A lot of buzz has been circling the internet about Pinterest.  To be honest, it didn’t sound the least bit interesting on the surface.  After listening to Episode 250 of the Podcast Answer Man show, I figured it was worth at least giving it a try.

To start with, here is how Rob Lammle from Mashable describes Pinterest:

“Pinterest is a place to organize and share online images that you find interesting or inspiring. Once uploaded or shared on Pinterest, these images become known as Pins, which the user can place on customized, themed Boards. You can create Boards for any topic imaginable, from cats to classic cars to cats driving classic cars. The possibilities are endless.”

So basically, you are able to create any number of bulletin boards featuring pictures and graphics from around the internet.  It is a graphically oriented search engine curated by its members.

Positives:

• You see all sorts of interesting things you probably wouldn’t have seen without it.
• You connect with people that aren’t in your circle of influence.
• You can sort pictures by whatever criteria you feel is appropriate.
• It is easy to consolidate items of interest from all different sources.
• You can comment on pictures you find interesting.
• When you repin something from another board, you can give it a new title that gives meaning to you rather than being stuck with what someone else called it.
• For those who have websites or blogs, you can create boards for each category of your site and include links to specific articles, posts, or pages. (I created a board for BackyardLifeBlog.com Recipes)
• You can follow people or specific boards.  This is great when people have lots of different boards about different topics and not all of them suit your taste.

Negatives:

• The interface isn’t particularly intuitive, so it takes some playing to figure it out.
• Sometimes the site is really slow or unresponsive.  I don’t know if it’s because of the sheer volume of visitors, or something else.
• Pinterest picks people for you to follow based on your interests, which is a little weird.  You can unfollow them if it’s a bit much, so it doesn’t have to be a big deal.
• At the moment, Pinterest is dominated by women.  The only reason why I call this a negative is that right now, there isn’t as much content that interests me as there will be in the future.  Of course, the way to fix that is to add more content myself that is interesting to create more of a “market” for that kind of thing.
• Right now, Pinterest accounts are available by invitation only.  However, current members can invite anyone they want with no limit.  I don’t really get why the invitation stipulation is there without putting a cap on it.  It seems to me that they should just open it up to everyone without the invitation.  That being said, if you’d like an invite, contact me by email (Raun@backyardlifeblog.com), on Twitter or Facebook and I’ll send you one.

Final thoughts:

While Pinterest has it’s issues, I think it’s worth a try.  It has potential to be a valuable way to convey your message, whether that is your hobbies and interests or part of a marketing plan.  I think in the future, you’ll see lots of larger, well-known brands joining to share their goods.  Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.

If you’d like to see what I’ve done on Pinterest, visit my profile: http://pinterest.com/backyardlife/