How to Use Boardbooster Tribes to Promote your Blog

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UPDATE June 25, 2018:  As of June 27th, 2018, Boardbooster will no longer be in operation. If you are looking for Pinterest management tools, please consider using Tailwind instead.

Writing a blog can be a true joy. But what’s the point in writing it if no one can find it to read it? There are many ways to promote your blog, and I’m really excited to tell you about a new one. It’s a Pinterest tool called Boardbooster. You may be familiar with Boardbooster already, but they have recently added the ability to create Tribes.

Why am I excited about Boardbooster Tribes?

I’m excited about Boardbooster Tribes for a handful of reasons. The first is that Pinterest is one of my favorite search engines.  That’s right, I just called Pinterest a search engine. And it truly is. I can search for anything I need to learn how to do, what I’m entertained by, or what I’d like to shop for on Pinterest. I can search for these things on Pinterest just like I can on Google or any other search engine.

I’m also excited about Boardbooster Tribes because I’m a big fan of treating some social media like a crock pot. I enjoy having some elements that I can set and forget. That’s not to say that I don’t need to check in on things and respond to what’s going on, but at least I can do the bulk of the work in one go, and not have to worry about it every single day.

I like treating some #socialmedia like a crock pot. Who doesn’t want to set it and forget about it for a while?

What is Boardbooster?

Boardbooster is an automation tool to share your pins on Pinterest. In fact, it’s a lot like a crock pot. I set it up to share my pins, and it does a lot of work for me. I still pin manually on a regular basis, but this does a lot of my promotion work for me.

Boardbooster does a great job at doing a lot of my daily Pinterest promotion for me.

Pinterest is one of my greatest sources of traffic to The Awesome Muse. I’m already using Boardbooster to promote my pins every day. The way I use it now is to set up my pins to circulate across my own boards as well as the group boards that I’m part of at specific intervals.

Part of having an effective Pinterest strategy involves:

1.  Recirculating your own pins across your personal and group boards.
2.  Sharing popular pins created by others.

You can do this manually, which is time-consuming as you need to do this daily. Or, you can use a tool to do it for you. There are two tools that do a good job at this, Boardbooster and Tailwind. Today, we’re talking about Boardbooster.

Boardbooster has a few different features where you can loop your personal pins on an automated schedule.  You can set up Boardbooster to also pull pins from others boards to share to your own boards as well. This is great since sharing others pins is good for your own strategy, and it is a requirement of most group boards. When you pin a pin of your own, you are expected to repin a pin another one to keep the board active.

Boardbooster Tribes makes reciprocal pinning easy

Being able to automate your reciprocal pins sounds easy, right? Well, it is. But sadly, most people don’t take the time to set that up. And believe me, a lot of people really don’t take the time to do their group board reciprocation manually.

You could be sharing others pins, but they could be sitting back enjoying being pinned without returning the favor. And that’s where Tribes comes in.

Boardbooster Tribes solves the problem of people not reciprocating shares on Pinterest group boards. It simplifies your sharing and guarantees that other members will share your pins too! Let’s talk about how this works.

How to use Boardbooster Tribes

First of all, to use Boardbooster Tribes, you need a Boardbooster account. If you’re already using them, fantastic! If not, I would like to give you 100 pins as a free trial when you sign up. There’s no obligation, and Boardbooster is a bargain considering how much time it saves. Plans start at only $5 a month, so it’s one of the most affordable scheduling tools out there. And it saves me at least 10-15 hours a month of work. If you only sign up with Boardbooster to give it a go to join one of my tribes, that will get you almost 2 months of daily promotion for free.

I’d like to give you a gift! Try 100 #Boardbooster pins on me. Find out how.

There are two ways to take part in Tribes. The first way is to join someone else’s tribe.  The second way is to create a tribe of your own. In either case, what you can expect is:

• If the Tribe is private, you will need an invitation from an existing member.
• If the Tribe is public, you may search on Boardbooster for tribes in your niche. From the tribes page in Boardbooster, there is a “Join Tribes” button that will take you to a table of available public tribes for your consideration.
• The Tribe may be open to anyone, or it may be set up where the members will vote to accept you into the Tribe.
• There will be a set of rules that determines how many pins you can add to the tribe.
• There may be guidelines about the Tribe’s topic, what type of pins are accepted, whether or not you may link to affiliate links or sales pages. Some Tribes may require you to be part of a certain group, or follow the Tribe’s founder on Pinterest.

Selecting your boards

Once you are part of the Tribe, you will need to set up which boards you wish for your pins to go to. You want to choose boards that are relevant to the topic. For example, if your Tribe is about blogging, you don’t want to pin to a board about food. You may wish to post to a handful of boards to keep the pins in a good rotation.

You will also want to adjust the pinning frequency. For example, if you only have one board related to that topic, and you are required to pin two pins per day, you’ll need to select the option for pinning 2 pins per day.  However, if you have several boards related to the topic, you can choose a less frequent option so that you are spreading the pins around your boards. This can help visibility since some Pinterest users may follow specific boards rather than all of your boards.

You’ll also want to select the time of day you wish to pin. Evening time is a popular time for people to be on Pinterest, so if you aren’t sure what time your audience is most likely to be on Pinterest, that’s a great time to set your schedule.

How to be a good tribe member

Being part of a tribe is a privilege, and you don’t want to be voted off the island. When you ask to join a tribe, you will want to do a few things in a timely manner:

1. Add some pins. You don’t have to add the full number of pins the tribe allows, but at least add a few. This is also helpful if the tribe is still small. When you add your pins right away, they will likely be approved more quickly as fewer members will need to vote yes on your pins for them to be shared. Some tribes do not require voting on members or pins, so you definitely want to be in the habit of adding your pins quickly so that they can be shared as soon as possible.
2. Set up your boards and pinning frequency when you request to join a public tribe or receive your invitation to a private tribe. The tribe will want to see your intent to pin.
3. Establish your pinning schedule. There will be a default schedule in place, so if your audience uses Pinterest at other times, be sure to change it.
4. Save any changes you have made.
5. If the tribe requires voting on members and / or pins, be sure to vote.

Using #Boardbooster tribes is easy! Learn how in this handy #tutorial.

Adding value to the tribe

At the end of the day, you want to add value. While it’s not something that you have to check in on daily, it’s a crock pot strategy remember, you do want to check in. Your tribes page on Boardbooster will tell you if you need to vote on something in a specific tribe. It only takes a few moments to do so.

That said, I have seen tribes vote people off the island for not doing these things. When you ask to be part of a tribe and don’t add any pins or do any voting, what you’re doing is making it harder for the active members to get their pins shared. The reason for this is that tribes with voting requirements need half the members to vote on new members and new pins before they are approved. So if you’re in the tribe and not doing anything, you’re holding everyone else back. Don’t be that person. This is about collaboration.

Adding Pins to your Boardbooster Tribe

Now that you’re all set up, it’s time to add some pins. To do so, you simply click the upload button next to My pins. This will open a window with a text box where you can paste the urls to the relevant pins. You’ll add one pin per line and then select upload.

That’s it! You may upload as many pins as you like up to the maximum allowed per the Tribe’s rules.

If your Tribe has opted to vote on which pins will be allowed into the Tribe, you’ll need to wait for this approval. It’s all very democratic. I like having the pins voted on as that way you’re certain that the pins you will be sharing are high quality and on topic.

What happens now?

If the Tribe is new, and many will be as this is a new feature, you’ll see your pins start to trickle out as other members are added to the Tribe. On your end, once you’re set up, you will see pins from the Tribe posting to your boards on a daily basis. It’s that simple.

It’s not totally hands off, but like a crock pot, you can do most of the work at the beginning, and then check in from time to time to see how it’s doing. You’ll want to check the tribe to see if you need to vote on new members or pins from time to time. As you add more boards and create more pins, you may also wish to make adjustments to where and what you are sharing.

If you have more pins on the tribe’s subject than the tribe allows you to post, you can rotate your pins. To do so, all you do is remove a pin and upload a new pin to replace it. Be mindful that the tribe may need to vote on your new pins, so if you want to continue to be pinned while you await the votes on your new pins, you may only want to swap a couple of pins at a time.

How does Boardbooster’s Tribes differ from Tailwind Tribes?

The difference between Boardbooster Tribes and Tailwind Tribes that matters to me comes down to one thing — guaranteed reciprocation. If you’re frustrated with doing your part to share others’ pins who don’t share yours as often as you would like, or even at all, you’ll love it. Or if the members of your Tailwind Tribes are sharing from their tribe’s pins, but they aren’t sharing your pins as often as you would like? You’ll love Boardbooster’s Tribes. Again, you’ll be shared every day, by different tribe members.

How do #Boardbooster tribes differ from #Tailwind tribes?

The number of your pins shared daily will be determined by the person who founded the tribe. So you can count on your pins going out across your tribe that often each day.

And for those of you who need to keep your budget low, the entry-level package to use Boardbooster regularly is less costly each month than Tailwind. Tailwind has a lot of great features that I love, and it’s a strong tool that I also recommend – in fact, the two tools work beautifully together,  but for this particular feature, Boardbooster is winning the battle of the Tribes.

Update: On November 1, 2017, Tailwind changed their policy regarding Tailwind Tribes. You are now limited to how many tribes you can join and how many pins you can pin each month. Boardbooster’s Tribes are currently more affordable.

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