Many of you already know about the wonder of . If you don’t yet know about Pinterest, you are missing out! Pinterest is a virtual pinboard and it’s wonderful! Have you ever been on a blog or a website and you wanted to save an image or maybe a recipe from the website? Maybe you were cruising the internet and you found something you like but then you lost it because you kept cruising and couldn’t find your way back to the place that had the thing you liked? Pinterest is the answer you’ve been looking for, you just didn’t know it! I have a few friends and now my own mom who are jumping on the Pinterest train but they aren’t exactly sure how to use it. So I am going to attempt to show you how I use Pinterest and maybe you’ll decide to give Pinterest a try or finally start pinning some stuff to those empty boards.
For those of you unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is basically an online pinboard. My friend Kelly always tore pictures and articles out of magazines and saved them in folders for future reference. Some people bookmark their favorite websites for the articles, information, pictures, etc. I know other people save pictures from blogs and websites on their computer files. Pinterest is an online version of these types of systems but without the hassle and clutter either in your home or on your computer. You can find anything and everything on Pinterest including, recipes, home decor inspiration and ideas, craft/diy projects and ideas, photography poses and tutorials, exercise stuff, orginazation and cleaning stuff, weird crazy stuff, celebrity pics, pretty much anything you could think of, it’s on there!
To get started, the very first thing you will need to do is request an invite to join . The turn around time on this varies but it shouldn’t be longer than a week before you receive an e-mail from Pinterest.
Some terminology you will need to get familiar with are the words Pins and Boards. Pins are the pictures or items added from websites by people, collected all onto Pinterest. Some examples are recipes, tutorials for photography, clothing, furniture, pets and art. You can then pin the items you like onto your boards. Boards are where you organize what you pin. You can have many different boards organized in a number of different ways. You will figure out what works best for you the more familiar you get with Pinterest. You will have some boards already set up by Pinterest when you first log on. I will discuss boards in greater detail a little further down in this post.
Once you’ve received your e-mail from Pinterest, login to your account and this is what your page should look like:
One of the first things you want to do is get familiar with the functions on Pinterest. Those can be found under your name where the drop down box is located. Drop down the box and click on Boards.
Once you find something you like, you will want to pin it. So where do you pin your pin? This is what the boards are for, they are a place to organize your pins. Pinterest gives you a set of generic boards to help you get started. This is a screen shot of my mom’s Pinterest boards. She hasn’t pinned anything yet and you can see the boards that Pinterest has already named for you.
I highly recommend changing the names of your boards after your initial log in and once you have a feel for how you want to organize your boards and pins. There are a bazillion ways to organize and name your boards. Here is a screen shot of some of my boards:
I have a board for every room in my home, recipes and food, clothing, books, hair ideas, project ideas, things that make me laugh, blog stuff and Christmas to name just a few. You can always create new boards or change the names of your boards once you are more familiar with everything.
There are a few ways to go about finding items to pin. If you are not following anyone yet, you can just browse your main page on Pinterest where you see pins from random people and it will be a mixed bag of stuff. I actually enjoy browsing the random page and find lots of fun stuff on there plus it’s always changing as people are always pinning!
Once you start following friends or people you may know on Pinterest, your “home” page when you log in will have your friend’s most recent pins on it instead of the page of pins by random people. The shot below is from my mom’s Pinterest account which she has not used yet so those pins are from strangers.
You can also search for specific things on Pinterest by using the search box in the upper left hand corner. This allows you to search everything that has been pinned on Pinterest, ever. Say I want to find a Crock Pot Chicken Recipe. I type in Crock Pot Chicken Recipe and this is what my page looks like now:
Underneath the search box you will see that there are 209932 Pins · ·
for crock pot chicken recipes. You can browse all 209932 pins which is what the picture above shows you the start of all those pins. You can also click on the 110936 boards and your page will look like this:
These are the boards on Pinterest that contain the words Crock, Pot and/or Recipes. I can chose to follow some or all of these boards as maybe they pinned some recipes I would be interested in. I can also decide that I don’t want to follow the boards but maybe just pin a few pins from these boards instead.
If I click on the 31 People this is what it looks like:
As you can see, the results on this are mixed. The first pin is a Skinny Crock Pot pin which takes me to a blog named Skinny Crock Pot which is nice. There are also people who have the words Crock or Pot in their name which really isn’t helpful for my search for Crock Pot Chicken Recipes.
Finally, you can install the Pin It Button on your internet browser’s toolbar. When you are browsing blogs and websites and come across something you really want to pin, you can hit the Pin It Button. The Pin It Button can be found under the About button on the top right hand side of your Pinterst page.
There are lots of other goodies as they call them to be found here as well. If you have an iPhone or Android they have an app, along with Follow buttons and Pin It Buttons for websites and blogs. After uploading the Pin It button onto my Toolbar, it’s time to use it! So I’m browsing this great blog and find a great picture that I’d love to Pin. I hit the Pin It button on my toolbar and here is what my screen looks like now:
It brings up recent images from my blog. I can chose which image to pin by clicking on it. When I hover my mouse over the lemon bars image, you can see the Pin This show up. Please make sure when pinning an image that you pin from the direct post it pertains to and not the main page of the blog or site. I would pin this image from http://www.thebloominghydrangea.com/2011/01/lemon-bars.html not from http://www.thebloominghydrangea.com
When I click on Pin this I get the same box I would on my Pinterest page which lets me choose which board to pin the image on. It’s that easy peasy!
I almost forgot to tell you one more thing about Pinterest that you should know:
Source: via on
And don’t forget, you can follow me on Pinterest by clicking on the P in the right hand side of my blog next to my e-mail, facebook and RSS buttons!
I’m linking up here:
This is such a great post! I have been wanting to post something like this but have not had enough time…how long did this take you to write? It's amazing!
I would really be honoured if you could link this up to my weekly Pinning & Singing Pinterest party!
Best wishes and happy pinning!
Natasha @ 5 Minutes Just for Me
I think Pinterest is a great resource! It can be addicting but fun. I have not had the chance to use it as much as I would like but hopefully someday!
This is fabulous! I will share this with my Facebook page! Thanks!
Becky B.
Organizing Made Fun
What a thorough tutorial on pinterest! The last one, the mirror photo, 'crack'ed me up!!! Sorry I had to do it. It is true, but in a good way. I have gotten so many awesome ideas from Pinterest!! Loving your new profile photo!
Thanks so much for linking up! I just tweeted about it.
Natasha.
xo
I'm a big fan of Pinterest as well. Thanks for all the great tips and for partying with DIYbyDesign.
I've been wondering for a while now what all the hype was about Pinterest. Thank you so much for the insight. What a handy tool…already sent my invite request. Thanks again.
LOL. Pinterest DOES = crack.
I love Pinterest so much it's almost sickening.
Stopped by from Amanda's.
I'm doing a week of giveaways on my blog. Stop over and enter.
ooooh, ooooh, I have a question *waves hand in the air*.
Ok, so I've got some friends that I follow and I can see what they've recently pinned. But just supposing I want to have a look at that particular person?
So, for example I know my friend has pinned a recipe I want to go back to, I can't work out how to find her pins. I would have assumed that in the drop down menu there'd be a 'friends' type button where it brought up a list of all my friends. I can't find one though!
Anyone have any idea?
x
xx
p.s. hello from your newest follower
Great post! I have a post scheduled for Wednesday on the power of Pinterest in marketing your blog. I'll share this as a resource for those who are just starting or haven't actually made it on there.