Pinterest, What is it & Who’s on it?
Are you interested in the new social phenomenon that is Pinterest?
I’ve pulled together some information to explain what Pinterest is and also have included interesting articles on this phenomenal site where “Pinners”organize and share things they find on the web on boards, similar to a virtual scrapbook.
To get an account, you can go to Pinterest.com and request an invitation, or, have a friend invite you.
Of course this is a social site, so you can view the boards displayed by others, helping people reveal common links and share the things they love. Straight from Pinterest, “Pins are the most useful when they have links back to the original source. If you notice that a pin is not sourced correctly, leave a comment so the original pinner can update the source. Finding the original source is always preferable to a secondary source such as Google Image Search or a blog entry.”
You can invite friends by adding their email addresses, or uploading your contacts from Facebook.
When you sign up for
Pinterest, it automatically has you follow the boards of your Facebook friends, and puts a Pinterest section on your timeline. You can change this by going to Pinterest Help
As long as you’re following at least one board of a fellow Pinner, you can @mention that Pinner in a pin/repin description. Ex. 
@Rebecca Blackwell – I thought you’d like this one…
You can also let other people contribute to your boards (pin the things they want to add to it), user specific. Here’s how.
I’m fascinated by the statistics and the user demographics! As of now, this site has over 4 million users and is still on an invite-only membership basis.
“Google Ad planner shows that users are:
- Largely women (a 80% to 20% ratio). So there’s some truth to Matt Buchanan’s post on Gizmodo yesterday that proclaims Pinterest as “a Tumblr for ladies”.
- Aged mainly between 25 and 44 (accounting for 55% of the group, 30% are 25-34, 25% are 35 – 44)
- Just 25% of users have a bachelors degree or higher
- The majority live off a household income of $25-75k”
This article shows the demographics of Pinterest members in the United States and compares them with those of the U.K. Floating Path – Demographics of Pinterest
THE POINT of Pinterest from a Marketing Standpoint
From Jura Koncuis of the Washington Post Style blog, “It’s an online filing system (of your LIKES)… It’s also why marketers are flocking to the site. It’s becoming a huge source of traffic to online stores thanks to those who decide to make the dream pinboards a very real purchase.”
Some say that this site is a perfect marketing tool for: tourism marketing, product marketing (especially for online stores), fashion, design, and anything that is made appealing through photos.
Also, in a recent Social Media Today article, they explain how “Pinterest is generating more referral traffic to websites/blogs than YouTube, Google +, and LinkedIn combined” of course, done by pinning content on their sites that is “re-pinnable” and commenting on other’s pins, and sharing other’s content.
Yes, this is the same song, different verse. In order to be successful in using social media as a marketing tool, you have to produce engaging, viral content, interact with others (comment, like, repost), and be social!
What’s my conclusion? If you’ve got a “picture perfect” business model, you’d better be on Pinterest! And, I’m going to be posting case studies of traffic before/after the use of Pinterest on a couple different sites so stay tuned for the results…
Be sure to add the Pinterest icon to your website and the “pin it” icon to your blog if you do get involved in the “pinning” community! 
YOUR THOUGHTS… Are you on Pinterest? What do you think? Please comment below!
LinkedIn Tags – How to Make Lists of Your Connections – and How to Use Them
What are Tags on LinkedIn & How to Use Them
Filtering Your Connections for Maximum Relationship Building
Tags are simple key words you can use to organize your LinkedIn connections to filter them quickly. You can categorize people according to profession, company, position, location, where you met, or other important factors.
How to add or remove a tag:
1. Click on ‘Contacts’ at the top of your home page. This will take you to the ‘My Connections’ page.
2. Select the ‘Manage Tags’ filter in the left panel.
a. Delete tags by clicking on the tag you wish to delete then click ‘ok’ to confirm. Removing a tag does not end your connection to this person. It only removes this tag filter you have attached to connections.
b. Add new tags by entering the tag name in the empty box and clicking on the ‘Add new tag’ button
How to Use LinkedIn Tags:
Use tags to remember people well – to remember important details. Here are some questions you could ask yourself to help you sort them out.
- Where did I meet them? A tag could be “2011 CFA planning convention” or “Facebook friend”
- How did we meet? (In person, Phone, Email, FB, TW, Web)
- How do I want to manage the relationship? Ex. Meet | Prospect | Maintain | Reconnect – this way you can frequently be in touch with people who are in your “Meet/Prospect/Reconnect” lists to further your relationships with them
- What type of relationship do you have? Are they a (Client | Personal Friend | Power Partner | Industry Leader | Relative | Colleague | Vendor?)
- And, if you want to get a bit more specific, how strong is your connection? (1 = Weak, 5 = Strong- then perhaps spend most of your time on the strong connections)
Then what?
Use these tags to be in better communication with the people who are most important to you (business referral partners, client prospects.)
If you want to message people who fit in a “tag,” simply to go Contacts, then select the tag from the left toolbar “filter connections” that you want to message, and select all (or select only the people you want by checking the box next to their name and picture” and in the toolbar to the right, select “send message.”
**Note: You’ll need to invest some time at the beginning to correctly tag all those you are connected with. And if you have more than 50 people that are associated with a specific tag, you can’t use the handy “Send a Message” feature because of the limitation of 50 contacts per InMail.
Have you used LinkedIn tags? How have you used them? What do you think of them?
