In our last newsletter, we introduced you to Pinterest, the new visual social media network that has everyone talking. Pinterest isn’t like the other social media giants, and hasn’t achieved quite the same reach…yet. But there’s no doubt that this network is going to become an important part of social media strategies this year, just ask Mashable!Pinterest can be highly advantageous to businesses if utilised effectively, so we thought we’d help you to figure out whether you should use Pinterest, why, and how.Is my business right for Pinterest? Pinterest is an extremely visual network, and based around appealing to its audience with images. Ideal businesses for Pinterest are retail stores – clothing and shoes are constantly pinned and re-pinned; restaurants, entertainment venues, hotels, real estate and anything revolving around consumer products. Basically, anything that takes a great picture. Unfortunately if you are in a business like the manufacturing of tools, or IT and computer hardware, Pinterest may not quite work for you!Stay With ItJust like using Facebook or Twitter, you must keep up to date if you are going to utilize Pinterest as part of your social media strategy. Falling behind will mean your pins won’t ever land on the front page, or ‘most popular pins’ page, and you will lose – or simply won’t gain, new followers. Pinterest is all about the trends: what people are looking at, doing, reading, watching, eating. If you want your product to be part of that, make sure you put yourself in the ring.Get Creative Creating an account and pinning your own products and images is only the start of Pinterest. Likes, repins, comments - the list is endless. You may choose to only have boards of your own products. However, to seem more user-friendly and add the social aspect, you may choose to keep a ‘like’ list of products from other stores or related to yours. Maybe you work in real estate or home design, in which case you could create a board of ideas for potential clients to look at. You can search for your products through the Pinterest search bar or by going to pinterest.com/source/yourwebsite.com– maybe you want to comment on other users’ pins and thank them or tell them about other products or services.Interaction & ContestsHolding Pinterest contests are a great way to get other ‘pinners’ involved and bring more attention to your brand. Contests can take on any form – the best comment on a pin or board, the most repins could win a gift card or free service. You can set up a contest for users to submit photos related to your brand and choose the best: this can be done over all your other social networks and then the winner has their photo displayed on Pinterest. The opportunities for competitions are endless and simple and not as restrictive as Facebook.If you think Pinterest is for your but you're not sure how to get started, contact Bang Online today on (08) 9328 7000 or email info@bangdigital.com.au and we can help you out.