Social sharing site Pinterest has grown to 12 million users and sparked a new surge in social marketing.

Some online businesses are hoping to use Pinterest as a way to engage customers and make sales. As with any form of marketing there are some best practices that may make a business' efforts more efficient and effective.

What follows are seven tips for improving your business's Pinterest marketing.

1. Use Boards to Segment Prospects

Pinterest lets users save pictures and videos to topical boards. These pin boards may be thought of as a form of customer segmentation, since Pinterest users may follow individual boards.

For example, Michael's, the specialty arts and crafts retailer, includes a board for baking enthusiasts called "Bake It" and a separate board for wedding crafts called "Say I Do."

Folks that click from the Bake It board and arrive at the Michael's site have segmented themselves, and Michael's would be wise to use that information to further engage, perhaps offering a special discount for joining the baking email list or similar, or showing different on-site merchandising based on which pin board a visitor came form.

2. Be Trendy: Pin What People are Talking About

In some sense, social sharing is an extremely fast moving medium. Topics and fashions come into and go out of popularity very quickly.

When marketing on Pinterest, be a trendy pinner — meaning that the images and videos posted reflect what a business's potential customers are talking about.

For example, the 2012 Olympics are just getting started in London. Pinning images that relate to the Olympic games could be one way of giving Pinterest marketing a boost.

3. Pin Products, but Use Compelling Photos

Pinterest is like a gigantic wish list on which users pin product picture after product picture. As such it can be a great place for online retailers to simply display their wares.

Nordstrom, for instance, has published many of its catalog images on Pinterest, and the company regularly pins new products or offers.