Have you met my new favorite online obsession? Its name is Pinterest. No? Well, let me introduce you.
Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool, an easy way to save things you want to remember on the Internet. It uses pictures to mark your place, and you can organize your collected items into any categories you please. Once you create a profile (which is easy to do with your Facebook account), you can look at other people’s pins and begin creating your own boards. You can filter the pins you see by topics in which you’re interested, such as architecture, DIY and crafts, photography or food. Or you can discover new things by following certain people. When you sign up via Facebook, it helps you find friends from Facebook who are using Pinterest that you may want to follow. You can also find people with similar interests or just follow certain boards to guide what shows up on your home page.
The most helpful tool though, in my opinion, is the ability to link back to original sources. You install the “Pin It” button to your bookmark toolbar, and then you can hit the button when you find something to save on any website. It’ll let you choose a picture from the page to keep as the bookmark, select a board to pin it to and then add a caption. So if I find a recipe I want to try, I can pin a picture of the final product and go back to the original blog or website at any time to use the full recipe.
Pinterest is still new, with its quickest adoption happening over this past spring and summer according to compete.com. So far, the audience is predominantly women.
Because of this, there are few official stats on how people are using it. But that’s half the fun. People have found all kinds of creative ways to use the site, like making visual travel guides. More commonly, I see people create boards to plan their weddings or gather inspiration for their holiday decorations. There are a lot of recipes collected for future trial, and ideas for everything from your next haircut to your next vacation. Other users can like or comment on a pin that you post, so you can use it to get feedback on said new haircut. If you notice a friend is planning a party, then you can mention it to them when you find an idea you think they’d like. The people who run Pinterest have recently updated the interface to allow for the uploading of video, help you find pins that are generating conversation and let you add prices to pins.
Pinterest is not meant as a promotional tool, and as such has not made any indications of how it will work with brands, if at all. I can see some potential, though. Users are already posting products and tips from brands, especially clothes and recipes. Simply making content accessible to this channel, through the inclusion of good pictures, may bring your brand into this trendy site. But for now, it serves as a great tool for your creativity – a place, full of beautiful things, to inspire your next project or find a little encouragement.
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