Dynamic Business

Have you heard all the buzz about Pinterest, but can’t figure out how to get started with it? In the first of a three-part article series, Nancy Georges looks at getting your business or brand acquainted with the newest online craze.

For those of us who have been using Pinterest for a while now, we are not surprised it’s becoming the ultimate connecting & sharing tool.

I started using it in May 2011. I try almost everything new, it’s my job, but Pinterest was different from the beginning, I loved it and found it pretty addictive, one click lead to a board which lead to another…

From the start, Pinterest was a god-send for me. I had been saving images to my computer in folders and taking up a lot of space, on and offline. Now my pics are available online, in groups and I can share them.

Pinterest, for those who do not know what it is, is an online bookmarking tool/online pin board. It is total eye-candy; beautiful, delicious, creative eye-candy. It reminds me of when Facebook was new and we all uploaded and shared our pictures – that is what drove us to easily adopt it.

But Pinterest is better! The minute you start, you realise there’s a wonderful world that awaits your discovery. You become a curator of what you see online, but remember, with great power, comes great responsibility.

Pinterest have created a tool, the ‘Pin It’ Button, which allows us to do what comes naturally;

• See a picture we like on the web;

• ‘Pin it’ to a board (save it organised in a group/theme);

• Check out our friends’ activity; and

• Share and like their pictures – on Pinterest and on other social media sites.

It also makes these things easier than ever before:

• Finding new friends, contacts, influencers, products, customers and suppliers, based on common interests;

• Finding new sources;

• ‘Following’ people, businesses and brands we like; and

• Gaining insight into a person’s creativity.

I was instantly impressed by the quality of the images and the variety of people on Pinterest. Over the last month or so, I have noticed a lot of the ‘geeks’ have started boards, so this will add another dimension. Whether this will be popular with hard-core Pinners will remain to be seen.

Unlike other sites, Pinterest does not manipulate us to do its bidding, as users we don’t have to do anything that is odd – we are simply flicking through pages of the web and cutting the pics out that we like and pasting them to a board… online.

By simply adding the ‘Pin It’ button to your internet browser toolbar, you can ‘Pin’ almost any picture online to a board of your choice. Almost you ask? Yes. You can’t Pin pictures from Facebook and sites who opt out of having their contents pinned.