Pinterest is one of the newest forms of social networking, but many people are struggling to get to grips with it and may simply give up on it. However, for businesses, it seems safe to say that skipping Pinterest will lead to a missed opportunity.

The whole point of Pinterest is that people post their interests and passions; this results in a spider diagram, in which the relevant topics are given links to related subjects. If you look at the Pinterest pages relating to golf, for example, then within a few seconds you will be shown the way to pages relating to other sports.

This will be of clear benefit to businesses. If a company sets up a Pinterest page, then people who view related topics on the site will eventually be directed to the business. It is a brilliant form of free marketing.

Every business wants their LinkedIn page to receive more page views – not to mention seeing it generate more leads too.

LinkedIn offers its users a variety of impressive free tools, and big and small companies alike often miss the opportunity of creating a company page.

Custom header images can be added to a company page, a services page can be utilized to customize products or services. Every product page can be used to upload a video and product promotions can be customized. Use hyperlinks that lead to relevant product info on your website, and also provide contact details for the person in your company connected to the product.

With regards to company pages three of the most unused features on LinkedIn are header images, customized sidebar promotions and the products/services tab. Also remember to make your content keyword rich and use videos and images that make an impact.

Despite its 500 million users, Google+ is arguably the most overlooked social network around today. So why should you use Google+? Let’s look at some its defining features.

Circles
Circles are a convenient way of choosing who you share with, something Facebook lacks. You may want to share something with your friends, but not your parents; with circles, that’s possible.

Hangout
Hangout has many purposes, including private video chat, live streaming and creating YouTube videos. Business users will appreciate the ability to video conference and stream live events.

Integration
As part of the Google empire, Google+ allows for fast and easy integration with other Google services, including Gmail and YouTube.

Google+ may not overtake Facebook any time soon, but with a 27% increase in activity over the last three months, more and more people are giving it a chance.

Initially launched in July 2010, ‘Questions’ was a Facebook feature, which gave users the option of creating polls on their newsfeed. It enjoyed some degree of instant popularity, but two years later, in 2012, the site quietly announced that it was scaling back the feature. This scaling back process prevented users from adding polls to their newsfeed.

“Questions will still be available in Groups and Pages,” Facebook confirmed at the time.

However, in July 2013, users may have noticed that the ability to create polls has also been quietly removed from those sections of the website as well. So does that spell the end for the ‘Questions’ facility?

Well, not quite. Or at least not yet. According to the social networking giant, the function has been removed, but still has limited use amongst public content pages, like news organisations. This is with a view to researching its potential future use.