Thursday, August 25, 2011

Who Wants to Pinterest? All the Scoop

Pinterest is a place for visual bookmarking that you share with others. It’s a great way to keep track of all those things you’ve been wanting to try, and a fabulous way to discover new and inspiring ideas!
It is very addicting the ability to share, and search and visually see everything.

Here is the website:

http://pinterest.com/

You can also follow them on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pinterest

There is also an iphone app if you want to have it at your finger tips on your cell:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pinterest/id429047995?mt=8

1.  Get an invitation:

In order to try Pinterest out you have to receive an invitation.  You can request an invitation through the website itself but most people I know wait forever to get approved that way.  People on Etsy, twitter and facebook seem to be helping each other out with the invitation to join.

2.  Set up your account

You can sign in using your existing twitter account or facebook account. The benefit of using one of those social media accounts to sign in, is that you can find people on Pinterest that you already interact with on those other sites. You also can log in to Pinterest using the email and password you establish when setting up your account. image
When signing up, you will be prompted to create some boards. Pinterest suggests a few basic boards with titles.
3.  Start following others:

This site is like most social networking sites... as you follow people you will see their "pins" and they can see yours.  So following people from your facebook network to twitter and finding others to follow will be important.
You can follow all of of someone’s boards, or just pick a one or a few to follow. You can also unfollow a person or certain boards at any time.
Once you have a few friends to follow, look around their pinboards and see if you can find anyone else who looks familiar or interesting. You can always unfollow them later on.  You can click on who I follow or who follows me to find some fun people.

4.  Create Boards:

You can “like” pins which is liking adding them to a “favorites” file. If you “repin” them, you will want to sort the pins into boards. After browsing through a few pinboards from friends, you will probably have a pretty good idea of what topics you want to focus on. You can always rename and rearrange your pinboards so don’t worry too much about getting them “just right”!

To edit them at any time, I just go to the boards from my drop down menu and I can edit each one individually or even rearrange the order they are displayed in.
It’s also helpful to be be sure each board is categorized properly – this helps others find your pins. Just click on “edit” for each board and select the most appropriate category.

#5  Start Pinning Re-Pinning:

Find the image of photos on a wall that I want to repin to my own boards. As I hover over the picture with my mouse, the option appears to either “repin” or “like” it. I choose “repin” and it prompts me to categorize it to one of my boards. I choose Gallery Walls and click on repin.  I could also automatically share this pin on twitter or facebook by using the buttons at the bottom.

What if you want to pin something you find on another site? You can go to “add a pin” and then enter the url and description.  You can also have a button added to the toolbar on your internet window to make it easier.

The quick way is to add the “pin it” shortcut. It says you can click and drag it to your toolbar, but I couldn’t get it to work. Here are the instructions:

To install the “Pin It” button in Internet Explorer:

1. Display your Favorites Bar by clicking Tools > Toolbars > Favorites Bar

2. Right-click the “Pin It” button and select “Add to Favorites”

3. On the pop-up window, select “Create in: Favorites Bar”

4. When you are browsing the web, push the “Pin It” button to pin an image

As always with any social network basic etiquette applies.  Try to be polite, leave comments, share, but don't spam.

Here is a really nice article with more details on Pinterest:

http://www.sortacrunchy.net/sortacrunchy/2011/05/pinterest-a-beginners-guide.html

ALSO, TurtleXii wrote up a blog post answering specific questions from our team:

http://turtlexiii.blogspot.com/2011/08/pinterest-and-all-its-questions.html

Hope this helps everyone!  Have fun with this site.

Janet
www.galla15.etsy.com

2 comments:

  1. I've been hearing a lot about this site. Did you receive an invitation?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, someone from the team invited me. Can't remember who.... I know Glitter was offering to send an invite if you convo her your personal email address. I know I will :)))

    ReplyDelete