What to pin?
Once you’ve created your account, and you’ve perused the homepage of items selected for you, you might get the urge to repin a few things on your own boards. And after a few (hundred) clicks, you may ask yourself “What, exactly, should I pin?” The simple answer to this question is, “Anything you like!” The more complicated answer (you knew there would be one) is that your Pinterest account should serve a purpose. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it. But you should approach your Pinterest account by asking yourself: What do you want to DO with Pinterest?
It could be “Find ideas to redecorate my house and pull them together in one place,” “create an inspiration board for my creative pursuits,” “create a visual shopping list” or even “show people what I like.” Or, for our UFOs, “showcase what I do for Market America to potential clients.” By keeping your purpose in mind, you can better organize your boards and make your pinning serve your goals more effectively. If you want to show the world you have a keen eye for design, create boards that showcase things you have found that represent design. If you want to show people the things you specifically make or sell, create boards and pin the things you sell, either buy uploading your own photos or photos from your portal (Very important: see PINNING DIRECTLY FROM YOUR PORTAL).
Organizing
One of the most important things to consider for your Pinterest account is proper organization of pins. By creating specific categories and making sure your pins fit within them, you will maintain your purpose more clearly, as well as help visitors find what they are looking for. For example, my categories are décor, recipes, fashion, projects, and typography. Everything I pin fits within one of those categories (and if it doesn’t, I will definitely make a new category). You can create a new board by clicking the “Add” button at the top right of your Pinterest screen, and clicking “Add new board.” OR, when pinning a new item, use the drop down menu to select the board the item will be pinned to, and in the “Create New Board” field, simply type the name of your new category.
Extending Pinterest’s reach
The most efficient way to pin from websites outside of Pinterest is to install the “Pin it!” button (http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/) directly to your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. The next step is to connect your Pinterest account with your Facebook/Twitter accounts, so your connections can view your pins (and, if you like, be alerted when you add new pins). If you go to your Pinterest profile, and click “Edit Profile,” you’ll see a few on/off switches for Facebook and Twitter. By toggling these switches to enable sharing, you’ll be redirected to your logins on each site. Once you’ve logged in, and allowed permission for Pinterest to access each site, your pins will now be visible on Facebook (in fact, Timeline even has a Pinterest section on your profile with an overview of your boards!), and updated on Twitter as well. There are also plenty of great add-ons to optimize the Pinterest experience, which you can read about in the Huffington Post here: 11 Pinterest Apps And Tools To Enhance Your Pinning Experience.
A word about ownership.
Because Pinterest is relatively new, there are a lot of ownership and copyright issues that have yet to be worked out. By repinning something from another Pinterest account or from a website, ideally you are automatically crediting them via the description (if not, your description should include a link back to the original source, if known). This a bit difficult to do when pinning from Pinterest. With regards to uploading your own images, there really aren’t limits or restrictions on who can repin them without crediting you, so if it is something you’d rather not leave open to sharing, don’t upload it in the first place. In uploading a few of my own food photography and styling shots, I questioned whether or not I was OK with other people sharing them and potentially taking credit. I realized there was no way to prevent this; however I also realized that by sharing my work, people may become more familiar with what I do. As long as I felt that people having these images for free did not rob me of any personal (financial) gain, I was quite excited at the possibility of a broader audience seeing my work. (It was also quite exciting to have other people share and re-share images that I had taken, showing that they liked what I had done!)