See anything Pinteresting lately?  I am sure most of you have heard of Pinterest by now, and many of you have checked it out.  Whether you liked it, hated it, or just dismissed it I think you should give it another look.  Pinterest is your visual social network and search engine.  I am going to show you 8 ways you can use Pinterest in your life.  Now let’s stop wasting time and check out a few ways you can get your Pinterest on.

Use Pinterest as a Virtual Library

Log into your Pinterest account (yes that means if you don’t have one it’s time to get one).  Next create a board to save all the interesting blog posts, webpages, and infographics that you know you are going to want to come back to.  You can even create several boards all covering a topic of interest to you.  Over time you will have built up a virtual library of information that you can come back to over and over again.  All this without cluttering up your bookmarks.   Like Phil on Duck Dynasty would say, that will leave you “happy happy happy”.

Create a Bucket List

It is my belief that everyone should have one.  Life is far too short not to experience all that it has to offer.  Why not make a board that has pins of all those things you would like to see or do in your life?  You can even make the board private if you don’t want the world to see all of your diabolical plans.  That shouldn’t be necessary though, all my readers are far more Jedi than Sith right?

Visually Plan a Trip

Just about to hit that road trip like a rock star or fly out to some crazy vacation?  You can create a board to hold all the information you will ever need about your soon to come adventure.  You can put websites, pictures, and all kinds of other useful information.  And to make things even more useful anyone else going with you can access that information from your pin board.  How cool is that?

Make a Wish List

Whether we are talking Christmas, birthday, graduation, birthday, wedding, or any other occasion you can imagine, you can make a board in which you pin the gifts you want instead of leaving the giving to the whims of cruel fate.  Don’t give me that look, we have all gotten the gift at some point in our lives that left us with that fake smile and awkward “thank you I love it”.  Here is your chance to let the world know what you really want.  Now wouldn’t this make Christmas and birthdays a lot easier.

Show Off Your Work

Whether you are a blogger, entrepreneur, painter, store manager, or literally anything else you have some kind of work that you should take pride in.  If it’s worth taking pride in then it’s worth showing off to the world.  So stand on top of the virtual roof top that we call Pinterest and shout out to the world the cool things you have done.  Who knows, you just might make a few new clients or sales in the process.  And the truth is, you can never have too much exposure.

Sell Your Merchandise

Yes you can set up shop on Pinterest.  Pin that killer picture of your product, write some great content about it, include appropriate hashtags to help your pin be found, and make sure the pin links back to your website.  In this way Pinterest offers you yet another front to sell merchandise, and who wouldn’t like to increase sales?

Find Useful Information

Yes Pinterest can actually be a very powerful search engine.  I would go so far as to say that it deserves to stand side by side with Google.  In some cases it can even surpass Google in finding the information you are looking for.  From a marketing perspective, all of this means if you want to increase your chances of being found you should be active on Pinterest.  Go ahead and try the search feature, you know you want to.

Follow Your Interests

Now we come to the main reason Pinterest exists.  By making boards to contain all the things you are interested in you have helped yourself by having a great go-to place that always has your favorite things, and you help others by pinning things that they just may find interesting as well.

Give Pinterest a shot.  It is powerful, easy on the eyes, and fun.  I challenge you to check out Pinterest today.

In what interesting ways do you use Pinterest?