Many times when I am going through my feed or checking other websites for pictures, I find a stunning picture that I really like. The problem had been that I had no board to put it on. When Pinterest introduced the secret boards, they provided one solution to this problem. Secret boards can be a place to store photos with no home. Unfortunately secret boards are just that, secret. What is the point of using an image sharing social media if you are going to hide your favorite pictures. That is the reason I created the board “Photos I Like”. There is no intentional theme for this board other than great photography.
The board “Photos I Like” does only slightly better than average in attracting followers compared to all my other boards collectively. I guess that tells me that my taste is pretty middle of the road. The court of public opinion has ruled and reminded me that my favorites aren’t so special to anyone else.
None of the pictures on “Photos I LIke” have gone viral. Surprisingly some of my best performing pins of all time are rather poor quality photography. Content is definitely a big part of the equation when it comes to viral pins.
Another way I use secret boards is to start new boards. Many times creating a new board is a process and really begins with an idea or a concept. Quite often a new board morphs a lot as the process progresses. That’s why I like the first five to ten pictures of a new board to be added to a secret board. By doing this the pictures don’t go in the feed of your followers. If you do make major changes everyone doesn’t have to see it in their feed.
The feed issue is something you should be aware of. When you convert your new board from secret to public nothing goes in your followers feed. If you are like me you tend to put some of your favorite pictures on your boards first and no one will see them unless they dig through your new board. That is why the original pins on new boards don’t get the likes or repins you might expect when you use the secret board method.
Here’s how you deal with that problem. After you make your board public, repin all the original pins one or two at a time before you start adding new pins. This does a couple of things. First it puts your pictures in your followers feed so they get noticed. Secondly by repinning only a couple at a time you don’t overwhelm your followers with an avalanche of similar photos. After you repin a picture delete the first image you put on the board when it was still a secret board. This eliminates duplicate images.
Here is another use for secret boards. Many times when I am looking for images for my boards, I come across a ton of great pictures that are similar on one website. Before there were secret boards you had two options. The first option was to pin a whole bunch of similar images and bombard your followers with pictures in their feed. The other option is to pin a few of the great images and hope you can remember where you found them next time you are out looking. I always forgot where I found images so I was real happy to the see the secret board feature on Pinterest. I use the secret boards to store all the extra images I want to use later. Now I don’t have to remember where they are. One of my secret boards is a community board with my family. If they find an image that would fit one of my boards, they use the secret board to share the image with me.
I hope these tips have been helpful. Pin away! If I can attract a large following, you can too!
Here are a few more of the Photos I Like:
