A Digital Marketing Insider's Point of View by Winston Bromley.
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Pinterest: An up-and-coming Social Media Network worth looking into

Pinterest - Winston Bromley - Social Media Management

There are always new Social Media platforms that come out it seems every week with a new take on the medium. The one that caught my eye about 2 months ago is called  Pinterest. Pinterest.com is one of the new Social Media platforms that has come out, that truly has an interesting take on bringing people together and collaborating.

Essentially what Pinterest does is allow you to share and organize images and videos into your Profile that is organized by Categories or “Boards” that you can define. Each time you add an image or video, it’s called a Pin. Think of it as a Scrapbooking, VisionBoard or Social Images board, if you will.

But if you are not into Scrapbooking (and I am not), Pinterest is much more that – so don’t discount it. It will be worth it.

An image is worth a thousand words so Pinterest is set to be very valuable.

With Pinterest, as you setup your Boards and “pin” images or video straight from items you are browsing normally, followers and people searching for similar items can become involved in your Boards by “re-pinning” your images to their boards, or if you allow, have users pin to your Boards. “Pinning” is super simple and is done by simply clicking on the “PIN” bookmark that are you asked to add to your Browser, while you are on the page you have images you would like to showcase. Once you click “PIN IT”, you get to choose the image you would like to add to your Board, leave a note on it and categorize the image. The process takes less than 30 seconds (longer if you have a lot to say on it)

As always, and as a business coach who teaches Social Media to Businesses, I am sure you are asking, “But why should I look into Pinterest”?

Well, the answer is simple: By being open to others working on your Boards or even just sharing your Boards, you can promote your Business effectively and have others share your products/services/images if done correctly.

Pinterest.com doesn’t like (and it is looked down on) overly branding of the pages or only pushing your product. They don’t consider this a good fit for their platform.

But there is always ways to fit in the system AND get the promotional / social value from over 4 million users.

For example, let’s say you are a designer who creates great clothes every season. You use the usual 5 social networks and people discuss your items. However your uploaded images don’t have as much presence on these sites (such as Facebook) as you would want. On Pinterest, you created a Board called “Spring 2012 Clothing Line” and then upload or Pin your images from your online store or website right to your Pinterest Account. What this does is take your specific images that you easily “pin” from a website you are on, and it allows you to comment on each one so others can discuss and share AND (and this is big) links each image back to your website so that people can end up on your site to find out more about your great clothing and even buy them.

As a business, another example for you to think about, would be for to create a Board for your Staff to pin items to as part of a meeting or ideas OR use the Pinterest Boards as a way to mastermind a solution to your problems by asking other to contribute to the solution

The social benefits of Pinterest, I believe, are very good for any business owner to promote what they do, in a non-salesy way, and allow the 4+ million users (at the time of this blog) to share in the visual interests you have.

If you want to drop by my account, visit: http://pinterest.com/winstonbromley/

If you want to be invited (as Pinterest is set to INVITE ONLY right now), email me at winston@artbox.ca with the Subject “Pinterest”.