Food Blogging FM 014: Pinterest Groups For Food Bloggers

Food Blogging FM 014:

Pinterest Groups For Food Bloggers Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our fourteenth food blogging Podcast.

In this food blogging Podcast we are talking all about Pinterest Groups and why you need them to grow your food blog.

I have been a member of Pinterest groups long before I started RecipeThis.com. I used them on previous food blogs that I owned, diet blogs I managed and even travel sites. They are a great way to get extra exposure to your blog and if you manage them well you can use them to send your content viral.

But it can be complicated and hard to know where to start. Therefore I have put together today’s Podcast based around getting you on Pinterest groups, how to use them and how to do it efficiently so that you can save on time.

So if you want to take on the Pinterest groups then listen away!

What should you do first?

So the first thing you need is a Pinterest account that is fully set up and has regular pins on it. You are going to be judged by these group board owners and if your account looks like it is not in use or spammy then they will run in the other direction.

You also want to have an account where you have at least 12 boards so that it looks like you have a happening account.

You also want your recipes or blog posts to have the original source of the pin on your own board. So that you are repinning (well when you get accepted) to the group boards rather than them being the original source.

I find it works best if you have a board for each of your food types and pin it to here as well as having a board dedicated to all your recipes so that it becomes really easy for setting up the repins.

For example we do a lot of airfryer recipes on our blog and have an airfryer board. Then we also have “all our recipes” board so that we can quickly access them all.

Getting On Pinterest Groups Before you actually go onto a Pinterest group you need to have a plan in place. There are thousands and thousands of Pinterest groups and even if you are eager to be on groups doesn’t mean that you should settle for small following ones.

To start with I recommend that if you are new to Pinterest that you only go on boards with 5000 followers or more. Then once you are established aim for 10,000 followers and then 25,000 and 50,000 and so on.

Right now (well at the time of putting this Podcast together for you) we were only going on boards with 10,000 followers or more and have a personal following of just below 4000 followers.

Then when we hit 10,000 followers (which I am sure will be a while yet) we will downgrade our groups to 25,000 followers and over and just keep niche specific ones that don’t fall under this.

When we have researched Pinterest Groups we have found that there are endless amounts so it is always best to be strict with the ones you join. We analysed it for example and found over 800 suitable groups within the food and the healthy eating niche which is way more than we could ever handle. Even if 25% of these groups approved you that would still leave you with 200 groups to go at.

After that I recommend that you put a spreadsheet together with your progress so that you can monitor everything as it happens.

In mine for example we have the following columns in the spreadsheet:      

Name & url of the board Whether we are following the board Group followers How to join/group rules Website of the moderator Email address

The good thing is that sometimes just by following a board you can get an invite. But people can often not add you unless you are following the board so it is a good idea to follow it first.

We also make sure we have all the info about the board so that when we are contacting the board owners that we know what we are talking about.

When it comes to contacting them some will ask you to comment on a pin but the majority will just not tell you or ask you to email them.

When there is no info on the board go to the profile of the board owner and you can get their contact details like that.

Some boards of course will not be open to new contributors in which case just ditch it and move on. There is always a mountain of new boards opening so don’t dwell on it!

Often the ratio of getting on boards (depending on how good your Pinterest account is) maybe about 20%. So if you’re contacting 50 a week asking to be added to their boards then you can expect to go on 10.

So if you want to build up your boards to 100 group boards then by contacting 500 suitable boards over a month then you can achieve your goal.

Though, we are still on a mission with ours and we are on about 80 group boards at the moment, each with 10,000+ followers and we are also very lucky to be on a handful of boards with over 100,000 followers.

Quick ways to get on lots of groups Often it can feel like an eternity to get on lots of Pinterest groups.

You keep sending out requests and never feel like you get very far. Well there are a couple of quicker ways to get on groups.

Here are my favourites: 1 – Get members to add you not just moderators - now this is my favourite one. If you find another member of the group and ask them to add you the majority will. You can also sign up to do an exchange of Pinterest boards and how that works is that you add people to your group boards and then they do the same for you. I have even been added to 10+ boards in one go from this method. We also run this service through our FB Group “how to start a food blog” or you can email me for info. Some boards only allow moderators to add people but this only applies to about 10% of boards.

2 – Pinterest Group Board – There is a Pinterest Group board invite board that I am a member of on Facebook.

Basically people that want contributors to their boards post it on there and it is a much quicker route for getting approved on groups.

You can go back to when the group started to look for groups to join via

the document and then keep it up to date each week. It is also a lot quicker to use this group rather than just going on Pinterest and trying to find groups.

How To Find Relevant Groups I have 2 favourite methods for finding groups. They both make finding groups really easy and a lot better than just searching for things on Pinterest.

The first is to find a happening group with a lot of group members. Then stalk those that post a lot on the group. If they post similar things to what you need to post, then go to their profile and find the groups that they are a member of. Then open in a new window any relevant groups and go through them and follow the instructions to join.

Secondly, I also love PinGroupie.com. It is like the Google search for Pinterest groups. You can search by how many members the group has, the category, how many pins and so much more. This is how we originally got our potential list of 600 groups from. You can then put all the information together and ask to join members one by one.

Our Podcast Sponsor For this Podcast our sponsor is Tailwind. We started using Tailwind back in June and unlike BoardBooster (that we left after an hour) Tailwind is very easy for scheduling lots of pins to lots of boards at once on a schedule.

If you think that each time you add a new recipe that you would share it on your main social media channels. We do this with our Hootsuite account so

that it will go out to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin & Google+ all in the click of a mouse.

But it lacks Pinterest and what you can do with tailwind is have it so that it goes out to all the Pinterest Groups you’re a member of at set times.

For example today I was scheduling my recipe and have it so that it sends out the recipe to all the relevant group boards at the rate of one every 5 hours over the next 10 days. This means that thanks to the high following of these groups my pins are in front of 450,000 people over the next 10 days rather than 3600.

You can also see how many have repinned it so that you have easy access to the groups that are bringing you results and then at a later date ditch the bad ones.

Oh and with Tailwind the time it takes to do this is less than 3 minutes for every recipe I schedule with them. And on a final note about Tailwind they also tell you the best time to have your pins going out so that you can get the best for them. For me for example it is 2.30 in the morning and for me when I did it manually I was never online at that time!

Food Blogging Q & A Each Podcast I pick a question that has been asked on one of the Facebook Groups and then answer it for you. For this session I was asked what the point in Pinterest Groups was and what you get out of them?

Well back to what I was saying about Tailwind it is the ability of the extra exposure that the groups can bring you. If you are on a board with 100,000 followers and you have 5,000 of your own followers it is like you are appearing to 20* more followers overnight. That humble pin that has got 5 repins has the chance to 100 instead and every pin you have on your Pinterest account has a much bigger chance of going viral.

The more relevant Pinterest group boards you are on, the more chances you have of building your traffic quickly. On my old diet site what sent the Pinterest account viral first was a Pinterest group board.

Plus if you use some software then you can do it fast and get your blog out there much sooner.

Well That’s A Wrap Thanks for joining us in our latest Podcast. We have found that getting into Pinterest Groups is a bit of trial and error. It takes a while to get into it and understand what you need to do.

In this Podcast we have outlined how we do it so that you have a good starting base.

We recommend that you download the transcript so that you access all the links mentioned and that you come back regularly to listen to our other food blogging podcasts.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast      

Our Pinterest Boards How to start a food blog (group board) Hootsuite Pinterest Group Board On Facebook PinGroupie Tailwind

How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts Our Podcasts are easily accessible no matter how you prefer to access them. You can download them as a PDF from our blog by going to recipe this dot com and visiting the Podcasts category.

This is also very good for getting

the links to material that is mentioned in the Podcast.

Alternatively you can listen to them like you are now. You can also subscribe to our iTunes feed or you can be kept in the loop by joining our mailing list at recipe this dot com forward slash the food blogging newsletter.

Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your food blog.

Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media:    

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And don’t forget to check out this Podcasts sponsor:

Tailwind