may be a good idea to allow some self-promotion as long as it’s relevant. Your contributors can include a description of the image telling others where they can find it or other information for shopping purposes.
