If you’re a consumer-oriented, “visual” business, you’re most likely using Pinterest – a virtual bulletin board for images – to gather and share pictures and videos that you find on the web. And since Pinterest is more of a social media site than a photo sharing site, you’re probably building boards that are a good mix of your own and other content and working to build a community by sharing what you’ve found.

Pinterest can be more than a social media site, though, and we have three easy ideas to get you started:

Secret Boards: You may be using secret boards as a place to gather inspirations and ideas that you’d like to keep to yourself. But how about a Secret Board for your business? We work with a client who creates floral arrangements for weddings. She had tried email and a shared Google Drive folder for exchanging ideas with her brides and their families, but both were very cumbersome – emails got lost, images were too big, even logging in to Google Drive was an issue. We suggested setting up secret boards for each bride, where she could post pictures of flowers she liked, our client could post her thoughts and ideas, and together they could arrive at the perfect colors and arrangements for the bride’s special day. Brides – and their mothers! – loved having their own special board and the simplicity it offered.

Here’s how: Scroll to the lower third of your Pinterest page, where you’ll see the option to Create a secret board. In the details pop up, be sure to add the people you’re sharing the board with in the “Who can add pins” section.

Embed a Board: Your website needs fresh content, but with everything else you need to do, keeping it updated isn’t always a priority. You can maximize the time you spend on Pinterest and update your website at the same time by adding a Board widget to a page on your site. This way, any time you add images to the board on Pinterest, you will be updating the page on your website, too.

Here’s how: Select the board you’d like to embed, click the < > button, and copy the code in the pop up. Paste this code on your web page, and voila – your board will appear, showing up to 30 of that board’s latest Pins. To customize the embedded board, select Analytics, then Tools, then Widget builder. Choose “Board Widget” from the menu on the left, choose the appropriate Custom Size option, click Build it! and copy the code.

Create a Slideshow: An alternative way to showcase images from a board is to create a slideshow of the board and even embed it on your website.

Here’s how:

• First, set up a storify.com account and install the bookmarklet.
• Visit the board with the images for your slideshow.
• Use the Storify bookmarklet to add each image you’re using to your Storypad.
• Create a new story, using the images you selected.
• Once it’s published, you can grab the Embed code – choose Story, Grid or Slideshow – and add it to your website.

Have you used any of these ideas? Do you have any other ways your using Pinterest to share? Please let us know!

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Thanks to The Daily Freeman blog for the Storify idea.