In the process of preparing to teach my class on using Pinterest as a marketing tool, I found myself spending a lot of time in their Help Center, which has recently undergone a complete overhaul. There have also been some changes in Facebook’s Help Center.

That made me think readers of this blog might like to know what can be found in these help centers. Very often I find myself directing people who come to me for help with a one of these sites to these pages, as they are full of more (and more detailed) helpful information than one person could ever provide.

Pinterest Help Center

The Pinterest Help Center is found among other drop down options when you click on your Pinterest account name in the top right of the page. As with all help centers, there is a search box where you can type in the topic you want help with.

In most cases, I was able to obtain relevant answers for the topics I entered, but not always. For example, while there are definitely apps associated with Pinterest, when I typed in the word “app” or “Pinterest apps,” none of the suggested options have anything to do with apps – at least as far as I could tell.

What I like about this help center is that it includes a link to the section called Browse Help Topics, which lists all the topics for which they have information under the following categories: Pinterest basics, your account, reporting and blocking, businesses and websites, fix a problem, and legal and privacy.

The help center also has a direct link to Guide to Pinterest, which is a very informative overview of how to use this site. It is divided into the following chapters: all about Pinterest, pins, boards, your home feed, discovering things, your profile and more resources.

Here is a link to the Pinterest Help Center: http://help.pinterest.com/en

 

Facebook Help Center

As you may have noticed when you clicked on the Help option on Facebook (found when you click on the little downward pointing arrow at the top right of your screen), there are links to Visit the Help Center and to Report a Problem. There are also several suggested topics, which, as far as I can tell, are selected to come up based on your recent activity on the site. There is also a search box where you can type in the topic you want information about.

The link to Visit the Help Center provides a rich array of topics you can find out more about, including (but not limited to): get started on Facebook, password and login, manage your account, privacy, security, newsfeed, timeline, sharing, messaging, connecting, pages, safety tools and resources, and Facebook mobile. It also includes a list of the most frequently asked questions and a link to a section called Facebook Privacy.

In addition, there are also links to Graph Search, What’s New on Facebook, Report an Issue, Build Your Facebook Page, Create Your Facebook Ads, and Manage your Ad Campaign.

Here is a link to the Facebook Help Center: https://www.facebook.com/help/?ref=contextual

In next week’s blog post, I will cover the help centers for Twitter and LinkedIn.

How About You?

Do you use the help centers for the social media sites you tend to frequent? Which help centers do you like the best? What improvements do you think could be made in these centers?

 

About Joyce

Joyce Feustel helps people, especially those age 50 and up, to become more comfortable using social media, especially Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

She works with business owners, nonprofit organizations, retired people, consultants, and many others. Find her at www.boomerssocialmediatutor.com.