Pinterest has captured the attention of millions of people with a unique platform that allows its users to expresses their interests, desires, and ideas through visually appealing images on virtual bulletin boards. With the frenzy around Pinterest also comes the perfect opportunity for marketers to leverage its compelling virtual nature and weave it into it a social experience with their business.

Here are five ways brands can leverage Pinterest now:

1. The “Follow Me” Button

The simplest way to get Pinterest followers to your company’s Pinterest page is to put a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on your webpage in hopes that people will click it. Make sure you provide quality content for them to follow. Update it frequently so your boards don’t go stale. It’s also important to remember that a user’s choice to “Follow” may not be brand specific, but board specific. This gives you the opportunity to segment your followers in ways relevant to your business. A well-designed strategy will have you add “Follow Me” buttons in places appropriate to the segment.

Share Your Authenticity

Show your audience you’re a real person. Pinterest allows a business to show its consumers there are really people behind it. You can share experiences, recipes, hobbies, and the like with customers. While this shouldn’t be the bulk of what you’re sharing, it can be a small portion of it to show the person or people behind the scenes of the operation. The more they get to know you, the more they’ll feel they connect with your business.

Link Back to Your Business

Is your business something with visual appeal? If it is, you can pin professional photos of your products or services and link back to your website. For example, if you own a restaurant, you can pin great recipes or recipes you create, both with great pictures, and link back to a landing page on your website. This makes it easy for Pinterest followers to become customers once they notice your picture and are naturally intrigued to visit the link where the picture came from.

Be a Resource for Customers

If you have a service-based business, consider pinning some eye-catching short tutorials and how- to articles. Pin some tasteful photos that illustrate what you’re trying to teach and have them link back to a media story, blog post, or wherever else the educational material might be on the web.

It’s important to meet your customers where they are. If they have a need, fill it. People are much more open to look for new products and services when they have a problem. If you are there to help them fix the problem, they will be much more receptive to what your company is offering.

Share and Share Alike

If you want to promote your business on Pinterest, you can’t make your pins all about your business. You need to focus on more than just yourself. Re-pin interesting things others are doing. Re-pinning something someone else pinned is the ultimate compliment on Pinterest. If you do it on a regular basis, you will have people take notice of you.

There are so many strategies you can use to promote your business on Pinterest. Gone are the days of hardcore marketing. Today people like to feel connected with the people marketing to them. There are a number of ways you can connect with your customers to help get the word out about your business.

There’s no denying the popularity of the social networking site Pinterest recently. It has captured the attention of millions of people. What is it about this website that has grabbed the attention of so many people? What can we learn about the phenomenon Pinterest has created online? Why do so many people love this website?

Self-Expression

Pinterest, first and foremost, is a place for people to express themselves. The premise behind the website is for people to create virtual bulletin boards and “pin” what they find interesting to them. They can create as many boards as they like for as many different aspects of their lives as they want. Pinterest allows for a form of self-expression online that other social networks don’t. It is based almost entirely on images. It’s perfect for our visual society. People can express themselves and fulfill that need we all have.

Curiosity

Pinterest allows you to follow other people on the website. That means you can see what they are pinning to their boards. This can be quite fascinating to the Pinterest user. You can learn more about people you already know or people you’re just getting to know. The fact you can see what others are pinning to their boards makes Pinterest quite intriguing to many people. It makes it quite a fascinating place for people to hang out.

Creating Digital Memories

Everyone loves creating memories. Pinterest boards are like virtual scrapbooks. The user can create several boards for what’s important to them at that moment in time. As with anything in life, the user will change over time so the boards capture a digital snapshot of that time period in their lives, their likes and dislikes, their hopes and desires, for that time when it was created.

Community

Who doesn’t love to see what their friends like? Who doesn’t want a peek into someone else’s dreams for a moment? Want to see what recipes your friends are collecting? Want to see crafts all your mom friends are planning for the upcoming holidays? Want to see what new cars the family down the street are considering? All of that can be seen on Pinterest. It’s a way to get a peek into someone else’s life.

Life Planning

Some people use Pinterest for planning. There are stories of people using it to plan a trip or even plan an entire wedding! Whatever you are planning, Pinterest offers a place for you to organize everything. You can split different aspects of your planning into different boards or put it all into one board.

Escape

Sometimes you just need to escape for life for a few minutes. One reason people love Pinterest so much is because it offers them that. They can hop on and see what their friends are pinning. Or they can surf the web and find things they want to put on their boards. But Pinterest is all about escaping from life for just a little while.

There are a number of reasons people love Pinterest. Whether it’s the community they build, the curiosity they have about others, or just a way to escape and relax, this website is changing the way people interact online. It’s a website that has hit the social media web with a bang and has many adoring fans.

Think Pinterest is just a social network to kill time on when you’re supposed to be working? Think again! There are ways, if used correctly, this new, hot network can serve as a vital resource in not only your life but specifically, your career.

Visual Resume – If you’re looking for a job, why not get creative and make Pinterest a part of the process? You can pin photos of the work you do and include links to your online portfolio. This is especially helpful if you’re in the digital arts, education, beauty, fashion, or other careers that require visual creativity. Use boards as a way to showcase your inspirations and what you offer to an employer or client.

For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you can pin a picture of a logo you have done and link it to your branded website. If you’re a beautician, you can pin photos of clients you have made up, as well as the products you use to create the looks. If you’re a teacher, you can link to lesson plans you have created for a creative lesson. Last but not least, you can link to your resume. For creative ideas for this, search Pinterest boards that have done this and find one that you like and use it for inspiration.

Increased Marketability - You can find out what a company wants simply by following the company’s, the human resources, and recruiters Pinterest’s boards. Some companies post boards focusing on human resources and management tips specifically. This gives you insight on the types of professionals they favor or might be interested in hiring. Some companies also post boards actually showing the type of candidate they like working at their company or organization, the exact qualifications they are looking for, and even job boards for the titles they’re hiring.. This is valuable information if you’re looking to work for that company.

Professional Connections - Just like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, Pinterest offers insight into what makes a person tick. Professionals are just like anyone else and use boards to tell the stories of who they are outside of the office. You can follow the “pins” of someone you want to get to know better and use the information you learn as a springboard for conversations.

Job Hunting - Companies, universities, media organizations, and other entities are actually using Pinterest to post jobs and job seeker resources. Since it’s a visual website, a photo will be pinned along with the link. You can check out the Pinterest boards of companies like FlexJobs or educational institutions such as the Coppin State University Career Services Center to find information on recruiters, links to job boards, and other information about job seeking if you’re looking for a job.

Inspiration - Pinterest can help you in so many more aspects than you think in finding a job. You can find many resources on making yourself marketable for a job, how to conduct yourself in an interview, what to wear, and much more. It can direct you to career books and blogs that can enrich your knowledge even further. You can pin the things that inspire you to your board for future reference when you find that “perfect job.”

When looking for a new job, the last place you might think to look is Pinterest. But, it might be wise to make it your “go to” place. Whether you’re looking for a job or looking for tips on how to conduct yourself in an interview, what to wear, or anything else career-oriented, Pinterest has it all.

Nearly anyone who uses Pinterest comes to one conclusion: the newest social network is addictive. What starts out as a way to collect a few tidbits here and there online can quickly turn into hours spent on the popular website looking at what other people have pinned. So what’s the allure? Why is this website so addictive?

Finding Your Happy Place and Sharing Your Ideal Self

Pinterest is a unique social network. Gone are the awkward relationship status changes, check-ins at restaurants, or pictures of kids. Pinterest boards are like personal happiness collages. They represent things that the pinner appreciates, that they desire, and that expresses who they are.

While it seems Pinterest is more private without the status updates that Facebook and Twitter offer, Pinterest frees people to be more public about who they really are and who they want to be. The key is the fact it reveals the more ideal self, what the user is trying to be, where their hopes and dreams lie. When you follow someone and watch what they are pinning and see a glimpse of what they want out of life, you might see a nugget of yourself or just learn more about that person. It’s a gratifying experience and a unique connection that other social networks don’t offer.

Simple and Artistic

Whether we like to admit it or not, we like things that are attractive. How each photo is displayed on Pinterest, down to the size it is, is pleasing to the eyes. They are also simple. Without words distracting all over the page, it’s clean and simple to look at. Although there are pictures all around, that simply lends to an artistic look, but not a cluttered look. Even the logo is clean and simple

People like things that are simple. Everything about Pinterest is simple. From the moment you log into Pinterest and start building boards, it easy and simple. Finding content and either pinning it or re-pinning it from someone else’s board is simple. You don’t need technical knowledge. So there are no limitations in that respect. Anyone can do Pinterest and that certainly makes it addictive!

It’s All About Sharing

Much of what Pinterest lovers adore the most is sharing. They follow their friends, celebrities, other people and entities and see what they’re doing. This is fascinating information. They can re-pin when they like what they see. If it weren’t for the sharing part of the Pinterest formula, it might not work as well as it does. The fact users get to take a peek into the lives of others and share in it and even snag a piece of it for themselves if they chose to do so may be what is most addicting about Pinterest.

There’s no doubt that Pinterest has made a big splash in the marketing community today. Millions of users are on it every day pinning things they find useful and sharing them with their friends. Companies everywhere are clamoring just to get some of the traffic Pinterest has to offer. There are a few strategies anyone with a website can use to get some Pinterest attention if they are consistent.

Is Pinterest Right for Your Site?

Although Pinterest is a hot website right now, it’s not going to be right for every niche. As of early 2012, the website’s main users are women, that means if your website is mainly men’s fashions, sports, or scantily clad women, you probably won’t do well on Pinterest. As the site evolves, experts predict male use of the site will, too. It’s still not a bad idea to get involved even if your primary target is males so are ready when male readership increases.

Some reports claim that the site can now bring more traffic than Google+, Linkedin, and others combined. Hard information is scarce and most people are at the very emerging stages of determining just how many visitors the site sends.

Become a Member of the Pinterest Community

There are no shortcuts in building web traffic. If you want to connect with people on Pinterest and get web traffic from the website, you need to be an active participant. You can use it to post pictures that you find pretty, useful, or in the case of food, mouth-watering.

Consistently use the site every day. You can’t expect for good traffic to come from Pinterest if you just show up every once in a while with limited interaction. That is no way to build a following or develop relationships on the site. The only way to really build traffic from the site is to actually use the site itself.

Know Who to Follow

Find people and brands that have similar interests or branding to you or your company and watch them over time. After you have watched them for a while, you can start to gradually engage and interact with them. You can promote them by re-pinning things they post, in the hopes they might notice things you post and re-pin them, too. You can also follow or befriend these people on Facebook, and develop a deeper relationship with them. Get to know them and talk to them. This is the heart of what social media and it is what is all about.

Help Others

If you see someone pin something you like, re-pin it, meaning to share it. If people “like” your pins and boards and “pin” your images, do the same thing for them. This builds a relationship between the two of you. It shows you have similar interests. Re-pinning is the equivalent to a re-tweet on Twitter or a share on Facebook. If you consistently interact with people on Pinterest it will determine if you develop a relationship or not.

In the end, it’s up to each company or individual to determine if their time is well-spent on Pinterest. It could be time very well-spent but the jury is still out exactly how beneficial it is. But there’s no doubt Pinterest is a hot website right now and a great way to get some traffic to your website.

Pinterest is all about the experience of the user. Why not kick it up a notch with some cool tools to enhance your Pinterest experience? Even though Pinterest already provides a number of great tools, there are a number of extra online tools available to help you make Pinterest even more fun!

Add a Pinterest Follow Me button to Your Signature

Wisestamp is a free service you can use to jazz up your email signatures and has added Pinterest to its list of supported services. It’s easy to use so the process is perfect for even the most technology challenged person. The Pinterest Email App makes it easy to add a “Follow Me on Pinterest “button to your email signature without having to touch an ounce of HTML, buttons or anything else. As a second option, Wisestamp offers the option to simply add a Pinteret button beside your other social profile icons.

“Pinterest To Go “

If you can’t bear the thought of being without Pinterest even when you’re away from home, you’re in luck. There is an official iPhone app so you can pin photos you’ve taken or save them while you’re on the go. Android users aren’t as lucky. They’ll have to wait, as surely something will come out soon for their Pinterest addiction. Android users can still access all of Pinterest while they’re on the go, they just can’t upload.

Share Screenshots on Pinterest

Do you like to share screen shots on Pinterest? While you may have your own method of taking screenshots, the website Url2Pin.it gives you a way to share them on Pinterest. Url2Pin.it is a great way for Web designers to easily share their work with Pinterest followers.

The process of Url2Pin.it is easy. You simply enter the website url you want to share, hit the Pinterest button on the right, and a pop up button will appear. You can choose the board you would like to put it on and then write an account of what it is. There is also a Chrome browser extension for it, too.

Find Out How Influential You Are on Pinterest

In social media, it’s almost like you’ve returned to high school. Popularity is where it’s at again. Ever since Klout burst onto the scene, there have been several copycats. Some of them are dedicated to letting you know how influential you are on Pinterest. While this might be fun for one person, it’s invaluable information for brands and companies. It helps them know what they’re doing right and wrong on Pinterest.

Pinclout is free and will tell you your score. While it’s not very clear on exactly how they determine your score, it seems to be based on the total number of pins, repins, likes, followers, friends, comments, boards, and community boards you have. This service also shows how to quickly know what your most popular boards are and how you stack up against the most very popular Pinterest members.

The second option on your quest to determine how great your influence on Pinterest is Pinpuff. You don’t even have to sign in to use this service, you just enter your Pinterest user ID and email address and they will display your score. This service will also tell you how much your account is worth, what your reach is, your activity, and your virility scores.

First and foremost, Pinterest is meant to be a fun social tool. While Pinterest itself has a number of features that keep users busy for hours, there are also a number of tools and websites that can enhance your Pinterest experience even further. By trying a few of them out, you might find Pinterest even more addicting!

The twenty-first century ushered in a whole new way to stand out in a crowd: personal branding. While branding for products has been around for years, branding yourself is still relatively new. If you brand yourself, that means you need to market yourself. What better way than to use the fastest growing social network on the web: Pinterest.

Branding is the new way to differentiate yourself in today’s marketplace. Today’s phenomenon of Pinterest takes this to a whole new level. It looks like Pinterest is here to stay and it’s filled with endless possibilities of ways to brand yourself yet to be explored.

Showcase Your Work

Whatever you do, whether it’s photography, floral arranging, blogging, or graphic design, Pinterest is perfect to display your work in one place and showcase it in a compelling way. It will make you stand out and really make name for yourself. Most people aren’t doing this yet and it gives you a way to be a trend setter.

Pin Your CV or Resume

Believe it or not, Pinterest can be a great ally in your quest to find the perfect job. Gone are the days of boring paper resumes. Today you need to be innovative and visual. Pinterest is just that and more. In fact, Pinterest may give the seal of approval for those trailblazers who experimented and were innovative with their visual résumés when it was still not fashionable to do so. Personal branding is all about standing out and making Pinterest a part of your resume is certainly a way to stand out. The ideal solution might be to create your “resume” as a website and incorporate Pinterest as an element of the website. Or, you can have your entire resume on Pinterest and simply send potential employers there.

Create and Update a Reading List About Your Profession

If you want to show you are passionate about your profession, create a board of your favorite books and books you want to read on your chosen profession. You can leave comments about each book, too. It also goes without saying, if you’re a published author, make sure you include your own books, as well.

Flaunt Your Creative and Innovative Spirit

You don’t have to showcase your own work to show how creative you are. Start a board of things that inspire you. Pinterest can go a long way in underscoring your creative flair. The collection of your boards displays who you are as a person. They speak about who you are and prove you are an innovative spirit.

Support Your Favorite Charity & Non-Profit

You can be an active contributor by pinning quality content for your favorite charity or non-profit organization. If you believe in making a difference as a part of your life, Pinterest can help you in that quest. You should only do this if you truly support the charity or non-profit. But if this is a part of who you are then you should proudly display it on Pinterest.

Pinterest is a great way to show off your personal brand. It allows you to showcase your talents and who you are as a professional. You can use it in many different ways to show what’s important to you and what you are passionate about.

With the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, it seemed as if social media was saturated. But Pinterest has hit the social media with a big splash with ripple effects may be felt for years to come. It’s popularity is huge and has many businesses wanting to tap into that.

Pinterest offers many advantages for small businesses, particularly those who specialize in e-commerce or other product based businesses.

The premise behind this social network newbie is to create online scrapbooks featuring photos of their favorite products. For a business, they can easily create a scrapbook of their newest products and embed links to their websites so customers can easily buy the product.

There are a few things to keep in mind to have a positive experience with Pinterest and keep your campaign organized and meaningful.

Create Boards

The key to using Pinterest are the boards. You don’t want to go overboard but you will want to create a fair number of boards to display a variety of products. Select different types of products that will appeal to different types of people. You might want to select some things that are classic, some that are modern, and some that are a little funky. It offers a little something for everybody and will give you more reach when it comes to people re-pinning things.

Use Images with Personality

Pinterest is all about images. That’s why it’s important to pick an eye-catching one for your website or blog so it will attract a lot of attention when it is pinned. The images that get shared the most are funny, inspiring, or emotional. If the image strikes a chord with you, chances are good it will strike a chord with someone else, too.

Be Selective

Don’t pin every picture from your website on your board or it will look like an advertisement. That’s the last thing you want. The beauty of Pinterest is that the boards highlight the best of the best. Select the best and most eye-catching photos from your website to pin. Mix in great pictures from other websites that you like. Your board will look like a true Pinterest experience while also displaying your best products.

Write Vivid Descriptions

The pictures you pin to your boards will automatically have a link to the webpage they are from but they won’t have a caption. You have the freedom to write your own commentary on each photo. You can use it to give users updates on what’s new with your business or simply describe the product.

The Pinterest craze seems to be here to stay for a while. Why not tap into its popularity for your business and learn to use it to promote your business? It’s simple to use and may go a long way in marketing your business.

To stay up to date in today’s marketplace, your company should be a part of whatever social media is hot. Right now Pinterest is blazing hot online and your company needs to hop on the bandwagon if it hasn’t already. Need 5 ways this will benefit your company? Here they are:

Show the Visual Side to Your Brand

Most products or services have a visual side to them, even if it’s just a logo and a few other distinctive graphics. Take the time to prepare aesthetically pleasing visual content to share. For example if your brand creates blog posts for pet products, then make sure all the pictures on the blog posts that direct back to those posts are eye-catching. If you have a service-based business, you can still select pictures on a website or blog that are attractive and will catch someone’s attention.

Publicize – Using Pinterest

You want to be where your target market is. So if your target market is on Pinterest, then you want to be there, too. Chances are good there is at least one segment of your target audience on Pinterest. So you need to be there. Consumers won’t know you’re there though. Let them know by publicizing it on all forms of media that leaves your company or business. Your Pinterest page will receive traffic, even if it’s just for curiosity.

Use Instagram

Pinterest

Be creative with photos. Use a program like Instagram to highlight certain boards. Instagram is a photo sharing application that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter, then share it on a variety of social networking sites. Pinterest’s focus is on visual appeal. The more you make your pictures exciting to view, the better chances you have of peaking consumers’ interest.

Make Sure the Pins are Something Others Will Want to Re-Pin

When you create a pin, make sure it links to something on your website, blog, or other social network. Not only should it link to something, it should link to something your consumers will want to share their own followers on Pinterest by re-pinning your content. Also, and this is the most important element, make sure it has an eye-catching graphic attached to it.

Do a Marketing Campaign

Pinterest is a great place to do creative campaigns. Since so much of campaigns are visual, Pinterest is perfect and takes the social media aspect of campaigns to a whole new level. The types of campaigns Pinterest can help with are:

• Contests: Allow consumer to create images that might be featured on the company Pinterest page.
• Voting: Ask consumers on a specific board what their favorite item is or pick what other boards they would like to be featured.
• How-To Demos: Demos can be done via videos, posts, and other items to let consumers get better insight into your company’s service or product.

Marketing your business on Pinterest is a must in today’s online social media world. It’s a social network that is around to stay. There are a number of ways you can build interest and even create hype to draw attention to your company and your brand for Pinterest that’s growing every day.

Branding on Pinterest is become super popular for business these days. Pinterest started out as a place for regular people to share things they enjoy with each other. However, it’s quickly morphed into a place for small and large companies to brand their products. There are a number of ways you can do this effectively to reach out to your target market and even learn from them.

Branding on Pinterest

Showcase Your Products on Pinterest – The most obvious thing you can use Pinterest for is to showcase your product. Create a board for your products and pin them. You might create several boards, splitting your products into categories so consumers can view them easier. You might consider naming the board with a bright and colorful name so the label’s personality really sticks out.

The point of creating the boards for your products is for Pinterest users to be attracted to the images and re-pin them on their walls. High-quality, creative images are key.

Run Competitions on Pinterest – You can run pinning competitions. This can help increase interest in your product, as people will pin your product and others in their network of friends will see it, possibly re-pin it and so on. The ripple effect is great.

Clothing retailer Lands’ End ran a “Canvas Holiday Pin It to Win It” completion where pinners were asked to pin up to 20 images to their boards from the Lands’ End website. Then, they were to email the url of the board to Land’s End to win the items contained within the board.

Branding on Pinterest

There were just over 200 entries. That may seem low, but there was a high level of engagement seen by Pinterest, as well as a re-pinning effect, which means the products were actually seen by a much larger network of people.

Backstage Access on Pinterest – Show consumers something they can’t see anywhere else except on Pinterest. Show them the process the company goes through to create the product they eventually buy. Everyone loves to see “exclusive content.” Make Pinterest the bearer of that content.

Coverage on Pinterest  on Pinterest - If your company has a big event of some type, make the visual portion of that event be available on Pinterest. When New York Fashion week rolled around in 2011, the Wall Street Journal covered it by posting pictures on Pinterest.

Highlight Your Visual Content on Pinterest – Every business has visual content they can share on Pinterest. Even if your business is not primarily a visual business, there will still be something to share. For example, if your business is computer repairs, you can post pictures of computers, pictures of computers disassembled, and so on. There is always a visual to your business you can share. Just make sure your pictures are interesting so they are more likely to be re-pinned.

Educate on Pinterest - Pinterest isn’t just about “pretty” pictures, it’s about pictures that tell a story. Many of those pictures can be used to educate. If your company or organization has something that can be taught, do it through pictures on Pinterest.

Use It Like a Focus Group on Pinterest – There are few sites that simplify aligning yourself with a brand to represent who you are and what you like as Pinterest does. You can learn a lot about your customers through this. If you spend some time looking at those that engage with your brand, what they re-pin, and who they engage with, you’ll find truly valuable insights in a far more natural way than other methods, like surveying people.

Using any one of these is a bit of a chore but as you cna see from the infographic above the popularity of Pinterest means that Branding on Pinterest is well worth the time and effort