The Five Best Things About Pinterest for Designers

Pinterest. Once considered a flash-in-the-pan social media site for people who only post kitties and homemade pies, it has weathered the storm and become an integral site for freelancers and anyone trying to expand their audience, especially on the visual side. Managing a Pinterest account to the fullest extent can take a lot of know-how (which is one reason this class is so helpful, especially if you’re trying to promote your brand), but once you get it figured out the opportunities are broad and, to be honest, a lot less stressful compared to other media tools. We’re not saying that Pinterest is a necessity, as we all know there are other digital realms that you can focus on that will have some incredibly efficient impacts. But with that said, here is exactly what a designer or artist will get if they start pinning:  

1. Inspiration

Now that the site is filled to the brim with creatives, you can spend hours diving through the boards of artists and designers you may have never found otherwise. Everything from clean and simple to abstract and completely bonkers, there is no lack of visual candy for you to feast on, whether it is people posting their own work or collating the work that they have deemed worthy. Here alone are fifty boards to check out that will keep you satisfied for days.

2. Competition

Friendly competition can be a great thing, and you don’t even necessarily have to be friends with someone for it to be successful. Picking out a few boards can be more than inspiration -- it can help you focus on pushing your work past what you are seeing by other artists and designers. This has likely happened to you before -- you were in a museum or stumbled onto a website or even walked past a flyer on the street that made you think, “Wow, I have to step up my game.” Mainlining so much good work this way, though, can be an even greater motivator to spur you on and spend time trying to raise the bar.  

3. Networking

You may not be friendly with some of these people yet, but the boards on Pinterest make it an incredibly easy social media site to dig through and find the people who share your same taste or who are actively working in the same area. Unlike LinkedIn, you don’t need to sift through a person’s resume -- you can get straight to the work and see what speaks to you. And the increasingly specific tags can sift out everything but exactly what you’re looking for.

4. Promotion

The ability to manage SEO angles as well as give robust descriptions of your projects is one of the most effective ways Pinterest is good for your work and your brand (here is one way to create impressive social media graphics for yourself). And by using strategic rich pins, anything you create with viral appeal will carry your name with it. This means that there are no more worries (or at least fewer worries) about credit being swept away as people share your genius.

5. It’s Fun

Let’s be honest here -- keeping up with your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can be a pain sometimes. Considering how stiff some of it can be, and the way your personal life sometimes butts your work out of the way, Pinterest is really the closest thing social media has for design that actually feels more like a hobby than just brand management (check out this recent attempt at "Pinterest Roulette.") You can just paste up your work and can leave all that struggle to come up with pithy comments for your other outlets. So set up a board, crack your knuckles and pin your heart out.