SOMETHING JUST FOR YOU

2019-08-13T14:13:00.000-05:00

5 ways to benefit from Pinterest.

2019-08-12T19:22:00.000-05:00

Pinterest is the newest social media phenomena, as it now attracts more new online traffic than most of the other social media web sites combined. At Pinterest, users can post (or "pin") pictures of various items grouped by category, much like a online photo album or scrapbook. The groups of pictures, which can originate from any web site, blog or social media site, are called "pin boards" and are shared with other Pinterest users. Pinterest allows users to connect by giving an option to "follow" each other, and "like" or "re-pin" other's pictures.

The Pinterest interface has changed several times since its inception in March 2010. Pinterest is now attempting to get more "social" by encouraging more connection between users. Slowly, the Pinterest programmers are incorporating elements into their platform that are popular at other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

As much fun and as addictive as Pinterest can be, the format can surely be improved. Here are five suggestions to improve Pinterest. Most of the suggestions simply transfer other popular elements from other social media sites to the Pinterest platform.

First, Pinterest users should have more creative options to customize the home page. You should have the ability to change background wallpaper, themes, colors, fonts, etc. as part of the Pinterest experience. One of the most addictive features of Pinterest is the creative outlet that it offers. Web sites are constantly looking for ways to keep users at the site longer, and Pinterest should consider creative options to customize the home page to help achieve that.

Second, users should have more control over the arrangement and display of pins and pin boards. Limited control is offered currently (rearranging the order of pin boards on a user home page, for instance), but more options would greatly enhance the experience. You should be able to group and categorize pin boards, rather than just have them all displayed side by side. Also, there should be the option to keep some pin boards private. You would pin more pictures of family and friends if there was a private option for pin boards. With the most recent format change, now each pin board has a "featured image" that is larger than the other pins on the board. Currently, this image is the last image pinned, whereas it would be better to have users choose which pin is used as featured image.

Third, users should be able to follow pin boards as well as people. Currently, if you see a pin board of "Favorite Places to Visit in New York" and want to follow updates on that board, you have to follow that user and all of her boards, or follow the board and not be able to refer back to it. You should be able to just follow that one pin board if you want, and be able to refer back for updates.

Fourth, where is the messaging? Again, if Pinterest wants users to spend more time at the site, direct messaging between others that you follow needs to be offered. Public comments can be left for the user for a less personal level of connection, but perhaps there's a question or comment that you don't want to post publicly. You should be able to direct message that user privately.

Fifth, improve the comments section, likes and re-pins. Currently, when other users comment on a pin, the comments are listed and scroll below the image. Extensive commenting can cause a long scroll, so collapsing the comments would surely improve the aesthetics of the home page display. A familiar tiny plus/minus toggle next to the word "Comments" would allow you to expand them to read, and then collapse them again to conserve screen space. Also, you should be able to hover your mouse arrow over the word "likes" and "re-pins" on each image and be able to see names, Currently, it's a challenge to figure out who's following you, and who has liked or re-pinned your images.

Pinterest: A Powerful Social Media

2012-08-18T11:30:00.000-05:00

Marketing analysts saw greater opportunities on the new social site called Pinterest. With more than 10.4 million users, 88.3 minutes spending time and 2 to 3 times more engaging compared to other sites, Pinterest is indeed an emerging powerful social media.

Besides sharing photos and videos, Pinterest can also tell the story of a business or brand and share more information through interacting and repinning. However, to fully experience the marketing advantages of Pinterest, managing any account or page must be done on a daily basis.

The pinboard owner must be observant and analyze how customers can interact with the content especially when it's about business. Good thing there are various Pinterest tools available to ensure that a business' Pinterest account will be influential, effective and updated regularly. Below are a few useful tools.

"Pinerly"

Pinerly is the easiest way to increase exposure. Though currently in a beta testing stage and can only be accessed by invitation, it is helpful in many ways. It can follow pinners by helping a user find and follow pinners that have similar interests as them. It can also unfollow a group of pinners.

In addition, it helps users view popular pins and get inspired by those pins. It can also help schedule pins by timing posts keeping the followers interested and updated regularly. Lastly, it can help a user know and understand how effective and influential the site is.

"PinPuff"

One of the best Pinterest tools is PinPuff. This is a new site that is designed to accurately measure the influence and reach of a certain Pinterest account. It also helps users to track pinning activities regularly and suggest tips to get a maximum advantage of Pinterest. Moreover, it helps businesses by analyzing, creating and managing marketing-related activities. Lastly, PinPuff is completely free.

PinReach

PinReach, formerly PinClout is a fresh new analytics tool that measures the impact and pinning activity. It uses a so-called PinReach score or a numeric representation of the influence and impact of a Pinterest account.

"Url2pin"

Url2pin is a free tool that helps share various websites on Pinterest. It can share a website's screenshot that uploads to the Pinterest account.

To easily update a Pinterest account, Google Chrome has an extension called Pint It! that allows pinning posts using the shortcut. Another extension is from FireFox. It has a so-called Quick Pinterest used for easier pinning. Moreover, there is an application for an even quicker way to pin called "Easypinner" for Pinterest.

Apple App

With the demands of updating social network sites while on the go, a Pinterest app on iPhone and iPad is available. It allows users to like, re-pin and pin photos or videos anywhere.

The above Pinterest tools are only a few of the things one can use to achieve an influential Pinterest account. However, there are other essential elements that need to be considered. Apart from the tools, users should also post good content that customers, followers and random users will be interested in. Remember the more interaction a site gets the more influence it can obtain.

Please comment below or email me.

The Pinterest Traffic Blueprint

2012-08-13T10:08:00.000-05:00

Social media marketing alterations on a regular basis and it can be a challenge with regard to small enterprises to keep up. You've got a Facebook web page? Examine. Your current twitter give food to can be frequently updated? Check out. Properly the following is something more important to hold you distract : Pinterest.

The problem together with technology altering therefore rapidly is basically that you do not invariably determine what horse in order to back again. Maybe you have lost your hard earned dollars Pinterest Traffic Blueprint getting your Myspace . com web site custom-designed, to find all your prospective customers get transferred on to Facebook or myspace. Then when a person find about a brand new social websites expertise, you happen to be right to stop and contemplate, really need I always be stressing using this type of? Therefore, should you be bothering to make use of Pinterest?

Pinterest (poems using curiosity) is an on the internet electronic pinboard. Goods that you stick on the pinboard or even deep freeze in the home, you'll be able to remain on Pinterest. I'm not really speaking about certificates saying 'Buy Milk' * much more beautiful/interesting/inspiring products. Had you been getting married and came across a better plan with regard to flowers you could stay that will Pinterest Traffic Blueprint on the spot, or maybe probably you're a fashionista, you can utilize Pinterest to show a new high-heeled shoe you adore.

When people 'pin' these types of images on Pinterest, others will be able to opinion. While a person remain up the wedding blossom design you think will make your vision appear fantastic, the ordinary can give their own recommendations, along with suggest alternate options.

If at all possible, buyers link via their particular green for the source, so high heeled shoe ought to link to send out webpage, or the type blog page you found it on, though not everyone creates this change.

Profiles about Pinterest Traffic Blueprint could be open public or personal, and individuals can adhere to other's boards. All this can be successfully great, will be spontaneous in order to understand spherical, which is filled with awesome youngsters publishing stuff additional trendy everyone has created. Yet do you require that?

One thing you'll notice whenever you check out Pinterest.net would it be is actually visually beautiful. The site offers photographs of gorgeous food, outfits, buildings as well as anything else that is attractive to the eye. It's really a quite visible social network web site, that need to provide you with a solid idea of what type of organization may well reap the benefits of a presence in Pinterest.

Pleasantly eye-catching products will continue to work effectively about Pinterest. In case you are within an artistic area of interest, it can be worth looking into promoting your merchandise via the website. Definitely anybody who provides a support for your marriage ceremony industry has to check into it - wedding brides seeking to program their special day appear to be large customers in the service continuing. The principal customers associated with Pinterest Traffic Blueprint review in the instant are women aged 25-44.

If you present by means of amazon or even Etsy you then must be checking out what Pinterest Traffic Blueprint review could accomplish for you personally. Without a doubt Etsy not too long ago added a new 'Pin It i switch on their rankings, allowing people for you to effortlessly talk about their goods in the social media.

If yo happen to happen to be an accountant los angeles, solicitor and other qualified expert that's offering a new specialized service, you might not identify most of curiosity for you personally appropriately. Target instead about caring for your LinkedIn account.

Should you experience Pinterest Traffic Blueprint review might be of curiosity to you, then a following dilemma is how can you use it in order to Public relations your company? Pinterest is really an online community site, thus as opposed to right advertising and marketing your product or service, the actual focus should be about encouraging individuals to discuss your products. Primary promoting of the goods will not go down nicely and does not http://www.pinteresttrafficblueprint.net enhance your brand name.

If you're delivering build goods or even apparel, it will be straight-forward. Motivate your customers in order to pin number the products by means of your own optin list or perhaps Fb bank account, and take into consideration which includes stick to along with 'Pin It' buttons for a benefits alongside the various other social networking links. This can be done by using the actual directions around the Pinterest website.

Another sectors will need to be a bit more unique concerning marketing many. In the event you chance a coffee shop as well as food caterer you could reveal several tested recipes upon Pinterest. Make certain that you do have a great, tempting photograph of the recipe, article the menu on your own internet site and give a Flag This switch. Ideally consumers will certainly pin the particular picture on the site while others may simply click to your web site.

Make sure you remember - the main element in order to getting good results on Pinterest, along with reaching the high visitors homepage, is usually to will have interesting photographs. Keep your images tend to be first-rate and you may thrive.

Any issue to suit your needs is that you simply can't seem to very easily join Pinterest during producing this information * it is not open to the population. The quickest way to get onto it is usually to question a pal who's on websites for an invite. Or even you need to require an invite coming from Pinterest and simply delay with consideration from the laptop or computer.

Finally, innovative everyone has to possess a take a look at Pinterest. Have an request Pinterest Traffic Blueprint review nowadays where you can experiment to determine whether or not this is wonderful for your corporation. It's definitely going growing in reputation inside the arriving a few months, so Pinterest Traffic Blueprint by getting on the website nice and first you could with some good fortune find a way to take a new march on your levels of competition as well as expand a name on the website-http://www.pinteresttrafficblueprint.net.

Please comment below or email me.

Introducing a new social media: Pinterest.

2012-07-15T19:15:00.000-05:00

Pinterest - The new social media hype!

Pinterest is a relatively new social network website that allows you to post inspiring pictures and share them with other people. Pinterest means 'pinning' your 'interests', simple as that! The result is stunning, both visually and concept wise. Pinterest has already entered the top ten of social networks. If you haven't heard of it yet, you soon will.

Here's how it works.

Pinterest is divided into several topic boards on which you can post your inspirations. Most of them are photography or digital design. This way you can easily connect with people who share the same interests. Simple ideas are often the best!

A couple of things to get you going.

Pinterest is still open to invited people only. You can request an invite on the site and you should receive an invitation soon. Then it's just a matter of pinning what you find interesting. You can pin images from other websites or upload images. Once it is pinned, it can be shared by other users. If you see something of interest, just repin it and share it with your own friends. Take it one step further and check the board where it originally was pinned and there's a good chance you'll find a lot of common interesting stuff.

Can Pinterest boost your business?

Yes it can! Important to any business is to be unique, to try something different. Why would anyone choose your product or service if you don't stand out from the rest? That's something to keep in mind every step of the way. How can this be applied to Pinterest? Well, if you have a product of which you think it's quite exceptional, something people will like, then it's a no-brainer

Just pin an awesome photograph on Pinterest and soon people will start liking and repinning! That's half the job done! As we all know it's very important for SEO purposes to get links to your site. So when you pin your product, don't upload it from your computer but pin it from your website. Before you know it your website and product will be repinned, liked and tweeted. Your SEO ranking as well as your social media engagement will increase and your brand awareness will be stimulated.

Be aware that not all types of companies apply for this approach. If you check out Pinterest you'll soon notice that it's got lots to do with art, design, photography, home decoration, fashion, recipes etc.

So if you sell tractors or insect repellent, you just might not fit.

Another tip I can give you is to not be too self-centered. Don't be afraid to post up tips and trends in your business and avoid only posting about yourself or your own products. When applying marketing strategies it's important to put yourself in your customers' shoes. Your potential customers are only concerned about "what's in it for me?" and they don't care about you and certainly not you promoting yourself. Just be creative and dare to be different.

How Pinterest changed webdesign.

Being different is certainly something Pinterest had in mind. If you look the vast majority of social network websites you'll notice that they all have pretty much the same structure. Pinterest totally differs in many ways and that makes it very exciting and (p)interesting for geek webdesigners like me. Even tough the designers of Pinterest did not do anything that can't be done by others, they did it in such a professional and profound way that it makes users true addicts. The site combines design elements, bright colors, beautiful pictures, eye catching content, typography and most of all user interactivity in one very well designed page. It creates well designed structure out of chaos!

The site doesn't use traditional web building blocks. "It's almost like a window-shopping mode," says Khoi Vinh, the former design director for NYTimes.com. Pinterest is made out of little blocks that can be organized by users. They can be considered as mini websites that can be repinned, liked or commented at. Also very appealing is the fact that every time you visit Pinterest the content will look totally different and awesome once again, inviting you to keep clicking and pinning and drawing you back time after time.

Create your own Pinterest web design.

Check out the jQuery Masonry plugin to create a vertical layout like Pinterest and go nuts!

Jump on the train and experience the wonderful,rich and colorful world of Pinterest!

Please comment below or email me.

What is Pinterest?

2012-07-15T17:56:00.001-05:00

What is Pinterest? Many individuals have not heard of this two- year old social bookmarking site and they are missing out on how Pinterest can benefit their business. The concept of Pinterest is relatively simple. Each user is able to create an online bulletin board, referred to as "pinboards". Users then collect and share items that they find on the web that they like. These items are then put into various categories. These categories include just about anything from food, interior design, wedding inspiration, and tech gadgets. There are categories for just about anything imaginable. As this site gains traction and becomes more popular, how does this affect businesses?

The items that are shared on Pinterest drive traffic to where those images originated. For example, if Sue really likes a specific cake topper for a wedding cake, she will post that image on her "pinboard". Her friend Jane happens to be getting married within the next year and she stumbles upon the wedding cake topper that Sue posted. She clicks on this and it takes her to where she can purchase the item. Therefore, Pinterest provides virtually free advertising for businesses and increases a businesses natural circle of influence many times over. How else can Pinterest benefit your SEO and work for your business?

Pin It Buttons: Pin It buttons are one of two widgets offered by Pinterest. You embed this widget into your web content. Your website viewers can then click on your Pin It widget and post your information on their "pinboard". This is great word of mouth advertising. The other widget is a "Follow me on Pinterest" button. This widget allows you to send your collections on your "pinboard" to others.

Backlink Building: Due to the size of Pinterest, it is indexed on a constant basis by search engines. This means that the more items that are posted on peoples boards that link back to your website, the more traffic your site will receive.

Branding: Business should create a Pinterest accounts for their specific brands. Use all of the images that are associated with your brand, such as your logo and profile pictures. When you are done adding images that are associated with your brand, you have virtually created a catalogue that can be shared.

Keyword Strategy: Google indexes individual boards on Pinterest. This makes the copy you use on your "pinboard" extremely important. Use the same keyword strategy you would use in your other efforts with Pinterest.

Pinterest has become extremely popular over the last two years. Their growth doesn't appear to be slowing down. As a business, one should consider Pinterest almost as important as a blog, Facebook and Twitter. The combination of using all of these social platforms will increase visibility which increases visits to your website. This increase will generate sales, which is the main reason for any business engaging in online platforms for marketing purposes.

Please comment below or email me.

How to take advantage of Pinterest to promote your business?

2012-07-15T17:44:00.000-05:00

Social media alterations on a regular basis might be difficult to get small business owners to maintain. Youve got a Facebook or twitter page? Assess. Your youtube feed is definitely regularly up to date? Check. Well heres something diffrent to keep you distract - Pinterest.

The matter with technological know-how changing therefore swiftly is basically that you do not always determine what horse to be able to back. Youll have wasted your hard earned money getting your Twitter site custom-designed, to find all your prospective buyers have changed onto Myspace. So when one read about a new social media knowledge, youre directly to pause and determine, ought I personally be thinking with this? Thus, should you be annoying to use Pinterest?

Pinterest (poems with attraction) is an on line virtual pinboard. Things that you keep on your pinboard or possibly freezer in your own home, you are able to cling on Pinterest. I am not saying really talking about a piece of paper documenting Buy Milk - more beautiful/interesting/inspiring stuff. If you were getting married and came across the best idea for flowers you might stay that on the website, or if quite possibly youre a fashionista, you can utilize Pinterest to show the high-heeled shoe you cherish.

Whenever persons pin these snap shots on Pinterest, other people will be able to feedback. So when a person stick up the wedding increased by design you suspect will make up your eyes look great, your bridal party can give the suggestions, and even suggest other options.

Ideally, shoppers link by their flag to the source, so high heeled shoes ought to link to the companys webpage, or the model blog page a person found it with, though few people does this.

Single profiles on Pinterest may well be public as well as private, and people can comply with other peoples decks. All this is certainly visually great, is spontaneous to navigate round, it is filled with nice youngsters publishing stuff various other fashionable persons have made. But do you need the application?

The first thing youll notice when you stop by Pinterest.com would it be is beautifully stunning. The site has shots of beautiful food, clothes, architecture and the rest thats pleasing to the total eye. Its really a highly visual facebook and myspace website, which unfortunately ought to provide an idea of what are the business could possibly benefit from a name on Pinterest.

Visually eye-catching merchandise is fine well with Pinterest. If youre within an artistic sector, its worthwhile investigating advertising and marketing your merchandise through the site. Certainly anyone who comes with a service for the wedding trade needs to research it -- brides hoping to plan ones own special day appear to be big purchasers of the company in its early stages. The initial users involving Pinterest at the instant are a lot of women aged 25-44.

If you supply by means of eBay or possibly Etsy then you definitely must be investigating everything that Pinterest could carry out for you. Really Etsy recently additional a Pin It i button therefore to their item listings, providing members in order to effortlessly show their items inside the social network.

If however, you happen to be an accountant, solicitor or another skilled expert who is giving a tailor-made service, payday advance identify a lot of interest for you personally professionally. Target instead concerning working on your LinkedIn information.

Should you feel Pinterest may be of interest to you, than the next issue how may you utilize it to Page rank your business? Pinterest is really a social network webpage, thus rather then directly promotion your products, an emphasis should really be on pushing visitors to promote your solutions. Direct promoting of your solutions wont head on down well and does not boost your product.

Should you be presenting craft objects or clothing, it will be straight-forward. Really encourage your customers in order to pin your own items by your optin list or Youtube account, together with think about as well as follow and even Pin It buttons to your outcome next to an individuals other web 2 . 0 buttons. This can be accomplished by following all the instructions around the Pinterest website.

A few other industries has to be a little more authentic about encouraging their products. When you operate an eaterie or food caterer you might present some excellent recipes on Pinterest. Be certain that youve got a decent, enticing shoot of the plate, post all the recipe by yourself website and also add a Pin number It press button. Hopefully people will code the chance on the site among others may just click through to a web site.

Dont forget ( space ) the key to being successful in Pinterest, and making it to the high visitors homepage, should be to always have captivating photos. Maintain your visuals are first-rate and you will live.

A possible concern for you is basically are unable to easily join Pinterest whilst producing the next few paragraphs - its not at all open to the population. The fastest way to get onto it will be to ask a colleague who is on the spot for an invitation. If not its best to ask for an invite from Pinterest and only wait with patience by the computer.

To conclude, creative people have to use a look at Pinterest. Receive an invite today and have a manipulate to see whether or not this will work for your company. Its definitely going to grow in popularity throughout the coming many weeks, so by getting on the website nice early chances are youll with a little lady luck manage to swipe a next month on your level of competition and raise a presence over the internet.

Please comment below or email me.

How can affiliate marketers benefit from Pinterest?

2012-07-15T17:30:00.001-05:00

Had you joined Facebook as an affiliate marketer when it first began, imagine where you could be today! Wouldn't it be great to have a time machine and go back and get started in Facebook's early days? Well now you can. Only it's not called Facebook, It's an online pinboard called Pinterest. And it's ready for marketing.

Pinterest is the fastest growing social site in history, currently growing faster than Facebook was when it was at the same stage of development. Online pinboards are a totally different than anything else out there and Pinterest is a hot, hot market. Instead of sharing information about what you're doing right now ala' Twitter; instead of posting your vacation photos and commenting on friends' pages ala' Facebook, Pinterest gives you pin boards. These are virtual cork boards where you can "pin" images that interest you that you have found in your internet travels.

Your pin board can have dozens or hundreds of images, but they must all be related some way, to the theme of your pin board. For example, I recently saw a pin board of a Pinterest user who categorized her board "Yellow and Gray." So each image she pinned was something that she liked, but was primarily yellow and gray in color.

You can have unlimited boards.You can also add captions and tags to your images so people searching for a specific topic can find your board.

One very nice thing about Pinterest is that it has is a very specific demographic. Most users on Pinterest are U.S. females (70%) with an annual household income of $100,000 or more. Most Facebook users are teenagers who do not have a lot of money to spend. So obviously Pinterest is a marketer's dream. You have access to millions of U.S. females who have money to spend, sharing their consumer behavior online. These women are pinning all the stuff they would like to buy or already own.

So how do you monetize Pinterest? Naturally you will pin lots of interesting images that relate to niches in which you may have items to sell or you are an affiliate for. But keep in mind your demographic. If you're pinning lots of fishing gear and car accessories you probably will not get much interest. You need to go for fashion, books, and all things related to home decor, beauty and fitness. Weddings, clothing and food are some of the most popular niches on Pinterest and most product pins from these niches are things that you can get affiliate links for.

But you need to behave like a typical Pinterest user in order to develop credibility and above all, don't do anything that'll get you shut down! Never spam! You should grow your audience first, gain some trust and add only products that you find interesting and worth buying. If you pin everything you see that's marketable you will be quickly seen to be a spammer and lose any chance to profit from your efforts.

The second thing you definitely should do if you're going to use Pinterest for affiliate marketing is affiliate link cloaking. Pinterest has a novel feature that they use to profit from affiliates- they discover affiliate links and replace the affiliate's user name with their own! They take the profits from clicks affiliates would otherwise get! So you need to carefully cloak your affiliate link.

Please comment below or email me.

How to create the best Pinterest Pinboard Contests?

2012-07-15T17:18:00.004-05:00

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. According to reports, it is now the third most popular social networking site, with Facebook and Twitter ranking as first and second. This virtual pinboard is truly making waves in the online world as more and more people have been signing up. It currently boasts 11 million registered users, and many of these people are logging onto the site everyday and creating the most beautiful pinboards.

Whether you're a business or personal brand, you should definitely pay attention to Pinterest. It's an excellent way to engage and interact with others as you create beautiful collections and share the things that you love and that inspire you. Through creating lovely pinboards that other people enjoy, you can create a buzz that encourages a good following and can promote brand awareness.

One of the best ways to create brand buzz in Pinterest is by hosting a contest. Most people enjoy contests as they are fun and challenging, and it's always nice to win a prize. So if you want to promote your brand in Pinterest, creating a fun contest is a good idea.

So what are the best practices in using Pinterest contests? Here are some great ideas you should consider:

1. Create the Best Pinboard Contest

One of the most challenging and creative contests you can host on Pinterest is one that asks people to create the best pinboards. You can require them to create pinboards that include pictures of your products, as well as other items that relate or look well with the products you're offering. Then ask them to post it on their pinboard and tag you so that their followers can see the pinboard they've created. This really helps in creating buzz around your brand. You can judge the winner of the contest yourself, or you can judge the winner by the number of likes and repins the pinboard has.

2. Most Repins and Likes Contest

With this contest, you can ask your audience to repin their favorite products from your collection and then ask them to solicit votes through repins and likes. The winner of this contest is the board with the most likes and repins.

Though this is a fun contest, it can also seem a bit like spam as the people who enter your contest solicit votes using different social networking sites. But it can be very effective in promoting brand awareness as people share their boards to their network of friends.

3. Utilize other social media platforms

You can incorporate other social networking sites to your Pinterest contest to help promote better brand awareness. Facebook and Twitter are excellent social media platforms that you can require the contestants to use. This way, even their followers who are active in other sites will be able to learn about your brand and may even start following you as well.

Some good ideas for doing this include: asking contestants to share their pinboards that they've created about your brand in their Facebook wall, asking them to Tweet links to their pinboard, or asking them to blog about the pinboard they've created.

4. Raffling off the winner

You can also simply ask your audience to create a pinboard of your brand, share it on their Pinterest pages, and then post the link to your wall. People can only enter once, and then you draw a random winner from the list of entries. The downside of this type of contest is that it is not very engaging, but at least it gives everyone a fair chance of winning the contest.

Pinterest contests are truly an excellent way to promote brand awareness, generate great content for your feed, and get links back to your pages and site. Remember though to review the Pinterest's user guide to ensure that you are not violating any rules by hosting your contest.

If you want to host a contest but are not sure where to start, you can also observe some of the ongoing contests at Pinterests and learn what works and what doesn't. Watch and observe how other brands create buzz using Pinterest contests.

Truly, there's still a world of things you can do on Pinterest to help you promote brand awareness and create brand buzz. So why not host a Pinterest contest that lets people show off their creativity and enjoy as well? The reward you offer is just a little bit of an incentive that can help you gain a slew of new followers that can translate to potential customers and clients. Please comment below or email me.

Pinterest- The World of Color and Illustration.

2012-07-15T17:15:00.002-05:00

Social media is perhaps one of the most ideal channels for business communications. We can explain, show, and discuss our products and services with our audience quickly and easily. But, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. Pinterest is one of the newest additions to the social media world, and it provides a visually oriented look for our companies. The problem here is that some companies, even the larger ones, have misused this awesome outlet of information.

Selling yourself short

Pinterest is a world of color and illustration, focusing on the visual appearance to tell a story. Here, a business can showcase their products, tell a history, and even inspire their audience to follow them and interact with them. All three of these topics should be the focus of your Pinterest account, and here is where even the big dogs in the industry have fallen short.

Many large companies, and even the small ones, have turned Pinterest into a shopping catalog. Here's the problem with that- you lose the other two thirds of the interest that Pinterest has to offer. Shopping isn't really the focus of Pinterest. People want to see, explore, and imagine themselves doing things. Pinterest uses visuals to inspire people more than anything else. And the bottom line is that if you inspire someone to buy a product, you're more likely to sell than if you just show it to them.

Interest in Pinterest

Here's where the interest develops. Rather than simply showcase your products across the board, develop several boards. You can still promote products, but your focus should be to influence your audience to become interested in what you're selling.

Start by telling your business' story. People like knowing who they are dealing with, and it adds color and depth to your boards. Use pictures from your history, and even current projects (perhaps renovations and development) or even things that you plan for the future. Create a board where you explain where you come from and where you're going so that others will see that you too are inspired to interact with them.

Influence your audience

Now comes the importance of the influential boards. Here's where you have to be innovative and creative. Showing your products isn't enough. You need to make people have the desire to do business with you. Utilize videos, pictures, and even comments to stimulate interest. For instance: you are a caterer who provides food preparation services. Marketing food products is old news, and people don't always want to see what they can look up on your website. Here on Pinterest, you have to create interest in your services. Perhaps you can provide tasty recipes for the upcoming holidays, or particular foods that go good with the season. On top of that, utilize videos in which you show your audience how to make some of your delicious recipes. This creates interest in your product, and that is what sells your business.

When you develop these interesting pins, you create the desire to re-pin, which is exactly what you want. Not many people focus on repining products, but what they do re-pin are items that stimulate interest and entertainment. This is perhaps the key to this social media site-entertainment. The visual appeal is most of the influence, but through entertaining videos and factoids, you create something that others want to share with those around them. When creating a network of followers via social media, this is perhaps the most powerful tool. Give people a reason to follow you.

Don't forget to follow

Of course, this goes both ways. Following is often overlooked by larger companies that disregard the importance of following their followers. This two-way street isn't just about you- it's about you and your audience. By following your customer, you can see and share their experience on Pinterest far more effectively than simply waiting for them to interact or repost some of your content. Although this is not a socially designed network (like Facebook), you can still start the development of good relationships with those that are interested in you.

Overall, Pinterest is the ideal source for business applications. A social media site formatted on the visual and entertaining appeal, this network provides any business with an ideal outlet to communicate with their audience. Although some companies have fallen short of Pinterest's opportunities, by creating boards that generate interest, influence, and entertainment rather than merely a showcase catalog, you can provide the perfect experience for your audience to start a good business relationship. Please comment below or email me.