What You Need To Know About Pinterest

By Author: Josh Goodman
Total Articles: 4
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If you're on Facebook, chances are you've seen updates in your newsfeed about a friend of yours "pinning" an image. Essentially, Pinterest is a virtual pin board where you can easily save photos and other images organized under different categories. It can be used to plan a wedding, a home remodel, or to share with others your favorite products and designs. With 1.36 million users already, it is important that you know the basics of this new social media phenomenon. ATAK Interactive, Inc. shares what you need to know about Pinterest and how it can affect your business.
1. Requesting an invitation or accepting an existing one.
To sign up for Pinterest, you can request an invitation through the website (you usually receive an invitation within a day or two). When you are invited to sign up, you have two options to join; through your Facebook account or through your Twitter account. Note that when you sign up there is a message that reads, "We NEVER post without your permission". However, unless you log in and change your setting that turns off posting to Facebook, anything you pin will start showing ...
... up in your newsfeed.
2. How to use Pinterest: The Basics
Imagine you're planning to revamp your yard for summer and purchase magazines for ideas. You get to work with a pair of scissors and a cork board and start cutting out your favorite ideas and pinning them to your board. With Pinterest, you lose the scissors, the cork board and the magazines. First, you easily install the "Pin It' button for your internet browser (instructions on Pinterest.com). Next, for example, you go to www.bhg.com (Better Homes and Gardens) and click on the Gardening tab. Once you find an idea you like, you click the "Pin It" button on your taskbar and instantly save the image to your collection. You can also browse through categories within Pinterest to find images that other members have pinned already, and then you can "re-pin" them to your own board.
3. How ATAK Interactive can help you use Pinterest to benefit your business
Say your business is a flower shop. You can take some pictures of some of your best floral arrangements and put them on your website (if they're not already there). By then pinning your images and therefore linking them to your Pinterest account, you can start to generate interest in your designs and floral arrangements. You can take it a step further and have your friends re-pin your photos. Pinterest also allows websites to add a "Follow" button. For example, BHG uses this on its website to encourage potential customers to follow their pins on Pinterest. This way, whenever BHG posts new photos, its followers are alerted to view them.
4. How to maximize Pinterest
Taking the tips already mentioned a step further, here are some ideas where ATAK Interactive, Inc can help take your business to the next level. First, you could do a weekly contest. You can post a new image every Friday on Pinterest and then ask your followers to answer a question about it for a chance to win a gift certificate. Second, you can use Pinterest to gain publicity in a similar fashion to YouTube. Simply upload a video pertinent to your business (how to make flowers last longer, for example), pin it to your board using strong keywords for searchability and get your friends and existing customers to start sharing. Another trick is to create a linked image. Going back to the flower shop example, you could create an image that reads, "Make beautiful bouquets for under $10". You can then link this image to a page on your website that features an article or a video on making bouquets for under $10. This pin can help generate traffic to your website by enticing Pinterest users interested in the topic.
As with any social media outlet, there are a number of ways to reach potential customers and the most effective way of being successful is consulting an experienced online company like ATAK Interactive, Inc. With directed effort, you could see the profits start multiplying.
Author Details : Author of this article, Mr. Josh Goodman has niche in Internet Marketing and is actively associated with Internet Marketing Los Angles, which is a renowned and leading Website Design Company.