Beginner Guide to Pinterest


Pinterest baffled me for the longest time. I couldn't keep a post and a pin straight, I just couldn't grasp the point of the whole thing, and frankly, I didn't even know how to pronounce the word. However, I finally figured out to navigate around and now I'm addicted. So, now that I'm a seasoned expert, I thought it might be helpful to put together a "beginner's guide" to Pinterest for anyone else who is struggling with Pinterest.

Pinterest is basically a way to keep track of ideas.  Let's say you're having people over on Saturday night and can't think of anything to make.  In theory, you could pull up Pinterest and find your board on recipes and find a recipe that you've "pinned" in the past.  Or, if it's a rainy morning and you need something to do with the kids, you can pull up your board about "Kid stuff" and find a fun activity to do.  Still confused?  Think of it like this.  Let's say you come across something on the Internet that you really like and you want to save it for later.  Now, you have to save it to your "Favorites" but soon you have tons and tons of bookmarks and can't keep track of everything.  Now you have a way to save things for later and keep them organized. The idea is to create a bunch of virtual pinboards with things that you will want to come back and see later.

Here are a few tips for beginners: First, you need to request an invitation. It does take several weeks and it is faster if you have a friend "invite" you. Anyone who is on Pinterest can invite you.  So, once you're "in", now you need to create some boards. Think about what is interesting to you. It might be recipes, kids stuff, house decorating, travel ideas, etc. Now, once you have a few ideas, click on the "Add" button on the main page:

Then, once you click on this, you will have some options.  Click Create a Board

Now you will be taken to a screen where you can name the board whatever you want and categorize it.  Again, just keep it personal to you.  Once you get some basic boards, you can expand.  My boards at the beginning were: Recipes, Keeping Kids Busy, Easy Crafts, Recommendations from Moms, and Travel Ideas.  Some people have four boards, some people have forty boards.  They can be very broad or can be as specific as chicken recipes, beef recipes, fish recipes etc. 

Once you have boards, it's time to find something to put on the boards. The best way is to find people to follow.  You can search for your friends by typing in a name in the upper left hand corner.  

  
Notice here that I have searched for Katie Norris.  It found all pins with the name Katie Norris.  Or, you can click on People and then it will look for all people named Katie Norris.  This will allow you to find your friends.  Once you've found someone, you can click on "Follow" and pretty soon you will have lots of people to follow.  You can also find friends via Facebook.  Go to your Facebook account, then you can get the Pinterest App and follow all your Facebook friends on Pinterest.  You will probably be surprised at how many of your Facebook friends are already on Pinterest.

Then, the next time you go to Pinterest.com, you will see a bunch of new things that your friends have found.  Now you can just scroll through and find something that interests you.  


For example, see this screen shot.  Here are a bunch of pins that my followers "pinned" since the last time I visited.   If you see something you like, click on it.  Then you will see "re-pin".  Just click that and you can assign it to any of your boards. Pretty soon your boards will be full of interesting things.

Here are a few boards you might want to follow.  These boards are collaborative, meaning several different people contribute, so you get a lot of bang for your buck when you follow them:





Now, for a few more tips on navigating around Pinterest.  If you click on the arrow button next to your name, you will see some options:

 
You can click on boards to see all your boards organized for you.  You could also click on pins, which would show you everything you have pinned from the original source.  Keep in mind that there some people who feel that Pinterst might be violating copyright laws, so it's probably safest to only pin from sites that give you explicit permission to pin.  Most blogs will have a "Pin Friendly" button somewhere on the site, to show that it's okay to pin.  

Another good thing to know is that if you find a pin that you really like, you might want to find more pins from that site.  If you do, scroll down to the bottom of a pin that you like and you will see this option for "Pinned via pinmarket via mommywithselectivememory.blogspot.com"  If you click on this, it will show you all the pins from that site and you might be able to find a bunch of things that are interesting to you.


Here is the screen shot of how it will look when you click on this.  You will notice where it says, "Pins from Mommywithselectivememory.blogspot.com".  Now you can scroll and see everything from this blog.


I hope you found this useful.  If you have any other tips, feel free to pass them along!

5 comments:

  1. Here is another great article on tips for pintrest:

    http://blog.us.cision.com/2012/05/quick-pinterest-tips-to-help-drive-traffic-to-your-site/


    -JohnN
    Choose, bid and save! Join the fun at www.bidacuda.com!

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  2. The credit for my successful Pinterest account goes to PinPinterest [com]. I used to spend a lot of time on Pinterest and still, I was not able to get a decent amount of followers. For the first time, I used PinPinterest for my Pinterest account automation, and it became the savior of my sinking account. Within a few weeks, I got a lot of active followers, thanks to PinPinterest.

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