On August 1st I started a group board.  I love group boards and a lot of my growth has come from posting to group boards.  I thought this would be a great way to build followers and repins.

I went to Tailwind to see which of my current group boards was having the most success.  It was clearly a craft board.

So I created Lets Craft!

Once the board was created, I posted it to the Facebook group that I started following a couple months ago.

I expected the requests to start flying in…they didn’t.  Apearantly people don’t want to join baby group boards.  And I don’t blame them.  Right now it is far from the glory of a good group board.  But I’m not giving up hope.  I think that it will continue to grow.  It just wont be as quickly as I had originally hoped.

If you want to get in on the ground floor of this group board, send us an email.  Include the email address that you use on Pinterest, and make sure that you are following Twitchetts on Pinterest.

Together, maybe we can make this baby board into at least a toddler by the end of September.

So hears a look at this months stats.

(All stats are based on our Pinterest sessions)

Page Views:  2432– Up 379 view since last month

Percent of Traffic:  36% – Up 12% since last month

New Subscribers:  17 – Down 6 since last month

Pinterest Followers:  1250– Up 61 from last monthMineCraft Swords: 1433 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

MineCraft Torches: 524 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

Toddler Snack Cookies: 281 re-pins. Original Post on April 8th

TMNT Activity Enter the HASHI: 272 re-pins. Original Post January 19, 2015

Upcycled Card Boxes: 180 re-pins. Original Post on November 24, 2014

I’m a little torn on this one.  I feel like the jury is still out.  I’ve seen amazingly successful Pinterest group boards, and our follower traffic went up.  However, the board is not progressing as quickly as I had hoped.  Stay tuned, I’ll keep you updated on whether or not creating a group board is actually worth it.

Make sure that you are subscribing to our emails, so you don’t miss out on our Pinterest updates!  I just tried something new and fun for August and I’m really excited to see if it pans out!

And feel free to follow us on Pinterest!  We’d love  to have you join us!

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This post contains affiliate links.  Don’t worry, we only link up to products that we love and we know you will love too!

The post The Pin Project – Are Pinterest Group Boards worth it? appeared first on Twitchetts.

Pinterest Strategy

I made 3 big changes with our strategy in June.

First, I signed up for Tailwind.  Tailwind is a web app that helps you schedule your pins.  Within five minutes of upgrading to the Plus level, I was in love.
~I can schedule all my post’s re-pins at one time.
~I can schedule my pins before a post goes live.
~I can easily track how many followers, re-pins, and referrals I have.
~Plus, their customer service is awesome.
I started with the free trial, but found that paying for the service opened up a huge amount of options.  It’s definitely an investment well worth the money.

Second, I found a Facebook group dedicated to Pinterest group boards.
This has been HUGE!  The group I found is called Pinterest Collaborative Boards.  When owners of a group board want to add more contributors, they post to the Facebook group.  Just leave a comment on their post, and they will send you an invite!  My group boards have over doubled since I joined this group.  This group only accepts bloggers, so make sure you have your blog listed the “About Me” section of your Facebook profile.

Third, I’m cleaning up my account.  I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ve been pinning for almost as long as Pinterest has been around.  I was a very early addict.  But all this pinning has made my boards a bit messy.  I’m working on deleting boards that I no longer need and deleting pins that I don’t want any more.  No word on how this will affect my traffic yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

So here are this month’s stats

(All stats are based on our Pinterest sessions)

Page Views:  1275 – Up 767 view since last month

Percent of Traffic:  35% – Up 17% since last month

New Subscribers:  4 – Up 1 since last month

Pinterest Followers:  1140 – Down 30 from last month

You may notice that our followers actually went down this month.  While I was cleaning up my boards, I deleted several that I no longer pin to.  One of them had quite a few followers.  We dropped by almost 100 followers.  But we’ve already gained most of them back…which is amazing on it’s own!

MineCraft Swords: 1161 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

MineCraft Torches: 352 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

TMNT Activity Enter the HASHI: 230 re-pins. Original Post January 19, 2015

Toddler Snack Cookies: 157 re-pins. Original Post on April 8th

Upcycled Card Boxes: 122 re-pins. Original Post on November 24, 2014

Tailwind.

I’m LOVING it!  Yes, it costs money…but it’s worth it.  Pinning at least 10 times a day and to multiple group boards was starting to become very tedious.  My spreadsheet just wasn’t cutting it anymore.  Plus, Saturday mornings are great pinning times, but are awful times for my schedule…I’m going to use it as my excuse for always burning pancakes.  Now I can schedule my pins for the best pinning times and never have to think about them again.  That alone is worth the money.  Adding that to all the perks I listed above definitely make us say “Love It!”  Now I have to come up with another excuse for burning pancakes!

Have you been trying to increase your Pinterest traffic?  What are some of the tools that have been successful for you?

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This post contains affiliate links.  Don’t worry, we only link up to products that we love and we know you will love too!

The post The Pin Project – Testing the Pinterest Waters appeared first on Twitchetts.

Back when Little Miss was baptized, I was still posting to Crafty Kate.  Writting about her baptism luncheon was one of my last posts, and I pinned the picture to my own personal Pinterest page.  That’s it.  Over the last 2 1/2 years, it has organically been repinned 118 times.

Because of this, we knew that Pinterest was going to be Twitchett’s biggest ally.

But we haven’t fully utilized it.  Yes, I do more now than I did in those Crafty Kate days, but there is still A LOT of room to grow.  We decided that this summer we would focus on building our Pinterest traffic and really learning how to best use this powerful free resource.

While we do this, we’re going to show you our progress.  Let you know what we’ve tried.  What’s working.  What’s not.

As of right now, here are some of our Pinterest stats.

(all stats are based on our Pinterest sessions)

Page Views: 508

Percent of Traffic: 18%

Percent of New viewers: 89%

New Subscribers: 3

Pinterest Followers: 1,170

Here are a few things we are currently doing to get our Pins out there.
~Timing out our Pins.  I use a spreadsheet to help me track when I pin and to which boards.  For each new post, I plan out the entire pinning schedule.  I try to pin it to about 5 boards during the first week of the post.  Then I pin it every Saturday afterwards until I run out of relevant boards.

****Update****  I can’t believe that I used to do it like this!!!!  Tailwind has saved me so much time.  You can try it for free, so check it out!

~Joining group boards. Lots of group boards have large followings. These can get your Pins in front of more eyes.  Plus the more group boards you’re pinning to, the longer the pinning schedule lasts. Just search Pinterest for group boards. When the results come up, change the type of search from “All Pins” to “Boards”. Then look for the group board icon in the top right corner of the board. Each board has different ways to join. Read the board’s description for instructions.

~Quality graphics. We are not professional photographers, but we take the time to make sure our pictures are clean, crisp, and have some sort of text overlay.
~Facebook Pin groups. When you post your pins in these groups, you have fellow bloggers helping you get your pins out there.

We really want to get our numbers up, so during June we’re trying some new ideas.

MineCraft Swords: 767 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

MineCraft Torches: 239 re-pins. Original Post on March 2, 2015

TMNT Activity Enter the HASHI: 202 re-pins. Original Post January 19, 2015

Toddler Snack Cookies: 106 re-pins. Original Post on April 8th

Upcycled Card Boxes: 85 re-pins. Original Post on November 24, 2014

Finding some quality group boards can be amazing to getting your Pins out there, but drop those group boards that have a low amount of re-pins. Look for boards with a lot of activity!!

Next month we’ll give you an update on our stats and share if any of our new experiments paid off!

What are some of the ways that you use Pinterest?  We would love to hear some of your tips!

This post contains affiliate links.  Don’t worry, we only link up to products that we love and we know you will love too!

The post The Pin Project ~ Making the Most from Pinterest appeared first on Twitchetts.