Here is the part I find most helpful:

Creating A Feed For An Individual Pinterest Board:

Pinterest Board RSS
Following a specific board created by a user via RSS is less obvious.  If you visit a user’s Pinterest Board you’ll see that there are no links to subscribe to that board’s RSS feed.  But you can still generate a feed for it.

• To do this, first open the board (e.g. Felicia Day’s Geekin Board), then,
• Remove the last “/” from the URL and add .rss – your end URL will look likehttp://pinterest.com/feliciaday/geekin.rss

The RSS feed will show you the last 20 or so pins created in that board rather than the full contents.   You won’t be able to see the comments for pin but your feed will be updated when new items are added.

You’ll notice I tweaked our lower right widget box on this site to include a feed from my user profile. Here is how you do that:

Creating A Pinterest Feed From A Pinterest User:

Pinterest Fire Hose RSS
The site does provide an RSS option for user profiles; this feed combines all the latest pins a user has created regardless of which board they are in.  To generate this RSS simply click on the user’s profile and select the RSS icon on the left of the page.  Another way to do this is to add feed.rss to the end of the user’s profile; for example, if you want to see the latest pins by Felicia Day your RSS URL would look like this http://pinterest.com/feliciaday/feed.rss.

Let the syndication begin!

Here’s the thing – One of my marketing professors in Business School once famously said,

In English it would be plagiarism, but in business it’s called ‘best practices.’”

In a world of technology, where people turn into millionaires and billionaires over night, innovation sometimes trumps the ‘old practices.’ But sometimes they’re the best. Catalogs for selling products and services have been at the heart of businesses for years. Why not copy this same old strategy on Pinterest?

All you have to do is create pinboards based on the different categories that your products are offered in. One Company that makes good use of catalogs is Target.

Pinterest Catalog Best Practices:

Catalog designers have best practices that can be applied. Here are just a few:

1. Natural Setting Product Photography – Use images that show the product being used with other products instead of single product images. This context view helps pinners visualize themselves using the product and therefore encourages more purchases.
2. Thoughtful product descriptions – Pinterest allows up to 500 characters for each image. Product descriptions must be clear and simple, at the same time be creative to keep your target audience engaged. For the best catalog product descriptions check out the J Peterman Comany.
3. Consistency – Yes, anytime you talk about design, this element cannot be underplayed. In developing your brand image, you need to pin images that make who you are absolutely clear to your customer. For example, one way of doing this is have your logo in the background. However, remember to keep things interesting while being consistent as sometimes consistency leads to boredom.
4. Categorization – In print catalogs you’re constrained by the page count. But in Pinterest you can organize things in an infinant number of ways. Think logically about how best to organize your product presentation in a user friendly way.

Are you ready to create catalogs on Pinterest? I think so.

By the way, if you are not sure how Pinterest fits in with your overall social media strategy, we can help! Consider signing up for a social media consultation.

By the way, don’t forget to follow me on pinterest…

The thing that makes Pinterest unique is that when users are on this social media website, they are attracted to brands they love by pinning images that interest them.

How does this help us as marketers? Pinterest delivers you prospects with the following attributes:

1. Self Identified: Their identity and who they are is revealed to you through this massive virtual collection tool. One of the hardest parts of prospecting is to get ‘hand-raisers’ to self identify. Pinterest enables it.
2. Non-Defensive: They don’t feel like they are on a website that is trying to sell them products or services. Getting a prospective customer to interact with you with their defenses down is a critical part of the sales process.
3. Sharing Preferences: Every pin that is posted on a ‘board’ will tell you something about the customer. This ‘something’ is their tastes and preferences – a key component of market research.
4. Saying Yes: Sales professionals agree, the best way to get a prospect to purchase something is to get them saying, “Yes” as early in the process as possible so that when you ask for the sale, their natural response is simply another “Yes”. Repinning content on Pinterest is saying, “Yes – I Want To Remember This, Save it For Later, And Share It With My Friends”. That’s a prospecting home-run.

So how can you start this process of attraction? As you publish stories, make sure to include a relevant, eye-catching image of your content. Your images must serve to make your brand interesting to the customer. Here is one example of a technique you can use “Pinterest Traffic Tips: Use Before And After Images, Not Just After Images”.

Not sure how to get started? Consider signing up for a Social Media Tune Up – our 3 step consulting process.

Are you attracting new customers with Pinterest? Tell us what you’re learning.

By the way, don’t forget to follow me on pinterest…

Can you use Pinterest to make money via the Amazon Associates program? “

This week we’re aiming to find out by conducting a fun little experiment. As a disclaimer – I am not an affiliate marketer. I am just experimenting. I’m sure there are true affiliate marketers who are reading this, and if they wanted to, they could share their expertise.

7 Steps To Make Money On Pinterest With Amazon:

1. I pulled my favorite book off the shelf. Although I think Darren Rowse over at Problogger would probably recommend going with a current best-seller. Maybe I’ll try that next. Read his advice on how to boost Amazon Affiliate Income here.
2. I Summarized a nice section of the book to create a nice ‘pinutorial’.
3. I used Photoshop Elements to make it as nice as I could. Although admittedly I’m not a designer.
4. I added screenshots of the book covers for both the print and audio editions.
5. I pinned it to Pinterest using my ‘Books I love’ Board. To see the pin ‘in the wild’ on Pinterest click here: Growing A Business On Pinterest
6. I added a brief disclosure, “disclosure: I make money if you buy this book through this link.” I believe this is adequate to comply with the FTC guidelines related affiliate marketers. Read a good summary here.
7. I edited the Pin URL to use my Amazon Associates Program unique link for that book. So, if it works, I should receive affiliate income from any sales that occur on this book, or any item that people buy on Amazon as a result of following this URL there.

You might be wondering,

Do people click from Pinterest to Amazon? “

Here is a full post on ‘Pinterest For Product Marketing’. The emphatic answer is yes. Amazon is one of the most visited sites after people leave Pinterest.

I’ll keep you posted on how this works out…

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

Maybe Other Social Media Conferences could use a Pinterest speaker?!” 

So I looked at the awesome problogger.com website to see what they had going at their big blogging conference in Australia, and sure enough, they had a Pinterest expert lined up. But not just any Pinterest expert – someone who used to work with me at World Vision Richenda Vermeulen! How random & strange is that?!

What are the chances? 

So it looks like the Australian market is covered. Dang it! But how could I be upset? I’m excited for my old coworker. I wish her all the best!

Then I looked to see what Blog World had going at their big Social Media Conference. I thought,

Maybe New York could use a Pinterest Speaker?

Nope, they’ve got things covered with Kelby Carr, author of the new Pinterest For Dummies book.

Nuts!

So, I’m out of options. So, if by chance, you need a speaker for Pinterest topics at your social media conference, and Richenda and Kelby are busy – hit me up. I’ll be happy to jump in and lend you a hand.

I’m sure there will be a wave of Pinterest experts that emerge in the next year or two. I hope I make the cut!

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

Blog & Ebook: Last year I launched this blog, and my ebook – The Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide…

Marketing On Pinterest Book Camp: And earlier this year I launched my Marketing On Pinterest Boot Camp. It’s my free 10 part video guide to Marketing on Pinterest. You can read some of the testimonials here. I get them pretty much every day, and I try to post them as I can…

Social Media Camp Speaking Gig: And next month I’ll speak at the Social Media Camp in Canada about Pinterest.

Pinterest Power Book: Then in the Fall I have a ‘real’ book coming out with McGraw Hill Professional – Pinterest Power: Make Money | Get Noticed | Expand Your Reach“. So that should be cool.

But this morning I realized there is something missing. It’s time to take all this to the next level and launch my 2nd Boot Camp program. A beefed up, professional grade, high-quality training program.

The Branding On Pinterest Boot Camp

The Branding On Pinterest Boot Camp will be a 1 month  course that provides a deep dive into lots of great Branding On Pinterest related topics. It will include an ebook/guide and a 10 part video series. Topics will include:

• Positioning Your Brand On Pinterest
• Brand Strategies That Work
• Developing Your Brands Unique Position On Pinterest
• Highlighting Brand Attributes On Pinterest
• Developing Sticki-ness
• Image editing and copyright protection tools
• Tracking Your work and measuring impact
• Copyright issues & challenges
• 10 Companies to model your work after
• More, lot’s more…

I will start putting together the details soon and will keep you posted. I will likely publish this on a platform that allows affiliate marketers to help me promote it. If you’re interested in that angle, get ahold of me.

So what do you think about this idea? Would you rather see another topic be the focus? I’d love your advice on how best to launch this. Leave a comment, or answer this poll…

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

I’m super excited to be speaking at the Social Media Camp Conference in Victoria in June [2012] along with Chris Brogan.

The kind folks at the Social Media Camp, Canada’s largest social media conference just made my day by pinning this description of me on their Pinterest Speakers board,

“Happy to have Pinterest expert Jason Miles joining us…”

Wow, time to put up.

But no worries, as you’ll notice in the screenshot, there is just 1 person that has liked the pin, (no it wasn’t me, although I should like it).  It’s a guy named Scott McDonald, and I don’t even know him?!

Hi Scott! Since I’m an ultimate pessimist I’ll assume it will be just the 2 of us at the Pinterest workshop, here is some of what we’ll be covering:

• Pinterest’s back-story, growth trajectory, current size, and what the smart folks at Techcrunch predict the future might look like…
• 9 Reasons Pinterest Is Infinitely better than Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube for marketers…(and yeah, I think I should know, I’ve built a 14,000 follower FB Fanpage, and a 7,600 subscriber Youtube channel both with very little budget).
• The Google Display Ad Crank Call Story, (no one has ever heard this before).
• 12 Ways To Create An Authority Profile in Pinterest. And a list of mistakes people (even professional online marketers) make.
• Our Story – How We Doubled Our Revenue The Month After We Started Using Pinterest, (I will show the proof & details),

[disclaimer - Scott, when it comes to making money - you're on your own bro. I am not suggesting your revenue will double by using Pinterest - I'm just sharing our story - in detail - and explaining why Pinterest played a part. Our results are unique, and yours will be too].

And Scott, as a total side note – why in the world would you listen to social media ‘experts’ who cannot prove to you that they’ve actually used the social media tool they’re talking about to create real business results? (and no, I don’t mean simply building a list of followers on the social media site because they call themselves an expert on that site – I mean actually using the site to make money – get noticed – or expand their reach…actual real-world business results. It boggles my mind.

Anyway…back to the list of fun topics for our time together. We’ll go over…

• Inside the Liberty Jane Patterns Referral Related Analytics – Specifically the Pinterest Insights. This is our ecommerce site that gets 40k uniques a month, 300k visits. Through this site we’ve delivered about 150,000 digital guidebooks over the last 2 years, and we sign up about 600 people per month to our newsletter.
• The Smartest, (as opposed to dumbest), way to set up your Pinterest account, if you haven’t already done it. And how to fix a major start-up mistake many people make.
• How we built our company’s Pinterest Profile to 1,000 followers in 3 months. And how you can too.
• The Secret Weapon for Professional Pinterest Marketers, (actually it’s an awesome software tool in private beta), that we learned about from the cool folks at ModCloth. I’ll demo it, and your mind will be blown.

Okay, I’m sure I’ll come up with more fun stuff between now and then…I want to cram in as much value for you as I possibly can.

And Scott, no worries if you’re a total newb. We’ll boot up our laptops and I’ll personally help you get set up and running in Pinterest – answer your questions – talk about your business situation & how Pinterest can work for you.

Overall, I think we’re going to have a blast – As is my custom with my Management Class @ Northwest University – I’ll bring candy & snacks in case you get hungry. And if we can’t cover all the topics on your mind, then I’ll give you my personal contact information and you can always reach out to me directly after the workshop – free of charge of course.

Finally, I’ll put in a plug for my new book – Pinterest Power: Make Money | Get Noticed | Expand Your Reach – it’s coming out in the Fall with McGraw Hill Professional.

See ya next month Scott!

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

The test was to determine something that I’ve felt curious about for a while. That…

Before & After Pins are better than just using the ‘After’ image alone “

The Experiment: We noticed that the Clickinmoms team had pinned the ‘after’ image 23 hours previously, and on their website they have the before & after images stacked one on top of the other perfectly, so we simply screenshotted it, and pinned that, with a link back to their [awesome] article of course.

The result: Within 1 hour we had 26 repins, and 23 hours later we had 94 repins, compared to their 84 repins after the same time period. As a raw number that’s just an 11% improvement. But wait, there is more…

Importantly, we had launched our version to a pinboard of 400 followers, where as they had launched their version to a pinboard of 8,200 followers. So even though the actual results are only 11% higher, (94 versus 84), the percentage of followers result, (or what you might call ‘repin rate’ similar to ‘response rate’ in Direct Response Marketing lingo), was 23.5% versus 1%. That’s a fairly dramatic different.

The Extraneous Variables: [sorry to geek out]. You’ll also notice that I changed the image description. That’s called a variable. Specifically called an extraneous variable, [learn about intervening variables versus extraneous variables here]. If I wanted a proper A/B Test, I would have used the exact same phrase so those would have been ‘constants’. And we would have launched both versions to the same pinboard so the number of followers would have been constant. So, you could say the variable influenced people differently and impacted these results. But I’m not going to be that picky. Maybe I’ll run that test next. All other variables were fairly constant – time of day it was launched, etc. The day of the week was different, so that again, is another variable. But all in all, this is a good enough, (for me), test to prove my original gut feeling. If one of you want to do a proper A/B test with no other variables, go for it.

Ps. Hey, don’t forget to…

Check it out here: Social Media Camp