What better way to introduce Pinterest than as an online scrapbook? You no longer need to stick your hand to your table top with super glue, or find shards of magazine scraps down the sofa, as now your mood board can be neatly held online. Welcome to Pinterest.
Why Pinterest?
Imagine being able to access gardening and plant inspiration from all over the world. You can show off your garden AND take a peek over the fence of others, in any country you might fancy. Your plant obsession can be pandered to by Pinterest; you can create pin boards of your favourite specimens, create special colour-themed boards, play with planting combinations and so much more. It’s easy to search what others have pinned, so Pinterest becomes a big melting pot of ideas, of any type, not just gardening!
I’ve spoken to a few users about what they get from Pinterest and the answers were varied. One user pieced together her whole new 1-acre garden using Pinterest, and another finds tattoo inspiration from the range of flower pin boards online. Another user is a UK flower grower, and she gets her blushing brides to pin ideas to the app, so she knows what to grow for them.
You can also buy products directly through Pinterest, but there’s no marketing hard sell, just a discreet link. This is unlike Instagram, for example, where links aren’t allowed, so you might often see a cool plant but not be able to buy it. I personally like the ‘garden craft’ element of Pinterest, where you can enjoy the decorative re-purpose of waste products such as pallets and the like. Those creations are then shared on the app. Did you know that gardening is the quickest growing category on Pinterest? Log on and you’ll soon understand why! .
Using Pinterest
Remember Pinterest will look different depending on which platform you’re using it on; whether tablet, smart phone or computer. You set up boards (you can give them whatever name you want) and then start pinning things to them, either ‘re-pins’ from other people’s boards or you can pin up your own pictures and videos by uploading them to the app.
To start pinning, you can search for things to pin, and you can helpfully do this by category. You can also download an additional ‘pin it button‘ app where you can pin web pages into Pinterest, and this is well worth downloading.
You can follow people in a similar way to twitter, and they can follow you, and see your boards (unless you have set them to private, which you can easily do by setting as a ‘secret board’)
The buttons
Pinterest home: this is your timeline, where any new pins will appear in a newsfeed style. You can click on any of these pins and then pin it to your own board, visit the website to find out more, click ‘like’, add a comment OR share it with your friends. Below the pin you will also see related pins.
Search: here you can discover the whole world of Pinterest. Search by keyword or delve into the categories and explore. You will also find sub-categories there too.
Activity: discover yet more pins by seeing which pins your favourite profiles have pinned recently. You can also see who follows you, plus read any direct messages.
Profile: here’s the hub for your pinning activity- where you can check who you follow, who follows you, and see your own scrapbooks made up of pins .
Some pin boards to look out for
My Garden School
David Domoney
James Wong
Thompson & Morgan
Crocus.co.uk
