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You’ve heard it a million times, right? Pinterest isn’t a social media platform it’s a search engine. Or more specifically a visual search engine. Well, that fact might not be true much longer. As Pinterest Communities have been secretly added as a beta feature to Pinterest at the end of September.
If you’ve seen any of the other new features that Pinterest has added. That
Well, what if I told you that the news on the grapevine is that Pinterest Communities might be the next ‘Facebook Groups’ for Pinterest? The kind of groups that Pinterest aimed for Group Boards to be. As collaboration tools. Before marketers learnt how to leverage them for rapid traffic growth.
They are a central place for people to communicate and make connections. That aren’t spread out across multiple pins with no way to find them.
Sound more interesting now? Well, you might be looking at your Pinterest dashboard and scratching your head. Wondering how do you get access?
How To Get Access To Pinterest Communities
Pinterest Communities are currently a beta feature. You’ll need to get an invite to a community before the extra features show in your Pinterest dashboard.
Don’t worry, it isn’t as bad as it sounds though. It is super easy to get an invite once you know where to look.
How To Get Invited
So, how do you get an invite? Well for starters, if you are interested in joining a WordPress focused Pinterest Community. Aimed at beginners and bloggers. Where you can get help and share information about using the WordPress platform. Then you can start by joining my community WordPress For Beginners & Blogging.
Just click here to get your invite. Which will also give you access to the Pinterest communities. Your invites should look like the below screenshot. Once you click on Join you should be in the community!
Once you’ve joined your first Pinterest Community, your dashboard will look a bit like this:
If for some reason it doesn’t show right away. You might need to refresh the screen. I’ve heard
Once the Community button shows on your dashboard, you can click on it and go straight to the main page. Which gives you some recommended communities to join. And what looks like a search bar to find more.
Here’s the thing though. At the time of writing this, the ‘Search communities’ does not work. I know for a fact that there are a few Pinterest and Blogging Communities already. But if I search for ‘Pinterest’, ‘Blogging’ or other similar terms. It tells me that it couldn’t find any!
How To Find Pinterest Communities
Whilst there may be some communities in the recommended list you’d like to join. Here are a few others I have found through the Pinterest home feed, Tailwind tribes, Google, the Community Finder and old-fashioned snooping on people’s Pinterest profiles:
Note: If any links redirect you to the Pinterest homepage then try using them in the Pinterest mobile app instead. For some reason, some links only work in the app, until you’ve joined your first community. Because of this, I recommend joining the official ‘Pinterest Communities‘ first.
- Pinterest Community – Official Pinterest Community
- Community Finder – A place to help find communities
- Bloggers Club by Simply Amanda
- Blogging & Pinterest Tips by Simply Amanda
- Pinterest & Blogging Tips by Saunder Says
- Dog Moms by Saunder Says
- Creatives on Pinterest by Ivory Mix
- Female Entrepreneurs by Vanessa Kynes
- Online Entrepreneur & Blogging Tips by Meagan Williamson
- Blogging Tips + Tricks by Success Unscrambled
- Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers by Epife
- Bloggers Circle by Epife
- Blogging Tips for Beginners by Epife
- Blogging for New Bloggers by Tiny Love Bug
- Pinterest for New Bloggers by Tiny Love Bug
- Bloggers by Her Paper Route
- WordPress For Beginners & Blogging (mine)
- WordPress by The May Creative
- WordPress for Bloggers & Business Owners by Shaylee Smith
The Pinterest Community Finder has many communities listed but not every community is there. I had to find most of the WordPress ones by checking out people’s profiles. It’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack, but focusing on profiles that I know are focused on WordPress eventually got me some communities!
And yes, you can tell who has access to communities and who doesn’t from their profile. As well as what communities they are in. Like this:
Another way you can find more to join is through the list of 191+ Pinterest communities for bloggers I put together. That covers a variety of blogging niches from blogging, social media, mommy, lifestyle, food and more!
So, What Can You Do In Pinterest Communities?
Pinterest Communities are designed to be collaborative groups for engaging in discussion on specific topics.
Each community has a section for New, About and People. Where New tends to be the feed of discussions. About is where the board description is including any rules you should follow. So make sure to check that out! And finally
When you join a community you can Add Pin, Add Photo or simply just Post a comment.
At the top of each community is also a button to invite users or Leave. You can send invitations to Facebook, Twitter, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Or just get a URL to paste into anywhere. Which seems to be the easiest method. You also seem to be able to send invites to people directly on Pinterest.
Every post in a community you can add comments to. You can also ‘heart’ posts or comments to ‘like’ them. Clicking on a post will take you to the full thread.
How Should Communities Be Used?
Communities might sound a lot like Group Boards. But, don’t be fooled because they are worlds apart!
Currently, Pinterest Communities are public (once you get your invite) and anyone can participate in them. There isn’t any official information from Pinterest, except for what you can find in the Official Pinterest Community discussions.
Based on the comments by Brian Donohue, the admin of the official Pinterest community. They want us to collaborate more interactively in a natural way rather than just dumping pins.
We want to encourage you to participate in the community in an organic way so it doesn’t feel overly self-promotional when you post your own pins.
Brian Donohue
Why Pinterest Communities Are Not Group Boards
So here’s the thing. Pinterest Communities sound a bit like Group boards and many will try to use them as such. But they are designed with a completely different focus in mind. For example, communities have a single-column layout. Whilst this makes communities mobile-friendly it also creates a thread-like style to the posts there. Perfect for conversations, right?
This also makes them terrible for just pinning your content to and leaving. I’ve seen communities who are already at 500+ members. Even if you limit to 1 pin per
Group boards are for collaborating on ideas with people that you know. Communities are meant to share pins, photos, ideas, or ask questions about topics with people that have the same interest as you on Pinterest.
Brian Donohue
If you think Pinterest Communities are the next new place to share your pins once a day. Then think again. Using communities this way is a waste of your time and the communities.
Do it the right way. Ask questions, start a discussion. If you know of a pin or content that can answer a question (even if it’s not yours) then share it. But don’t just share pins that don’t contribute to a discussion.
Pinterest Communities should be the place to find answers to questions. Who knows you might even find
Did you know? Using Alt text to write your Pinterest descriptions can be bad for your SEO. Learn how to write an embedded Pinterest description on your website without needing to use alt text!
How To Create Pinterest Communities
So, now that you know what communities are, how they are intended to be used and what you can do in them. You might be thinking that you want to create your own.
Once you’ve joined your first community. If you click the Community button or the ‘heart inside a speech bubble’ icon. It will take you to the Communities home page. In the top right should be a Create community button.
Click on it and a new screen will show that looks like this:
Add a cover image, which should be ideally 1440px wide.
Pick a name for your community. This will need to be unique and you should try to include at least one keyword.
Write a description for your community. Again try to include a few keywords but do not stuff them. You should also consider adding in some rules and be prepared to moderate and enforce them. Here’s what it might look like once done.
As a community owner, you can set rules, sticky posts. Invite, ban and promote users to moderators. It is also worth noting that there are no privacy settings for communities, so everyone can see the comments and content within them.
You should avoid creating too many communities. Some users decided to go a little crazy with creating Pinterest Communities only to find them deleted. Based on responses within the official Pinterest Communities threads, do not create more than 5 communities.
Pinterest Community Names
People are suggesting to get in and create Pinterest Communities for your niche asap. As community names have to be unique meaning early adopters could get the most niche names.
But this hype, you should take with a pinch of salt. Consider it this way. Is it really difficult to create a unique community name, of a few Pinterest SEO keywords and say your brand name? Just think of your Pinterest username. It is probably pretty unique and searchable, right?
Personally, I don’t think more unique names will stop duplicate content or communities either. You only have to look at the list I provided earlier to see there are already multiple communities on the same topic already.
What Pinterest Communities Could Mean For The Future Of Pinterest
Whilst still in the infant days, this new feature looks like a promising way to let Pinterest users build a community on the platform. Giving Pinterest a social aspect, it is currently missing. Whilst possibly keeping users on the platform even longer.
Communities could be an amazing way to engage, ask questions, learn and help others within specific niches you are interested in. But also, this feature could stay for good or go depending on what happens. It will be interesting to see how different communities decide to use this opportunity. I am hoping for meaningful discussions and not, yet another place people just see as a chance to share their content and vanish.
If you found this blog post useful then please consider taking a few seconds to share it on Pinterest!