The Social Media Club of Dallas held a panel discussion this past week that offered tips on to use Pinterest in your social engagement strategies. Pinterest is one of the most popular and widely used social networks right now and there are some advantages to the platform that will help boost your brand’s online relevancy. With the right planning, you can have Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram work with Pinterest but it takes research and some analytics to make it successful. Below are some tips that the panel guests offered through their own experiences that might prove useful for your Pinterest ideas.

Knowing your audience and when they are on and pinning better helps you determine when to pin.

Brands can use Pinterest for actual business insights, such as merchandising.

Invent a new category on pinterest & nail it… or pin it

Pinterest Tools: Why You Should Give PinAlerts A Try

Create a board of top pins to put on your website to drive to Pinterest.

Pingraphy allows you to schedule pins.

Knowing your audience and when they are on and pinning better helps you determine when to pin.

3 Ways Pinterest Could Be Even Better

Ask for permission to repin copyrighted content. It takes time but it won’t cost you a dime.

The best time to pin as a brand? Saturday mornings and 3-6pm weekdays.

Is your brand Instagraming to Pinterest? If not, perhaps you should!

Pinterest for image search with context.

Pinterest must match your personality and brand core.

Pinterest – A Sleeping Giant in Internet Marketing.

Brands can use Pinterest for actual business insights, such as merchandising.

Use other social media platforms to promote your pins. Facebook is best. Stock to one pin share per day.

You can use Reachli as a Pinterest analytics tool.

Curalate is a great platform for discovering where/by whom images of your brand are being pinned.

What to do with secret boards? Perfect your boards before their public launch!

If your goal is to get people to follow all of your Pinterest boards, sharing same pin to multiple boards at once is not good.

Showcase your brand without it all being about you.

Keep Pinterest contest prizes under $5,000 or has to be bonded and insured.

Pinning same pin to multiple boards? Space it out and repurpose.

Give followers a sneak preview of your brand’s coming products with Pinterest

Always give context to Pinterest images. SEO must!

How to grow your brand on Pinterest : contests, sweeps & games w/ a follow requirement. Most people won’t drop off.

Use group boards as a discovery system.

Link the Pinterest images to a useful and GOOD article.

Use Pinterest for customer engagement: Showcase pictures of customers enjoying your brand they have shared on Twitter and Instagram!

Brands can use secret Pinterest boards to perfect the board before it’s released to the public.

Tie stuff that your followers already love in with your brand

Connecting with the right people is more valuable to a brand than the number of people.

There’s so much creativity around things that aren’t yours but you can tie to your brand.

Rule of thumb: 1/3 of your pins come from you, the other 2/3 from not you.

Showcase your brand but don’t make it all about you.

It’s not always about you! But it can still reflect the brand anthem.

Brands can share content beyond their products. What inspires your audience? How do you showcase brand beyond you?

Give followers a sneak preview of your brand’s coming products with Pinterest.

Pinterest is not just about account follower numbers; how do their networks scale? Are you targeting the right influencers?

Create great images that you can pin and link to great, useful content people want to access later for B2B.

In the U.S. Pinterest is a female-dominated platform, but in the U.K. it’s a male-dominated platform.

Brands have to utilize the “pin it” buttons on images throughout their websites. It works.

Demographic & time zones matter on Pinterest! New moms 5-7am, urbanites 8pm-12am, soccer moms Sat morning.

I find a custom description helps a pin gain traction and discussion.

Know your audience, when they are using the site to find when you should pin on Pinterest, late workday & weekends are popular.

Pinterest contests can also be used to provide insightful focus group data on consumer interests.

Make sure people enjoy what you’re pinning. Don’t pin stuff people don’t think they can pull off.

Related articles

• 10 Things You Need to Do When Getting Started on Pinterest (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• The Top 10 Questions Small Businesses Have About Pinterest (blogs.constantcontact.com)
• Getting Visual with Pinterest Marketing Strategy: Part II (digitalsurgeons.com)
• Getting Visual with Pinterest Marketing Strategy – DigitalSurgeons.com (digitalsurgeons.com)
• Fauzia Burke: How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Book (huffingtonpost.com)
• Pinterest: Learning the Basics to How to Gain 1 Million Followers (inspiredbyfamilymag.com)
• How My Site Gets Tons of Traffic From Pinterest (inc.com)
• Why Your Brand Should Be On Pinterest (& How to Get Started) (prnewswire.com)
• Pinterest: Five Ways to Monetize (digitaria.com)
• Stats: Who uses Pinterest and why is it important for marketers? (econsultancy.com)