Using Pinterest to Market your Business

If you’re not using Pinterest as a marketing channel for your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Pinterest has more than 100 million active monthly users and ranks high in Google search results. This is a really effective way for startups to generate traffic without spending big marketing dollars. However, creating a profile and uploading a few pins won’t be enough to generate traffic to your site. Using these three simple tricks will.

Stay focused on your target audience.

Your pins should only contain relevant content that enhances the user experience. Social media is a crowded, distracting place and you have a small window of opportunity to get the user's attention. Think about what your audience is looking for and find new and exciting ways to deliver that content. If you can do this, they will repin it, share it with friends and keep coming back for more. Look for trending topics on sites like Twitter and Instagram and see if you can tie those into the value of your product or service with your next pin. Ideally, this will become an ongoing process and will take some time to perfect. Read comments and feedback and see what people are saying, to get a better idea of what’s driving the interest in your pins and your competitors.

Create Infographics.

People love infographics. The visual appeal of these images makes it easy and fun to understand a process, product, service or study. If you don’t have a good graphic designer, you can use sites like Fiver.com to contract out the work for a reasonable price. Image and video marketing have become increasingly popular forms of SEO in recent years and the image dimensions that Pinterest allows for has continued to increase. Make sure to include a “Pin It” button so viewers can like and share the image. This will help your relevance in Google’s eye and give you a boost in the search engines.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a filing system that allow users on social media platforms to search for images by specific keywords. Hashtags are highly effective and as people become more familiar with using this system to search, it will allow you to expand your reach and drive more traffic to your board. Be specific and make sure to use them in moderation. Too many hashtags can be ineffective and look spammy.

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Skateboarding in Venice Beach

Here's some footage from the Venice Skatepark in Venice Beach shot on Saturday 3/19. You can always catch some really talented skaters here, many of them pros. Here's a look from inside the skatepark.

Easy Knife Sharpening Trick

Dull knifes are the worst. This simply DIY trick will keep your knifes sharp at all times. This same method can also be applied to sharpening your scissors, which can be helpful to tailors and seamstresses. Check out how easy it was to turn this butter knife into a sharp blade.

Kirk Cousins: NFL Quarterback and Dog Foster

If you weren’t already a Kirk Cousins fan, you probably will be now. Some of you may know Kirk as the breakout quarterback for the Washington Redskins. Others in the DC area know him as Kirk, dog foster. Kirk’s wife Julie, who has been fostering dogs since her college days at the University of Georgia, made it clear when they started dating that this would be an expectation. Now the couple fosters dogs, one at a time, until they find them a good home.

In the past 18 months, the Cousins have fostered 7 dogs, mostly non-shedding breeds, with at least three during Kirk’s record setting season with Redskins. They are currently working with no-kill shelters Friends of Homeless Animals and Doodle Rescue, to foster and network abandoned and abused dogs and cats.

Kirk and his wife, like many others, choose fostering because it gives animal lovers like them the freedom of the long-term commitment, while helping to find these dogs and cats the right home. For the shelters, having a famous foster like Kirk is a tremendous benefit, as he can use his celebrity reach to spread awareness of how easy it is to foster an animal, while encouraging others to get involved.

Fostering helps animals that can’t help themselves and when the shelter is at capacity, fostering provides loving homes to animals in need. If you’re considering a pet, fostering is a great way to learn whether or not a particular breed is the right fit for you. If you are an animal lover who can’t have a pet due to your current living situation, there are other ways to get involved. Many shelters need volunteers to walk dogs and help out around the shelter on the weekends. You can learn more about animal fostering and volunteering by visiting or contacting your local animal shelter for more details.

You can see some of the dogs the Cousins have fostered on Kirk’s twitter page @KirrkCousins8.

Our foster dog of four months found a permanent home this week...tough to say good-bye to such a great dog! pic.twitter.com/lcA98abhJO

— Kirk Cousins (@KirkCousins8) December 30, 2014

You can see some of the dogs the Cousins have fostered on Kirk’s twitter page @KirkCousins8.

Used the day off to take our newest foster dog, Cash, to @petsuppliesplus for a self-servi... https://t.co/aP5da5O0JJ pic.twitter.com/32vnfcU1Sc

— Kirk Cousins (@KirkCousins8) August 21, 2015

The Wilshire Grand, Los Angeles' New Tallest Building

The post Recession recovery has brought about a construction boom in downtown Los Angeles. Prior to 2010, much of downtown’s landscape consisted of empty parking lots. For the second largest city in America, this always seemed strange to me. Fast forward to 2016 and the skyline is filled with cranes building up from the sites the parking lots once occupied. While most of the construction is low and mid-rise residential condos and apartment buildings, one project that sticks out from the rest and will certainly reshape the skyline is the Wilshire Grand project.

Until now, the US Bank building was the tallest and most recognizable building in LA. When the Wilshire Grand, a 73 story tower with office space and a hotel owned by Korean Air and operated by the InterContinental Hotels Group, is completed it will be the largest building West of the Mississippi.

Here are some interesting facts to know about Los Angeles soon to be new tallest building:

• Workers set a record by pouring more than 21,000 cubic feet of concrete in one continuous, 18 hour pour
• The Wilshire Grand will stand 82 feet taller than the US Bank building
• The hotel will feature more than 900 four-star rooms
• The 70th floor will have a public observation deck and rooftop pool
• The project will create 11,500 construction jobs
• Materials include 640,000,000 pounds of concrete and 20,000 tons of steel

Construction of the Wilshire Grand is set to be complete in 2017 and will definitely be something to check out.