Sunday, February 26, 2012

NEPA Blogs Pinterest

Local blogger/fashonista extraordinaire Shannon Nelson sent me an invite to Pinterest about a month or two ago, and I've only recently started to dig in and figure out what it is all about and how it can work for NEPA Blogs. Below is some of the research that I found online and through the help of some of my contacts. Hopefully this will help you get started with the latest social networking craze.

What is Pinterest?

To answer this question, I defer to the FAQ section of the Pinterest webpage:

Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

I'd also recommend watching Shannon's PA Live! segment which aired on Friday 2/24/12 right over here: http://pahomepage.com/palive-details?nxd_id=229382 (unrelated: I REALLY wish WBRE would make their videos embeddable)

How do I use Pinterest?

I found two very helpful articles at the USA Today and by one of our local bloggers "The Nest Effect", which you can read right here. These articles should get you comfortable with the basic terminology and use of the website.

What can I use it for?

Hubspot has a great article/pdf on using Pinterest for business purposes that you can read here. Mashable did some research on Pinterest, and found that Pinterest pins increases traffic to your website/blog more so than Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube combined which I found fascinating. I found that local business Refer Local is using it to attract people to their website to find the latest NEPA deals that they are offering.



Issues?

Some website owners are blocking their content from being pinned due to copyright issues. Pinterest is currently following the Digital Millenium copyright act, but there are still ways around it. Mashable did a good article about it here, but you can watch the video below to get the gist of it.



NEPA Blogs and Pinterest...

I've created http://pinterest.com/nepablogs to share and showcase the talent of some of the photography of our local bloggers and photographers. I'm not sure where this will go. I already update Twitter, Facebook and blog, so adding another website to my already growing list of Social Networks is a bit overwhelming. I will add pins as I come across something interesting in my RSS feeds giving credit back to the original author. As you can see, I've added pinboards for New Header Wednesday, Local Blogger Photography, Books of Interest (with a NEPA influence), and NEPA Places of Interest. Hopefully, we can get some interesting content on each of these boards that will attract attention and traffic to your blogs and maybe...just maybe...attract more visitors to the Northeastern PA area.

I invite you to connect with us, if you are already a member of Pinterest.

Not a member?

Send an email to nepablogs@gmail.com with your email address, or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter and we'll be sure to hook you up with an invite.

~Michelle

1 comment:

Karla said...

This is a very informative straight forward post. It will be interesting to see if Pinterest drives more traffic to the site. For anyone looking to use Pinterest for business rather than personal bookmarking, Hubspot put this out - I have my doubts on longevity, but will enjoy it while it lasts - http://www.hubspot.com/how-to-use-pinterest-for-business/download