I'm thinking about redoing our guest room. Rather than pull down some home magazines from a bookshelf or log onto the website of my local furniture store, I clicked over to Pinterest.
What is Pinterest? Only the coolest, most visual social media site out there where people create virtual "pin boards" of images and ideas they like, and then share them with the world. Think of it as a virtual bulletin board where you don't post notices but rather you post pictures of things you like.
I first became aware of Pinterest about 6 months ago when I started noticing incoming links on my Suddenly Frugal blog from the site. When I followed the links, I saw that people had "pinned" pictures from my long-ago blog post on DIY laundry detergent. These people weren't stealing my content but rather sharing an image from the blog post, with their comments on my make-your-own laundry detergent recipe—most loved it—and then linking back to my blog.
For a blogger like me, Pinterest is a win-win, in that it drives more traffic to my blog but also gives me the opportunity to share my blog posts with new readers in a new and visual way. In fact, I've started writing more blog posts—here and on Suddenly Frugal—that are more visual in nature so that I can pin them on Pinterest. These stories include:
My teenage daughter is also a fan of Pinterest. While she isn't using the site to redesign her bedroom, she is searching on Pinterest for ways to apply makeup, cool hairstyles to try for date night, and workout routines to get her body ready for bathing suit weather.
Tech site Mashable recently put together an infographic on who is using Pinterest. And the fact that both my daughter and I like Pinterest isn't a big shock. For starters Pinterest users are 68.2% women. As far as the age breakdown of users go, here's how that looks:
According to Pinterest itself people are using the site for all kinds of purposes, including finding colors to use at their wedding, redecorating a home, sharing recipes with other foodies, and updating their fashion style. Even celebrities are using Pinterest. Paula Deen, Nina Garcia, and even Yoko Ono each have Pinterest boards.
I'm still trying to figure out how I can best use Pinterest to help me with that guest room update. But the simple act of typing "guest room" into the Pinterest search box brings up a whole realm of possibilities—literally hundreds of photos that other Pinterest users have "pinned" or shared when they, too, were looking to redecorate, redesign, or update a guest room.