The Pinterest Craze

Move over Facebook. Pinterest is the latest craze in social media. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where people can organize what they find interesting on the Internet and pin it onto their own pin boards. It's a visual bookmarking site that bookmarks images instead of text. But the images; when clicked on, will bring you to your favorite website. Pinterest was first launched in March of 2010 with only a few users from local collages and family members of CEO and founder Ben Silbermann of West Des Moines, Iowa. Pinterest jumped from 10,000 users in November 2011 to 16.1 million users in January 2012. Making it the fastest growing social media in such a short time. Pinterest is managed by Cold Brew Laboratories and is funded by a small group of investors and entrepreneurs.

To join Pinterest you need to ask for an invite. You can ask a member to invite you, or you can click on the invite button on the Pinterest website. It usually takes 24 hours to get a reply back. Once you are accepted to join, you can start pinning images onto your boards. In order to do this, you need to download the "pin box" to place on your browser. After the pin box is placed on your browser, you can start pinning images from websites that interest you. You can also browse other peoples boards on Pinterest from selecting the Everything link at the top of the Pinterest menu. You can then select the category you are interested in. Such as; fashion, art, music, film, books, etc and you can pin images from their boards onto your boards.

Here is an easy breakdown: Say your are interested in planning a wedding. You can search the web for wedding gowns and if you like a particular dress, you can save it to your board by:

• Hitting the Pin It box
• A screen from Pinterest will pop up with the images from the website your are viewing
• Select (pin) the image of the dress that you really like
• Pinterest will ask you to categorize the image from the drop-down list. Or you can create a new category (title) of your board. Let's say making a category "My Wedding"
• Now you can search the web for wedding invitations and so on, and keep pinning them onto your "My Wedding" board.
• It's that simple.

Pinterest is an interactive site where members can follow you or just a few of your pin boards. Or they can just pin the images they like onto their own boards. They also can leave comments on your boards. When you pin an image to your board you can tweet it, like it on Facebook, email it, or embed it on a website or blog. Those options are displayed when you add or edit a pin. You can sign into Pinterest from your Twitter or Facebook accounts.

If you have a blog or a website, you can pin the images from those sites onto Pinterest. Pinterest will automatically link your site to your board. When someone clicks on the image of your pin they will be brought to your website. I have my hubs pinned on my boards and I notice I've been getting more traffic. From a business standpoint, you can also pin products to sell from your affiliates or from your own store.