Pinterest
Its the hot new social media phenomenon.
Are you pinning?
At the moment I have stayed clear. Even the other day when BabySigning Mummy was going crazy pinning away and my Facebook feed was full of her updates I resisted the urge to take a look.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard.

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

OK so it’s basically a giant pin board that you can share with the world.
Feeling it yet? No me neither so I’ve done some research for you.

Love it!!

I use Pinterest for pleasure, I have all my wedding ideas pinned. Rather than having to bookmark or write down all the great things I see, I can just pin them. I hadn’t thought about using it for business ideas but I may well start using it for business as whenever I see great cake ideas I bookmark the page.

I love the fact its so easy to use, it saves pictures rather than urls which is much prettier to look at and so much easier to sort through. – Natalie (Have Your Cake and Ice It)

I can see what the attraction to not having a page of ugly url’s is. But still not convinced.

I love how visual it is – I can instantly see things I like etc. It’s a great bookmarking tool and a great way to create inspiration boards to make people aspire to wanting your product. Viv (Poppy Sparkles)

I can even buy that I love imagery – I even dedicated half a chapter in my book (Crafting a Successful Small Business) to the importance of beautifully crafted images in order to sell products.

Hate it!
OK so I don’t strictly hate it but I am one of the voices of unlove for Pinterest. It’s hard enough to get any form of work done around 3 children, 1 grown man, 944 people I follow on Twitter, my collection of 2,000 Facebook Fans (Charlie Moo’s &  JoanneDewberry.co.uk) and then there’s my 212 friends & 2 websites .. I surely couldn’t cram any ‘pinning‘ into my day!

For me Pinterest lacks a corporate edge to it’s offering and therefore isn’t of interest to a large number of companies already using other social media platforms to promote their services. Bearing this in mind the brand & format doesn’t feel right for the more corporate business either. Pinterest seems to only attract companies that offer items or services orientated around personal interest! Julie Williams Business Support Services

For Business or Pleasure??
If your thinking about introducing Pinterest to your business then check out this comprehensive posts from AceInspire it even lists the SEO merits of Pinterest.  Jeff Bullas also gives you a 7 step guide to using Pinterest for your business.

“I’m currently working on ways to use it more effectively for business, such as boards for weddings which have images of my jewellery alongside dresses and other inspiration to show how my jewellery will fit in with a wedding.” Viv (Poppy Sparkles)

Copyright – intellectual property
I read a post from Louise at Safe Dreams blog, she is reproducing a blog post from Alexandra Wrote, it makes really interesting reading about the copyright aspect of Pinterest.  So I asked my panel of lovers & haters what they thought.

I had one of my hair pin designs repinned by someone onto their ‘craft projects’ board – presuming they mean to copy my design, which is not intended as a DIY tutorial! I left a comment to say “This is my original work and not a DIY project”. But I’m not sure they’ve seen it as the hairpin image is still on their board.

I do have concerns – people using images on blogs with the source credit as ‘Pinterest’ and not linking back to the original work. I think there was a lack of credit before, but Pinterest is helping accelerate the sharing of images and ideas quicker. Viv (PoppySparkles)

 

Make sure you know your rights – can you stop people from using your images without linking or naming you as the source?

Love it or hate it – Pinterest will have value to your business if you use it in the correct format. My only advice would be like with any social media platform – find out which one suits you, your business and your style then work it to your advantage. Don’t join loads of different platforms then bit and bob not really achieving anything and not knowing how to achieve what you want.

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