Exploring Welding through Pinterest This social media site is a great resource for welding pictures and videos With so many social media sites available to us nowadays, you may not be familiar with all of them or their benefits. Pinterest, launched five years ago, is a photo sharing website, where users can upload, save, sort, and manage images known as “pins” to one of their own boards, which a user creates and typically organizes by a central topic. It is widely known as a popular place to share photos for wedding planning, recipes, vacation destinations, and books. However, I decided to browse through Pinterest for welding-related material and search out ways it could be beneficial to those in the industry. Following is some of what I found. Using Pinterest for Business Having a presence on Pinterest can greatly benefit a business. Pinterest allows businesses to create pages aimed at promoting their companies online at its Business Center (www.business. pinterest.com). Several guides are available for download to help you, including a best practice guide. Such pages can serve as a virtual storefront. Pinterest can be an effective form of social media for driving sales. When posting a pin, use keywords in your description so it is easy to search for. Set up links to your website and social media channels on your profile. People, for example, who would like to sell their welded creations, can pin pictures of the items and in the description provide a link to their website. You can also network on Pinterest — build relationships and get noticed by following users and businesses, leaving comments on photos, liking pinned photos, or repinning them to one of your boards. Finally, you can cross-promote your Pinterest presence with other social networks by sharing links to your boards, and you can integrate Pinterest with your Twitter and Facebook accounts to automatically share your new pins there. One business taking advantage of Pinterest is Weldpedia, an educational platform for welding-related personnel, students, and home welders — Fig. 1. “Pinterest is the best visualsharing platform, where future welders can learn, discover, and get innovative ideas by merely seeing the images. They can easily access our content through pins and therefore engage with the quality lessons planned by our specialists,” said Adeel Rafique, administrator, Weldpedia. AWS and Pinterest Upon searching for the keywords “American Welding Society,” I found that many Pinterest users have pinned articles and images found on the AWS’s website. This is useful for having easy access to important information. Among the pins were safety and health fact sheets, the AWS Welding Education Online page, and articles found on the AWS blog. By creating a Pinterest board and pinning all your favorite Welding Journal articles, AWS links, and even videos, you can easily view them all in one place. I now have a Pinterest board full of AWS pins, where I add what is most interesting or helpful to me — Fig. 2. Welding Tutorials Pinterest is a great place to find welding tutorials. Search those keywords, and there’s no end to the DIY pins you’ll find. You can also find many infographics — a graphic, eye-catching visual representation of information, data, or knowledge. Videos, although the most underpinned visual format on Pinterest, are one of the most engaging. I found a 23-min metalforming tutorial video on Pinterest (Fig. 3) among many others. A great idea would be to create a board just for tutorial videos to use as reference from time to time. Women Welders If you’re a woman welder, Pinterest is a great place for inspiration. I searched those keywords and found amazing action pictures of women 84 WELDING JOURNAL / AUGUST 2015 BY MELISSA GOMEZ THE AMERICAN WELDER Fig. 1 — Weldpedia is one of many companies taking advantage of Pinterest to promote themselves.
Welding Journal | August 2015
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