Well I would have thought this could be a lot simpler and more streamlined, and online help a tad more geared towards to non-thinkers like me; not in December 2013, so I am now going to supply here what I managed not to realize from my research.
A group board is just one of your own Pinterest boards that you allow friends to add pins to,
- you still have full control over the board,
- who is currently able to add pins to the board,
- and if those pins stay on your board,
and all these points are easily handled from the EDIT board button you find when you are logged in and viewing your board.
So it is a great way to do a bit of collaborative research or build a community project.
If the friends you want to invite to contribute aren’t already Pinterest users they need first to become Pinterest users, simple.
On your board EDIT button and pop up window there is the invite box, just type in their email address
- they receive an email invite from Pinterest, like this one
- they click on the button, and do their registration
- they get a confirmation email
- they get a third email
and towards the bottom, Pinterest happen to mention the Pin It button for the browser, which is a tool your contributors will find very handy!
which is all absolutely simple, but does not get them linked to your board to contribute!
So, OK, I deduce your friend and you have to ‘follow’ each other, so the easiest way seems to be to drop your friend into the nether regions of Pinterest to find your board, here is what I suggested
so from your log in, in the top left hand search box type canine collectibles courier AND choose the pinners button underneath, then do the search, that will bring up an icon and a follow button,
so from their log in, in the top left hand search box type the board owners Pinterest name in my case that was canine collectibles courier (it wasn’t case sensitive, and the name appears in the original email invite) AND choose the pinners button underneath, then do the search, that will bring up an icon and a follow button.
If there is no pinners button, pop the phrase/board owners name into the search box, and search and then the option buttons will appear underneath, the options being pins, boards, pinners; so now you can search by pinners (default search is for pins)
Now your friend is following you, in a few minutes you will have a new follower, so when that happens you will get a notification, new notifications appear as a digit/numeral on the top right hand side of your board pages (attached to your links to edit your account, boards, etc;)(the little pair of matching and inverted pins to the top far right), you need to now follow your friend too (a few clicks, you’ll soon get to the right ‘follow’ button)
BTW Pinterest will send you an email when someone new follows you if you have that set up (it is default) so you can click on the profile button there and activate your follow status that way.
And no, the new Pinterest users do not need to have any pins or any boards set up for you to follow them.
Back to your board, and click on the edit button, invite your friend by their Pinterest name to the board, Pinterest will search and find them, and add them to your board. (Now I see a Pinterest email will also be sent to them, more below)
However, not quite done yet!
Your contributor needs to activate/accept the invitation, again via their notifications it is a simple click, so I said to my contributor
on your Pinterest page on the top right hand side there is the button with the pin, your first name, and on the right another button-ette that will now have a number in it (it is usually two smaller pins, it seems to be a notification button), click on that, and you then click on the accept button for the board invitation
OR they can accept via a Pinterest email they will get
then you are nearly ready to rock!
To make it super simple to Pin, as not all websites have PinIt buttons on them, suggest your contributors download the PinIt thingy for their browser, there was a link in the third Pinterest email they received (see pic above) or for instructions for the major browsers go to https://help.pinterest.com/entries/22997343-Add-the-Pin-It-button; I added mine along time ago and recall it was really simple.
Now you and your contributors are ready to rock and roll and do fabulous group and community boards!
So to summarize to get non-Pinterest friends ready to contribute to a group/community Pinterest board
- invite with them with their email addresses via the edit board function
- let them register with Pinterest via the email invite
- get them to follow you, the user (send them off to find your Pinner id and then the follow button)
- you follow them (you can do that from your Pinterest notifications tab)
- you re-invite them, use your edit board tab, now under their Pinterest username to contribute to the board
- they accept your invite to contribute from their Pinterest notifications tab
- make sure they have installed the browser PinIt button to making pinning really simple