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Q. I just read your articles about Group Boards on Pinterest and I found some I really want to join. But it’s not as easy as just clicking a button, though I wish it was!
I’ve been following Group Boards but I want to join them so I can pin to them. Can you do an article on how to join Group Pinterest Boards?
A. Great question. Yes, I also wish joining Group Pinterest Boards were as easy as clicking a button. But you know who else wishes joining were that easy? Spammers!
That’s right, if anyone could join Group Boards with just a click of a button, spammers would quickly flood those boards making them useless for legitimate pinners like us. So Pinterest has restricted membership of Group Boards to be Invitation Only.
About Group Pinterest Boards
Group Boards amplify Pinterest for you. Active Group Boards can expose you to pins from thousands of pinners and get your pins seen by a much wider audience. Pins from Group Boards show up in the stream of all of its members and followers, giving your pins to Group Boards much broader exposure than if you pinned them to your own board.
➲ For more information on Group Pinterest Boards, see:
- How to Use Group Pinterest Boards to Make Your Pins Go Viral!
- 4 Easy Tools for Finding Group Boards on Pinterest!
Follow Group Pinterest Boards to have pins from that board appear in your Pinterest stream. But to pin to a Group Board you need to join the board.
How to Join Group Boards on Pinterest
Group Pinterest Boards are Invitation Only. You must be invited by either the owner of the board or one of its members to join the board and be able to pin to it.
Instructions to Get an Invitation
The Group Board description ideally should have instructions on how to request an invitation. Go to the home page of the Group Board and look at the top to see whether the owner of the board has shared information about how to be invited to join.
Often you’ll be instructed to send an email or tweet to the owner to ask for an invitation. Be sure to include your Pinterest email address and/or URL when requesting an invitation.
Finding Your Pinterest Email and URL
To find your Pinterest email and URL, click on your name in the upper right corner on Pinterest.
Pinterest Email: From the drop-down menu click Settings. Your email address that you use with Pinterest will appear in Settings.
Pinterest URL: From the drop-down menu click Your Profile and Pins. In the address bar at the top of your screen your Pinterest URL will appear.
Follow First
You cannot receive an invitation from someone to join a Group Board unless you follow that person first. You can follow every board or just one board but you must follow at least one for that person to be able to invite you to a Group Board. You can unfollow them later if you’d like.
How to Join If No Instructions Are Provided
If the Group Board description does not include instructions on how to get an invitation, you’ll have to get a bit creative in reaching out to request an invitation.
Contact the Owner of the Board
You can reach out to the owner of the Group Board to request an invitation. The owner of a Group Board is the first one listed on the left side of the list of members:
Reach Out On Social Media
You can contact the owner on social media if they’ve added their profiles to Pinterest. Look for social media icons on their profile page.
Leave a Comment
You can also try leaving a comment on a pin on the Group Board you’re trying to join. This works best if you comment on a pin by the owner of the board. If you leave a comment on a member’s pin asking for an invitation, they may not respond, not knowing that they have the power to invite you.
Note that not everyone has email notifications from Pinterest enabled so even though you may leave a comment on a pin, the pinner may not find out about your comment.
Find a Friend
Any member of the board can invite you so if you know people who already joined the board you can request an invitation from them. Many people don’t know that any member of a Group Board can invite new members though.
Note that some Group Board Owners want to be the only person who invites people to the board. They can’t block members from inviting others to join the board but they can delete people who join via an invitation from another member.
How To Know When You Get a Group Board Invitation
If you have email notifications enabled, you’ll receive an email when you get an invitation to a Group Board.
You can also see your invitation in your notifications on Pinterest. Click on the notification button in the upper right corner of Pinterest and your invitation will appear.
You can click to accept or ignore the invitation.
If All Your Attempts to Get an Invitation Fail
No matter how hard you try, you may not be able to get an invitation to a Group Pinterest Board. Some are closed, some don’t want new members, some are inactive, etc. There aren’t any guarantees that you’ll be able to join a Group Board.
If you can’t join a board, you can still follow it to see the pins in your stream. You can also find other Group Boards to join or start your own Group Board.
Group Board Netiquette
After you join a Group Board, you should play nice to remain a member of the board. After all, you worked hard to get an invitation to the party, so you don’t want to get kicked out!
Like any party, Group Boards are most fun when people behave. Don’t flood the board with your pins or you’ll be seen as spammy. Follow the 80/20 Rule of Social Media: 80% of what you share should be other’s stuff, 20% should be your own stuff.
Follow the rules set out by the owner of the board. The owner can kick anybody off of a Group Board at any time without warning so be sure to play by the rules. If an owner doesn’t want members inviting new members, then you shouldn’t invite anyone.
Support other Group Members by repinning their pins, liking, and leaving comments. By being members of the Group Board you all share a common interest so you may make new friends!
Your Thoughts
Have you ever requested an invitation to a Group Pinterest Board? Do you have any secrets for success? Have you ever been unsuccessful in trying to get an invitation to a Group Board? Let us know in the Comments section below!
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Invitation image courtesy of ba 1969 on rgbstock (edited).
Austin Powers GIF courtesy of Shagadelic on Tumblr.
HI Carolyn,
Informative post indeed 🙂
Yes, I’ve recently become a member of a few group boards, thanks to one of your earlier posts I think where you’d mentioned that it’s better to pin posts onto group boards than your own, and I always listen to your wise words 🙂
I agree, not all boards are easy to become part of and some of them need you to request to join in to pin your pins, while others are just for following, without pinning. So, it all depends on which ones you want to join. I joined a few of the food ones, and then got a few more invitations to join others through email, so that was easy. They do increase your followers, though slow and stead does it, and you need to be careful about spamming and all that you share, which should be related to the group.
Thanks for sharing. Have a nice rest of the week 🙂
Hi Harleena, Ah, the irony. My Monday post about the iPhone’s Do Not Disturb feature was pinned to a Group Pinterest Board and is getting a huge amount of traffic from that pin. If you could see today’s traffic stats for The Wonder of Tech, you would be a believer of the power of Group Boards.
Good point, you can get invitations from Group Boards you didn’t even know existed. I’ve received a bunch of those. Some I join, others I decline since I don’t have an interest in that area.
That’s great you’ve joined some food Group Boards. Those boards may come in especially handy if you do expand your blog to cover recipes and cooking tips (fingers crossed that you do!).
Hi Carolyn,
This is a useful post. I should use Pinterest more. I’ve been busy trying to promote the Black Country Festival, it’s become quite controversial. My photos have been very popualr recently. Carnival pictures to see this week! I’ll have to pin some onto Pinterest, a few followers are from the Black Country. I’m starting to do some wildlife shots now with a 300mm lens so I’ll have to start a new wildlife board!
Hi Mike, Yes, Pinterest Group Boards would be a great fit for your photography. I usually post photos from your photography blogs onto Pinterest and they are often repinned. Pinterest would be a great way to share your photos with a wide audience and Group Boards could bring you photos to a wider audience!
Hi Carolyn,
I’m not active on Pinterest, and I didn’t know that Pinterest has enable Group as well. But I know I thing for sure, every group either in Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or any other social media sites look for genuin users who are really passionate about Group theme. Nobody likes spammers, so by sticking to 80/20 works brilliantly.
Hi Pankaj, You’re right, getting involved with groups is an excellent way of engaging on any social media site. Join Facebook Groups, Google + Communities, Twitter Chats and Pinterest Group Boards to get the most out of these sites.
Hey Carolyn Nicander,
You just revealed rocking strategy to go viral in pinterest. I totally lost my hope about pinterest marketing as I don’t have enough knowledge about it. Moreover I search online but couldn’t find helpful content on this topic. Your article is like hope of light me. I will definitely try these pinterest tricks. Before I was totally unknown about pinterest group boards. Thanks again and want’s to learn more from you.
Hi Sakib, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, definitely give Pinterest another try. As with all social media, the more you give the more you get. Sharing is caring so share at least 80% of the time and then you can broadcast your own content. You may find you enjoy Pinterest as a source of inspiration and information.
Hi Carolyn,
Awesome post on Pinterest! Indeed.
Yes, I didn’t work on pinterest yet but would definitely try it once. Your information will really help me a lot to work on it. It inspire me and do something different. Thanks for sharing this article, otherwise I couldn’t know anything about this tips 🙂
Hi Pritam, That’s wonderful. Thanks for letting me know that this article was helpful to you. You’re right, you can make the most of Pinterest by joining Group Boards!
Hi Carolyn,
I came to know about pinterest when Darren putted a post which tells how he got 1000 visitors because of pinterest. And he himself said that he didn’t did much for this and even then got the 1000 visits. It is a big traffic source and with getting less spammy it is one of the best out there.
Thanks for this post!
Hi Anurag, Yes, Pinterest can definitely bring a lot of visitors to your blog. What’s very helpful is when your readers pin to their Group Boards too. Make sure you have a Pin It button for your website.
HI Carolyn, I have not but this makes me think about it. I don’t belong to too many but I do to several, maybe a dozen. I didn’t realize you could make a request and how creative to reach out on social media too. Thanks for sharing a simple how to Carolyn. Hope you are having a great weekend.
Hi Lisa, That’s wonderful you already belong to a dozen group boards. Yes, I didn’t know when I first started receiving invitations to Group Boards that I could request invitations to boards that interested me.
Some boards have absolutely no instructions to help you get an invitation, but if you reach out on social media at least you have a small chance of contacting the creator of the board.
I host a group board, Charmed By Rustic, and have instructions for people who want an invitation to post a request on my board called Please Add Me. I’ve also found that once I invite a person, if they don’t accept, there’s no way to tell if they even saw the invite, and Pinterest won’t allow sending an invite more than once — understandable, but I’d love to find a way to send another invite to people who follow my boards and that have big followings themselves.
Hi Carole, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! That’s great you have instructions for people who want to join. I agree, it would be nice to get feedback when you’re invited someone and they don’t join. Did they at least see the invitation? It would also be great to be able to send a reminder, just one wouldn’t be too spammy, right?
I’m hoping Pinterest overhauls the process for joining group boards at some point to help make it easier for creators and followers to align.
Carolyn, I am glad to read this post fully and now I understand the importance of a Pinterest Board. Earlier, I haven’t tried to join any board but I do share others stuff and mine less.
One thing that striked my mind is, if we follow someone to get an invitation from the board and some other person unfollow him after the approval then its meanest thing one can do. After all they helped them gaining the access. Such new board members should also been banned according to me.
And About the informative post you have provided, I guess people will re think about joining a board to share and socialize more effectively.
Hi Aditya, No offense would be meant by unfollowing a board. But if you’re following a board only to become a member of a Group Board, then you probably don’t want those pins appearing in your feed. Chances are you can find a board you would like to follow by the Group Board creator though!
Hi, Carolyn
Another very useful article, thank you. No, I actually haven’t used the Pinterest board or asked for an invitation to join a board before. What a great tip for if I ever choose to do so. I am glad that it’s difficult to join a Pinterest board for the same reason as you already stated above — to reduce spam. Sure would hate to have Pinterest ruined by spammy content. Phew!
I’ll have to bookmark this article for future use. Thanks again and take care.
Allyson
Hi Allyson, Yes, when you’re ready to join a Group Board on Pinterest I hope you find some where the instructions for requesting an invitation are very clear. If not, then follow these steps to try to get an invitation. Good luck with Pinterest, Allyson!