Sketch Loves... Pinterest

Wow. Having discovered Pinterest in recent months, we are now officially hooked.

It’s a visual catalogue of everything you've ever wanted on the web, neatly organised into boards; your boards, and others’ boards – sharing and discovering with others that have similar interests.

For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s a nice little breakdown of how it works – credit goes to thelinkbuilders.com for this one:

1) When someone likes an image on a website they can pin it back to a board they’ve created on the Pinterest site. These boards can be named anything but fall under categories designated by the Pinterest team, like weddings/events, home décor, travel, etc.

2) Individuals can see pins by people whose boards they are following, or by searching through the most popular pins (most repinned), by category, by search term, or by price. If a user has typed in the price of the object in the comment area it will also appear on the top left corner of the image (this only happens when the dollar sign is typed into the comment area. No other money symbol – like € or £ – makes the price appear on the pin).

3) Every image has a comment area, link, and options to like or repin. Viewers can visit the site that housed the original image by clicking on the image or on the URL in the top right corner of the image.

On our Pinterest account we’ve currently got 8 boards. As expected, they are mostly events and design led, but the opportunities for inspiration are endless:

But who else is using Pinterest? Back in February, US agency Modena put some stats together that help create a picture of who’s pinning:

As the infographic illustrates, there are plenty of brand using Pinterest. But what are they doing there? There’s obvious SEO potential, and an opportunity to display more ‘stuff’ from your site, but users aren’t always going to want to engage with that kind of content. So clever brands make boards that are insightful and reflect the interests of their audience.

ASOS, for example, has 23 boards ranging from Christmas, beauty, current trends and competitions.

But not all brands fit the Pinterest format, forcing them to think outside the box. Take Coca Cola, who ask users to help them discover ‘moments of happiness ’ by sharing photos. A little soppy perhaps, but all in all, Pinterest...we like you.