Happy Holidays, one and all! It was a merry November indeed for Pinterest fans, what with the dual release of secret boards and official business accounts! Chrismahanukwanzakah come early! Can’t wait to see what this social bookmarking darling has up its sleeve for December 🙂 .
While business accounts have obviously awesome perks galore, it’s secret boards that have got us particularly excited. In the spirit of the season, we wanted to unwrap some of the features, benefits, and opportunities this groovy new board type brings to the table. Read on for actionable tactics!
The Secret Power of Secret Boards
Secret boards! Hooray! Now we have the ability to curate our own private stash of content we might not want people to see. But hmm, what would we not want the world to see? [Insert adult content joke here.] Seriously though, secret boards are not only for the obvious: surprise gift ideas for friends and family. At the high level, this board type allows us the chance to do what we want without being gawked at by the Pinterest public.
A few months back, some AIMCLEARians started using Pinterest for internal training and competitive research, among other things (*cough* pinning drool-tastic pics of food). Of course, when using Pinterest for business purposes, you want to keep some things to yourself. Cards close to the chest and all that jazz. Now you can!
Here are three ways to consider using secret boards to give your business a super cool competitive edge:
1. Pinterest for Content Aggregation
An essential part of community management is sharing non-branded content, greatly aided by streamlined content aggregation. We love aggregators like AllTop and customized Google Readers to find non-competitive, third-party content to share with our social communities. Are you a cutting-edge CM? Are you factoring Pinterest into your content aggregation strategy? Start now! Pinterest is another fabulous tool to find awesome articles, blog posts, infographics, and videos to dish out to your community.
Pinterest is a social bookmarking darling. But when it comes to content aggregation, use it like a search engine. Remember, what people write in the comment field of each pin are essentially keywords. In the Pinterest search box, type in short-tail topical KWs to find killer content  you might not normally come across in the regular SERPs.
Spend some time surfing to uncover blog posts, news stories, and other cool gems to share.
How about infographics?
Videos posted from YouTube may lead to a useful channel brimming with topical videos to share or learn from. Be committed to traveling down the rabbit hole. You never know what you may find!
Here’s where the secret boards come in:
- Create a secret board for your secret content.
- In the comment area, add a brief, thoughtful note to remind you what you might want to use this for. Agency CMs, make a note of the client the content pertains to. This is a good way to organize your goods.
(Note, you only get three secret boards, so you might have to share your content aggregation secret board for all clients.)
2. Pinterest for Competitive Intelligence
Pinterest is an amazing tool for competitive intelligence. While surfing Pinterest, sometimes you come across awesome articles, inforgraphics, etc. that, upon closer inspection, actually belong to a competitor! It’s important for companies to keep tabs on what competitors are doing, but you probably don’t want to broadcast from your business page that you’re actively pinning their goods.
Ready to rock?
- Input competitors’ websites at the end of this string: http://pinterest.com/source/YOURWEBSITE.com
- Behold, everything anyone in the world is pinning from any site you enter
- See what people are sharing from your competitor’s site, and take note
- Learn from what others are doing in the industry
- See what they are NOT doing and capitalize on that
- Phase II: Become an industry leader on Pinterest by creating new and useful boards that others can learn from and re-pin
- Know thine enemy 🙂
3. Pinterest for Internal Training
Here at AIMCLEAR, we hold daily trainings during which we curate and discuss articles across the web. It’s one of the ways we all can learn from to stay on top of industry news. Why not use Pinterest as another resource?
- Create a secret board entitled: Internal Training Materials
- Make sure you share the board with your team members so everyone can pin content they come across
- Stay up to speed without giving away your trade secrets 🙂
Voila! There you have it. We hope this article has inspired you to use Pinterest’s secret boards in creative ways that benefit your own company or your clients. Now it’s your turn! Share with us how you’re using secret boards.
