Looking for a way to engage your patrons/customers/students? How about a Pinterest contest?! Pinterest contests can be a great way to engage your audience as well as sneak in digital literacy skill development that is fun and exciting to learn!
I have been scouring the interweb to curate a list of past and present Pinterest contests as well as some of my own thought formations. If you have any to add I’d love to hear them!
Interactive Image Contest
Repin to Win/Pin It to Win It
This has been done by various entities and is an effective way to expose your products to a wider audience. Here are some guidelines to checkout before you start your contest. Examples:
Library Repin to Win ideas:
- New book arrivals
- Your favorite booklist (using Goodreads)
- Best places to study
- Best study apps
- Best YouTube songs to study to (pinning a video can be found here)
- Have a “database/resource of the day/week” on your library’s Pinterest board that students can repin.
Theme Contest
- Create Pinterest board based on a specific theme, best board wins (based on a set rubric) or board with the most likes wins, etc
- Syracuse University’s Future of Librarianship contest
Guess this Image
- Contestants can answer in the comments area. Here are a few examples that you can adapt for Pinterest:
- SBCC’s Luria Library
- Yahoo (see below):
Snapshot Jackpot
The UMHB Alumni association hosted this contest for Instagram but it could be adapted for Pinterest. The contestants were required to visit a particular place on campus, take a picture of the building, upload the picture to Instagram, and tag it #umhbcharterday13. The pic with the most likes won $50. (With Pinterest’s new hashtag capability this is an awesome contest to try out!)
- Example: Show Us Your Favorite _____ (research resource, campus activity, etc)
- Lifehacker did Show Us Your Favorite Home-Cooked Meal
Clue Contest
- Guess this book by the Catalog Card
- Pin a photo of a specific area on campus/library/community (don’t make it too obvious), first one to that location gets a prize
- Library as Incubator did something like this for Twitter using the hashtag #LAIPswag
- MTV VMAs
Video contest
- Have users upload a video to YouTube based on a specific theme, then pin to Pinterest w/ a specific hashtag
- JoAnn
Infographic Contest
- During the spring 2013 semester I created an infographic contest. Students were required to create an infographic (using their own software or an infographic generator like easel.ly or piktocahrt) and post it to Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook w/ the hashtag #tmlinfographic. Infographics were judged on a set rubric by faculty.
- Here’s a link to the contest page
Daily Photo Challenge
- Each day has a new challenge: your minor, your major, best (school color) combo, etc
- Entries post to Pinterest w/ hashtag and @yourlibrary/company (ex: tmlphotochallenge, @umhblibrary)
- Quinnipiac University’s #quphotochallenge
Librarian Enumerations 
I love a good infographic. One of the only good things about going to the doctors as a kid! (remember the posters that showed all the organs in the human body…cool). Sounds like the rest of the business world is catching on too. I see these catchy visual posters popping up everywhere!