Posted by Dana VanDen Heuvel, March 22, 2012

Have you succumbed to the Pinterest Craze yet? If not, you’re soon to be in the minority. New subscribers are piling up by the millions, and users are spending an astronomical amount of time on the site. A recent stat showed that Pinterest generates more monthly usage than Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined! For anyone who’s spent any time on the site, you know how easily an hour can slip by without even realizing it.

Usage Stats

• Twitter: 36 minutes/month
• LinkedIn: 17 minutes/month
• Google+: 6 minutes/month
• Pinterest: 1 hour 17 minutes/month
• 97% of Pinterest users are women
• Pinterest’s unique visitors increased by 429% in Q4 2011
• Pinterest accounts for 3.6% of referral traffic to other websites

Pinterest Defined

For those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to explore Pinterest, let’s rewind and start from the beginning. In the words of its maker, “Pinterest is a virtual pin board that lets you organize and share the beautiful things you find on the web.”

Imagine you are browsing the web for a new recipe to try for dinner tonight. In the process, you come across all kinds of intriguing recipes. Of course you can only choose one to make tonight, so you “pin” all of the recipes to your “recipes” pin board on Pinterest, and revisit them when you’re ready. It’s a fun way to organize ideas and share them with your friends.

How it Works

Pinterest is like a virtual magazine full of all kinds of images and videos. When a Pinterest user sees something they like and want to save, they can “pin” it to one of their own pinboards. Users can create as many pinboards as they can think of categories. Each pinned image or video links back to the original website from which it was taken so users can easily get back to the source if necessary. The social aspect of Pinterest comes into play when you start following people and sharing your pins with your friends.

There are two ways to pin items to your board:

1. Repin something that someone else has already pinned
2. Install the “Pin It” button on your web browser and Pin images you find on the Internet

Repin

Your Pinterest home screen has a feed that displays pins from people in your network. You can also view other people’s boards, just as you might view someone’s Facebook profile or Page. Each pin gives you the option to comment on it, like it, or repin it. When you find a pin on your friend’s board that you want to pin to your own board, click “repin” to pin the image to your own board.

Pin It Button

When you create your Pinterest account, one of the first things you should do is add the “Pin It” button to the bookmarks bar in your web browser. Pinterest does a great job explaining how to do this on their website. Once you have the button installed, you can pin anything you find on the web that has an image associated with it.

When you find something, say a recipe, you want to pin, click on the “Pin It” button that you installed in your web browser.

If there are multiple pinable items on the page, you will be asked to select which item you meant to pin.

Make your selection and provide a brief description of what it is you are pinning and choose which board you want to pin the item to.

Action Summary

Have we piqued your interest? Are the ideas coming fast and furious? If you haven’t had a chance to check out Pinterest for yourself, go ahead and check it out. Spend a few minutes browsing the site to get a feel for the layout and how people are using it.

And most importantly, download our e-book, All Aboard the Pinterest Train – Your Express Track to Powerful Marketing on Pinterest. The book is a great resource for getting started, learning insider tips and tricks, and gathering tons of great examples.

Download