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Over the last 12 months, the world of social networking has been turned on its head by the incredible success of Pinterest, the world’s first purely image-based social site.

Nobody expected Pinterest to become so huge so fast. Why would they? On the face of it there isn’t much to the site, but beneath the surface, the reason for the success is clear: it’s all about inspiration.

Facebook and Twitter seem to be most commonly used for the sharing of news and cat photo-based updates in equal measure, but Pinterest bypasses words altogether to dig deep into our hearts. It inspires its users, fueling their imagination in a way that no other site could hope to achieve.

Any marketer worth his salt can see how Pinterest can work as a promotional tool par excellence; that it not only allows marketers to tell customers about their brand, but actually show them. And it’s no surprise that everyone from multi-national fashion houses to local craft stores are trying to get in on the action.

If you’re a marketer and want to see how Pinterest can work for you, you might want to first check out these excellent Pinterest marketing tools to help you squeeze the greatest benefit from your efforts.

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Pingraphy

The benefit of Pinterest comes only when users share your images, and convincing them to do so takes more than just a cool picture. To succeed you need to carefully time your posts to appear when the site is busy, which tends to be on weekdays between 9AM and early afternoon in the US.

If you don’t want to organize your day around a posting schedule you might want to try Pingraphy, a scheduling service that allows you to line up your posts days, weeks and even months in advance. By doing so you can spend just a single day uploading your pictures for the rest of the year, and then allow Pingraphy to work on auto-pilot while you reap the benefits!

There is a caveat to this, however. You don’t want to pin too far in advance because what you’re pinning might (and most probably will) become outdated.

Pin Search

Any seasoned Pinterest marketer will know that participation is key. Pinning only your own images will turn people off, but if you throw in a few related images from other sources you’ll be seen as a valued contributor (which will attract more followers to your own images).

Pin Search is a browser add-on for Google Chrome that helps you find images related to your topic of interest. Once the add-on is installed you can simply hover over any image on Pinterest and click the search button that appears. Pin Search will then run a Google Image search to find similar images.

The beauty of Pin Search is that it allows you to quickly and easily find images that complement your own, which makes populating your boards a breeze!

Pin Alerts

Pin Alerts is a simple tool that mirrors the function of Google Alerts. Quite simply, it lets you know whenever an image from your website is pinned on Pinterest, helping you figure out which visual content is striking a chord with your readership.

The benefit of this is plain to see; Pin Alerts offers a way to actually meet the social network users who engage with your content, offering you an invaluable insight into the likes, dislikes and related interests of your potential customers.

Pin Alerts can be configured to scan multiple domains, and you can set it up to either let you know immediately when an image is pinned or simply send you an occasional digest (for those of you with lots of image-heavy sites).

These are just a few of the invaluable tools that can help you use Pinterest to increase your brand visibility, solidify your image and even directly attract customers. With the right tools and the right attitude this site could change the way you approach your marketing efforts entirely. Now get pinning!