Earlier last year, around January and February 2012 to be exact, I've heard about Pinterest among online marketers and social media gurus mentioning about Pinterest gaining popularity as a great new marketing tool for many online businesses out there. I didn't get curious about it until I stumbled about several times from several different people talking about it. I finally got interested about Pinterest around early March 2012 so I decided to visit the site. To my dismay, during that time period, Pinterest was for invitation-only sign-up process, and I didn't know anybody who could send me an invite at that time because none of my friends and family used Pinterest, but there was a button to request for invitation to be in the waiting list, so I did that, and I got accepted within a week.
Pinterest Compared To Other Social Media
Fast forward almost a year later (January 2013) Pinterest has exponentially grown into a major social media site for a lot of people. More and more users have discovered its advantages and many got hook, and loving it. If you haven't heard of Pinterest, chances are you are/were glued into your Facebook wall and feed stream (?), following your family and friends rants and ramblings about their day to day lives and activities, in which even if you are happy for your friends and families accomplishments, and have this virtual means to be a part of their lives even if they are hundreds or thousands of miles away from you, there are days that it can sometimes make left you feel sad, left out and not feeling good about yourself knowing that people you know did this, did that, he/she been there, than that, and sometimes you feel sorry for yourself when you don't accomplish the same level of good things like your friends and family have accomplished, or you cannot afford to go places like your friends or family have been. Having a means to communicate with your family and friends at the tip of your fingertips is very nice, but somehow the very site that is suppose to make us feel connected and stay in touch with our family and friends, can sometimes make us feel all alone and feel inferior especially when we start comparing our lives with them (others), comparing what they have done, where they have been.. and this is where Pinterest is to the rescue, to look again about the bright side of things, allows you to dream and plan for your future, force you to look at yourself what you like, what you want, your desires, dreams and interests. And the people who will eventually follow you in Pinterest will have a sense of who you (as you) basing on the things/topics that interests you as seen in your boards that you created.
Advantages Of Pinterest
While majority of social media out there chronicle of a person's past and sometimes present like what a person did or doing, where a person has been or is at the moment, what a person was/is feeling, and/or was/is he/she doing at the moment, Pinterest on the other hand is like a window of a person's future, a chronicle of a person's needs and wants/desire today, and the future. Pinterest entice you to dream and plan for your future. Pinterest encourage you to re-affirm your desire to visit places that you always want to go simply because you see all these beautiful photographs of tourists destinations all over the world, and you can particularly add these photos in your boards, the ones that you personally want to go. Pinterest gives you plenty of ideas and tips on how your future home may look like because of the abundance of home interior designs, storage ideas, landscaping inspirations virtually visible everywhere in Pinterest that you can borrow and apply in your future home. You can learn and discover new recipes, and how to cook them. You can learn how to plant this, and that. The possibilities of topics you see in Pinterest are endless including fashion, travel, food, cars, business, animals, etc, and the best part of it all is that you control the topics you want to see in your boards depending on your personal taste, preferences, and interests.
What is Pinterest?
With that said, what exactly is Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual cork board. Remember those days when you read a magazine or newspaper and see a beautiful photograph of a kitchen, and you clipped it and put it in your cork board? Same goes with Pinterest minus the actual cork board in your wall and the messy paper clippings that are pinned all over your wall! With Pinterest you can create several different virtual boards solely depending on the topics that interest you, and the best part is
that you get to decide on your own what to call each board, you can pretty much be creative with how to name each board that you create, for example, if you create a board about gardening, you can choose to call it garden, gardening, my yard, my backyard, gardeners paradise, etc, it's your choice, really!
Start Pinning And Following People
Now that you have a Pinterest account and created few blank boards to start and named each board that you created by topic, for example, food and recipes, future trips, gardening tips, etc. After that, this is where most people get lost and confused especially when they dont know anybody who use Pinterest, and the big question mark lingering in your head is where can you get photos to put in your boards?! (This is totally true especially when you dont own a website with photos in them.) No worries, you don't have to personally know anybody in Pinterest to start following them and to start pinning photos in their boards to your boards. To give you a head start on pinning, lets say you like Mickey Mouse and you created a board called All About Mickey. To get photos of products and items about Mickey just type-in Mickey Mouse in the Pinterest search box and click search, from there you will find several search results of Mickey Mouse items and products that are already added in Pinterest, if you spot Mickey Mouse item or photo that you like and want to add it in your own board, just mouse-over the photo, and a PIN button will appear, click that PIN button and specify which board in this case All About Mickey board that you created, and there you have it, your first pin! Don't worry too much about not knowing personally the person who owns the board that you just pinned the Mickey Mouse item from, that is the beauty of Pinterest, you can pretty much follow complete strangers' boards, as long as their specific boards are inline with your interests and wants, follow them, or pin away! Better yet, if you see someone's boards that are mostly the same as your interests, you can follow the person, which means you are following all his/her boards, and all this person's new pins will show in your feed regardless of topic, which you have the option to re-pin in your board. You can either follow a person's specific board, or all his/her boards by following the person, and you can do this without feeling like you are stalking somebody, or feeling like you are invading his/her privacy because majority of the photos and graphics that you see in Pinterest are non-intrusive, nothing personal because majority of them are photographs of tangible items like products, foods, animals, plants, places, not potraits of family and friends, not someone's parents or boyfriend/girlfriend.
Maximize The Use Of Pinterest, And Cautions
The beauty about Pinterest is that you don't just see a photo of a delicious food, if you click the link next to the photo, such link will usually lead you to where the photo is originally posted in the internet, and from there you can find the ingredients and the instructions of the delicious food photograph. For the most part, this is the case, you have to be aware of spammers, who pin photos and change the original link, which is not really permitted in Pinterest but there will always be some people that does not follow the rules, and you have to be aware of this so that you prevent yourself from following these spammers who changed the link and the photos link will no longer match the original link where the photo was originally posted.
Many website nowadays provide PIN buttons so that you can add their photo posting to Pinterest, but the general rule of thumb here is always give credit to the source of the photograph, do not edit the link and put your own website link there, that's not nice, and you could be ban doing that. When you see a photograph anywhere in the internet but it does not have a PIN button in it, and you dont own the photograph, I personally would not pin nor add it to Pinterest because that photographed could be copyrighted or protected. The general rule when you pin is to always give credit to the original source of the photograph, dont claim the photograph as your own by editing the source link to put your own site link instead, be a good pinner, always give credit to the source of the photos.
Take Advantage Of Pinterest As A Website Owner
If you have a website or a blog with plenty of your own photographs posted with your posts or articles, maximize your visibility in Pinterest by adding PIN button in each of your articles or posts with photo or graphic. This way, when somebody have a Pinterest account and happen to be in your site and like your article, the chances that they will share (by pinning) your post is high when you have a PIN button provided, otherwise they will think twice if its even okey for them to pin or not when there is no PIN button available. To find the PIN button to add to your site, go to Pinterest.com at the upper right click About > Pin It Button > Goodies , from there follow the instructions to get and produce the html codes you need to copy-and-paste in your web pages. If you haven't heard already, Pinterest is a major traffic generator for many websites and especially blogs nowadays. As a website owner, use Pinterest to your advantage and add PIN buttons to each of your postings with photos in it.
This article is written by Jazevox
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