So Pinterest is an ever-changing machine and as a business owner promoting yourself on the platform you are well aware of that. So what are Pinterest Communities and why should you care about them?

Here’s my simple explanation and I’ll leave the rest to you!

What are Pinterest Communities?

I’ve spent the morning diving into Pinterest Communities trying to figure out what they are all about and why we as marketers should care about them.

Pinterest is an ever-changing platform, I’ve said that already. But here’s the deal… They want to help you succeed and to do that you want to use their features. You want to be on their platform on desktop and mobile. You pin content that you love and use keywords to target your audience as well.

So as a Pinterest for Business user, you should care about communities because Pinterest wants you to connect and interact with them. 

Pinterest created group boards as a place for people to share ideas and that was clearly taken advantage of. Bloggers and influencers used group boards as a way to game the algorithm and get ahead of the game by going to audiences that weren’t theirs to market their content.

Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this. I’ve done it. I continue to use group boards for my content, my clients content and will still do so as long as they are around.

There is a difference though when it comes to Pinterest Communities.

Why Are Pinterest Communities Different?

Well, first of all, you cannot add content to a Pinterest Community without being a member of the community itself. The same goes for pinning content from the community.

That means you cannot just add a pin from Tailwind. You physically have to go into the community or open the pin up and add your pin there.

It’s a little tricky though because your options from inside of the community when you click the button shown in the image below are “your pins” and “all pins” which seem to be the most recent pinned.

Here is the other option if you are already a member of the community and want to add a pin.

So you might need to search if there is something specific you want to see.

Second, Pinterest communities are different because they allow you to have conversations. You can post in a similar fashion as you would in a Facebook group or on your personal Facebook page.

You can see what I’m talking about here. This is just a simple text post, but you can also post links! Hello, that is an amazing ability that we haven’t been able to do YET on Pinterest.

This is an all new ball field we are playing on now!

You can also add images to your posts if you’d like to do that as you can see here.

This is where the social aspect of this new Communities feature comes into play. Someone can now comment on my post and start a conversation. This conversation stays inside of the community and cannot be shared outside of it from what I can tell.

Here is a great example of posting in a community that is all about sharing and communicating on a topic and not link dropping.

This person posted about their winning lemon bars and how delicious they were. Then someone asked her to share her recipe. This is a whole new avenue of sharing and exploring a certain topic in a way that Pinterest wants us to collaborate.

It is a community after all!

Third, communities allow for less spamming from the get-go because you have to be part of it to pin to or from that community. This promotes more collaboration if you want to use these to truly collaborate with other influencers and reach your target market.

Features of Pinterest Communities

There are a few features of these communities you may want to know about before you dive right in.

Promoting or Banning Members

One of the biggest things I’m seeing is the ability for a community manager to manage people within by promoting someone to a moderator or banning a user.

You can’t really promote anyone to a moderator on group boards.

Sticky Posts

You can create a pinned post just like in Facebook groups. So if you want to create a pinned post and include a link to your site, opt-ins, products, etc then you can easily add that in your “sticky post” as Pinterest calls it.

Change Ownership

If you decide you no longer want to manage that community then you can change the ownership to another member. This will take away the ability to edit anything within it once you’ve made the change.

Niche Naming Allows for only ONE!

Here’s the kicker that will make you want to act FAST! You can only have ONE community name exist. Group boards can exist by the thousands with the SAME name but communities cannot. Here is a screenshot of what I’m talking about.

This means you want to claim an SEO-friendly community name quickly before you aren’t the head honcho in charge of the community you want to exist.

So are you ready to start or join a Pinterest Community?

If you want to start a Pinterest community and don’t have access to communities then you will need to be invited by someone who does. Otherwise, you should be able to click the links below to gain access.

You can find the list of communities I’ve started right here: 

• Parenting & Motherhood
• Recipes & Cooking
• Home Decor, DIY & Organizing
• Travel in the United States
• DIY Crafts & Kids Activities 
• Online Business & Marketing
• Homeschool & Education Resources
• Pinterest Marketing Strategies & Tips
• RV Travel & Lifestyle
• Community Finder (this isn’t my community but it’s a great place to find others)
• Pinterest Communities (again not mine but a great source of info!)
• Special Needs Parenting Tips

If you want to join communities but are having a hard time doing so feel free to join my Facebook Group here and I will assist you in doing so!

So are you ready for the newest feature that Pinterest has to offer? I know for one thing… I AM! Early adopters always gain an edge so be an early adopter!

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