Pinterest Week

As most of you know, I’ve been dealing with mono for the past 11 weeks. It’s been a slow and frustrating recovery but I’m finally at the point where life is almost normal again. In celebration of this milestone, I’ve spent most of the weekend preparing posts for … wait for it ……. Pinterest Week!

What can you expect from me this week? Well I’m starting the week early and ending it late because there are just too many posts to fit in otherwise. These posts are not going to discuss how to use Pinterest because there are already plenty of those available. My Pinterest posts this week will focus on how the tourism industry uses Pinterest as well tips on how to add it to your current social media efforts.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Today’s post is about brands on Pinterest and how you can stand out among all the images.
• On Monday we’ll take a look at which international DMOs are using Pinterest and how they stack up. There are charts and even a map so be ready to get your geek on.
• On Tuesday you can follow step-by-step instructions to add a Pinterest tab to your Facebook page. Yes, even before the Pinterest API is available.
• Wednesday has the biggest post of the week and examines the list of US and Canadian CVBs (and DMOs) on Pinterest. For a refresher, read through the February 22 post. The list of CVBs is now at 110 so you can anticipate some great stats.
• On Thursday is an analysis of the US CVBs on Pinterest by state. One state will be crowned as the most Pinteresting.
• Friday’s post examines two Pinterest contests and hopefully will inspire you to run a Pinterest contest of your own.
• And Saturday’s post will help you pull everything together with some examples of how to promote your Pinterest account as well as other social media channels. Think of it as a Pintegration.

Now let’s get started.

The best way to fully understand something is to watch what others are doing. Since most of you are in the tourism industry, you can take a look at the CVBs on Pinterest but you’ll see a lot of accounts that are doing very similar things. That’s great if you just want to fit it but if you want to stand out, you have to look at the bigger picture. Look at what big brands are doing and then tweak that to work for your destination.

I came across this Brands on Pinterest board several weeks ago and fell in love with it. It was actually the inspiration for my CVBs on Pinterest board. According to a recent blog post, there are over 250 brands on Pinterest and Mashable has listed the most-followed brands on Pinterest. Many of the brands that I’ve looked at have little or no activity which is actually a little disappointing to me. However, there are several brand accounts that stand out.

One of the brands that I first followed was KodakCB Jenny. Of course a photography brand is going to excel on Pinterest but what I really like about this account is that they’re not just pushing their product. They have boards that explore historic or funny photos as well as boards that teach photo tricks and techniques. My favorite photography store, Adorama, recently started a Pinterest account. As with more examples below, having some fun boards show that you’re a fun brand. AdoramaPix has a Zombie Love board as well as a board offering specials to their Pinterest followers, something that might work in the tourism industry.

The Redeye Chicago Pinterest account is another great example. They have boards for festivals with photos and videos of performers as well as fun boards like their Chicago Tattoos and Puppies – Why Not? boards. They also have a board of their staff members. It’s a nice reminder that they’re more than just a brand.

The U.S. Army and Weather Channel are also great because they explore the niche interests that many Pinterest users have – cooking/food, crafts, fashion/style and travel.

One last example is Klout’s #KXKW board – a board that they’re creating live while in Austin for SXSW. Using Pinterest on the go like this is a fresh idea.

Please feel free to share your favorite brand boards in a comment on this post!

So with all the accounts already on Pinterest, how can you stand out?

A cool trick is to hack a few of your boards by using the 9 squares to create a larger image for the board. Here are some instructions as well as 10 examples. The big problem with these is that most of the boards only have the 9 images needed create a board, which is quite disappointing from the user’s perspective.

There’s nothing more misleading than clicking on the “Artwork by Kids” board and discovering that there aren’t any artwork pins at all, beyond the 9 needed to create the hacked image.

The way Pinterest works is that the 9 most recent images display on the board tile. So once you have your hacked image displayed, you can’t add more pins without disrupting the image. My advice is to add at least 30 pins right from the beginning and then create the hacked image. Another option would be to sporadically add more pins and redo the hacked image every few months.

If you create a hacked board, please share it in the comment section. I’d love to compile a list of them for the tourism industry!