Why is Pinterest so Pinteresting?!

 “Pinterest is a tool for collecting and organizing the things you love.”

  Pinterest has grown and become extremely popular in the few years that it has been created.  I freely admit that I have a Pinterest addiction.  I first realized that I had an addiction when I caught myself pinning from three different devices at the same time.  A five minute break can easily turn into a 30 minute distraction.  What is Pinterest and what does it offer?  Can businesses utilize Pinterest to grow?

What is Pinterest?

   Pinterest is a pinboard-style website that allows users to create photo-sharing collections.   It is basically a social image bookmarking website.  The site was created by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp and is located in San Francisco, California.

Categories Include: Home Feed, Popular, Everything, Gifts, Videos, Animals, Architecture, Art, Cars & Motorcycles, Celebrities, Design. DIY & Crafts, Education, Film, Music & Books, Food & Drink, Gardening, Geek, Hair & Beauty, Health & Fitness, History, Holidays & Events, Home Decor, Humor, Illustrations & Posters, Kids, Men’s Fashion, Outdoors, Photography, Products, Quotes, Science & Nature, Sports, Tattoos, Technology, Travel, Weddings, Women’s Fashion

Pin:  An image or video that is added to Pinterest; To add a Pin you can use the “Pin It” bookmarklet or you can upload your own image from your computer;  Once Pins are added to Pinterest they can be repined by other Pinners;  Pins will automatically link back to its original source (either a website or full image); There is also a 'Like' option

Board:  Where you can organize your Pins by topic or theme; A board can be secret where only you can view Pins that you pin there, or a board can be public.  You can invite others to pin onto your public board, or they can decide just to follow the board.

Follow:  If you follow someone, then their pins will show up on your Pinterest Home Feed.  You can follow a person, meaning that you follow all the boards associated with him/her, or you can follow individual boards from that person.

Home Feed:  A collection of your most recent Pins.  These include your Pins along with the Pins from those whom you follow.  It is updated whenever someone you follow adds a pin.

Business Aspect: Pinterest has also been known to help smaller business grow in their exposure to the public.  Etsy and WikiHow are two examples of businesses who greatly benefited from using Pinterest.  Etsy reported a 22% increase in average views per week and a 20% increase in sales per week.  WikiHow uses Pinterest to help improve their overall quality of their content.  WikiHow has seen a dramatic growth in their referral traffic as well.

Sources:

 http://about.pinterest.com/

http://about.pinterest.com/basics/

http://about.pinterest.com/goodies/

http://business.pinterest.com/success-stories/

http://www.madiganmade.com/2011/08/warning-label-pinterest-can-be-highly.html

-Kendall Fagan