Why all the interest in Pinterest? It’s a fun, rather addictive and quickly growing site, and those that have Pinterest accounts log in and log in often. According to an article from WSJ Online, in January alone 11 million unique visitors visited the site, which is more than double the 4.9 million who visited in November 2011. Also according to the WSJ article, those who visited Pinterest spent 100 minutes on the site in January — quite impressive when compared to the 19 minutes spent by those visiting business social networking site LinkedIn.

So what is Pinterest? Similar to other social networking sites, a Pinterest user follows other people or companies “boards” or collections of images. Think of a Pinterest board as a virtual bulletin board that you can pin web images to. Popular boards include images collected by people planning a wedding, redecorating a bedroom, or a fashionista collecting her favorite spring accessories. When someone viewing a board clicks on a pin, they are then directed to the website where the image came from — or your company’s website. Therein lies the advantage for businesses: word of mouth marketing. When you sign up for a Pinterest account, you can create your own boards and pin images you find on websites to them (you can do this by inputting the link to the page the image is found on or installing a “pin it” button to your browser that allows you to easily pin an image). You can also upload an image from your phone or computer. There are many tutorials being written on how to use Pinterest, with a great one found HERE on MSNBC.com.

But once you or your company gets up and running, here are some tips on how to start to make Pinterest work for your business:

1). Create Great Images One of the most addictive parts about Pinterest is being able to create a board with a bunch of beautiful pictures on them and sharing it with your friends. Grab some great-looking images from your favorite sites, and you’ll have an awesome looking board in no time. But in creating some boards for TweeParties Pinterest account, I noticed that many websites have a poor selection of images to choose from, and some websites have NO images that are pinnable. The key for businesses here is to make sure your website has professional-looking, colorful, sharp images on them that are easy to pin (such as .jpg files). The more colorful and vivid, the better. Give Pinterest users a few good images, and you’ll be sure to land on a few good boards.

2.) Create Your Own Boards and Share Them Start on Pinterest by creating boards of anything you like: your spring collection, your award-winning products, or your  favorite recipes and share links to your boards via Facebook, Twitter, your blog, or an email blast — you name it! You’ll not only gain Pinterest followers, but you’ll also find that other Pinterest users might “repin” or share your pins on their own boards and with their followers.

3). Add the ‘Pin It’ Button to Your Website or Blog Posts Make it easy for visitors to your website to pin your images by adding the official ‘Pin It’ Button from Pinterest (see the top of this post for an example). If you have a visitor to your site that’s not there on a pin hunt, but who is in fact a Pinterest user, you might inspire them to pin something when they see it. Click here to find the Pinterest button page.

4). Have a Pinterest Contest I’ve already seen a few businesses run Pinterest contests. It’s a great way to get people to explore your website as well as encourage them to pin your images and share information about your company. A business might ask that entrants create a board about a certain topic that includes a specific number of images from that company’s website. To enter, the user sends the company the link to their new board. The intended result is to get people pinning links to your site with the hope that their followers will see them and take an interest in checking it out. Prizes can be products, gift cards — you name it! But as with any contest, be sure to follow legal rules and draft up official rules before proceeding.

Good luck & happy pinning!

Contests and promotions can be great way for businesses both large and small to help promote their products and services, gain more followers and subscribers, interact with fans and generate a good buzz to help boost a company’s image. However, when not done properly, a poorly run contest can backfire and actually do more harm than good. Here are some quick tips to help you get started on running a successful contest and avoiding an ‘Epic Fail.’

Know the Rules
If you are running a contest on Twitter or Facebook, check out both sites to make sure you are following rules set up by both social media sites. For example, Twitter does not allow for contests where a person with the most tweets wins. Also, Facebook does not permit winners of a contest to be notified that they have won through Facebook (no posts, messaging, etc.). Do not jeopardize your account status by violating the terms on either site. For guidelines for running a contest specifically on Twitter, check out this article. For Facebook rules, visit Facebook’s promotions page.

Make the Rules
When running any contest, it’s best to seek legal advice and draft Official Rules. It’s better to err on the side of caution and consult with an attorney who is highly knowledgeable about sweepstakes laws. Some contests and sweepstakes are not allowed in certain states. If you do choose to wing it, consider giving away smaller prizes (under $50 value), which are less likely to come under the scrutiny of litigious eyes. The larger the prize, the larger buzz you will generate and entries gained, but also the more likely someone will want to know if your giveaway followed all applicable laws. No matter the prize, make sure that you are following the law; the only way to really do that is to consult with a professional.

Set Limits
Not setting limits for your contest can have disastrous consequences. If you have a product giveaway and your only requirement is that everyone who uploads a photo to Facebook ‘wins’ a product, then prepare for the deluge—and the backlash. Often news of such giveaways spreads like wildfire through social media, blogs or other freebie and giveaway sites. Even if you have a low follower count and are a new company, not setting limits might force you to backtrack on your prizing and cause a stir among your followers. By simply limiting your giveaway to a specific number of winners can save your contest and reputation.

Another common problem is having a giveaway at a designated date and time, such as “the first 1,000 to enter will receive our product!” Only to have servers crash, error messages pop up and followers become disgruntled. Don’t offer something you cannot follow through on—unless you would like to see your wall or timeline fill up with angry posts.

Think Ahead
While not a contest, I’ll bet this week McDonalds wishes they would have foreseen the negative turn their #MeettheFarmers/#McDStories hashtag campaigns took. While hoping to generate a wholesome, positive buzz online and have users share their fond stories of MickeyD’s, instead users began to hijack the hashtag and tweet horrendous experiences that only sent messages of their dislike for the restaurant chain across the Twitterverse. Business must realize first of all that when venturing into social media, they lose a degree of control in that they cannot oversee what users write about them. If you have a product that might be controversial to some degree, seriously think about the possible repercussions of running such a campaign. On the other hand, this might give you a chance to engage those who might disagree with your product and  try to set things right or state your case. Secondly, if you are running a contest in which you solicit a feel-good story, specify that when promoting your contest: that to enter, users must tweet/post their favorite thing about our company. By making clear the purpose of your contest, you might inspire people to share positive thoughts about your business, and leave the negative ones off of their timelines.

Often when we help plan and host a Twitter Party or Twitter Chat, our clients request that we provide them with an in-depth report of how their hashtag performed during the event. And, more often than not, once the report is sent, we receive questions about what all of the statistics mean and what the differences are between them.

Here’s a quick synopsis of common terms used when tracking a hashtag, what those terms mean and how they were achieved:

REACH Simply put, this term reveals the maximum number of Twitter users your hashtag has reached. Or, the maximum number of users who might have seen your hashtag at least once. For example, if I have 100 followers and I tweet using a specific hashtag once, my reach is 100. If one of those users retweets that tweet just once, and  they too have 100 followers, that tag’s reach is now 200. If I tweet again using that same hashtag, I’m still ‘reaching’ the same users, so my reach stays at 200.

EXPOSURE This term measures the number of impression the hashtag had. This is different from reach in that the data on impressions shows how many times that hashtag showed up in someone’s time line. To expand upon our example above, I tweeted twice to my 100 followers, one of those followers tweeted once; our total reach is 200, but our impressions is 300. That hasthag appeared in a timeline 300 times.

ACTIVITY This gives you the number of individual tweets that were sent using that hashtag. In using the examples above, I tweeted using the hashtag twice; one of my followers once. Those three tweets reached 200 users and had a frequency of 300. But since it only took three tweets to do all that, our activity is just that: three tweets.

CONTRIBUTORS These are the total number of users — regardless of how many tweets they sent — who sent a tweet containing that hashtag. In our hypothetical example, I tweeted using the hashtag twice, and one of my followers retweeted it once. Though three tweets used the tag, only two users sent them. Thus, our statistic for contributors is two users.

The above terms will help you to best judge how many times your hashtag bounced around the Twittersphere. However, whether or not people saw — and better yet absorbed — your message usually can only be judged by the results of your calls to action sent during the party (such as added followers, newsletter sign ups, coupons used, new Facebook fans, etc.).

For more information on tracking hashtags and what service providers to use-as well as how to plan a Twitter Party or Chat-please check out our eBook now available for purchase at http://bit.ly/tweepartiesbook!

Twitter parties are fun ways to connect with your followers and to gain greater exposure for your brand. They take lots of planning and preparation, so you’ll want to make sure you do everything you can to get it right. Here are five things you can do to make sure you are on the path to Twitter party success!

Ample Promotion Time: If you announce your party the day of the event, you’ll probably get some people to attend. But often people don’t act the first time they are offered something. Ideally, allow at least a week to tweet, post, and blog about your party to help gain momentum. Some companies even send out press releases to gain further exposure, you’ll need to give them some circulation time for the biggest impact.

Convey the Facts: Put all of the components of your party in one place and make it easy for your followers to find and understand. Set up a registration page that includes the date, time, hosts/sponsor, hashtag, and any other information or requirements that are needed to attend or draw people to your party. Having an info page will give you a ‘landing page’ for which you can include a link to in Facebook posts and Tweets. Your info page can be set up on your website or blog, or you can create a Facebook event for it, or use a third-part event service such as Eventbrite or Twtvite.

Prizes: Having a great giveaway generates a lot of attention. Someone interested in winning might be more motivated to tweet about, which might lead someone else who might not have otherwise seen it to also tweet about it or attend. If a good prize can help generate some extra buzz for the event you’ve worked so hard on to promote, and it’s in your budget to give away—go for it!

Excellent Content: When doing an informal survey several months back of those who regularly attend Twitter events, about half said they wouldn’t attend a party based on prizes alone. Time is valuable; people want to get something in return for their attention. Not everyone wins a prize at Twitter parties, but if they can leave the event with greater knowledge of a topic, or by having a valuable interaction with an expert, celeb spokesperson, or company rep, they’ll be glad they took the time to attend — and remember you and your brand for it. Take time to plan your party, create insightful questions and assemble a team of participants who will give added value to your event.

Experience: You can go it alone and host a Twitter party yourself. With a little investment of time and research, most likely any skilled Twitter user can figure it out themselves. However, sometimes it pays to learn the ropes from someone who’s been there before. An experienced Twitter party or chat host can help you to navigate your first party and avoid potential problems. I have had clients comment about not knowing what to tweet during a party, not knowing how to handle giveaways, or unsure of how to set up a professional-looking registration page. Or they simply don’t have the time to do it all themselves. An experienced host can help you with that and give you the confidence you need to make sure you have a blast at your party — and that your attendees do to.

Want more Twitter Party tips? Get our new eBook: TweeParties ‘How to Plan a Twitter Party’ Guide! LEARN MORE HERE!

Twitter parties are fun, fast-paced events that are free to attend. They are billed as being open to everyone who has signed up for a Twitter account. Come, mingle, learn something new, chat about an informative topic, and maybe win a prize! Sounds simple enough, right?

But on occasion, there’s a bouncer at the door who excludes some from attending. His name is Twitter, and his reasons for not allowing admittance into his search function—the key to being part of any Twitter party—can be pretty vague.

I’ve seen it happen to a few attendees and even one host: they have a Twitter account with many followers and have sent hundreds of tweets, but come party time, they cannot ‘join in.’ Their tweets are making it out into the Twittersphere, but since they are not included in Twitter’s search function, they don’t show up in a search for a particular hashtag, even if they tweeted it. So what gives?

Your account may be functioning properly to some extent: your tweets might still be seen by your followers, but chances are you’ve been prevented from showing up in Twitter search. Since aggregator programs (like Tweet Chat, Tweet Grid) rely on accessing Twitter search to find those tweets containing a specific hashtag, you are thus ‘left out’ of the party.

To see if your account has been blocked from search, log on to Twitter, and enter the following in the search box at the top of the screen:

from:username

If you don’t get any results, your account is not showing up in search. Your followers most likely can still see all of your tweets. However, to properly participate in a chat or party, your tweets need to show up in Twitter search. If your tweets aren’t showing up in search, what could be happening? According to Twitter, here are some reasons:

1). Incomplete Bio You might not have completely filled out your name and bio in your profile (so it might look like an account set up for spamming).

2). New or Low Activity Account You might not yet have tweeted much, thus not looking like a legitimate account or your account might be brand-new.

3). Spammy Content Your tweets might be considered spammy if you tweet the same tweet or link over and over, post the same content across different accounts, use bots or sending automated tweets & replies, you might be marked as a spam account. If you are frequently retweeting tweets from other accounts that might considered to be spam, your account also could be tagged as being a contributor to spammy content.

4). Third Party Apps If you gave your username/password to a third party app that is updating other accounts with similar content, then you might be blocked.

So what can you do if you are blocked from Twitter search? First, try to fix your account (complete your profile, start tweeting if you have a new account, stop tweeting the same link or same content repeatedly). It might take some time, but if you follow Twitter’s guidelines for best practices, your tweets should start to appear back in search. If you’re at your wits end and feel that your account should be in good standing, contact Twitter to open a support ticket to look into the problem. There’s a chance that you are doing nothing wrong; your account just might be one of the unfortunate ones experiencing an ongoing problem.

In the meantime, if Twitter parties or chats are on your social agenda, you might want to set up another account, and start tweeting from it asap. With any luck-and with time-you should be on your way to partying or chatting it up on Twitter again.