What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a website at http://pinterest.com In a nutshell Pinterest is a: “Visual Image Bookmarking Social Media Site”. You could probably describe it in a dozen different ways! Basically, it's like an online pinboard or collage. So people 'pin' things they like to a pinboard for other people to enjoy. If a Pinterest user likes (or more likely, loves) an image, they can 'like' the image. And if they really like the image they can 're-pin' these items to their own pinboards. Not only that, you can set up boards that other people can pin to. So you can collaborate and become the curator of a board on a particular topic. What are the items that can be pinned? Images. You can pin images from anywhere on the 'net. Also, Videos can be pinned, they have their own section. Though to be honest, these rarely look as pretty as the rest of the site. So Pinterest is a very visual, very beautiful site. People tend to pin things that look great, and people repin things if they love them. It's very much emotion driven, people like and re-pin items Why is Pinterest useful? Pinterest is full of people who are passionate about things. They are passionate about design, quality, visual niceness. Why is this useful? Simple, people want more, they want more and more of the same. They want to see more, read more, they want more information. So it's a naturally curious audience. Traffic Generation You can use this pinning method to generate traffic. Every image is linked to the site it came from. THAT'S WHERE THE TRAFFIC IS. Users can click on an image that interests them, and they end up on the site it came from. So, you pin images on YOUR sites and YOU get that traffic. And, if they are GREAT images, they might be repinned, and hence that virally attracts more traffic. And, even better, users activity ends up on their connected Facebook and Twitter accounts. So you automatically gain from those networks too! It's been said that Pinterest is driving more traffic to sites than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined... TRAFFIC How do you use Pinterest? Okay, let's walk through using Pinterest. Invite Only At the time of writing, the site is Invite Only. I requested an invite, and was a member within a few days. Why are they doing this? I think it's to manage their growth, so they don't grow too quickly – rememeber, right now they aren't making any money! (Does that sound familiar, think Twitter...) TRAFFIC Signup and Username Once you've been granted your invite, you need to signup. Take care to choose a good username – it gets displayed all over the place, so if you are doing it for a company, use the right brand. Edit Profile You should fill out the profile to ensure maximum exposure for your website and social profiles. In your About box put something meaningful about yourself and your interests. Put your real location, remember your country – Pinterest is global. Put your website, include the http:// You can link your profile to both Facebook and Twitter. Do this. And finally, make sure the “Hide from search engines” is OFF (unlike to the right, I've changed mine now! TRAFFIC Your Public Profile As you will see below, your public profile is a snapshot of you and your pinboards. (Excuse the lack of pins in this snapshot, I've not done much pinning on this personal account at the time of the snapshot!) Note the red circled area. These are where the About, Location are displayed. And the icons link (via do-follow links) to your website, twitter, facebook and a link to your pinteres RSS.

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