Pinterest has created business accounts to allow brands to promote themselves. Pinterest is a social network with a very visual feel . Users create an online gallery of images that are of interest to them. The images then link back to the original webpage that the image was found upon. The galleries are known as boards in Pinterest speak and you “pin” images to your boards. When you pin an image you can also add text to the image. Boards allow you to subdivide your pins into subcategories. For example on my Pinterest page I have boars for General Tech Stories, SEO, Social Media and Videos among others.

The new business account comes with a different set of terms to those of a standard user account. Business accounts can also use the name of the business rather than that of an individual. Business users also gain access to extra tools. For example if you have an online shop then you might want to add a Pin It Button to each product page. This is very similar in its functionality to a Like button for Facebook. When you configure your button you can set it to show the number of times that the page has been repined or not. There is also a Follow button that you can add to your site that when clicked will allow fellow Pinterest users to follow you on Pinterest.

Pinterest is all about telling stories in a visual manner. As the old adage goes “A picture says a thousand words”. Pinterest likes its users to provide compelling content and compelling content on Pinterest starts with strong imagery. If you are going to use Pinterest as a business user and you are planning on creating a board of the products that you offer then rather than just using images that have been supplied by a variety of suppliers you might want to consider creating your own images so that they all have a common look and feel to them which will make them more pleasing to the eye.

Pinterest has gained a lot of attention within the tech community and one of the facts that is often quoted about it is that its users are mainly female. This is certainly true in the US where over 80% of users are female. However, here in the UK the demographic is very different with males accounting for 55% of users. This last statistic may explain why last Friday I was talking to two pretty tech savvy females, one a client, and was surprised that neither of them had even heard of Pinterest.

I have only started using Pinterest myself recently and while it does not have the user base of say Facebook or Twitter I do feel that it is a social network that is likely to not only survive but also thrive long term. You can already see the impact that it has had on the web with many new website redesigns adopting the very image intense feel of Pinterest.

If you do have a business then you may well want to take a look at Pinterest. Start off with a personal account until you have got to grips with the workings of the site and then look at creating or converting to a business account.