So I have to share with you one of my new favorite things or some would call it an obsession… Pinterest… Have you heard of it yet? If not I am sure it will come up in conversation very soon. Pinterest seems to be one of the hottest new sites out there. We cannot stop talking about it around here – from a personal perspective and from a business and client perspective. If you have a few hours on your hands spend some time going through the site – Trust me you are going to love it!

Pinterest is basically a site where you get to create your own pin boards, or inspiration boards, as I like to call them, with images from basically anywhere on the internet. You can make as many or as few pin boards as you like. When you register your free account on Pinterest, you get a bookmarkelt to drag into your bookmark bar of your web browser. What this allows you to do is “pin” any image on any website that you see and it will get added to one of your inspiration boards.

Over the years of being in business and constantly keeping folders on my desktop of inspiration and a long running list of bookmarks from my favorite blogs and photographers, I now have a place where they are all organized and with their new iphone app, I have access to them at anytime. Instead of dragging images to my desktop and taking up room on my hard drive, now I can just “pin it.” If you think this is awesome… it gets better.

On top of being able to see what I am pining, I can see what other people have found interesting to them and I can repin what they have pinned. You guessed it, we have another form of social media! I can “follow” inspiration boards of other people and they can follow me back. Brilliant! This site still gets better… Here are two main experiences that make this site so wonderful.

1. I see an image on pinterest that I love, that someone else has pinned… I click on it and it takes me to its own page where you have the option to “repin” and edit your comment on that image. When you click on it again from its product page it will take you directly to the original source of that image. AMAZING!

So for example if I see this fabulous dress on there that someone else has pinned and I want to know where I can purchase that dress, I click on it to get to the product page and I can repin and comment and/or I click on that picture of the dress again and it will take me to its original page, maybe bloomingdales or someone’s blog. I see this as being very dangerous : )

2. I am doing my daily blog reading and on one of the blogs I see this wonderful picture of a family that has beautiful lighting and I want to remember this for inspiration, all I have to do is click on the PIN IT bookmarklet and a window will pop up. It will then allow me to choose which inspiration board I want the image pinned to and I can leave a comment as well.

What the pinterest team has done here is brilliant! It is taking things to a totally new level in the social online world.

Click on the image to see the whole inspiration board

Currently I have 15 boards and 748 individual pins spread out over all these boards. I have a board called “Inspirational Photography” that is being filled up with fabulous photos of photographers I admire, poses I like, and beautiful lighting. I am using this site to incorporate with my photography company in a couple different ways. My clients that join, we can follow each other and I can learn more about their style and what they like. I can create boards to share with my clients such as, “Great colors for photo shoots” – on there I have clothing examples that work well and color combinations that also work well. I also have a “Wall Galleries” board, here I can show clients different ideas for hanging large prints on their walls. They can get inspired before their shoot and then we can talk about ideas more after the proofs are delivered to them. This is just the beginning of the wonderful things this site has been able to do for my company.

Click on the image to view all of my inspiration boards

So the big question for me is how I can incorporate this site to add on to my brand as a children & family photographer? How can I use this amazing site and turn it into another tool for me and my clients to increase my brand, increase awareness, and increase sales? I am thinking about it, thinking really hard. What do you think? Is there something here for a business? What about for you personally? Will you use something like this to collect your interests and share them with the world?

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or commenting on my facebook page!

(Note: you have to receive an invite to join Pinterest right now which may be going away in the future. If you are interested in this site and would like an invite just leave me a comment or send me an email and I will send you an invite!)

Happy Pinning Everyone : )