Your organization is on Pinterest. Now what?
You have some Pinboards, neatly categorized. You found a few people to follow through Facebook maybe. You’ve pinned a few dozen times, but you’re not really seeing the point of it all. Where do you go from here?
Pinterest isn't just for finding cute pictures of Ryan Gosling or for planning a wedding. There's a lot more than meets the eye, and a lot that your brand or business can do to integrate Pinterest into a social media strategy. Here area few tips to help get you started:
Find good pinners to inspire you. What are you interested in? Art, design, news, planning a wedding? It may take a little digging, but there are some really interesting tastemakers out there, for all styles and tastes.
Search. Search for your favorite bloggers, news organizations and websites. As Pinterest use grows, more and more of people are getting on there (4 million and counting) and it doesn’t hurt anything to look. Also, make sure to search for topics that interest you and in turn, find pins and users you like.
Find the source of pins you like and find out who others are following. When you see a pin you like, find out who originally posted it. If you like the general vibe of their boards, follow them. If you follow someone you really like, look at the list who they’re following, and if you like what you see, follow them.
Follow only individual boards. You don’t have to follow everything that a user pins, but rather you can opt to follow only a particular board. The ability to pick and choose boards means that you can filter out your feed into only topics you’re interested in.
Get pinning, get more followers. The more you pin, the more visible you become. The more often your pins show up in the public feed, the more likely other users are to find you and follow. Pinterest is time sensitive, meaning the most recent pins will show up first in search results.
Tag it. Make sure that you describe your pins and add hastags (#) or topic markers to the descriptions. This will help other users find your pins and find more of what you’re pinning.
Connect with Twitter or Facebook. Share your pins (but don’t go overboard) on other social networks. Feature your favorite pins every now and then to help your friends, coworkers, readers, fans – whoever – find you on Pinterest.
Feature top stories. Have a blog or a website? Create a board for your news and top stories. Cross pollinate your website’s stories and videos and share news with a whole new audience.
Showcase your work or items for sale. Post your professional portfolio. Share photos of store items. Pinterest is another great way to share your work and share links to your website or store. Prices can also be included to pins – check out the Gift tag.
Collaborate. Invite other users to collaborate on a pinboard with you. Invite fans or friends of your organization to share or submit pin ideas. Build community by pinning together.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a "virtual pinboard." A virtual mood board. It's a place where you can organize any and all interesting images you find on the web and find other cool images that other people have found. Though to the casual observer these “cool images” seem to be mainly in the cupcakes, chunky jewelry and cute guy department, there’s a whole lot more potential and lot more going on than just cute stuff.
It may still be on an “invite-only” basis, but it’s easy enough to get an invite from a friend, or simply request an invite from the site. You’ll typically get access in a couple of days.
Once you’re in, choose what interests you and create categories or boards where you can store images. Get the “Pin it” button on the browser(s) of your choice so that you can grab the images you want. Browse the web and “pin” an interesting image and write a little description. You can also categorize your pin with a hashtag (#) so that users searching for a specific topic can find your pin easier. Images are automatically linked back to the original source.
Other features
Each time you pin/post any other users who come across your pin can “like” or “repin” the post. Likes are a separate, unorganized category, while repins can be put on the board of your choice where you can add or change the description.
Users can comment on pins, though this feature does often seem to be under utilized.
You can also connect your Pinterest account to Twitter or Facebook and find friends to follow and tweet or post about your pin.
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