Pintrest

[Paul Rollo]

I'm a newbie and have heard a lot of people talking about pintrest. What is it all about and can anyone invite me to join? lisarollo1@gmail.com

[Suzy Black]

Hi Paul,

Pinterest is a site where you 'Pin' images that you like to boards that you have created.

I.e. 'My Dream Home' would contain images that you have found online of settings/items that you would like your dream home to consist of.

Then, like Twitter, you follow people and others follow you - when you login, you can see items that others have like and your followers can see items that you have pinned. You then have the option to repin, follow, like (again, much like Twitter)

The main issue with Pinterest is that alot of the same content gets passed around as many users are too lazy to take the step of pinning items that they have found around the web - instead, they just repin items from those that they follow.

To get an invite, just go to Pinterest.com and request one, they will send you one directly.

I hope that helps.

Suzy.

[Nick Night]

Hey Paul,

I'll add to Suzy's comment by saying one of the important features about Pinterest is that each image that is pinned carries the original URL as a backlink. This is what made the site explode for marketing purposes.

Imagine you have created a series of images about your niche and posted them on your website or blog. By "pinning" them, and giving them tags that match the niche interest, people will discover them through search and drive traffic to your site!
Add to this the viral social bookmarking and re-pinning, and you've got a reason to create lots of rich image content.

About re-pinning: This is worthless as marketers, but fantastic for consumers. Repinning images will only bring traffic to your Pinterest board, but the actual image will still contain the original backlink. Better to host your own images and let the others do the repinning!

Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Nick