susan earlam ~ horror author

Last year I had the pleasure of attending a workshop put on by Pinterest UK.

Yes it’s take me ages to get around to writing this- oopsy!

Despite the UK being the second biggest Pinterest community we are relatively small compared to the USA. It struck me that as it’s still fairly small over here some of you guys might not be on Pinterest, due to not really knowing how it works, or what it’s used for.

So I today I’m sharing how to start on Pinterest and how you can use it.

First of all, lets just clear this out of the way: Pinterest is NOT a social media network. It’s not like Facebook or Twitter.

What I can liken Pinterest to the most is Google, a search engine. That might seem odd if you’re not a Pinterest user already but what Pinterest is, is a discovery tool. One third of millennials (those born in and from the early 80’s) use Pinterest to find something rather than Google.

So let me use an example, if you typed into Google, “chicken”, it brings up pictures of actual chickens and the Wikipedia entry of what a chicken is. If you type it into Pinterest then you’ll get something similar to the image below.

You see that bar across the top, you can filter your search with that. So it helps you figure out what you are looking for, and often suggests things you might not have thought of, but suit exactly what you are after.

Then when you’ve found that particular thing you can “Pin it” to a board. You can create these boards as you go along, or create a few in advance. So you might pin a particular chicken recipe pin to your Summer BBQ ideas board or your Easy Chicken Recipe board.

It’s totally up to you how you organise your boards.

Your boards are where you organise your pins, so for example a lot of my boards are home decor based. So I’ve a Bathroom one, a Kitchen one, and so on. But I also have a Christmas ideas one and even a Men in Kilts one (what?!) along with Living Room and Outside. See below.

Pinterest is a place to collect and organise ideas.

You are the curator.

No more trying to find that über cool hair cut you want on your next trip to the salon. You’ve pinned it to you hair board, FYI here’s my Hair board incase you’re interested.

Remember when you used to tear pictures out of magazine and make a scrap-book or mood board on one particular theme (it can’t just be me who did this) well each of those themes will now work as a Pinterest board.

There is so much stuff already on Pinterest that when you first start Pinning you’ll have plenty to go at, but you can also add pins from websites using the little + sign in the bottom right of the screen shot above.

Pinterest is great for so many ideas including;

• Recipes
• DIY and home improvement
• Crafts
• Kids activities
• Travel and holidays
• Hair & Beauty
• Fitness
• Fashion

And loads more, basically whatever you can think of!

Join the Pinning revolution  here, you can even use your Facebook account so you can find your friends on there and see if you want to follow them too.

You might like this post – Using Pinterest as an author

I’ve covered the basics here and getting started. For a more in-depth look check out Elizabeth who is a Pinterest UK ambassador.