How to Create a Pinterest Place Board for An Event

If you know me, you know I’m obsessed with Pinterest. Also with social media and associations. So when they announced Place Pins at the end of November, of course the first thing I thought was “this could be cool for an association’s annual conference.” Then the holidays came and went, and I didn’t have time to try it out, but finally got to try it and I think it’s pretty cool.

Follow AOTA Inc’s board AOTA 2014 Annual Conference & Expo Places of Interest on Pinterest.

It’s super easy to create a place board; adding the places, a little less so. To start, create a new board, name it whatever you want, then just select “add a map” and you’re all set to add places. First you have to add the city your event is located in, then just start naming places you want to include on your map and–provided they’re already listed in Foursquare (which powers the map part of place boards)–the listing will appear and you’ll be able to select or upload an image and add that pin.

A few (ok, 9) things to remember:

1. Pins will be displayed in reverse order of adding them and, at least as far as I could tell, there wasn’t any way to rearrange the order of pins. So if you want certain places to be listed first, you’ll want to add those last.
2. When I created the board, I wasn’t able to edit or delete a pin once I’d added it. But a day later, it worked fine. So if you encounter a similar problem, save and come back a day later.
3. You can start the board as a secret board if you want to experiment; just toggle “secret” to yes when you create the board. And remember that once you untoggle that and make it public, you can’t toggle back to secret.
4. You have to add each place individually via Foursquare. If a place isn’t already a venue in Foursquare, you’ll have to go add the place on Foursquare then try again. It’s a little tedious, but the result is pretty cool, IMO.
5. You have a choice of selecting photos that are pulled in via Foursquare or uploading your own. Most Foursquare photos are nothing to write home about, so if you’re really into having great looking pins, you might want to have your own images for each place ready to upload.
6. Be sure to take advantage of the board description field to enter as much information as possible about your event and a link to your website where they can get more information–and hopefully register.
7. If you want your event logo to be the board cover, you’ll have to make it the image for one of the places you pin. I did it for the Convention Center pin, as that’s the HQ for this particular event.
8. Add pins for the event venue (e.g. convention center, etc.), conference hotels and other local attractions. Be sure to include a link back to your website or registration page on EVERY pin, as people may repin just one place and the information you entered as the board description won’t show up on those individual pins.
9. If your org has a large Pinterest following, you might try offering an event map board as a sponsorship opportunity for local businesses.

Have you created any cool place boards on Pinterest? If so, please share!