What's new in social media: Piquing your interest

By Ellison Bloomfield

Pinterest has been around for about two years now and has slowly been gaining more popularity and interest. It is a social bookmarking site which allows you to create boards which you ‘pin’ pictures, links and items you like generally based on a category.

Once you have your own account and boards you can then repin links shared by others and add to your boards. By following people you’re interested in and inspired by you can find out about products and topics that you wouldn’t normally see.

58% of the users on Pinterest are women and it is popular for planning special events like weddings or sourcing ideas for redecorating.

Even though Pinterest now has over 4 million users it is still an invite only service so you will need to find people in your network who are using it already in order to gain access.

Share

You can create your own boards, like the pins of other users and comment on pins so there are multiple ways you can connect with others in the pinning community.

For creative people Pinterest can have dual benefits, creating boards and following others can lead to inspiration and open you up to new ideas and concepts and by sharing the work that you’re doing you can build your profile.

Your fans can share and pin your work or products to their boards and share this with their network and like twitter by using the @ symbol specific people can be mentioned or associated with your pins. Designers and artists can use this to acknowledge people who are sharing your work and to mention who is behind a specific piece.

Collaborate

You can choose to have more than one contributor for a board which allows you to collaborate with others. If you have a group or event that you’re involved in this can allow you to contribute and keep everyone involved. You can also use it to work with other designers, if you make clothes and another artist makes jewellery you can collaborate to create outfits or looks which showcase the work of multiple artists.

Gift It

If you add a $ to the pin description the pin will add a price banner to the photo and appear in the gifts category. Just make sure you include a link so that people know where they can purchase the item. If you have an Etsy store you can pin directly from the store to ensure that pinners can find your products.

Find

You can find out who has been pinning from your site by going to http://pinterest.com/source/ and adding your website address at the end. E.g. http://pinterest.com/source/creativewomenscircle.com.au/. This way you can find out what is popular on your site and gauge the interest in specifics items or products you have.

Like all social networks Pinterest is about connecting by sharing, chances are that someone has already pinned the things you like so by simply searching and browsing other boards you can add to your own. Or if you want to start completely fresh by adding the ‘Pin it’ button to your bookmarks bar you can pin to your heart’s content from any website you’re browsing.

Ellison Bloomfield is a Senior Analyst in Social Media at Deloitte. Her blog – Humane Resource has received world-wide attention and Ellison is frequently quoted as a thought leader on HR issues both within Australian and international publications. She can be found on twitter and pinterest @EllisonAmy