Pinterest is potentially more controversial than facebook as far as value generation is concerned. There aren’t as many babies and kittens, but more a flood of wedding dresses and furniture. Despite that, it has recently introduced excellent analytics tools and allows businesses to easily track how many referrals they receive through it. Because let’s face it, humans have a hunting-gathering instinct, which we satisfy in various ways, such as building collections… of shoes, for some, lego technic sets for others. And what better way than to build a visual collection of them, which we can share with friends?
Here are 5 things that I use pinterest for:
- Market and trend research: I’ve just started a handbag design class, and our first piece of homework was to find magazine clippings in order to compose a trends board and a mood board. One is meant to showcase what is going on now, and the other to inspire future designs. Since I answer most of my “so, what’s going on” questions online (and I was swamped between a presentation at work and unpacking my flat), I used pinterest to create a short visual list of the things I found for the trends board.
- Book recommendations: I read a lot, and I like to see what I read. Since I acquired a kindle, I no longer can see the lovely books I have consumed on my bookshelf. But I can add them to a pinterest board when I’ve read them, where I can see them, write a bit about them, and if someone asks me for a reference, I know where to find the name of the author.
- Wardrobe visualisation: I like to shop, and to collect things. Pinterest helps me see what I have in my closet that I may have added via internet shopping. Not only is it pretty, but it’s easy to see what kinds of things I buy a lot of, whether they match, and so on.
- Wishlist: the commonest usage. From photos of furniture, to dresses, shoes, and as I recently suggested to The Man, potentially lust-worthy electronics components to inform future geeky shopping sprees.
- To do list: This is an exaggeration, as the only board of this type that I keep is one of stuff I want to make. And this is only possible because I design and make dresses. So it’s really a board mostly full of dresses I’d like to make…
Want some examples? See my pinterest boards: http://pinterest.com/eurydice13.
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