On April 4th, 2019, Pinterest decided to remove Communities from their list of offerings. Below is an email you’ll find from them announcing this change. 

Thank you so much for participating in Pinterest communities over the past months, sharing posts, ideas and conversations.

After testing communities and getting a lot of feedback from Pinners, we’ve decided to take the best parts of the feature and fold them into group boards. While the communities tab will be going away by the end of this week, communities will live on as group boards. You can share Pins with community members there. All your posts and conversations from communities will be transferred to your new group boards, too.

If you’ve never been a part of a group board before, don’t worry: They work just like your “normal” boards, with the added bonus of commenting and seeing the board’s most recent ideas in an activity feed.

The communities feature was designed to bring people together around shared interests, and provide a space to collaborate. It was so inspiring to see the mind-melding that happened there, and we’re excited to see that continue in group boards. Please email communities@pinterest.‌com with any questions or feedback about your experience.

I’m here today to talk about Pinterest communities. They’re still very new and when we have something new in the Pinterest world, we tend to go a little crazy over it. My Facebook group explodes with questions. Check out the Facebook group to look at all of the questions (and answers) about Pinterest communities and so much more.

I’ve asked Jennifer Priest to come back on the podcast today to share her thoughts on Pinterest communities. You may recall that she joined me on our episode all about hashtags. What I love about Jennifer is how she explores everything for the sake of her audience. She really digs in to explore how new things can become an effective part of her business.

 

What In The World Are Pinterest Communities?

Pinterest communities are brand new. Jennifer jokes that the best way to describe them is if a Facebook group and a Pinterest group board had a baby, it would be a community.

It’s a place for both discussion and pinning. It gives you the opportunity to discuss your pins more in-depth than you can in the comment section.

What Do We Do With Communities?

We’ve seen over time that people who started out really early on with Pinterest and Youtube now have huge followings. If you’ve felt like you need to catch up, or need to be an “early adopter” of something, communities might be just the ticket for you.

As an early adopter, you’ll be able to experiment to discover how this feature can be used to bolster your business. Keep in mind that the intention behind communities isn’t to promote a business, but to give people the opportunity to come together to chat around on a common topic.

But of course, as someone using Pinterest as a marketing platform, you’re going to talk about your products. Jennifer has a community centered around “best craft rooms”. Her hope is that those community members will go to her blog and purchase through her affiliate links ...