On November 20, Pinterest announced their new Place Pins and Place Boards feature.  These new features allow you to pin photos of your favorite places with their location marked on a map. Place Boards let you create a global map to showcase cities across the continents, or a zoomed in map showing multiple locations in one city.

And while Pinterest seems to still be working out the kinks with being able to upload your own Place Pins (as opposed to using FourSquare photos), and with converting existing boards to Place Boards, now is still the time to start playing with this feature and figuring out how it could work for your brand.

First, start by mapping the things that are important to your brand.

In Marden-Kane’s case, we realized that the map feature would work well to showcase all of the exotic trips we had awarded on behalf of our clients last year. We found photos of all of the towns and resorts where we had sent winners and a Winners Trips Place Board was born.

For your brand, think of things that can put you on the map:

1.  For a hotel chain or a college it could be some of your scenic locations.
2. For a dog walker it could be photos of the parks you frequent with your furry friends.
3. For a wedding planner, places you recommend people have their wedding or reception. (Like Bo’s DC Picks).
4. For a food brand, map out the locations of your favorite restaurants that use your product.
5. For a clothing brand, create a map of places and photos where people have been spotted wearing your clothing.

Here are some of our favorite Place Boards so far:

• Fodor’s America’s Best Hot Chocolate
• Roadtripper’s Keep America Weird
• The City of New York’s Spotlight on Broadway

To peruse other Place Boards go to the main “Place Boards” page on Pinterest.

Next, encourage your fans to put you on the map.

Have a Place Board contest or sweepstakes calling for Place Boards (named with your designated hashtag) to be created showing your brand in use or photos at your locations. For a contest you could judge entries based on originality of the content and creative photos used. For a sweepstakes you could give an entry for every pin where the user uses your hashtag on their Place Board. Be sure to follow Pinterest promotion guidelines and always have full official rules for any promotion you run.

Finally, have fun with your maps! Post your map links to other social media channels and encourage sharing. Because if you want to be on the Pinterest map you have to put yourself there!