Pinterest Secret Boards - Make Use of Them for Your Business

Pinterest recently unveiled their newest feature - secret boards.  Here are a few pieces of information about secret boards and how you can make use of them in your business.

• You can have up to three of these secret boards (in addition to your public boards). 
• You can not make an existing board secret. 
• You can make a secret board public, but you cannot change it back to secret status.
• Only the creator of the secret board can make it public.
• Other people see your secret board through invitations you send allowing them to contribute to the board.
• There does not appear to be a limit on the number of invitations you can send to make people contributors to a secret board.

If you have a business where you deal with clients and need to show them pictures of things you are discussing (flowers, designs, packaging, labels, etc.) or even need a central place to archive links to articles and other online information (provided it's pin-able), these new secret boards may be a valuable tool to enhancing customer relationships and improving communication. 

A secret Pinterest board could also be handy as a tool for internal communication, idea sharing, and brainstorming.  Since original photos can be pinned, you, your family members, employees, or anyone you want to get involved, could pin photos of things they see away from the business to spark discussions or for future planning.

Since you can only have up to three secret boards at a time, managing your use of them will be important.  You can delete boards as you complete projects, allowing you to create a new secret board.  Your other option is to simply add and remove contributors.


For more information about Pinterest's secret boards, click here.  We invite you to visit our Pinterest boards here.  Do you think secret Pinterest boards will help you in your business?

Lots of Interest in Pinterest...

Watching the social media landscape, it's impossible to ignore the lightning-fast growth of Pinterest, an image-based social media tool.  Its growth rate has been amazing and seems to be getting heavy use related to food, fashion and design, and crafts.  I've been watching it for a couple months so that I could learn more.  (Find my Pinterest page here.)  This post describes what I know and provides some suggestions on how you might use Pinterest for marketing.

Pinterest in a Nutshell
My initial view of Pinterest caused a quick eye roll.  So many dresses, food dishes, flowers, signs, and other things that just weren't me.  What were all of these pictures?  Why were they limited to these types of items?  After re-grouping, I pressed on and have learned to appreciate this tool for what it is.  Here's what I know...

My Pinterest Page

First, it's very important to understand that Pinterest is not yet open to the public.  A prospective user can be added to a waiting list or be invited by an existing user.  This means that it has yet to reach its full potential, even for this early stage of its existence. Second, Pinterest is made for individuals, not companies or brands. Those may be coming someday, but they aren't reality right now.

Pinterest allows you to add "pins" to virtual "boards," each of which has a theme.  So, a board might represent dessert recipes, places you would like to travel, or craft ideas, as three examples.  A pin, represented by a picture, might include a photo of a fantastic fruit tart.  A pin can also include two other important characteristics, a short description and a link to some URL.  It's these additions that, in my opinion, can make Pinterest valuable to you, but that comes later.

Pins can be added in two different ways.  They can be uploaded from the user's computer or they can be pinned directly from a website.  This is easily done using the Pinterest "Bookmarklet," which can be downloaded from Pinterest and shows up as a bookmark in your bookmark toolbar.  Adding pins with the bookmarklet automatically adds the original photo URL to the image.  That way, whenever anyone clicks on the pin, they will be directed to the original site.  Uploading pins is also easy, but is done one at a time, so can be slow.  Again, users can add the description and a URL to uploaded pins.

One of the social aspects occurs when users follow each other.  User A can follow User B, which means that A will receive updates on all of B's boards, or User A can choose to follow one or more of User B's specific boards.  Because all of Pinterest's boards are public, however, User A does not have to follow User B to view B's boards, though A won't receive updates about B's boards without following B.

Beyond simply following, Pinterest allows increased interaction through "repinning," "likes," and "comments."  Comments are exactly what you're probably thinking, short text comments.  If a user likes a pin, then this is reflected on the pin and on a special page of likes on the users page.  If a user feels that the pin would represent them well, they can repin it, adding it as a pin to one of their own boards.  Again, this is reflected on the original pin.

Examples of Repins of my Pin showing the Theater of Epidaurus, Greece.

Pinterest as a Promotional Tool
As a visually-oriented tool, Pinterest has great potential.  Many items that food and agricultural marketers sell are already popular items on Pinterest.  Food, flowers, and gifts/crafts are all over the site.  The trick will be to have engaging photos that appeal to people.  Without those, one won't succeed with a tool like this one.  Assuming you have good content, here are a few thoughts...

One of my self-loaded pins. Me looking out into the ocean.

1. Use the descriptions and URLs to your advantage.  Drive web traffic to your Facebook page or website.  (Facebook doesn't allow you to pin directly from their site, but you can edit a URL to drive traffic there, if you like.)

2. Pinterest frowns on over-selling.  Use the site as a way to engage through photos and provide information through descriptions and URLs, but keep blatant self-promotion in check.

3. Watch who likes or repins your pins. Make sure to use this as another tool to socialize. Follow them if their boards are of interest to you.

4. ALL CONTENT IS PUBLIC! This is one downside for some marketers. A friend in the floral design business has used Pinterest to share wedding ideas with brides, but must be careful about having others steal designs. This is likely to happen anyway, but some may not want to simply hand over their secrets.

5. Think about a contest using Pinterest.  Many ag and food marketers use recipes to promote their products.  What about having a recipe contest on Pinterest and the winner is the one with the most repins and likes?  Ask customers to provide their best apple dumpling recipe, for example, and an original photo of their dish, and then create a board just for that contest.  The resulting pinning and repinning will drive traffic to your site and get your business's name out there.  Provide a gift certificate for an award, and you've just received some inexpensive promotion.

6. Integrate Pinterest with other social media tools.  When you pin something, you can notify Twitter followers or Facebook friends.  You can also notify them later.  This takes on more importance if you're running a contest, as discussed above.

Closing Thoughts
Like all social media tools, don't just launch into using Pinterest.  Think first about whether it will connect with your target audience and whether you have the resources to make it work for you.  Maybe photo albums on Facebook are a better fit for you.  Either way, make an informed decision about whether you should use the tool or not.

UPDATE - MARCH 27, 2012: My colleague Kathy Kelley (@kmk17psu on Twitter) just shared this infographic which has some great info for using Pinterest effectively.