Pinterest is a tool for collecting and
organizing things you love.
If you are at all into social media than you will have undoubtedly heard of Pinterest but may not be sure what it is and if it is for you. This year Pinterest decided to launch the #PinItForwardUK campaign,
“Three years ago, when Pinterest was a much smaller community and team, we had a great opportunity to have bloggers try out pinning. The site looked quite a bit different back then, we didn't have any mobile apps, but it was a lot of fun and we learned a great deal from folks too. Back in 2010, this collaboration was called “Pin It Forward,†and we thought we'd bring back the idea to get to know our British community and how they use Pinterest.”
For many, Pinterest is simply a way to share beautiful images on every subject imaginable in a simple, easy and fun way. But it’s also a great platform to showcase your business, service or product.
“Pinterest is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘re-pin’ images to their own pinboards, or ‘like’ photos.” Wikipedia.
What makes it so powerful is that most pinned images are ‘linked’ back to the website they are pinned from, thus making it an extremely impressive search engine – now the fourth biggest after YouTube, Google and Yahoo. Here’s a simple explanation for getting started with Pinterest
Quirky Traveller Pinterest Boards
What is a Pin?
A pin starts with an image or video you add to Pinterest. You can add a pin from a website using the PinIt bookmarklet or upload an image from your computer. Any pin on Pinterest can be repinned, and all pins link back to their source. You create boards with your favourite themes, collecting pins and sharing them. Here’s one of my boards with pins from The Quirky Traveller
What is a Board?
A board is where you organize your pins by topic. You could pin ideas for remodeling your bathroom to your House Projects board, for example. Boards can be secret or public and you can invite other people to pin with you on any of your boards. I have lots of travel boards but also Social Media, Art, Fav Films & Books, Writing and many more. You can check out all my boards here.
What is a Follow?
When you follow someone, their pins show up in your Pinterest home feed. You can follow all of someone’s boards or just the ones you like best. To manage who you’re following, go to your profile and click Following.
What happens when I Unfollow?
When you unfollow someone, their boards won’t show up in your home feed anymore. You can unfollow all of someone’s boards, or just the ones you’re not that interested in. Nobody will get notified if you unfollow them.
What is a Home Feed?
Pinterest Board – The Quirky Traveller
Your home feed is a collection of pins from pinners and boards you follow. It’s updated every time someone you follow adds a pin. The more people you follow the more varied and interesting your home feed will become. There’s a search menu for topics if you want more ideas.
What is a Pin It bookmarklet?
The Pin It bookmarklet lets you easily pin things you see on websites and blogs. To get the bookmarklet or learn more, check out the Pinterest Goodies page where you can also get the Pinterest App for your smartphone.
Reasons to use Pinterest for Business
Pinterest will drive traffic to your website or blog. Pinterest let you create businesses pages aimed at promoting your service, product or site online.] Your Board can become a “virtual storefront” encouraging visitors to buy from you. Wikipedia quotes one case study where, on a fashion website, users visiting from Pinterest spent $180 compared with $85 spent from users coming from Facebook. These users spent less time on the company’s website, choosing instead to browse from the company’s pinboard. Brand studies continue to show Pinterest is more effective at driving sales than other forms of social media.
So now you’ve seen the basics for getting started with Pinterest, share in the gloriously colourful #PinItForwardUK craze that’s got everyone talking and START PINNING!
NB: a fair amount of this article comes from the ‘Getting Started’ Guide by Pinterest and there are plenty more handy links and ideas on the site.
Have to admit I’m a bit of an addict – so love the colourful (and often totally unrealistic!) photos 😉 But it is also godo for business.
Great post Zoë! This is super clear and really informative–I’m very impressed! We’re super honored to have you join us in the campaign as you’re such an inspiring advocate for the site. I’m looking forward to seeing more of your travel pins.
It’s kind of hard to be up-to-date with all these channels one have to deal with as a Blogger – thanks for this starter guide! I will have a deeper look into pinterest as it seems to be a great platform for travel related content
Thanks so much Tina for inviting me to take part in the UK launch. As you know, I’m a Pinterest addict so it’s great to be able to hopefully encourage a few more to join in 🙂
As you say Steve, there are so many new and different social media platforms to keep up with – but this one is a bit different and really good for bloggers to share photos from blog posts as well as other fav pins.
Thanks Zöe for helping me understand a bit more – I´ve joined Pinterest just like I´m on Facebook and Twitter (@spaniola) it doesn´t mean I know what I´m doing with them!
Think we’re all learning as we go along Rachel! Get in touch if you need any help 🙂
Have to admit having a hard time wrapping our heads around Pinterest – it seems incredibly slow to garner new follows…. have also heard of chat sessions on Pinterest but cannot even begin to comprehend how this would work! Sigh, a sign that we’re getting old!
I loved Pinterest from the start…it is such a great concept. Then they stuck a group board in my home feed and ignored my requests to remove it. It doesn’t allow me an option to ignore or remove it so I’m assuming it’s making money for someone, using my name. I have since lost interest in the site; it makes me sad to look at my home feed. Such a waste.
Angela – that’s really bad. I have a contact at Pinterest in America and will mail them about this. You should be able to unfollow ANY Boards you don’t want to be on. If you email me direct via the Contact page I will let you know their response.
Great post. I want to start with Pinterest for ages but up till now I never got around actually doing it.
Hopefully I have some time this weekend to finally start, bookmarked this page to get me started 🙂
Thanks for this guide, Zoe. I have an account but I haven’t maximized it yet. Will try to be more active in using it, it seems very promising.
Look forward to connecting with you there Freya – it can become a bit addictive so be warned!
Update: – now you can put a geographical Place Pin on your photos and videso (linked to FourSquare) which should help in searches.