It is beyond any shadow of doubt the massive impression Pinterest has created in the digital media of sharing and knowing that we affectionately call social marketing. With more than 10 million active users according to AppData, it's difficult to ignore Pinterest's explosion in immense popularity.

The folks over at Socially Sorted and Mookoo Design pulled together the above infographic, "The 10 Commandments of Using Pinterest for Business," which guides you through best practices and tips for putting Pinterest to work in your social media marketing strategy. It is your very own Pinterest marketing cheat sheet!

Pinterest is a visual social network, so you will need to create a pinboard that highlights
some of your best visual content. A lot of big brands are taking notice of the power of online visual content for marketing and the emotions images elicit in readers. Instagram is one platform that has contributed to this movement and enabled real businesses to leverage photos as a an inbound marketing mechanism.

Life magazine has done an impressive job in refreshing its' brand legacy. Love the digital image board, especially as it markets itself as “the most comprehensive and iconic collection of professional photography on the web.” LIFE brings those images to a new generation on Pinterest for users to comment on and share. The inspiring boards include “Vintage Retrospect,” “LIFE Legends” and “Today in History.” Here is another great infographic that sings the laurels of Pinterest. Enjoy!

The fact that Pinterest in now the third most popular social media site, beating Linkedin and Tumblr tells us something about the contemporary mass psychological movement.
We are in the Age of Visual Content Revolution. Visuals have become the greatest crutch in the continuity of story telling. Ford, IBM, GE just to name a few have made the transition from stogy boardrooms to being active participants in this mass upheaval of ideas and culture. For artists designers and the creative folks, story boards and visuals were always part of the DNA. Now, visuals are grasping hold of marketers from different industries and they are realizing the forcefulness of visual marketing.

Visuals make your Brand Fluid!
Visual content draws upon your brand heritage and legacy. It helps in the story telling of your brand.  For example, the new Facebook timeline is set up for companies to have opportunity to share their history visually, like Coca-Cola has done below.

Brands like Starbucks, harnesses the power of social media to demonstrate what is going on behind the scenes between employees and customers. This humanizes the brand and promotes brand loyalty and awareness between companies and consumers. They have used visuals to make a powerful statement about their brand's stance on important issues that they believe in.

Visuals make your Brand Captivating!
Visuals capture more than just attention – they capture your heart and drives engagement. In fact, just one month after Facebook introduced timeline for brands, Simply Measured reports that engagement is up 46% percent per post, and visual content (photos and videos) have seen a 65% increase in engagement. Kudos to GE. They have proactively asked for fans to engage with the photos of their products, and the results are phenomenal! Now you know why status updates is loosing the battle to visual updates.

Visuals make your Brand User-Worthy!
If your customers are on at least a couple of the visually-friendly social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, or Instagram, get them involved in helping shape the story of your brand in a more visual way. Keep in mind that there are multiple industries in which prospects won't make a purchase without first consulting user-generated content. That is the reason perhaps why Dunkin Donuts is encouraging fans to create visual content that gets them excited about their product.

Referral traffic from social media sites to brand websites is on the rise. Shareaholic study revealed Pinterest generates more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined; only Facebook and StumbleUpon generate more.

Bottom Line: Social networks are a direct link to how customers get to your actual website. When brands are communicated through visual mediums, customers are then taking the next step and going directly to your website.
No matter how boring the business of goods that you are in; give it a visual flair, weave a story, include your target audience to participate. And, simply watch how your brand evolves.

Being in the business of modularity, (in the field of trade shows), I would have to say that nothing surpasses the human brain in the context of modularity. It is the ultimate definition of modularity! Stuffed with the randomness of a lifetime of hypnotic and chaotic memories, the brain is self-organizing, parallel thinking information processor that is now set on a fast track to evolution. Wonder why?

For humans, like many animal species, survival depends on effective social functioning. However, social interaction in humans is exceedingly complex compared with that in other animal species: "representations of internal somatic states, knowledge about the self, perceptions of others and interpersonal motivations are carefully orchestrated to support skilled social functioning."  Now add to this, the multiple layers of social media that functions on a global platform to plug into the planetary brain. Never before in the last 5,000 years of written history we humans, realized our multi-dimensional potential. The concept is so complex and so vast that we don't quite understand it. Yet we do understand its' infinite possibilities. 

Welcome to the age of Social Media.
Welcome to the age of Knowledge.
As marketers and trade show exhibitors, we need to harness the concept of social media and actively participate in it. “We have technology, finally, that for the first time in human history allows people to really maintain rich connections with much larger numbers of people.” {Pierre Omidyar, founder, eBay} and yet .....................................
“There’s never been a better time to be in advertising, and there’s never been a worse time.” {Aaron Reitkopf, North American CEO of digital agency Profero}

Our friends at Hubspot came up with this phenomenal how to hand book and it is here for you to download. How to Promote Your Trade Shows Socially.

“Social media isn’t the end-all-be-all, but it offers marketers unparalleled opportunity to participate in relevant ways. It also provides a launchpad for other marketing tactics. Social media is not an island. It’s a high-power engine on the larger marketing ship.” Matt Dickman, technomarketer.typepad.com

It seems like, to counteract the virtual aspects of social marketing, trade shows have remained firmly within the confines of the 3 dimensions of our physical world. Trade shows are not only unique to meeting, greeting and collecting leads, they are the fierece battle gounds in business. It is one frontier where "the business value of Facebook and the other social media is still largely untapped " says Scott Wherley, vice president of global customer insights with Reed Expositions, one of the world’s largest event organizers. “Some companies are doing it well, but many are not making the most of this opportunity.”

Scott Wherley says, that some exhibitors are sending out tweets during the show, offering discounts on their products for those who come to their booth within a prescribed time (say, the next 30 minutes).

Since, social marketing is multi-channel and cross-platform, in the days and weeks leading up to the show, exhibitors are creating a buzz about the event on various channels. During the show, marketers are posting “Special Reports,” updating show attendees from the trade show floor about special sessions and surprises. The companies are posting blogs and tweeting several times a day, keeping their blog subscribers who were unable to attend the show in the loop as to what they’re missing — while creating fresh and compelling content, that amplifies SEO and generates prolonged awareness.

Dave Clarke, an award-winning editor, says, a physical trade show presence and a virtual presence are not mutually exclusive, though; in fact, just the opposite. "Ratcheting up your social media marketing, before, during, and after a trade show is proving one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your booth and cement the relationships you’ve come there to forge."