Hi! I attended an hour webinar highlighting the use of Pinterest for businesses - B2C, B2B and also personal. I learned that in less than a year, this social media format has surpassed youtube, google+, linkedin - and is now number 3 in usage under facebook and twitter (not sure which one of the latter is first).
Terminology - PINS are images that you post on your BOARDS - like you would post picture cards on an office bulletin board. The thing is that pins can be linked to a landing page, folks can 'REPIN' your pin (with its image and links) to their own Boards. They can 'like', 'comment', REPIN. I can imagine ways that this could be used - for instance a separate BOARD for Writer,Draw, etc. Each board could have its own tutorial 'pin' with a link to the respective landing page. Their could be a board for the history, another for people behind the scenes, the imagination can go on - the webinar suggested using up to 32 boards, but you can have more. Each board displays 5 pins. Look at General Electrics site (pinterest.com/generalelectric)- notice how the images on their boards entice people to look around and create a bold statement (especially the first board). Another idea would be to reward those that contribute to openoffice by placing a 'I helped too' kind of board, people could repin their award on their own boards and their friends could see what they have been up to. Because this is increasing in popularity, and a great way to spread branding, I suggest reserving the openoffice username even if no one plans to use Pinterest yet. Starbucks (pinterest.com/starbucks)has reserved their name, but does not use it yet. I have just signed up to use pinterest, and have not added anything to my boards yet. I do not know the way to get analytics yet, still reading about it, but the webinar mentioned this is available, as well as tracking keywords that are working for the competitors. So far it is by invitation from another pinterest user to set up an account. By the way, check out /microsoft - everyone is starting out, it seems. Nancy Nancy Web Design Free 24 hour pass to lynda.com. Video courses on SEO, CMS, Design and Software Courses ________________________________
