What happens if you are featured in Pinterest's emails.

I've been featured twice, once on a group board I started with some others on a gardening group I'm on. The second was recently, another gardening board, this one about containers. Today I'll be talking about what to expect if your board is featured on Pinterest.

The first time this happened I didn't know until someone who had the email told me, I had mine turned off in settings. I noticed people following me in groups of fifty...lol I had no idea that that's how Pinterest grouped large numbers of followers was in fifty. a little over 8,000 people followed my board or me completely during that which felt huge to someone who only had just reached 256. People repinned, liked and commented on my boards at an insane rate.

This is a screenshot of my group board title. The rules I put up are simple and keeping my group small means it's easier to keep spam out.
Spam is unrelated pins, whether by accident or on purpose. There may be some seemingly unrelated pins but a yard is someone's grass garden and I have pinned pet safe pins loosely related to plants or edibles along with advice on how to keep pets safe.

Trolls attacked...Trolls are people who bring negativity to comments and rile people up. They say things they know will upset others into replying and starting full blow arguments. Just remember that these people are just doing it for attention. The best form of action is to ignore them if you can, if it's too upsetting most social sites are set up to flag or report comments and are usually anonymous so they can't find out who tattled.

I have slain a few trolls, aka I've deleted comments on my pins. To do so you will find an x on the right side of the comment if you are on browser. On my android powered tablet I was using at the time, I was able to hold down on the icon and delete the awful comments and arguments that were never ending. Once I cut them out they didn't start up again. A pop up will appear asking if you want to delete it so it's not instant, you can test on one of your pins by putting a 'test' comment to delete. This works well if you're working on a tablet and it prematurely comments while you're typing or you find a word you spelled wrong.

Besides troll comments you will get a lot of ones with very few words that need no comments back. There will also be questions, some of them with painfully obvious answers right in the link the pin is connected to but many don't look so you can politely say it's answered in the pin or answer it yourself if you can. I have had several people ask me how I did this or that and I'm thinking "do they not realize I pinned this from someone else?" but I do realize that some people could have written this, scrolled down and realized that it wasn't the original pin but a repin but have no idea how to delete their own comment before the owner of that specific pin reads it.

If you can't answer a question and pinned the pin for another reason, like you loved the picture or the idea but not the process, you can answer with "I don't know, this is an inspiration pin" or "I just pinned this because I'm going to make something similar to this part of it." There is nothing wrong with why you pinned a certain pin even if it wasn't for the link itself. I've pinned many things because I liked the look only to have to check out the link after someone asked a question about it.

Stolen boards...ah now this is where things get tricky. Before 'Gardening with pets' was featured I hadn't been able to find any in the search engine. I wanted something unique. Afterward I discovered many with the same name, even started up with pins from my board. Yes I know that it can sting, people copying your board that you worked so hard on but when I made this board it was to keep pets safe and to help gardeners. Of course the name part sucked but they never stole my whole board, they can't steal the person making it and take the brain behind the collection of pins. I decided to think of it as flattery, they loved my board so much they wanted it on their page and after that it didn't bother me so much, sting yes but bothered not much and after a while you forget about it.

This is a screenshot of my first featured board, The first group board. It was created with the idea of being a group board.

Notifications, expect these to skyrocket, you won't be able to keep up with them even when watching all day long. (I confess that I tried this and failed miserably. If your email doesn't notify you that you have people repinning your pins and commenting I suggest you turn these on for the time you are featured because comments will be lost.) You can go into settings and scroll down to email to change it how you like, how many times a day you want notified. I chose once, i get my email at night. Comments come separately and makes it easier to get to than sifting through all the notifications still flying by.

Disclaimer; your experience may not match up with mine completely. There are too many variables to tell what kind of featured board experience you will have if you get featured in the email. Everything from number of pins to originality to how many pinners are on the board are different for everyone. Even my second experience with being featured was not the same as the first nor did I get as many followers. See my next post for more information on my featured experience.