Social Bookmarking with Pinterest

Pinterest varies from standard bookmarking sites because it allows you to bookmark via images and video rather than just saving standard page URLs. After a few hours i discovered this makes bookmarking much more fun and social (and a little addictive!).

In its own words “Pinterest is an online virtual pinboard allowing you to organize and share things you love”.

Although Google is reporting that the site already gets as much traffic as other more well established sites such as “Picasa” and “Tumblr”. At present the service is still only available by invitation only. I applied and waited patiently for around a week and yesterday i finally received the email i had been waiting for:

“Hi Hayley,
YOU are the newest member of Pinterest, a community to share collections of things you love. We’re excited to have you as a member and can’t wait to see what you pin.”

So here’s what you can expect from Pinterest…

How to Add the Bookmarking Tool

The first thing to do is to turn on your bookmarks toolbar in your browser. If you are using Firefox this can be found here.

View > Toolbars > Bookmarks Toolbar

If you are using Internet Explorer you will need to turn on your Favourites Toolbar by right-clicking and making sure the ‘Favourites Bar’ is checked as below.

Next you should install the Bookmarklet Tool. This is optional but recommended. If you are using Firefox, you can do this by simply dragging and dropping the “Pin It” button as shown below into your bookmark toolbar.

If you are using Internet Explorer you need to right-click this button and add to favourites. Although you can add bookmarks by visiting Pinterest and typing in the URL of the page, this handy tool allows you to do it without having to leave the web page you wish to bookmark.

Upon signing up to Pinterest you are prompted to choose some of your interests from a standard set of categories. You are then automatically subscribed to follow a handful of other “Pinners” whom have similar interests. You can unfollow these people at any time. You can also follow other friends who are using the service.

How to Create Boards

Next you need to create some pinboards for your profile. There are standard ones to choose from such as “Favourite Places and Spaces” or “Things for the Home” or you can create your own. To create your own board click on the “Add+” button located at the top of the page, here you will be offered three options.

Note the “Add a Pin” option, this is where you can add bookmarks manually if you decide not to make use of the bookmarklet tool. But firstly we are going to create a new board so we will select this option for now. From here you can name your board, categorize your board and choose if you will allow others to add bookmarks to it. It is important to categorize your board correctly as your “pins” will be visible to everyone who subscribes to these categories.

Once you have created your boards you are ready to start pinning!

How to Pin an Image

So, you’re surfing the web and you find a great image that you wish to share, or even just a great page that contains an image. Click on the “Pin It” bookmarklet that we installed to your toolbar or favourites bar earlier. Pinterest will automatically find every image (from a certain size) and display them as shown below.

You can then select which image you wish to use as your bookmark. Remember that this image, when bookmarked, will link back to the web page on which you found it so try to pick an image that other people will find exciting, interesting or funny yet also conveys the content from the source properly.

Your browser will then open a small pop-up window asking you on which of your boards you wish to “Pin It” and to enter a description for your pin. Once you have filled in this information and added your pin it can then be found on that board on your Pinterest profile. People have the option to “like” your pin, comment on your pin or “re-pin” via your profile to their own board.

How to Embed a You Tube Video

Want to add a video from YouTube? This requires visiting the “Add+” button again, as we did when creating a new board. The option we want to choose now is “Add a Pin”.

If you add the URL displayed in your browser here you can still bookmark the video, but we want to embed the video so it can be viewed on the board we are posting it to. To do this you need to click on the “share button” and copy the shortened code.

How to Add a Price

You can add a price marker to your pin simply by typing the amount into the description. You can see below how this is displayed on your pin.

Pinterest for SEO?

According to online tech source Mashable, Pinterest is driving more traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and You Tube combined! If marketed correctly, you should be able to drive traffic through Pinterest to your website, the pin images that you bookmark link back to your website via a NOFOLLOW link. This means that there are very little, if any, SEO benefits to these links. However if you type the source of your web page into the description, such as “https://www.silkstream.net/blog” this creates a DOFOLLOW link back to your website. I’m still analyzing the outcome of placing these links, and guess that the boards containing these pins will need a little optimizing to become indexed and pass any value.

What are your thoughts and experiences on Pinterest? Please share them in our comments box below.