Photograph by Justin Hackworth
One of my favorite Alt Summit activities was the keynote by Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann. Note: If you’re interested in detailed information about the keynote, Jennifer provided a nice write-up about it on Dec-a-Porter or you can watch the entire keynote on the Ace Department blog. The video starts at 0:42, after Norah Jones.
A couple of things that Ben mentioned in his presentation stood out to me in terms of the purpose of Pinterest.
“…what you collect says a lot about who you are.”
Pinterest is really about getting you offline. It’s to inspire you to do things and be creative.
Pinterest has really blown up lately, and newcomers are asking lots of questions. What can you do with it? How is it useful as an extension of your brand identity? How is it fun?
As a former soldier of the marketing trenches, I have a lot of ideas about how businesses can use Pinterest to develop their brand. And who knows? Maybe I’ll write about some of those in the future. But today I want to focus on some of the ways that I’ve used Pinterest as a blogger, and just as a person who is a mega fan of the site.
* Creating a collection of blogger write-ups about Alt Summit 2012.
* Saving things that I’d like to buy or do with or for my son.
* Choosing a new haircut, and adding images to this board that my friend recommended via Pinterest.
* Feeding my Sofia Coppola obsession.
* Entering a Chronicle Books contest.
* Saving recipes that I can send to my husband so he will make them for me.
* Building a collection of useful tips that I can go to when I need help with something.
* Creating a virtual vision board.
For those of you who are new to Pinterest, I hope this is helpful in showing you how it can be useful for you. Beware – you’ll be hooked in no time!