What is Pinterest?

Have you been hearing people talking and/or tweeting about pinterest and wondered what on earth is it all about? Well, we’re going to do a number of posts on pinterest here this week and in this first post, we’re introducing the concept of pinterest to you.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is like a virtual online pinboard. Imagine you are getting married and moving into a new house.  It would be like having pinboards all around your office or room, one board would have cut-out pictures of wedding dresses from magazines, another might have bridesmaids dresses, another wedding shoes and you might have numerous boards with pictures to help you plan your dream kitchen, your garden, your living room and your bedrooms in your new home. But instead of having them in a scrapbook or on a wall mounted pinboard, you can access them in your own pinterest account online.

Within Pinterest, you can have as many pinboards as you like on as many topics as you like.  You can follow other people and they can follow you.  You can repin any pictures you find that you like.  It really is a true eye candy store.

True pinners post pictures that they find and love, pinning pictures that resonate with them, picture that they would use to inspire their wedding, their new home, their garden, their dress style, their cooking, their baking or anything else they love.

When you go to the pinterest site, you will see a series of pictures. Each picture will tell you how many times it has been repinned (that means other people like it so much they have shared it on their own boards), how many likes it has received and how many people have commented on it.

You can download the ‘Pin’ button on the site and it will sit neatly on your bookmarks bar. Everytime you see a picture on a blog or a website that you would like to include in one of your boards, you simply click on the ‘pin in’ button, select the board you wish to put it in, add a comment and it will stay on that board until you remove it.  You can also opt to share that pin on twitter and/or facebook. Each picture should carry the original source and I’ll write more about that in a post later in the week.

If you would like to follow some video instructions, then do have a look at this video by Amanda of Spiderworking.

You can apply to join pinterest but that does take some time. It is much quicker if you know a pinterest user and ask them to invite you. All they need is your email address.  If you would like an invite, do leave a comment below and we will send you one. You can find me on pinterest here too.

I’m sure we’ll think of various “pinterest’ topics” as we move through the week,  our posts will include tips on using pinterest for your business, the “do’s and don’ts of pinterest”, how it can increase the traffic to your website, and more.  If you have any questions, do ask and we’ll answer them in our final post on Friday.