Pinterest_Screen ShotThere’s a great deal of hype and hyperbole surrounding social media and its efficacy to business. There’s an endless supply of experts to tell us that if we’re not “social” then our businesses are as good as dead. And there are an almost endless number of social media outlets clamoring for our content—and presumably our ad dollars, or at least our contact information. But there also are stacks of data to support the premise that your business could die a slow death if you’re not active on social media.

With all of this information, it can be difficult to discern which—if any— social media channels are right for your company. Truly, the best way to determine this is to experiment. You will realize rather quickly from which social channels you gain the most traction. But one thing is for sure: the larger presence you have on social media, the better the return on SEO (search engine optimization) for your company name and any products you produce. Publishing companies such as ours rely on this fact to get people to visit our websites, where hopefully they stay long enough to read several articles and then decide to return regularly. Attracting “eyeballs,” as the industry parlance, is how we retain advertisers. They want our readers’ attention too.

I am a big proponent of social media, both personally and professionally. I try to keep up on developments and changes in the technology, as well as new applications and browser extensions designed to make using social media a more pleasurable experience all around. In fact, I developed the social media guidelines that we use here at Lionheart Publishing, cobbled together from best practices suggested by some of the savviest marketing pros and tech-minded editors I could find. I learned a lot in putting together those strategies, as well as through experimenting with certain social sites on my own time.

Thus, I am happy to report that Masonry Design magazine now has a Pinterest page! Pinterest is an online catalog or bookmarking site of ideas, interests, and projects—much like a real-life corkboard you might hang in your office to pin inspirations for a new building. Currently, it has about 100 million active users; that’s a lot of potential clients, customers, or readers! So please check out our page and follow it if you’re a Pinterest member. We will follow you back.