Thanks to everyone who entered my bookmark competition. It’s been fun and interesting. The winners are at the end of the competition post. If you are one of these winners, please contact me via the email address under the ‘Contact’ menu above.

I’ve confirmed a few things and learned a few more. While I love Pinterest and see lots of potential there for interacting with readers, a few aspects of the interactivity will need to be developed before it can do what I’d like it to do.

First, what I learned. When I pinned the quotes I didn’t include in the label that they were part of a competition. So anyone who followed me on Pinterest but not on Twitter or this site wouldn’t have known they could repin them and win something. I’ll definitely have to remember to do that next time (if there’s a next time).

Second, I had problems seeing who had entered. Each of the pins showed a limited number of people who had repinned it. After ten it indicated that there were ‘+12 more pins’, but you can’t click on that or go anywhere to see those extra twelve people. I had to work out who they were from the notification emails Pinterest sent me. That would be more straight forward if those emails didn’t list more than one activity. Some emails show several pinners, doing a mix of repins, follows and comments.

At first I thought I could get around this in future by asking people to like as well as repin a pin. But it also limits the number of likes it show – up to 24 people. You wouldn’t want them to only like a pin, as it won’t make that pin appear on their followers’ feed.

Thirdly, I can’t contact the winners through Pinterest. There’s no way to email anyone of course. But there’s no DM (direct message) option as there is in Twitter, either. I tried to comment on their repins, but it wouldn’t let me. So I’m having to rely on the winners coming back to this website to see that they won, or see their names on Twitter.

Would I do it again? Well, it’s the difficulty with compiling a list of entries that puts me off running another competition through Pinterest. Searching through emails to find the repinners not listed under the pin is too time-consuming. Hopefully that will change in future, and I will be able to hold competitions for books. I hope so, because Pinterest does have a lot of potential for this sort of thing.