Pinterest continues to be one of the top social networks – with 70 million users (and growing), and almost any type of business can benefit from setting up an account. But don’t let your account be full of business-only boards!
To keep current followers interested and attract new followers, add some variety to your Pinterest Boards. While it’s important to have boards that relate to your business and share helpful, useful information for your target audience, it’s also a good idea to have a few boards that are “just for fun”. So here are a few tips for optimizing your Pinterest Boards:
1. Put Your Best Boards First
Check out the first 10-15 boards on your profile (the boards new users are likely to see first). Will their titles and covers attract your target audience? Do you have a Just for Fun board in the mix?
Are your most important boards shown first? Users lose patience scrolling through 30 or more boards, so put some of your more interesting (or newer) boards toward the top.
Do you have a board with a low following, and want it to grow? Move it higher up in the display. (Just click on the board and move it to its new position.)
2. Switch Up Your Board Covers
The “cover” displayed on each board is simply the last Pin you added; it changes continuously unless you choose a specific Pin as the permanent cover. 
To set a permanent board cover, hover over the board and click on the Change Cover button. Scroll through the board’s Pins and choose the new cover.
Make sure the board cover matches the topic/title of the board, has text that is easy to read or contains a call to action. Optimize this space!
You may want schedule a routine “refresh” for your board Covers periodically: once a quarter or more often if you run specials, events or the topics are seasonal.
3. Pin the Trends
Home/DIY, Food and Fashion are some of the most popular categories on Pinterest. Which is great if your business sells products or services related to them!
But if your business’ products/services don’t naturally fit into any of the more popular categories on Pinterest, then what can you do?
Get creative and set up a few boards that have fun with trends, current events and popular topics. You can then try to relate the board to your business in some way if you want (sharing employees’ favorite holiday recipes for example). 
When I first joined Pinterest, a popular board on my personal account was my 2012 Olympics Board. It was a trending topic for weeks, and the Pins were fun, emotional and exciting.
With the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi just around the corner at the writing of this post, you could have some fun and maybe attract new followers with your own Olympics Board.
You can get your employees involved by sharing their favorite athletes/events or you could open up the board to your Pinterest community by inviting other users to contribute Pins. (Just Edit the board and invite others by username/email. Once they accept the invitation, they can add Pins to your board.)
Note: when you make a Community or Group Board, just make sure to monitor it closely. Unfortunately, Group Boards can be overrun with spam. Put the pinning guidelines in the board’s description and let users know that you will remove any Pins that are not appropriate to the board’s topic.
So use these three tips to optimize and add some variety to your Pinterest Boards and you may be pleasantly surprised with the new followers your account attracts.
And click here to check out our 2014 Winter Olympics Board!
Top image courtesy of Ventrilock/freedigitalphotos.net
About Terry League