I spend more tome than I would like on Pinterest and I’d love to see more pictures of stitched needlepoint on it. I also get lots of questions about what I’ve pinned.
I’ve learned several things that can make pinning and looking through Pinterest easier and better.
- Identify the designer of the piece you pin. I get more questions about this than about anything else. If you know the designer, add it to the description.
- Always put ‘needlepoint’ somewhere in your description. Pinterest uses this to search. Your lovely piece won’t be shared if people doing searches can’t find it.
- Add descriptive words. Tell folks what it’s a picture of. This not only helps others, it will help you. You can search just your own pins but if the great cake is just called Judy’s Grandma’s Cake, you won’t find it if you want to find that chocolate cake recipe in your pins.
- To find the source of a pin, click on the pictuure itself. Folks repin stuff, often many times, after all that’s the idea behind the site. To find the source of the pin, click on the picture. It will take you back to the site if the pin wasn’t uploaded from a computer. You may have to search the site or poke around to find it, but it should be there somewhere.
- If you can’t find it, ask. Don’t ask the repinner, use the via links located under the comments section on the pin itself, to find the first pinner. Then ask them. If the pin came originally from a blog or site and you can’t find it, look for a contact there and ask them.
- When you ask, cite the pin. Help them out. In your question, give a link to the pin, even if it is a repin, so they know what you are talking about.
- Limit your time on the site. Pinterest is a serious time sink. You can spend hours there. Rather than give it up, figure out what kind of limits work for you and use them. It might be time. It might be a certain number of pins in some categories, it might be a specific search. Set limits and stick to them.
What are your favorite tips for Pinterest? Share them in the Comments.
About Janet M Perry
Janet Perry is the Internet's leading authority on needlepoint. She designs, teaches and writes, getting raves from her fans for her innovative techniques, extensive knowledge and generous teaching style. A leading writer of stitch guides, she blogs here and lives on an island in the northeast corner of the SF Bay with her family
This article is timely as I discovered your site from a pinterest picture today. Unfortunately the original pinner pinned a picture that took me to a site that has a large blown up picture and does not give credit to you nor any links to your site. Fortunately when I was brand new to pinterest, I saw a post by the Graphics Fairy on how to find the original source of a picture using google image search, The article is here: http://thegraphicsfairy.com/find-original-source-image-pinterest/
I feel that it is good ethically and shows respect to the source and all of their hard work to point back to the original idea of something that I liked enough to pin. Bloggers give of themselves to make my life easier and getting traffic to their site and more of their ideas is good for them. It is also good for me, If I find one thing on someone’s blog that I like I usually find many more things that I will like also.
I don’t blog and I am thankful for the people who do.