After spending a few days absorbed in Pinterest, I thought I’d share some tips and tricks. Pinterest is a new social networking site based on images. Your page is basically a cork board with everything you pin to it being something you want to remember, keep or share. You have to be invited to join Pinterest, which you can do at their home page or by asking someone who is already a member to invite you. Email me if you need an invite.

If you’re not convinced about the usefulness of Pinterest for your business, this article might shed some light on how it integrates with your other content curation.

It’s fairly easy to set up a personal account and I recommend you do this first, and play around with the site for at least a week before attempting to add your business page. This isn’t a site built around selling anything (in fact, it’s against the TOS) and you won’t get far by just giving out sales information. Relax and pretend this an electronic filing system for magazine pages and you’ll be a lot more on the right track.

Signing up to Pinterest can be done via Facebook or Twitter. I recommend you use the Facebook verification for your personal page because you’ll have to use the Twitter verification for your business page. I’ve had poor results trying to set up multiple pages from Twitter without using multiple browsers.  Once you have responded to the invitation, you can log in to your personal page with Facebook and your brand page with Twitter. The only downside until Pinterest offers brand pages is that you can’t link your brand page to Facebook.

Be sure to add the “Pin It” button to your IE toolbar to make it easier to pin things you find — even if you remove it after a week or so.

Get the feel and syntax for Pinterest, one of the reasons it’s so popular is the visual quality. Your brand will want to focus on the best images as Pinterest fodder, and you probably want to consider creating custom images for products that would share well on Pinterest. Think of this as your opportunity to turn your brand into an online magazine.

Learn about how Pinterest can help your brand’s SEO and consider creating an infographic that relates to your industry especially for pinning. Remember that between 50-70% of users are female, and I am seeing quality winning out over quantity.

Look at other brand pages and see how your brand can stand out. This article with analysis of Michael’s Pinterest brand page is one starting place. Check for your favorite brands as well. Whole Foods has a very nice brand page and green brands seem to be particularly quick to adopt Pinterest. Here’s another article with advice for brands on Pinterest.

To see what users have pinned from your site already, use this link, replacing yoursite.com with your URL: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitename.com/.

Make sure to add the “Pin It” button to your web site and blog. I really like the Pin It On Pinterest plugin for WordPress for adding a “Pin It” button at the end of each post. It adds a box to the post editor that allows you to specify the text and photo that get pinned.

Be sure to be creative — for examples on how brands have developed a unique style/voice for Pinterest, see these examples.

If you need inspiration, check out these tips and tricks.

I’d love to see how your brand is using Pinterest, feel free to post links in the comments below.

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