Best Pinterest Tips and Tricks - Creative Uses For Pinterest.com
By GinnyLee
Who DOESN'T love Pinterest? Seriously, it has got to be one of the best new social media and bookmarking products in recent years. With a seemingly simple idea (use a picture as a webpage bookmark and share it with your friends) this has become a wild phenomenon!
There are dozens of ways that people have learned to use this site creatively. Whether you are planning a family vacation, shopping for the newest Star Trek gewgaw, or organizing your favorite recipes, there is a tip in here for you!
Read on for some of fan-dom's favorite Pinterest Tips and Tricks - and leave some of your own in the comments! We would love to hear from you!
Add a Price
Have you seen those diagonal banners crossing some of the pictures? That is created by including the price of the item in the description. When you pin a product, simply add a description like "My Favorite Stuffed Cthulhu $18.99" and Pinterest will automatically add the $18.99 as a banner in the corner.
This is a great help to save people the effort of having to open up the link to find the price. Efficient, clean and elegant, this is clearly one of the top tips on how to use Pinterest effectively.
 | Amazon Price: $18.99 List Price: $19.99 |
If You've Never Used Pinterest Watch This!
Do You Pinwheel?
Pinterest has really gained popularity! It shows the great demand out there to share your photos and ideas with friends and family.
There is a similar demand for sharing information about locations you have visited or neat activities you participated in. A new Web 2.0 site called Pinwheel is doing just that!
Read about the new site and Pinwheel's best tips and tricks. You will love finding some of the most obscure history and stories about your hometown!
Organize and Arrange Your Boards
This is one area where the fine art of organization is extremely important. All of your pins are organized on "boards." A properly named board will make it easy to find the contents. I don't recommend heading down the ultra-OCD path and naming them in accordance with the Dewey Decimal system, but some well-thought out names will serve you well later.
Oh no! What if you change your mind later and want to add a new board? That happened to me earlier this year when I realized my recipe collection board was getting way too cluttered. I created two new boards ("Family Favorites" and "Baking") and spent a bit of time moving pins to those categories. I don't know about you, but it seems like I end of making the same dinners each month - so I thought it would be a good idea to organize them in a smaller, but more frequently used folder.
How many cooking folders do you have?
Stop the E-Mail Madness!
As much as I love Pinterest, I get bombarded with email notifications that someone re-pinned an item I posted. For a while, it was fun to see them grow in popularity, but it didn't take long for my email box to become bombarded. Learn the Three Easy Steps to Stop Pinterest Emails.
A Recipe Collection
OK, you probably just read about this above, but it is worth mentioning in more detail here.
Use Pinterest to collect recipes. Have you ever misplaced a recipe that you wanted to make for dinner? You searched as much as you could, but couldn't find where it was in your cookbooks, or your recipe cards, or your email - You get the idea!
Save yourself the effort and pin your favorite meals in well organized boards. There is no need to go scrounging through the dozens of cookbooks or stress over locating the grease-stained recipe card - all your meals are organized nicely right from the site.
Are you Addicted?
How often do you Pinterest?
See results without votingInteract with Blog Readers
Do you run a blog or have your own site? Want to engage your readers more and increase traffic? Here are some tips to help bloggers use Pinterest to improve their readers' experience!
Plan A Trip
This is a very smart tip! Let's say you are planning a family trip to the Nation's Capitol. What on earth should you do? Search for Washington DC and click on "Boards."
Note: Their search engine defaults to searching for Pins, so overriding that to look at the Boards will get you a different set of ideas.
Once you find things that pique your interest, pin them to a Family Trip board of your own. I recommend naming it along the lines of the destination area to help other pinners on their trips!
Look below at some of the boards I found for Washington DC. What can you find for your trip to Paris, Miami, or the San Diego Comicon? I bet you will be pleasantly surprised!
Do You have a Bucket List?
What are ten things you want to do before you die? Skydive? Visit Africa? Hike through the Pacific Crest Trail? Watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve in Times Square?
Everyone has things that they want to do before they die. Why not record them in a board for YOUR bucket list? You might even get lucky and have your husband find a Valentine's Day idea in there. Ok, only if you're REALLY lucky, or he is in a LOT of trouble!
But seriously, keep your dream adventures consolidated into one location to remind yourself of your goals. Seeing them every day will improve your odds of completing them. Need help figuring out what you want to do? Look at other pinners' bucket lists for ideas!
How to Pin from your iPhone
It's easy to pin while surfing the web from your home computer, but how do you do it from your iPhone? Simple! Follow this link from your iPhone for the step-by-step instructions!
Gift Selections
This is my absolute favorite tip! I pride myself in finding the perfect gift for people. It has to be creative, thoughtful, meaningful, and special. There is a lot of pressure, right?!?! Pinterest just became my new number one shopping idea book.
No, they don't sell anything, but thousands of people before you have pinned cute or creative items that just might pique your interest while looking for a gift.
- Got a 10 year old boy who likes LEGOs? Do a quick search on the site and come up with more ways to use LEGOs than you could have ever imagined.
- How about your husband who loves the Zombie series Walking Dead? Search for it and be amazed at all of the creative ideas people have found for Zombie gifts.
Catch a Laugh
People post the silliest things here! There is no need to open up your email to read the latest joke or see the crazy things that happened. Instead, open up the Humor section and prepare to laugh!
A word of warning here: There are some pictures and words that you may not want your children to see, so please preview the page before kids walk into the room. Adult content is not allowed, but there is no shortage of profanity in the pictures.
Market Your Etsy Store Products
Do you have a small business on the side? I love how so many people market their items on this site. It's a perfect platform for those creative Etsy store items.
If you are really smart, you will track what products are bought that were pinned frequently. At a minimum, track the 're-pins' and the 'likes' to help gauge demand for particular items. Your hand-sewn Al Gore-sock-puppet may not be as widely popular as you expected! Experiment and see what this demographic find appealing.
Are you interested in the most popular items on the site? Simply click on the "Popular" option as circled in the picture above. Find out what is re-pinned the most!
Create a Reference Library
I wanted to learn some new crochet techniques and found an huge amount of links to helpful websites. I expanded my searches to knitting, scrapbooking and even decoupage . If you can dream it, someone pinned it! The problem I quickly encountered was how to keep my favorite tutorials organized. They simply got lost in my generic craft boards.
Instead, I created boards titled "Knitting Tutorial" and "Crochet Reference." You get the idea. This is a fabulous way to keep the very specific type of helpful sites organized. I bet you're thinking the Dewey Decimal System isn't too far off now!
Enjoy it from your Cell Phone
Yes! There's an app for that.
Apple's iTunes has a free app for Pinterest. An easy download and look for your favorite pins while you are on the go!
 | Amazon Price: $12.99 List Price: $19.99 |
Find the Best Craft Patterns
Tired of scouring dozens of blogs for the latest felt animal patterns or new knitting yarns? Odds are that someone did the work for you and pinned the most popular and cutest items already. Check out the new pins in the 'DIY & Crafts' category for some amazing finds from the farthest reaches of cyberspace!
Ever heard of Amigurumi? Check out the picture below for the newest patterns for these adorable Japanese crochet patterns. Yup - found them on Pinterest!
Search for All Pins to a Specific Site
This is one of the best tricks out there! Let's say you want to know all the pins that link back to a specific site. Why? If you have an Etsy store, this tip will help you find what products were repinned the most. You will be able to follow trends and see what flopped. What a great, real-time tracking tool!
Just enter the link below (replace the [Web site URL] with the site you are interested in.)
http://pinterest.com/source/[Web site URL]/
I use this to see what other great crochet patterns a blogger has posted. Odds are, if I liked one of her patterns, I would like more! Scrapbook and knitting ideas are the same way. I usually find that an designer has a lot of related items I like!
Another Way to Search for a Specific Site
Another way to accomplish this same search is by clicking on the domain name of the subject site on the left hand side of the page.
I circled it in red in the picture to the right.
Have fun and experiment with this!
Costume Ideas
Are you a huge Halloween fan? I am! I am always looking for creative costume ideas and love to see what fun things people have found throughout the web.
Mix up your search and see what you can find. I love the popcorn costumes (which we made for my son this last year) and the LEGO mini fig costume shown on the right.
What did you find that served as inspiration?
Store Inspirational Home Ideas
Early in my marriage, I would cut pictures of home decorating and layout ideas from magazines and paste them in a scrapbook. I dreamed that when we had enough money, we would design and decorate our house and used those pictures to inspire us.
Well, enter the new age of social media and bookmarking! Instead of a dusty scrapbook, I went digital and created a few boards to collect ideas on how we want our dream house to look!
Create your own Gift Registry
Do you have a wedding coming up? A birthday? A just-because-I'm-me day? Create a board titled Gift Registry and pin some of the items you want. Your friends and coworkers will appreciate the ideas and will certainly save disappointment from your only friend who DOESN'T use Pinterest!
 | Amazon Price: $0.99 |
How do you Pinterest?
oh wow! Thanks Heidi! I never new that. What a great way to pin a page that has no picture. Thank you for that wonderful tip!
GinnyLee,
Long ago I recall Oprah talking about an "image or dream board" - this is a powerful electronic tool. We mainly visual learners.
I learned allot. Very cool tool. Fantastic post!
The pinning to another page is must helpful. How can we apply this to HubPages? Suggestions?
been looking all over for a way to add the price! thank you so much for answering that!
Thank you for the kind words American Choices. I suppose you could pin a hub to share with your friends, but I would be careful so as not to be considered over promotional. That said, if you find a hub that you would like to pin and share with your friends, then I say go for it!
Take a look at the other hubs that have been shared through Pinterest and see which ones look to be the most popular for re-pinning. You may find trends that will give you inspiration for your own writing.
Wow, I didn't know you could do all that with Pinterest! I've been using it for a few months, but obviously, needed a tutorial to get the most out of it, and your article is perfect! I will be re-reading!
Bookmarking, voting up and SHARING!
Thanks for creating this very useful hub! You make pinterest so interesting, they should use this hub to advertise their site! Voted UP!
What timing! I just joined Pinterest because my friends couldn't stop talking about it, but I have yet to pin a thing. I will study this and get to work! (Just what I needed - another social media time suck.) : )
I'm going to share this on Facebook for all my Pinterest-loving pals to see.
Thank you for this hub. I just joined on the invitation of some friends, but I had no idea how much I could do with it. This helps me organize what I need to on Pintrest compared to other social networks.
I just joined Pinterest and appreciate all your wonderful suggestions. I have bookmarked this informative hub. Thanks for all the wonderful info.
Hiya GinnyLee, what an interesting concept Pinterest is! It's a great way to put all pictures, articles and what-nots you find interesting and share them with your friends. Good job in your presentation and I also enjoyed the video. Voted up and very interesting. Cheers!
Have a nice day,
Rosie
Awesome hub, Ginny! There are so many great uses for Pintrest. Even taking advantage of one or two of these ideas can be very valuable.
This is a great help since I just joined Pinterest! Thanks for a very informative and useful article. Bookmarked and voted up!
Tina
I love Pinterest, but have been on a bit of a hiatus lately. It can take up so much of your time! I didn't know how to add prices to your items, that is a great tip that I will definitely use in the future! Fantastic, informative Hub!
Fabulous! I just joined yesterday so reading this probably saved me tons of time on the learning curve:). Thank you so much, you did a beautiful job here!
Wow! Thank you everybody for your kind words. I think Pinterest.com will be a huge force to be reckoned with in the social media universe. I suspect it will continue to grow and really fill a great niche. I know it has already made a huge difference in my house. I hear my friends asking if I had "pinned" something and figured that once it became that common of a term, it would really be something big!
I thought it was great to see how many pins originated from HubPages! Do you have any articles that have been pinned?
I have personally pinned a few articles by other Hubbers that I thought would be useful to my Pinterest followers. It's a great way to showcase your Hubs and other Hubs that you think would be interesting. :D
I love Pinterest and have found it to be a great resource in my wedding business. I didn't think about using it as a plug for my Etsy shop, so good article! I'll come come back to this one.
Thanks for the comment DIY! I also recommend looking at the "Popular" option at the top of the page. There, you will find the most re-pinned items. I find that is a good indicator of what people enjoy and it will help identify the products and styles that are attracting the most people.
It will help you adjust your niche for this predominately women-based market. Good luck and please post a link so we can see your shop!
I am having a problem finding sites that allow me to pin them. any suggestions? In particular Sarah Brightman.
thanks
Great hub! You taught me a few things I didn't know about Pinterest that I will now use.
Catron - you are smart to ask about sites that allow you to use their images. You must have permission to use pictures. I suspect that the copyright issues with using the site will be very interesting over the next several months. The owners of the pictures won't make any money off of your reuse, but they might allow it if it creates more traffic to their site.
Also, you can pin any picture using the bookmarklet by following the instructions at http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/
Be careful that the owner of the image allows it.
Very interesting. I do not see myself joining the site but appreciated being able to read this in case I change my mind. Do you find that you spend a lot of time on the site? It seems like one that could easily suck up even more time than FB does!
It can be addicting. One must use self-control -- especially at the beginning when you are setting up your boards. I hope I've gotten past that stage. There are just to many other things to do.
This is nice and interesting post..Thanks
Love Pinterest. My daughter is on every day! You have some great suggestions that we had never thought of such as the "plan a trip" and being able to search for a specific site. Thanks for your great ideas!
I just joined pinterest last week so this post is really helpful! I have created some basic boards but nothing more than that. So thanks for all your help- now I can be an advanced user.
EyesStraightAhead, the site is extremely fun! You will find it to be much better than Facebook (at least I do!)
It can take time from your day, but I find that the benefits and usefulness far outweigh the time-sink. I keep all my recipes organized and start planning parties far in advance by pinning party ideas.
I see many women pinning ideas for their weddings - everything from wedding cakes to gothic dress to hairstyles for bridesmaids.
Susanm23b, I am glad you enjoy it. I stumble across ideas for things to do in various areas of the country, and I make sure to pin them. I have pinned Aquaboulevard in Paris to a treehouse hotel in Oregon. I love collecting these fun ideas!
A lot of interest in Pinterest right now - good tips!
thank you iguidenetwork. I suspect it will continue to grow in popularity over the next year or two.
Ginnylee, I can possibly see myself joining soon. The more I look around it, the more functionality and usefulness I can see for my life. I especially like the ideas of planning parties in advance, saving recipes, and can see it being useful for cleaning and organization tips. Still debating...
This was really helpful; thank you for this hub and thumbs up all the way.
Thanks for the info. I use Pinterest for so many things but never thought about using it to plan a trip. Good idea!
Thanks for the comment Maria! We are BIG planners in my house - and I love collecting ideas on places to visit, things to see, and activities to do with my son when we are on vacation. There are some very creative ideas that people have put together. It also makes for a great photo album of things you did.
Loved the hub and started Pinterest just now.
What excellent suggestions! Like you, I find my boards can easily outgrown a generic categorization so your tips were extremely timely. Voted up and bookmarked! PS HP Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors; loved the Cthulhu plush:)
This is an excellent introduction to Pinterest. I just joined Pinterest, and it's really helping to get me started.
I just joined and it really took off. Seems to be tailing off now. Can anyone tell me if it is an advantage to name your boards with the same name as pinterest topics.
Stugod, I highly recommend naming the boards to align with the topics. Right now, the search engine in Pinterest can find boards with the keywords in the title. You want to make sure that your pins are as easy as possible to find.
I am a pinterest and hubpages addict! Pinterest is one of my favorite sites I can never get off, I love it that much! It really helps all of my creativity flow, what about y'all? Thanks for posting about Pinterest I loved this hub! Voted up and awesome:)
Great article!
Great ideas, thanks!
Excellent hub! I Tweet it. I am new in Printerest. The
Great tips in this hub is a motivation to start well in there. Thank you.
Thanks for the great tips! I've been on Pinterest myself butdidn't know some of the things you mentioned above. Thanks for sharing!
Great Hub! You have some great ideas here. I love Pinterest and I am happy others do to. Let's keep it amazing! Happy Pinnint.
I'm new to pinterest and the question I have is, where do you get the images? do you just go to google and search images and pick ones you like? Are you concerned about the websites that the images come from? Once I find an image, then I'm researching if the site that it comes from is a good site, this takes forever to pin one image, HELP
Dawn, the images come from pretty much anywhere. I tend to repin many images that other pinners has pinned already. I also upload my own images or pictures. As you come across images online, use the pinmarklet to pin the images from that page. Sometimes researching a topic is helpful. Here is another Hub which explains all three of these methods. http://blogurl.hubpages.com/hub/whatsinapin
Thanks again GinnyLee for this inspiring hub!
Hope this helps.
I love Pinterest and the different ways you can use it. In fact I really must sort out my pinboards as they are looking a little cluttered!
Great hub on a fun and clever site.
Pinterest is addictive an it already receives over 16 million visitors per month.
Great hub. "My first Cthulhu" made me laugh out loud.
I recently joined pinterest and it is an amazing service. Easy to manage pins and boards. Interesting and useful Hub. Thanks and voted up :)
Pinterst is simply brilliant. fresh,new ideas,funny stuff,bikes,cars,and chicks. Only had one argument as well;););)
Challenge accepted! ;)
Great hub! Voted up and useful!
great hub ! now i know about the price tag, i hope you will follow up with more useful hubs. i preferred the original design that didn't have the big picture on the top because sometimes i have to change the first picture because of the way it is cropped, i wonder if they will give an option to pick the what you prefer. but i still enjoy pinning. voted up and useful !
Very interesting hub! I've just joined Pinterest a week ago and have had success with traffic. Now I'm addicted. Thanks for sharing your ideas. Voted up.
More and more people are catching on to Pinterest with the help of Hubs like yours that direct them how THEY can use it to their full advantage. I've been using Pinterest for awhile now and love to read articles on how other people are using it and what boards they're creating. Thanks for sharing, GinnyLee.
Best Regards
Ginny Lee,
I have been using Pinterest about a year but had no idea all the uses for it. The information here is great. I am also going to read your other hub on "stopping the email madness" because I am bombarded. Thanks in advance for that one, too. I voted up and useful!
Lisa
one drawback that I've feel, it not allow easily to signup.
One thing I find Pinterest useful for is fitness motivation. I "follow" a few fitness boards and every day see new motivational images.
The mix on Pinterest is what makes it so appealing. A bit of everything..Love it. I also had to wait a bit to get my invite..
Wow lots of information on this new tool. I'll have to go try this stuff out. Thanks!
Thank for the great helpful tips.
just joined pinterest, looks great.. just learning.. thanks for article
Wow what a great Hub. I voted it up! And I am now following you. I am new at Pinterest and liking it so much.
Great hub - uses for pinning never before conceived. Really helpful!
Thank you for this useful and informative hub. I'm a Pinterest girl myself. I am getting traffic from it and getting new re-pins every day so it is well worth trying.
Very useful Hub, thank you for sharing it.
Oh I am one who is certainty addicted to pinterest! LOVE IT! These are some really awesome ideas! I especially loved the gift registry! That's a great idea, I think that may be getting used more and more in the future!
Great article!
Great Read with awesome ideas. Thanks.
Great uses! Another way I use pinterest is to get ideas for decorating my apartment.
Hello Ginny,
After I read this post I created my own Pinterest boards, however, None of my pin appears in the public feeds or in their specific category feed, they only appear in Everything feeds. I have read the below articles:
I have read the below article from Pinterest:
https://pinterest.zendesk.com/entries/21235048-why
And so I tried my best to gain credibility with original pins, but still zero visibility...I now have over 100+ pins, but I see people with about 10+ pins that have all of their pins in publish feeds...
Do you have any personal suggestion on what I can and should do to gain my visibility and access to the public feeds? Please help, my Pinterest Boards:
http://pinterest.com/alijackson9077/
Thanks,
J.J.
Very useful hub as well as the comments. I am exploring Pinterest now days so always good to see some tricks about it. This was very pleasing for me to know that we can pin any website without any image also. I am going to try it right now... Thanks !!
Thanks for sharing and great info. Passing this on. I will have to read it more carefully. I do have one question - can I upload my own pics?
Gypsy Rose Lee, you can upload your own pin! Log in to Pinterest and click on the "add" tab on the upper right hand side of the page. The middle selection of the pop-up is "Add a Pin" and you can upload your own picture.
Heidi Kay 4 months ago
Did you know you can pin a web page that doesn't have an image? Find an image on another page that you like, write your description for the pin, complete the pin and then go back in and edit the pin so the link points to the page you really want to point to. PediaStaff (www.pinterest/pediastaff)