Have you tried the social image sharing site known as Pinterest?  Kari Rippetoe shares a few tips here for using it to effectively market your event or business.

Hi, I’m Kari, and I’m a Pinterest addict.

I was wary about it at first (“Ugh, not another social network!”), but after using it for a few months, I totally see what the attraction is and why it’s driving more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. People love pictures, and Pinterest capitalizes on that.

Brands are slowly beginning to pick up on this popularity and leveraging it as part of their social media marketing efforts. And events are no different. They have a unique opportunity to further engage attendees and convey information through a more visual medium.

A picture paints a thousand words, and events can tell an engaging story on Pinterest.

Here are 5 tips to help you get started on Pinterest to promote your event:

Make your pins visually compelling. On Pinterest, visual rules the day. This is what makes Pinterest so popular – images that compel users to learn more. Take an inventory of photos you have that will be of visual appeal, such as speaker photos, venue photos, infographics, and even videos (yep, you can pin those too!).

Create well-organized & relevant boards. Because Pinterest gives users the option to follow a person (and all of their boards) or just individual boards created by a person, it’s important to plan your boards to appeal to different interests your attendees will have. For example, if you offer several tracks of conference sessions, consider creating a board for each track that includes photos of speakers. Have photos from last year’s show? Create a special board to share them.

Categorize your boards properly. Apart from just browsing through the pins of the people they’re following, Pinterest users like to browse through Pinterest categories to find new things from people they don’t follow, so make sure you categorize your boards appropriately. You can only add a board to one category, so make it count! Think about where your attendees would go to find the information you’re providing, depending on what kind of content your event offers.

Posted with the permission of Kari Rippetoe.  To read the rest of this post, please click http://www.tuvel.com/blog/2012/02/27/how-to-effectively-use-pinterest-for-events/