Pinterest is a highly visual virtual pinboard site that lets you "pin" or collect images from the Web. You create boards to help you categorize your images and add descriptions to remind you why you bookmarked them in the first place. Pinterest is a place to discover ideas for all your projects and interests, hand-picked by people like you.
How to Join
Visit Pinterest.com and click Join Pinterest. When you do sign up, you’ll have the option to link either your Facebook or Twitter account with your Pinterest account. This will make it easier for you to find your friends, family members, and favorite blogs and brands to follow on Pinterest. If you want to start with your e-mail address, you can always connect your social accounts later. To connect with Facebook, you need to give the app permission to access your basic info, email address, birthday, and likes. This lets the app post activity on your behalf, but you can decide whether or not your pins get reposted to Facebook. If you want to connect with Twitter, you're giving the app permission to read tweets from your timeline, see who you follow and follow new people, update your profile, and post tweets for you.
If you created your account, think about the other social accounts you have. Try to solder with a good username if you already have a Twitter or Instagram account. That will make it easier for anyone who follows you to find you via searching on Pinterest. It also helps to use the same profile photo, that way people know it’s you.
Check Your Settings. Once your account is active the first thing you must do is to take a look at your e-mail settings. Pinterest’s options are straightforward and easy to understand. When you first start pinning, keep all the e-mail notifications on. It’s a great way to find new people to follow by seeing who likes, comments, or repins ideas from your boards. You can turn them off later if they are clogging your inbox.
The Pinterest profile and privacy settings
Click the profile icon in the top-right corner of the page.
Your profile page will appear, which displays your public information and pinboards.
Click the Edit profile button.
The profile settings page will appear. At the top of the page, you can modify your public profile, like your user name, location, and bio. Your profile picture will be imported automatically from Facebook or Twitter. You can upload a different image from your computer if you prefer.
- Scroll down to modify your privacy settings. Switch the Prevent search engines from including your profile in their search results button to the On position to prevent sites like Google and Bing from indexing your Pinterest profile.
- If you'd like to disconnect your Facebook account from Pinterest, switch the Login with Facebook button to the Off position. The same can be done for Twitter.
- Click Save Profile to confirm your changes.
Create Your Own Boards
After you edited your profile settings, you need to build boards in order to collect and organize items you're interested in. For this, click your Boards in the upper right-hand drop-down menu, then click create a Board. A box will pop up asking you to name your board, add a description, and categorize it. If you need some ideas, popular board names include For the Home, Books Worth Reading, Favorite Places & Spaces, and Recipes. If you want to get more specific with boards like Nice Desserts, Home Office Designs, Birthday Gifts, or iPhone Apps.
Get Social
You're now part of the Pinterest party now so you can to make some friends. Follow more boards and build out your own to attract new followers. Get friendly by liking [click Like next to the Pin It button] and commenting on other pins.
Follow Other Users
If you come to find that you like the boards and pins of specific users, you can follow them so that their stuff will show up on your personal homepage board feed.
Simply click the username of any Pinterest user to pull up their profile and click “Follow All” to follow of that user’s boards, or you can alternatively follow specific boards of that user if you just want to follow a few.
Discover New Things by Navigating Through Pinterest
On your homepage, you should notice a few options in the middle of the top menu bar. These will help you find new users to follow and new things to pin to your boards.
Pinners you follow: The default setting of the homepage displays all the things that people you follow are pinning.
Everything: Roll your mouse over this option to display a list of categories of things you can browse through.
Videos: Although images are the main things that get shared on Pinterest, there’s also a special section for videos too.
Popular: See what kind of stuff is generating the most interest, the most repins, the most likes and the most comments on Pinterest.
Gifts: Users like to recommend things they buy or products they sell on places. Gifts are categorized by price Click on any item to enlarge it and scroll down to the bottom to see the website link where you can purchase the item.
