Everyone is talking about Pinterest; there is at least one blog post a day in my Google Reader about it; it even started to annoy me a little bit. So, I decided it was about time to try it out and find out why people (and businesses) love it so much.
Pinterest is a social catalogue, a kind of an online pin board where you can share images and videos of the things you love – art, sports, fashion, beauty, science, technology, architecture, journeys, absolutely anything; or you can even plan weddings, holidays and journeys; find recipes, (re)decoration ideas; gifts and of course search other people’s boards. The idea behind it is: “a picture is worth 1000 words”. The social network launched ca. 2 years ago and is apparently becoming so popular that in the last 6 months the site visits increased by 4000%!
The 6 steps of my journey into Pinterest:
- I went to www.pinterest.com and requested an invite – it usually takes about a week; I got mine in two days.
- After the invitation I created an account by signing up with Facebook (you can do that with Twitter too) and set it up.
- Pinterest asks you to pick a few catalogues which you like such as for example Hair & Beauty, Technology, Science, Travel & Places, Products etc. so that Pinterest can suggest people from the themes you chose to follow.
- Then it was time to create my first pin boards – those are your personalized visual collections of the things you like such as Books worth Reading, Favourite Places & Space, Photography etc. For me the first boards were Favourtie Places & Spaces, Craft Ideas and My Style. There is another option of course – you can create your own board and name it as you wish.
- The final step was to add the “Pin it” button into my browser so that I can now “pin” (somewhat equivalent to Facebook’s “like”) an item I found interesting from any webpage.
- Ready to pin and re-pin!
To be honest, Pinterest is so much fun! You can pin anything from anywhere to any board you want; you can re-pin and like other people’s images and videos. It’s just like a type of a recommendation – you accidentally see something that you like so much, pin it and show everyone that you find this image or video amazing. Pinterest is a perfect way of visualizing your interests, style and thoughts; and by that your personality and lifestyle.
What about brands and Pinterest?
Well, from a business perspective, Pinterest allows brands to share their products and their features. Especially for fashion and beauty brands it seems that it is an ideal platform to promote their products and engage with their fans and customers. So, if you write down H&M at the search section on Pinterest, you find thousands of pins.
Another example is one of our family businesses Smile Hobby Club – a place where you can develop your talents and create beautiful souvenirs and gifts yourself by using various techniques such as decoupage; quilling etc. (to master those, the club offers courses as well as the necessary tools and materials). I created a board called “Do It Yourself Craft Ideas” and I uploaded a number of images of the things that Smile Hobby Club’s team and students have made; it somewhat looks like an online portfolio. By doing so, we can actually better advertise our business to our target audience (or we can simply show what amazing things we do). The result: in just a few minutes, people started to re-pin and like numerous of our pictures.
Pinterest is certainly a great communication tool for both people and brands; it’s simple, but it works.
However, there’s just one thing that I don’t like – you can’t pin images directly from Facebook. I personally come across various cool things on Facebook, so this is a feature that I would really like to be able to use.
Anyway, try it! But be careful, it's absolutely addictive (I am obsessed already)!
Oh, and here’s me and my pin boards on Pinterest.
Are you on Pinterest? What do you use it for?
