Pinterest is one of the most popular social media platforms today, and for good reason. It’s a great way to organize and share images, and it’s easy to use. But just like any other social media platform, Pinterest has its own set of rules. One of those rules is that board name names need to be consistent throughout the platform. SubscriberZ offers top-notch and industry-leading social media marketing services. You can subscribe, view, and like and optimize your video content for organic growth to take your content to the next level. In this post, we’ll share six Pinterest board name mistakes that can hurt your marketing campaigns.
Your friends and fans, the noobs, the bots and the human bots will follow all your Pinterest boards. Irrespective of what you pin.
What about the other pinners? They will follow only some of your boards.
How do they decide whether to follow or not a board? As easy as 1-2-3: the decision is usually taken based on the name of the board.
The more mistakes you make in naming your boards, the fewer visitors are converted into followers.
Let’s also not forget the good bots. Search engine bots, for example. Those bots don’t make assumptions. You provide the right information, or otherwise they hurt your rankings.
As you can see, the board names may help or hurt your marketing. Choosing these names isn’t a worthless activity required by Pinterest before letting you enjoy the actual pinning. It has its importance!
Now let me reveal the mistakes I noticed while using Pinterest. Learn from them and improve your results…
I’ll skip the inoffensive mistakes. Such as adding the hashtag sign to board names. According to Pinterest, it won’t help you in any way. But there’s no evidence that it hurts you.
I’ll focus only on mistakes that can really hurt your marketing…
- Pinterest Board Names Irrelevant to Everyone But You
Example of Pinterest Board Having an Irrelevant Name
When the name of a Pinterest board includes a topic a visitor of your profile is interested in, that board gets a new follower.
What happens if the name of the board is irrelevant and the visitor doesn’t understand what the topic of the board is? Nothing good to you. It’s like a board out of the visitor’s sphere of interest. Their eyes move on the next board.
Example of irrelevant board name: Guest Posts.
No one cares whether your blog post is hosted on your blog or on a third party blog. It’s not the host that matters to the prospect but the topic of the post.
What’s the topic of the blog posts from the board “Guest Posts”? Pets, social media, food, pregnancy? Or maybe all of them. No one knows but the owner of the board.
Don’t even think that the potential follower will make extra moves by opening the board and checking the pins. Most of the people don’t waste their time in order to offset your laziness or uninspired actions.
Tip: If you’re not a famous brand known by almost everyone as being involved in a clearly defined niche, name your Pinterest boards from a potential follower’s perspective, not from yours.
- Pinterest Board Names Irrelevant to Everyone. Including You
Example of Junk Pinterest Board: Random Pins
Real examples of board names: Random Pins, Other Pins, Miscellaneous, Various Things, Everything, Everything Else, For Everyone, Nothing, etc.
Are these the junk boards? Or do these pinners want to let everyone know how lazy they are? Or is this lack of imagination at its best?
I don’t know the answer. I guess it depends from case to case.
What I know for sure is that such board names create a bad image. And a bad image is bad marketing. Period.
Tip: If you wanna pin or repin something that doesn’t fit the topic of your actual boards, create a new board for that topic. Or pin it to a Secret Board and decide later whether you move it to a (new) public board or not.
- Pinterest Board Names Screaming That You’re a Noob
Example of Empty Pinterest Board: Coming Soon
Are you kidding me? That’s like opening a store while one of the rooms is not only empty but not even painted.
The people who follow you, follow automatically all your boards. Including any board that you will create sometime in the future. You don’t need to reserve the space in advance.
On the other hand, the other people – those who don’t follow you but only some of your boards, based on their interests – will never be interested in “Nothing here” boards.
Therefore… You have absolutely no reason to create “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” boards. Unless your goal is to make the prospects laugh at you.
- Long Board Names Aren’t Fully Viewable
Example of Pinterest Board Having a Long Name That isn’t Fully Viewable
What’s the name of the board shown on the left side? What’s its topic? You have no idea, have you?
Pinterest board names are similar to email subject lines. If they aren’t understandable without any further action, some people will move on without taking the action you’re looking for.
The actual name of the board from the left side is, “These are a few of my favourite things.” Let’s make it better…
Correction No.1: Cut the words that aren’t important. Updated name: “My Favourite Things.” Now the name is viewable. But it’s still irrelevant (see the mistake #1).
Correction No.2: Replace the generic noun “things” by something clearly defined – one or two keywords: “My Favourite Marketing Books” – you can remove “my” if the name is too long. You can even remove the adjective. The only important things are the keywords that define the topic: “marketing books”.
Tip #1: Put the keywords that define the topic at the very beginning. Even if you use a long board name, the words that reveal the topic will be viewable upfront.
Tip #2: Don’t use ALL CAPS. Capital letters are usually wider than small letters. Therefore capital letters take up more space.
- Too Much Creativity May Hurt Your SEO
Example of Pinterest Board Having a Letter Spaced Name
Some pinners are over creative. And they wanna prove it right away.
You’ve seen their board names, haven’t you? Hearts, various other symbols, spaced letters, etc.
While some of these improvements aren’t necessarily bad, others may hurt your SEO.
For example, letter spacing… The name of the board shown on the left side isn’t “Blogging,” but “B l o g g i n g.”
What’s the problem? Well, the second part of the link to that board isn’t /blogging, but /b-l-o-g-g-i-n-g. The expected keyword isn’t there anymore. There’s just a sequence of separate letters. Worthless for SEO.
- Non English Pinterest Board Names. For No Reason
Example of Pinterest Board Having a Name in Other Language than English
If you promote a blog written in other language than English, there’s no point in targeting via Pinterest people who don’t speak that language.
However, if you’re a photographer – just one possible example, then not using English when naming your boards is a Pinterest marketing mistake that will cost you…
While I don’t need to know your language to enjoy some nice pictures, board names written in a language that I don’t understand make me quickly decide to move on without further checking all your boards or following any of them.
Maybe that would be my loss, who knows? However, this isn’t about me (the visitor), but about you. It’s your loss too. You’re losing followers, likes and repins. For no reason at all.
Final Words: How to Improve Your Marketing
I guess I didn’t list here all the marketing mistakes pinners make. No list is the Ultimate List, even if it’s called that way.
What you need to learn from this article, besides the specific examples, is an effective way to detect the mistakes…
If you want to get better results, place yourself in your prospect’s shoes and see your small world through their eyes.
To do it effectively, forget about marketing myths like “People want to find out more about you.” You’re not a movie star, are you? Marketing isn’t about YOU. It’s about THEM. Focus on the prospects’ needs and your results will improve.
That’s valid for any type of marketing. Including Pinterest marketing.