For those of you unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is basically an online pinboard. My friend Kelly always tore pictures and articles out of  magazines and saved them in folders for future reference. Some people bookmark their favorite websites for the articles, information, pictures, etc. I know other people save pictures from blogs and websites on their computer files.  Pinterest is an online version of these types of systems but without the hassle and clutter either in your home or on your computer.  You can find anything and everything on Pinterest including, recipes, home decor inspiration and ideas, craft/diy projects and ideas, photography poses and tutorials, exercise stuff, orginazation and cleaning stuff, weird crazy stuff, celebrity pics, pretty much anything you could think of, it’s on there!

To get started, the very first thing you will need to do is request an invite to join Pinterest.  The turn around time on this varies but it shouldn’t be longer than a week before you receive an e-mail from Pinterest.

Some terminology you will need to get familiar with are the words Pins and Boards.  Pins are the pictures or items added from websites by people, collected all onto Pinterest.   Some examples are recipes, tutorials for photography, clothing, furniture, pets and art.  You can then pin the items you like onto your boards.  Boards are where you organize what you  pin.  You can have many different boards organized in a number of different ways.  You will figure out what works best for you the more familiar you get with Pinterest.   You will have some boards already set up by Pinterest when you first log on.  I will discuss boards in greater detail a little further down in this post.

Once you’ve received your e-mail from Pinterest, login to your account and this is what your page should look like:

One of the first things you want to do is get familiar with the functions on Pinterest.  Those can be found under your name where the drop down box is located.  Drop down the box and click on Boards.

Once you find something you like, you will want to pin it.  So where do you pin your pin?  This is what the boards are for, they are a place to organize your pins.  Pinterest gives you a set of generic boards to help you get started.   This is a screen shot of my mom’s Pinterest boards.  She hasn’t pinned anything yet and you can see the boards that Pinterest has already named for you.

I highly recommend changing the names of your boards after your initial log in and once you have a feel for how you want to organize your boards and pins.    There are a bazillion ways to organize and name your boards.  Here is a screen shot of some of my boards:

I have a board for every room in my home, recipes and food, clothing, books, hair ideas, project ideas, things that make me laugh, blog stuff and Christmas to name just a few.  You can always create new boards or change the names of your boards once you are more familiar with everything.

There are a few ways to go about finding items to pin.  If you are not following anyone yet, you can just browse your main page on Pinterest where you see pins from random people and it will be a mixed bag of stuff.  I actually enjoy browsing the random page and find lots of fun stuff on there plus it’s always changing as people are always pinning!

Once you start following friends or people you may know on Pinterest, your “home” page when you  log in will have your friend’s most recent pins on it instead of the page of pins by random people.  The shot below is from my mom’s Pinterest account which she has not used yet so those pins are from strangers.

 

This is a shot from my home page when I log into my Pinterest account.  The pins shown here are items that have recently been pinned by people that I am following on Pinterest.

If I don’t want to browse what has recently been pinned by people I am following, I just click on the word Everything located under the Pinterest that is in red at the top of my page.   This is where I can browse the latest items that have been pinned or re-pinned by random people.  Clicking on the word Pinterest in red takes me back to what a page that displays what I and everyone I’m following have recently pinned.

You can also search for specific things on Pinterest by using the search box in the upper left hand corner.  This allows you to search everything that has been pinned on Pinterest, ever.  Say I want to find a Crock Pot Chicken Recipe.  I type in Crock Pot Chicken Recipe and this is what my page looks like now:

Underneath the search box you will see that there are  209932 Pins · 110936 Boards · 31 People

for crock pot chicken recipes.  You can browse all 209932 pins which is what the picture above shows you the start of all those pins.  You can also click on the 110936 boards and your page will look like this:

These are the boards on Pinterest that contain the words Crock, Pot and/or Recipes.  I can chose to follow some or all of these boards as maybe they pinned some recipes I would be interested in.  I can also decide that I don’t want to follow the boards but maybe just pin a few pins from these boards instead.

If I click on the 31 People this is what it looks like:

As you can see, the results on this are mixed.  The first pin is a Skinny Crock Pot pin which takes me to a blog named Skinny Crock Pot which is nice.  There are also people who have the words Crock or Pot in their name which really isn’t helpful for my search for Crock Pot Chicken Recipes.

How do I pin something that is on a website or blog?

Finally, you can install the Pin It Button on your internet browser’s toolbar.  When you are browsing blogs and websites and come across something you really want to pin, you can hit the Pin It Button.  The Pin It Button can be found under the About button on the top right hand side of your Pinterst page.

There are lots of other goodies as they call them to be found here as well.  If you have an iPhone or Android they have an app, along with Follow buttons and Pin It Buttons for websites and blogs.  After uploading the Pin It button onto my Toolbar, it’s time to use it!  So I’m browsing this great blog and find a great picture that I’d love to Pin.  I hit the Pin It button on my toolbar and here is what my screen looks like now:

It brings up recent images from my blog.  I can chose which image to pin by clicking on it.  When I hover my mouse over the lemon bars image, you can see the Pin This show up.  Please make sure when pinning an image that you pin from the direct post it pertains to and not the main page of the blog or site.  I would pin this image from http://www.thebloominghydrangea.com/2011/01/lemon-bars.html not from http://www.thebloominghydrangea.com

When I click on Pin this I get the same box I would on my Pinterest page which lets me choose which board to pin the image on. It’s that easy peasy!

 

How do I find friends or people to follow on Pinterest?

To find friends on Pinterest is fairly easy.  Under your name in the right hand corner of your Pinterest page, use the pull down text box and scroll down until you highlight Find Friends.  You can use Twitter, Facebook, Gmail or Yahoo to find your friends via your address book.

Many bloggers also have a Follow me on Pinterest button on their blog, so that’s always a great place to get started following someone as well.

Another idea is to follow strangers on Pinterest.  You can chose to follow as many of their boards as you wish or you can just follow all of them.

When you find a friend or someone you would like to follow, simply click on the Follow All button under their profile picture and you’re done!

 You can also follow random boards by clicking on the Follow button located on the board.

  I’m going to end this post here as my head is about to explode and maybe yours is as well.  I am considering doing another post,  How to Use Pinterest Part 2,  including a Q&A session in my post.  I hope you found this post to be helpful in learning the ropes of Pinterest!

I almost forgot to tell you one more thing about Pinterest that you should know:

Source: earthmonkeymoms.com via m on Pinterest

And don’t forget,  you can follow me on Pinterest by clicking on the P in the right hand side of my blog next to my e-mail, facebook and RSS buttons!

I’m linking up here: