I have been trying to talk everyone and their brother (or maybe sister) into trying Pinterest.
I truly think it is my most worthwhile internet addiction hobby.
What is Pinterest?
Remember when we were young and had cork boards? We would tear out a picture of our favorite New Kid on the Block or of that pink boombox that we had to have and tack it up to our board to gaze at daily while reading The Babysitters Club. That cork board is Pinterest, only instead of jagged magazine edges Pinterest gives you your own “boards” to pin anything you could possibly find an image for online. You can organize your boards any way you would like. Picture yourself having multiple cork boards where you can “pin” anything you want to wear/bake/read/create,buy for your dog.
How do I use it?
The first thing you should do once you have an account is download the Pin It button to your toolbar. Do this by selecting “Pin It Button” under “About” once you are logged in to Pinterest.
This will allow you to easily pin any image you see online.
Next, select “Find Friends” under your user name and Pinterest will find your friends through Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo or Gmail. My advice would be to follow quite a few people. The best way to start filling your boards is to look through what your friends have already pinned and find things you like. Once you are following someone you will be able to see all of the boards they have created. Or, if you chose, you can follow only specific boards they have created instead of all. When I first began on Pinterest I followed all boards for everyone and then started unfollowing those boards that were not relevant to my interests.
Once you look around and see what people are pinning you can decide on the categories you want to use for your boards. Basic categories such as Recipes, Crafts, Things for Me, Things for the Kids are a great way to start. You will quickly discover what other categories you want to add once you begin pinning and if any of your initial categories need to be specific. For example, I added a board for each holiday soon after I started. This way I can click on Halloween and all of the recipes, crafts and costume ideas I have found for Halloween are in one place. Then, if you find yourself pinning ten million costume ideas you can branch off and create another board just for costumes. Make sense?
So ultimately, you can pin anything you see that you would like to see again, whether you find it while looking around Pinterest, shopping online or reading blogs. If you like it, pin it.
Tips for Making Pinterest Worth Your While
1. Pinterest is about finding things you love, saving them for another day when you want to read/try/buy/make them and sharing what you love with your friends. You can pin anything that you want but pinning everything that you see will start to clog up your followers’ Pinterest page and they may unfollow you. I think quality over quantity is definitely important when pinning. If you find an awesome recipe that you want to share, 100 people may repin it. If you find 100 pictures of unicorns that you want to share you will be lucky if one person pins one of your pictures, no matter how many colors of the rainbow are in that unicorns mane.
2. Describe your pins so they can be easily found. When you name something you have pinned, give it a name that will show up when someone searches for it. For example, if you pin a fantastic recipe for chocolate cupcakes, you need to include the words “chocolate” and “cupcake” in your title. Naming the picture “yum” will not help anyone else find your pin when searching.
3. When creating your own pin, include the least amount of text possible. In general, your goal should be to send people to a site for the information that is linked to that image. Including an entire recipe, blog post or magazine article just takes up space on everyones Pinterest page. Also, it does not lead anyone to the site that should get credit for the original idea.
**Remember this when pinning your own information. You want to give the reader a reason to visit your site. If you give them all of the information they need on Pinterest, they have no reason to visit you for more.**
4. If you pin something from a website make sure you are pinning from the specific page associated with that image. This is especially important with blog posts. You must click on the specific blog post you want the image to link to before pinning the image. Otherwise, the image may just link someone back to the home page for the blog and the post you meant to pin will be buried.
5. If you click on an image you have pinned only to find a broken, expired, or false link please, for the love of pinning, delete your pin so that the image does not continue to circulate. There is nothing worse than a picture of the Worlds Best Two Ingredient Cookies that You Can Make While Standing On Your Head With Your Eyes Closed with no link for the recipe.
Hope this helps get you started, if you need the next steps you can find links to my other Pinterest tutorials below.
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