Followers, and boards, and pins, oh my! If you have a Facebook, you inevitably have seen someone’s recent pins on Pinterest. These things have probably been somewhere in the category of: weddings, food, workouts, or crafts. This is just a tiny niche of Pinterest itself, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
First, some basic Pinterest vocabulary:
• Categories – a list of subjects ranging from animals to history to women’s fashion that hold pins related to the subject.
• Pin – an image of something that someone, somewhere, found interesting. Usually pins are linked to a website so you can follow it back to get more information about the image. For example, I love finding recipes on Pinterest. I search through the images under the food category, and then click on a tasty looking
image to get the recipe! You can even upload and share your own pins of things you find on the Internet.
• Board – a place to store pins that you find interesting. You can have several boards that each have a common theme. Some of my boards are: <3 (my future wedding – I would bet that almost every girl on Pinterest has one of these boards), Crafts!, Castles, Places to Visit, and Tattoos. You are free to make as many boards you want on any subject you desire! Every image has a “repin” option. By “repinning,” you are essentially storing the pin on your board for all of your followers to see. This is one way that pins get circulated around.
• Pinning – the process of saving a pin to one of your boards or uploading pins onto Pinterest.
• Follower – resembles a follower from Twitter or a Facebook friend. You can see and share each other’s boards and pins. When you first log in to Pinterest you see all of your followers’ recent pins.
Now that we have a basic idea of what Pinterest is, here are 5 reasons why we absolutely love Pinterest. [pagebreak]
5 Reasons Why We Love Pinterest
1. It’s visually stimulating. Instead of aimlessly browsing the web by reading, you can very easily browse Pinterest by just looking at images. It’s definitely a good way to relax and give your brain a rest from the craziness of midterm week.
2. There is something for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a math nerd, runway model, animal rights activist, or musician – there will always be something that appeals to you.
3. It’s addicting yet not time-consuming. One thing always leads to another. You can’t just pin one thing! I wouldn’t call Pinterest a time-waster. I always find myself on Pinterest, but usually not for hours at a time. It’s addicting in the sense that it will always have you coming back for more, but at the same time won’t eat up hours of your day like some social networking websites.
4. It’s educational as well as interesting. I’ve learned so much about fitness and have improved my cooking skills with all the recipes I’ve gotten from Pinterest. My fashion sense has gotten a nice boost as well. Some of the things on Pinterest are just very interesting, to say the least. Recently one of my followers pinned a Disney image with the caption, “Where 12 Disney Families are Now.” I followed the link, and it had images of our favorite Disney characters and the children they would probably have now. How cool is that?
5. It’s easy. Scroll, browse, repin, scroll, follow link, bookmark, back to Pinterest, browse, repin. It’s that easy, and it’s a great way to keep things organized. Some of my boards have an actual organizational purpose. For example, my list of places I need to visit is one of my boards on Pinterest. Some people like to make wish lists out of their boards; it’s all up to you!
This is just Pinterest in a nutshell. Pinterest offers so much more and the best way to find out is to join!
Bonus: Here is an example of a board https://pinterest.com/bellaslions/places-to-visit/
Sources:
https://pinterest.com/bellaslions/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/samimain/where-12-disney-families-are-now-5pfv
Images:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Castles_and_Fortific_g293-Hogwar…