Look at the fabulous new shinny thing! It’s a great new social media platform called Pinterest. People go to their favorite blogs and websites and just “pin” images or video to their own “boards” which then allows them to automatically share those “pins” with their followers. Dress designs, cupcakes, exotic locations, celebrities, favorite quotes and infographics. An endless amount of possibilities to share with others. Businesses got involved too and now Pinterest allows them to visually pull you in to what their brand is all about.
A corner has been turned though. What’s being “pinned” isn’t “favorite things”, it’s more like “everything”. As if someone went to a furniture website and “pinned” everything on the site, instead of just the main pieces that they love or appreciate. You’ve seen those accounts haven’t you? The ones where the person goes to a travel website and they don’t choose “A” or “L”, but instead choose to pin, “All of the above”. Flooding their boards and thereby flooding the boards of everyone following them with their “I love everything and I hate nothing so that you notice me” Pinterest strategy.
A person can have a lot of passions and interests that catch their fancy. Instead of one color, they might love the entire spectrum of colors. That’s great! In social media though, we don’t need to or are we asking you to share EVERY idea, thought, image or video that comes to mind or to your attention. Share the “choice” pieces of life. The highlights of life. In sports there are 2 announcers, the play-by-play and the color commentator. If you treat your social media accounts as doing color commentary of your life, you’re going to have far more success than if you do play-by-play postings. Help make Pinterest less Pinful, or painful. Make it fun!
How do you see it?
I don’t think Pinterest is any different from any other social media site in this respect. There are certainly Twitter accounts guilty of this tactic. The trick is finding the right accounts to follow, and Pinterest can be every bit as enjoyable as any other social site.
Pinterest has banned me from commenting because I wrote, “Please do not pin or re-pin if you cannot credit the artist” too many times. My work is all over pinterest without credit as is the art and photography of many others.
Recently the latest figures have come out about the community of Pinterest. The “experts” claimed the sky was falling since viewership had dropped from ten million, to a measly eight million. I don’t dispute the numbers, but I’m not worried in the slightest either. Pinterest is a young social media platform that is quickly changing, and as it changes those who have left will come back. I’m going to cover what will always be Pinterest staples, the meat and potato content; and what I think the content will become in the near future.
Pinterest, the latest social networking craze to take the world by storm, can be a useful tool to drive traffic to your website. You can add pins to your boards that link to your site. There are also some simple steps you can take to increase pins and links to your blog or website.
It seems the most popular Pinterest images so far are food related. There are some funny ones, a few beautiful vacation photos and some weight loss tips, too. But the foods ones have gotten the biggest bang on Pinterest.