You Need to Know About Pinterest

Everything You Need to Know About Pinterest The response I’ve heard surrounding Pinterest all echoes the same sentiment: “this is seriously addicting.” As someone who is easily distracted by sparkly things, I’ve forbidden myself from using Pinterest at work (only, of course, to thoroughly research this post…). 

Do we really need another social network to waste hours of our lives? Better yet, how has a network that is still invitation-only managed to get 2.7 million users (and that is just those who are signing in with Facebook)? 

Pinterest is a social bookmarking tool used to “pin” images found around the Web into categorized collections, or boards. Think of it like an interactive, shareable scrapbook. Like any good social network, you can follow other users, share their content, make comments, and tag users. Similar to a Twitter stream, you get real-time updates of what the people you follow are pinning. You can also easily share your pins on Facebook and Twitter. 

While there aren’t a lot of brands using Pinterest yet, I expect that to change very soon. The audience on Pinterest is different from the major social networks because most people use it to find inspiration, whether they are hosting a party, getting married, remodeling their bathroom, or looking for a recipe for dinner. In other words, many are using Pinterest to help guide their buying decisions. If a user finds something they like on Pinterest, there is a good chance they will at least click the source link and, at most, make a purchase. 

Why People Are Obsessed 

Pinterest combines two of the most compelling elements of social media: visual content and sharing who you are. Oh, and everything looks really pretty… 

How Pinterest Works

Although Pinterest is still “invite only,” you can request an invite on the site with a pretty quick turnaround for access. You can also login using your Facebook or Twitter account for instant access. The Pinterest user interface is extremely intuitive — so much so that I think the quickest way to “get it” is to join and from there it’s very self-explanatory. But, there wouldn’t be much to this post if I told everyone to just go join Pinterest… 

Before I get into how this social network can be beneficial for brands, here’s a quick overview of Pinterest’s features: PINS A pin is an image or video, either from a website or uploaded from the user. A description can (and should) be added to pins.

Boards

Pins can be organized by topic, called boards. By default, Pinterest starts users off with a bunch of boards, but these can be deleted or renamed to suit a user’s interests. Within my pin boards, I’ve created collections of everything from recipes I want to try to countries I’ve visited to ideas for organizing my home to nail polishes I think are pretty (don’t judge me).

Following

Like Twitter, you can follow anyone, even if they aren’t following you back. You have the option to follow all of another user’s boards, or you can just select certain boards to follow. You can sign up using your Twitter or Facebook account, which makes it easy to find all of your friends already using Pinterest.

Repins

Repins are the “retweets” of the Pinterest world. Repinning is sharing an image pinned by someone you follow or found while browsing Pinterest, and then adding it to one of your own boards. Repinning gives credit to the person who first pinned the image. You can also edit (or add to) the description when you repin something. Source links also stay on the pin no matter how many times it is repinned. You don’t need to be following someone to repin from them.