I'm relatively new to Pinterest. I created my account awhile back but didn't start using it until this summer. I confess, the real reason that I became so interested is because I wanted to create a Dancing Groot. Yes, like this:
(The instructions are on Mashable at: DIY Dancing Baby Groot)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to buy that flower. The price skyrocketed after the gentleman posted his how-to and those ugly flowers have become scarce.
Instead of creating my Groot, I became a Pinterest nut. I went from having several pins to having over 78,000 in the course of a few short months. (Part of that has been due to the fact that I'm stuck in bed and unable to do much beyond television, books and the internet.)
Some things that I've learned from pinning, repinning, and just paying attention to the people I choose (or choose not) to follow.
1. Categorize your boards. I use groups to keep my account clean. I have titles like "Recipes", "Crafts", "Holidays / Seasons", "Geekery" and "Jewelry" with a hyphen and then the specific name of the board. It really helps with pinning and it helps other people to search through the boards.
I also used asterisks to keep the boards grouped. Things that didn't belong to a specific category or were random got 2 asterisks. Categorically named boards have one asterisk and the most important boards have 3. I could have used another character but asterisks were simple and clean. (Sometimes I do break my own standards, like with "Recipes" because that started out as a single board and multiplied.)
2. Choose creative names for your boards. Even with using categories, you can come up with clever names to make your boards interesting and to make them stand out from other similar boards. I have told myself that I will not follow any more boards on a particular day only to come across one with a name so awesome that I have to follow it.
When naming, try to be consistent in capitalization. Either use sentence case (only the first letter of the first word is capitalized), upper case (all caps), lower case (no caps) or title case (every word is capitalized except for articles like "a", "an", "the", conjunctions like "and", "but", for", and prepositions like "on", "in", "with"), or even toggle case (random letters are capitalized) but try to make all of your boards the same. The board names are easy to edit so it's very simple to fix any capitalization issues. I have a couple of boards that I purposely chose not to use title case on.
3. Pick a great cover picture for each board. I have chosen my favourite picture from each board to use as the cover but I found a pin detailing how to make your boards organized and cohesive looking:
How to Make Cute Pinterest Cover Boards. Fantastic board covers have also lured me into following them. (Here are just a few examples of my board covers.)
4. Keep the boards organized on your home page. You might not look at your page that much but other people do. If it's a mess with boards scattered haphazardly around, people might not follow you. The aforementioned categorical naming helps.
5. Try to make sure the pins on your boards link properly. If it turns out that a pin doesn't lead you where it says, do a Google Reverse Image Search to find the real source of the pin and then edit the board to show the correct source. Don't just put the true source in the comments, actually edit the source like so:
Go to "Edit":
And then paste the correct URL under "Source":
Don't forget to save your changes.
I had to edit the source for the pin link mentioned in step 3 and shown above. The original pin only took me to the .jpg file of the pin cover.
6. Make use of Secret Boards and Group Boards. Secret Boards are boards that only you (or others that you also allow) can see. Group Boards are boards where anyone who is invited to can post. You can create Secret Boards that are also Group Boards. Examples of how each type can be used:
- Secret Boards - For gift giving ideas, for pictures of your celebrity crushes (if you don't want everyone else seeing those), for projects that you don't want anyone to know you're working on. Another great use of Secret Boards is when you first create a board and you're pinning a lot of items to it, you can start it out as Secret so you don't clog up your followers' feeds with that one subject.
* Remember, Secret Boards can become Public Boards but Public Boards can never become Secret. You can get around that by creating a new board that's Secret and repinning (not moving but repinning) all the pins to the Secret Board. However, that is time consuming so it's best to figure out ahead of time if you think you'll ever post anything there that you don't want the general public to view.
- Group Boards - For collaboration and sharing in a public manner. I have a board dedicated to the Myers Briggs Personality Type INFP. Anyone that I've invited can post INFP pins. I've also joined Group Boards dedicated to "DIY For FanGeeks", Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Polymer Clay, and the colour Green.
- Secret Group Boards - I started a Secret Board for my son. When he joined Pinterest, I shared it with him so it became a Secret Group Board. I also share one with my best friend. You can use them for work related things or to plan a surprise party. Gift giving ideas can be shared this way or plans for a vacation.
7. Don't be afraid that you'll mess up. If you overthink your boards and your pins, you'll spend all your time planning and none of your time doing. I have had to rename boards, move pins around, delete boards, etc and I'm still not completely satisfied.
Bonus Tips: You have the ability to write a description of your page. Write about you and/or the things you love, what you hope to post, what you want to use Pinterest for. Right now mine says that I'm in the midst of cleaning up my boards which I will change in the near future.
You can also write descriptions for each of your boards. I'm slowly going through and adding them to the ones that either need more information or I've found a cute quote/poem for.
So go out there and make your Pinterest pages and boards beautiful! Please post pictures and any questions you might have. Don't forget to follow me on Pinterest! ♥
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