Part 1: Pinterest for dummies...that would be me!

I've signed up, got my boards, now what...

Okay. I have succumbed. The Pinterest site got the better of my curiosity and I have signed up. I first heard of it through some blogs I follow. Lots of mentions of "addicted to it" and "spending hours looking at the awesome ideas pinned there".

I asked around via Facebook. My little newbie mind pictured Pinterest as 'blogs with links'. A fellow blogger soon set me straight. She helped me to visualise Pinterest as an online pin-up board, where ideas are grouped into categories. When you sign up you are hit with an overwhelming amount of images of everything you could possibly imagine. This is what initially threw me...it was just so overwhelming! But this post is to help you and me to make Pinterest manageable.

Note: I have only be signed up to Pinterest for three days. I am in no way an expert, only sharing my learning's as I go along! If you have been using Pinterest for some time and can share a better way to do something I discuss, PLEASE comment below.

Understand what your looking at...
When you're logged in (you have to wait for an email that invites you) you are taken to a page full of the pins(images) of the people you follow. This is your homepage. The most recent pins added to Pinterest appear first. You could wile away the hours just browsing all these. Or you could hover your mouse over Everything and a drop down menu of all the different Pinterest categories appears.

Using Search...

If there is something in particular that you would like to see, type it into Search and everything and anything to do with what you want appears.  For example I typed in Owls and got hundreds. The draw back with Pinterest is it doesn't tell you how many pins there are to look at! However, when I got more specific "Hand sewn owls" I got four pins. Much better!

Repin...
When you hover over a picture that takes your fancy you get three choices 'Repin', 'Like' or 'Comment'. At this point in time I am using the 'Repin' function. When you click 'Repin' a pop-up appears which allows you to choose what board of yours you would like to pin it to and you can type a description or go with the one already there. It is then saved to your chosen board. It will also appear on your homepage as the most recent pin.

From your search results page you can chose to click the words Pinterest (in red, centre top of the page) which will take you back to your home page or hover over your display name for a drop down menu of places you can go.

Well that should help us navigate Pinterest for now. I'll post some more helpful advice as I go along.

Note: There is no such thing as only having a 'quick' look on Pinterest!