What is Pinterest? Pinterest Explained and How to Use it!

ByJanel
61 Comments

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a new social media site that is quickly gaining popularity, but it’s a giant step away from the format of Facebook and Twitter. With Pinterest you have a virtual bulletin board where you can “pin” your interests, favorite things and inspirations is a very visual way that makes it fun and easy to browse your saved items.

This platform is perfect for saving your to do craft list, recipes to try, fun activities to try with the kids, organization tips, and on and on! You could even use Pinterest to “Pin” inspiring articles you’d like to reference back to like savings tips or “how to” posts! I even created a Pinterest board on “Gift Ideas for Kids” so I could easily visually browse ideas when needing a gift!

How Pinterest Works

You are able to create “Boards” and “Pins” to organize your finds. A board is a collection of pins and might have a category title like “Things to do with the kids” or “Places I want to visit”.

Then, a pin is an image that can be grabbed from around the web and lets you create a bookmark to that photo and lets you reference that post or website at a later date. You can add in your own pins from images on your computer or sites you may find of interest around the web.

Or, you can “repin” something another Pinterest user has already pinned. Maybe a friend of yours found a great craft on the web and you’d love to add it to your to make list as well, you can repin the image to one of your own personal boards so you don’t lose it!

Get started Pinning!

Pinterest becomes a social network when you start following your friends or other Pinterest users with like interest! You can follow their feeds to see what latest great ideas they have pinned for new suggestions for your own boards.

Pinterest is currently “invite-only” but you can request an invite directly from Pinterest or ask your friends for a personal invite! Once you have an account, just click the Add + button along the top menu bar to get started adding an image link, upload a new image as a pin, or customize your boards.

Who knows – maybe some pins will inspire you to start a hobby business. Not only are they fun, they’re tax deductible, something to remember when you’re filing your taxes with TurboTax online this year!

Be sure to follow A Mom’s Take on Pinterest! I can’t wait to see your pins and connect with you on Pinterest!


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61 Comments

  3. Very helpful. I take pride in my geekdom, but social media isn’t my thing. We were at a wedding over the summer and someone said something about pintrest and I said “what’s that?”, total strangers turned to me with shocked looks.

  4. Thanks for sharing. I am on Pinerest too I enjoy pinning things and seeing who follows my pins,. lol Happy Holidays. gahome2mom/gmail/com

  5. I been use pinterest,but I been following so much that now tells me I need to undo some to follow others but i do not know how to on follow,Can some one tell me how? Thank you.

  8. My daughter was just teasing me about Pineterest! I have joined but have no clue how to use it. I will be reading over this post better.

  9. Great explanation! I enter a lot of giveaways and more and more are wanting me to post about their giveaways. I really thought it was against Pinterest policy to post about giveaways. I actually joined Pinterest for my personal use only, so it doesn’t seem right somehow that so many bloggers are asking us to pin their giveaways on Pinterest. I do everything the blogger wants me to do and yes, even pin their giveaways, but at times there have been as many as 50 entries that I don’t get because I do not have a blog and they want me to pin it on my blog, or add their button, etc. I appreciate everything bloggers do for us, especially the giveaways, but sometimes it just doesn’t seem right when I can’t get all the entries. I have noticed your giveaways are not like that and that’s why I keep coming back.

  10. You have NO idea how long it took me to figure that site out lol! Now, I would love a tutorial on that Stumble thing!! TY for the explanation!

  12. This is way cool.  Several of my FB friends have recently joined Pinterest, but they haven’t pinned..maybe they are confused?  Maybe I can send them here for a quick lesson?! :O)

  14. Hi Janel, I am now following you on Pinterest.   I really enjoyed your article on Pinterest.  
    I love Pinterest, it can be addictive sometimes. It hits me more when I start following someone and then on the main page where my followers are pinning pics,info, I start looking and whoops an hour has past.  It is really enjoyable.  I hope everyone will at least try it and they will love it too.

  15. I was just asking my hubby about Pinterest… I thought it was only about crafts/DIY but started noticing retailers were using it to drive business to their websites

  18. I love pinterest, I can finally store all my favorite recipes I find online.

  19. Thanks! I have been noticing a bunch of my facebook friends “pinning” things to pinterest and I had absolutely no idea what it was. Thank you for explaining it well!

  20. Pinterest is my new addiction! I do however have mixed feelings on using this as an outlet for posting giveaways. We have so many other social media sites that are already flooded with giveaways and sometimes it bothers me when a blog makes an entry point based on “pinning” the giveaway. This is like my relaxation site, my zen if you will.. and i try to make my boards all about what i love. Dont get me wrong, I love giveaways obviously but I really want a place my non-giveaway friends can go to see the things I love without being bombarded by giveaways, we all know there are some giveaways we really dont want to enter but do in order to get entries into much larger ones so when i have to “pin” a diva cup on my boards i can only hope that it will be overlooked. My friends have already stopped visiting or blocked me on my other social sites such as fb, google+, and twitter. What are your thoughts on using pinterest as a way to make us promote their giveaways?

    1. I totally agree with you! I’ve seen more and more pinterest campaigns and giveaways and they just feel so FORCED to me.. not my thing. We bloggers ask for shares on social media sites to help spread the word about our website and bring in traffic, but it doesn’t make sense to draw traffic on Pinterest to something that will not really be applicable in a week or two. I do pin my posts, but in reference to gift guides and reviews, NOT for active live giveaways. I appreciate your feedback on this though as it is always great to hear what my readers think and feel about the use of social media as entries!!

  21. Thanks for the info on Pinterest.  I was a little confused about how to use it.  You helped a great deal.  

  23. Thank you so much for explaining this a little better to me!  I am a member, but truly didn’t understand how it worked!

  24. I’m finally get pretty good at pintrest, there’s another site called clip it, I got signed up but can’t get the add button to work, if you know anything about CLIP It, a review would be great.

  30. When I first joined Pinterest, I had no idea what to do with it!  I just sat and stared blankly!  This definitely would have helped me out!

  31. I find that I use Pinterest to save things I like…but I don’t take enough time to “look around” and enjoy the pins others leave. It’s very relaxing…yet intersting….to see what everyone else has shared. This is a nice write up about Pinterest.

  33. I’ve been really diggin’ Pinterest lately, so many of my recipes have come from there lately. so fun

  36. I’m just getting started with Pinterest and haven’t quite figured out everything but I.love.it.  So many ideas, recipes, crafts, etc. all floating around, just waiting to be pinned!

  50. Thanks for this.  I didn’t really get Pinterest at all.  I just thought it was a bunch of pictures that you like and I didn’t really see the point.  It makes sense to me now!  I’ll start put mine to use

  51. Thanks so much for explaining Pinterest to me! I have heard of it, of course, and seen it around (since I don’t live under a rock, after all!!), but I wasn’t quite sure what it was, and what purpose it served until now! I’ve got to go now because I’m going to start pinning 😀 

  52. Awww Pinterest. Loving it so far. I love being able to keep things organized on different boards with different topics. It’s way better than bookmarking sites on your browser. I also like that you can embed pins into blog posts and give credit to the site where the photo was originally pinned with no extra work on your part. 

  54. Thank you for the explaination. I keep seeing it mentioned but wasn’t sure what it was. Sounds like fun!

  60. I love pinterest! I used to wonder why people would say they were addicted. But I get it now. =)

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