Trying to evaluate Pinterest group boards?
It’s a challenge! Pinterest stats make it nearly impossible.
And it IS important to know which boards are helping you build your Pinterest presence – and which are actually dragging you down.
Wasting your time.
Making it look like your content sucks.
Because no one’s interacting with your pins on those group boards.
But how do you know which “those group boards” are?
Tailwind makes it easy! (P.S. They always do!)
Note: Looking to join group boards? Read this post instead.
Why Should You Evaluate Pinterest Group Boards?
Most Pinners seem to think you should get on as many group boards as you can, and Pin as much stuff on them as is allowed.
They see this as building links to their site, pumping up repin numbers, tricking the Pinterest algorithm, and (hopefully) getting some traffic to their website.
News flash: Pinterest knows better. If you think of Pinterest as a search engine (which is how they repeatedly describe themselves), then think how Google works:
- Links from high quality sites to your site build your domain authority.
- Links from low quality sites to your site are meaningless (think “link directories”).
- Links from spammy sites to your site devalue you in Google’s eyes.
Now reread that and think “Pins on high/low/spammy quality boards” and you’ll see what I’m getting at. Pinterest can see which group boards are a dumping ground for desperate marketers.
I’ve seen too many times how a Pin on a personal board with 3, 5, or 100 followers can go viral and send 1,000’s of website sessions – yet that same Pin on a group board with almost a million followers may go nowhere.Pinterest seems to see that organic Pin from a real user as genuine interest in your content!
I get it, we all want to post our Pins all over Pinterest. Me too!
But have you noticed how group boards are driving less and less repins – and traffic? (If not, you definitely should read on).
Friends, just like we can’t fool Google, we can’t fool Pinterest either. They’re not pushing Pins on low-engagement boards into the Smart Feed. They’re devaluing your account because those lousy boards are part of it – even thought they’re not your boards.
Did ya notice those boards are on your profile page? Hmmm…
For more about this concept of “bad neighborhoods,” see Jon Morrow’s post on SEO Mistakes (section 2).
What Do Others Say About Leaving Pinterest Group Boards?
For the most part, Pinterest doesn’t tell us what works and what doesn’t. We have to test things out and see what works on our own accounts. My account, and at least these two others, have improved by dumping the crummy group boards:
“Pinterest wants people to pin more to their own boards these days, so try that. I scaled back my group boards and traffic went up. I have a few I pin to daily and then sprinkle in the others as it works. My traffic is more than double what it was in May. So, it seems to be working.” ~Tracie Fobes
“That [lousy] board is dragging down your overall engagement score and decreasing the likelihood of your pins showing up in the smart feed. The smart feed is a popularity contest. You don’t gain popularity by hanging out with the losers or wallflowers. I had zero growth with followers and traffic from May – July. At the beginning of August I left half of my 21 group boards. In the next 6 weeks, my traffic from Pinterest went up, and I’ve gained 200 new followers.” ~Renee Gardner
Can You Evaluate Pinterest Group Boards without Tailwind?
You can’t see engagement stats on your Pins to group boards.
Sometimes, you can see the engagement stats for your Pins to group boards on your “Pins” page – if you can find them. Sometimes, those stats won’t open for me.
You can get a vague idea of which boards are performing by going into your Pinterest analytics.
Here’s how: Analytics > Profile > Clicks > Boards with the most clicked Pins from the last 30 days > Show more
Now you can see if any of your group boards are getting clicks to your site (as long as those boards are in the top 20).
You won’t know which Pins, or when you Saved them. If you’ve been on the board for a while, it could be a really old Pin. But you can sort by date pinned with Tailwind (below).
I actually had 8 group boards in my top 20, which surprised me (of course, that also means 12 were my own boards). One was a board I was kicked off over a year ago, I think for pinning something that was deemed irrelevant. I bet that’s the Pin that’s still sending clicks.
NOTE: Group boards may get high Impressions, but I urge you not to put too much value on that. You can’t take Impressions to the bank. Clicks and Saves show that people are seeing and acting on your Pins.
Oh, and by the way – a group board I’m on with close to a million followers was way down at the bottom of the list with 30 clicks. Not so great. Of course, other group boards didn’t even make the cut.
How to Track Your Website Traffic from Group Board Pins
This works for any Pins, but is particularly critical for group board Pins – since you can’t see which Pins are getting Saved or Clicked in Pinterest Analytics.
- Keep a list of each Pin’s URL after you Save it to a group board. Note the date you Saved it.
- After a month or more, open Google Analytics.
- Navigate to this screen to discover traffic from a Pin: Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals
- Click on Pinterest to expand the search details. You’ll see all of your pin URLs listed.
- Edit the date on your analytics to look at the traffic from the day you pinned it through the current date.
- Copy the last section of the URL, the numbers. Example: my URL is https://www.pinterest.com/pin/148548487692719476/ so I just want 148548487692719476.
- Paste the number into the search box above Behavior. Click the search icon.
- Now, you’ll see the total number of clicks to your site for that individual pin on that board.
This is a long and cumbersome process that’s probably going to yield a lot of zeroes. Just sayin’.
I expect you’ll find that most Pins on most group boards aren’t sending you much traffic. BTW the Pin I searched was on my own board.
How to Quickly Evaluate Pinterest Group Boards with Tailwind
You can easily determine group board engagement in Tailwind.
If you’re not currently a Tailwind user, grab a free trial! Unfortunately, on the free trial you won’t see all the stats mentioned here.
You could upgrade for a month, just to see if the stats help you. I can’t live without them! Pinterest analytics just aren’t very useful.
Freebie possibility: share your Tailwind referral link and earn a free month of Tailwind for every person you refer! It’s a way to try out the Plus Plan for free.
I use and love Tailwind! If you decide to upgrade, I’ll get a referral fee.
• • • Click here to try Tailwind for FREE • • •
The fastest (but not complete) way to evaluate is by going to Track Your Brand Page > Board Insights. Uncheck any type of board but Group.
The stat I feel is most important is Virality, which is repins per Pin. Sort the boards by highest to lowest Virality. You’ll have a rough idea of your group boards’ quality in seconds.
Why do I look at Virality? High engagement is great, but a board with a ton of followers with low repins per follower can still get you better results than few followers / high engagement.
Case in point, I’m on a group board with almost a million followers. When it had a .01 engagement score, I was getting plenty of repins. Now the engagement rate has actually dropped to .00, but repins per Pin is still better than 4. (Clicks suck though, as I mentioned above).
But that board with the stunning 15.53 engagement rate? 180 followers, woohoo 😛
The Repins number will vary by the number of Pins on the board – not helpful.
So on the Board Insights page, the only number that helps is Virality, because it shows repins PER PIN.
How to Accurately Evaluate Pinterest Group Boards
Virality and Engagement are lifetime stats, so they could be high due to a few viral Pins that happened years ago. Not completely accurate, but it will give you a quick overview of your group boards.
While the Virality score is the fastest way to judge a board’s overall performance, to determine exactly how your Pins are performing on a specific board recently, go to Optimize Content > Pin Inspector > By Board, and choose each group board one by one, as well as the time period you wish to evaluate. I go back two months. I’ve found that the stats won’t change after that time – i.e. Pins on group boards won’t suddenly get engagement after a month or two. They’re dead.
You can see the total pins you added to the board in that time period, and add up the number of repins if you want. Or, if you’re just seeing a lot of 0s, make a judgment call!
And, you can track traffic the same way I outlined in the section above, though you can easily grab the Pin URL from Tailwind for any board and time period.
How Do I Know Which Pinterest Group Boards to Leave?
Once again, this is a judgment call.
- What’s your personal repin rate? (Track Your Brand Page > Profile performance > Virality score)
- What are your own best and worst board repin rates? (Track Your Brand Page > Board Insights)
- What are your best and worst group board repin rates? (as above)
If you’re scared to dump any group boards at all, just stop pinning to the worst ones for a month, and re-evaluate your overall profile performance and Pinterest traffic.
I personally have left most group boards with under 1 repin per Pin Virality score.
I’ve been tracking repins per Pin on my Pins all year (accurate method), and will likely leave more boards, and pin less to even more boards.
My traffic is up! I’ll let you know if that continues.
Want to Learn More about Tailwind?
You can jump in and try it out free. I find it indispensable for evaluating boards and Pins, as well as keeping my content circulating on Pinterest, and increasing my website traffic! If you decide to upgrade to a paid plan for access to all the stats, I’ll get a referral fee.
You can use your own referral link to earn a free month of Tailwind for each person you refer! It’s a great way to try the Plus Plan at no cost to you.
• • • Click here to try Tailwind for FREE • • •
Or read more of my thoughts on Tailwind for Pinterest:
How To Use Tailwind For Massive Pinterest Growth
How To Explode Your Pinterest Reach With Tailwind Communities
If you used these tips to evaluate Pinterest group boards, leave a comment to let us know what you learned!
Meredith says
Hi Louise,
This post was SO helpful! I just went through all my group boards, determined which are worth my while and which aren’t, and big time “spring cleaned” my boards. Thank you so much for your valuable insights! I had already archived about half my boards and my engagement doubled in less than a week! I know after reading your blog post and taking action my stats will just continue to rise. Thank you so much for the free and helpful information!
Louise Myers says
That’s so great to hear! Best of luck.
Lisa says
Oh my goodness, this post has been amazing for me! I’d heard that group boards were no longer the way to go, but I hadn’t really understood why. I went through and realized just how badly almost all of mine were doing and just left 92 group boards!! I will be curious to see what changes this may make in my Pinterest stats. Thank you! 🙂 Lisa
Louise Myers says
Oh my goodness, 92! Hope you see big improvements.
Jessica Deall says
Hi Louise! I absolutely love your site. I just received and downloaded the Pinterest Group Board Cheat Sheet and I noticed that Boardbooster is still listed. Since Boardbooster is no more (sadly, though…I loved that amazing resource) is there something else that you think would be a good resource as well?
Thanks and have a happy and prosperous new year!
Louise Myers says
Did I also mention pingroupie.com in there? Sorry, I will have to update that sheet. Since BB was hacking into Pinterest’s stats in a way that Pinterest didn’t want nor allow, that same info doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Highton Ridley says
I find Tailwind’s stats to be unreliable, conflicting in a number of ways from what I see on my Pinterest Analytics (business account).
This new tool might be useful to those not yet ready for a full plunge into Analytics.
In your article you cover the analytics so well, I thought I’d approach you for feedback on it. Its primary purpose is to give tailored guidance based on a user’s Pinterest Profile Analytics and allow a history (csv export) to be kept – and make it easy for them to find and pin more of the same or explore similar boards.
This is so that people can try stuff and monitor the effects. It gives a quick overview including, for example, weighted board & pin values and click-through-rates by boards & pins. Top performers are highlighted and the boards and pins can be sorted in various ways.
I do hope you can take a look, I’d value your feedback 🙂
Louise Myers says
You’re kidding, right? Pinterest stats are 100% unreliable. I would be suspicious of anything that matches them.
Sorry, I don’t allow deep links so yours have been removed. I might be interested in testing your service if you want a paid review. Right now I don’t have time even for paid reviews. Don’t do free ones.
Karen Kohn says
Hi Louise – Very helpful article. Really appreciate your help. One question…..would it be true that Tailwind analytics are only collecting data from the pins that are scheduled through Tailwind? Therefore, if you manually pin to group boards, those saves don’t show in the Tailwind data? I noticed that some of my group boards have been saving my pins but that info. is not in Tailwind. If so, then there may be one more aspect to analyzing whether or not a group board is working. Thoughts? Thanks, Karen
Louise Myers says
If you’re looking at the Pin Inspector under Insights, those are the last 5,000 pins you’ve made to your boards regardless of scheduled or manual.
Published Pins under Publisher is only Tailwind pins.
Stephanie Manley says
I really loved how you dug into the data and made some very actionable steps. You really helped me evaluate, and drop some boards I always thought were doing well. Thank you!
Louise Myers says
I’m happy to hear that, Stephanie!
Rod says
Hi Louise, I have a question. Someone has created a board on my account – How can this be possible? Should I remove it?
Thanks in advance.
Louise Myers says
It appears that if you’re on a group board that is closed, or the owner removed you, a board of the same name is made on your profile containing only your pins from the group board.
Could this be what happened? You can remove it or not, it’s up to you.
Rod says
Thanks for your reply.
I really can’t figure it out how this person managed to create a board on my account?
It’s been created by someone I follow. And this person has invited 3 more people to the board.
Will there be any benefits for me if I leave it as it is, OR would it depreciate my account?
Louise Myers says
You’re sure you’re not a contributor to the board? It will show on your page if you are, no way around that. You can leave the board if you don’t want to be a contributor and/or have it on your page.
When you look at the board, is your username in the URL, or the other person’s? If it actually is YOUR board with your URL, I would report it to Pinterest. I don’t know how this could be done without some weird hacking.
Please let me know what you find out!
Rod says
Sorry Louise, it’s what you say. I was a contributor to this board and since I’d only created my first Pinterest account a few days ago I didn’t realise that the board would appear on my profile – So I deleted my name from it and it removed the board – The board was actually about a spam niche so I wasn’t going to have it left on my account.
Thanks so much for your replies.
Louise Myers says
You did the right thing! Best of luck.
Dawn says
Appreciate this great detailed guide. I also signed up for the free trial but it says you need Plus access to see virality and other stats. Just an FYI.
Louise Myers says
Thanks. I just found out they changed this feature recently. Sorry for the disappointment.
Heather says
I just joined tailwind specifically to evaluate my group boards and it turns out that you can only do so if you pay for Tailwind Plus. Quite a disappointment. You might want to note that fact in your article above.
Louise Myers says
Thanks for alerting me. I’ll look into it. That was definitely not my understanding of it! I will for sure add a note after I verify. Thanks for the heads up!
Lucy Robinson says
This is such helpful information, thank you! As a new blogger I have been led to believe that it’s best to join as many group boards as possible and yet whenever I get a notification that a pin had been saved, it is always from just one group board. Now I see why and will be careful when asking to join others. Is there a way of testing the virality of a group board before asking to join or do you just need to test it out? Another question – with my own boards (that I have very few followers for yet) should I be pinning my own relevant content to them more than once? Or just when I pin it for the first time? Thank you – will be reading all your posts from now on!
Louise Myers says
All the pointers on this post will help you decide if a board is a good fit. There’s no way to know its virality unless you’re a contributor. And even if you did, it wouldn’t say how it would perform for YOU.
Best of luck!
Lyndsey Johnson says
I love all the screenshots and explanations for how to evaluate the data. Thanks for putting that together.
Have you noticed in Tailwind Tribes that people are sharing Tribe pins to group boards? I had one pin that was shared by one person to 40 of their group boards… with 0 re-pins. The potential impressions though showed more than 700K.
What are your thoughts on sharing Tribe pins to your personal boards vs. group boards?
Louise Myers says
Yesss I am very unhappy about that type of sharing in Tribes. And it definitely makes the reach numbers very misleading. “Potential” doesn’t equal “actual.” Group boards have loads of potential but only one in a dozen or more realizes any of it.
Maegen says
Thanks so so much for this blog post. I recently started my blog (a few months ago). Most of my traffic is coming from Pinterest so I know I HAVE to keep focusing on learning more. I am using Tailwind and I am glad I now understand more about it thanks to you. I was wondering if I change some of my boards like kids parties to “Private” because I don’t want to delete it because I actually use it for planning my kids parties will that still hurt my account? should I still just delete it?
Louise Myers says
Maegan, it’s fine to make them secret. You can read more about my boards strategy here.
Soumya Roy says
Hello Louise Myers, thanks for sharing these tips. I have been using Pinterest for couple of years now, but never thought of using its groups in that way to drive traffic, which seems to be a very good idea. But you said it rightly, re-pins from high authority boards will only help and not those all. Tailwind sounds like the best tool to analyze one group board, its authority and power. I am going to explore it next and once again thanks for posting these tips here.
Louise Myers says
I’m glad you found it useful!
Susan Velez says
Hi Louise,
Great tips about Group Boards and I need to take the time to sit down and see if the group boards that I belong to are actually worth it.
I’ve seen so many people say that you should join 50 – 70 group boards to get traffic. I haven’t joined near that many.
To tell you the truth, I just don’t want to be a member of that many boards. Personally, I really like Tailwind tribes a lot better than group boards.
Thanks for taking the time to share these tips, I’ll be sure to check out if the group boards I belong to are actually worth it.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Louise Myers says
Hi Susan,
Yeah, I do agree. But actually, therein lies the whole problem with group boards – while we can’t imagine managing that many, these others are just automating regurgitated content to them. Easy, they think…
But it just doesn’t work!
Glad you enjoyed the post, and best of success.