Pinterested?

Have you noticed the craze over Pinterest? Honestly, I had heard about it long before I ventured to check it out. Once I did, though, I was immediately hooked. In a day and age where everything is about individual identification and self-expression, Pinterest is at the forefront of this in the online world.

What is Pinterest?

Great question! Many people do not even know what Pinterest is. Essentially, it is a virtual “pinboard.” You can create your own boards, and “pin” photos or videos to it. You can even set up multiple boards with different themes or topics. When you visit other boards there is a pin at the top right of each photo. Simply click the “repin” button, and you pin it to the board you want. Here is an example of a social media infographic on Pinterest, and in the upper right hand side is the option to repin it or like it.

What kinds of things are you interested in—music, health and wellness, a recent conference that you attended?  See some of the boards I have created below—for arts & crafts (“For the Creative”), travel, my bucket list (“Before I Die”), food I want to make (“Food.Yum.”), fashion ideas (“Passion for Fashion”), and ideas for my home (“Home Life”). Here are a few examples:

How do you find things to pin? There are three options. You can search on Pinterest by keyword for articles and pictures. The search bar is in the upper left hand corner of your screen. You can also visit the sites of “pinners you follow,” or anybody that is on Pinterest.

Lastly, you can enable the “pin it” bookmarklet on your toolbar and scan the web.  When you use the bookmarklet, it will automatically link from the website to your Pinterest board.

The great thing about Pinterest is that it allows you to organize ideas into one place, onto one board. You can literally create boards about anything, including a niche market or your membership activities.

How will it help my business or organization?

Visibility. Between the months of September to December (of 2011) there was a 429% increase of unique visitors to Pinterest, according to Compete. What does this mean? Visibility. Literally millions of people can browse images that can lead to your website, blog, etc. For example, I searched the term “social media,” and out came a whole bunch of social media related pins. One in particular was an infographic pinned from Jeff Bullas’s site:

If you notice from just one person pinning this on one of their boards, this infographic has been repined 159 times, liked 27 times, and has 6 comments.

Backlinks. Pinterest allows you to pin visual content you have on your blog, website, or any other social media platform, and guess what? It links it directly back to your page.

Traffic. The backlinks bring more traffic to your blog. One blog writer, Kate, reached over 10 million page views in a few months span because of Pinterest alone.

Interaction. There are over 3 million active users on Pinterest. This means you can “repin” other people’s content. This also means that people will always be browsing your content.

Want to know more? Stacey Meyers reposted a video tutorial about Pinterest that was originally created by Beth Hunter. This is a fun and easy-to-understand guide to learn the intricacies of Pinterest.  You can also contact us through our website, Facebook, or twitter.

What kind of virtual boards do you have? Like below if you want an invite to Pinterest!