Pinterest-ing Weddings

You wrapped your head around Facebook, sent out a few tweets, even considered a YouTube channel, and now there’s another network to figure out?

Pinterest has surged onto the scene faster than any of its predecessors and built up a user base in its first year that already rivals Twitter. Despite the fact that it’s being labelled the next great thing is the social media category, it breaks the mould in several significant ways.

Filtering the Internet

First off, Pinterest is little more than a cork board where people from all over the world can post their favorite images from all over the internet. Users include: Ryan Seacrest, Michael Kors, Alyssa Milano, Martha Stewart and Nina Garcia of Marie Claire.

The internet is a nearly endless space filled with gems surrounded by piles of garbage. We all spend hours seeking out those gems. The producers of the prettiest images and other interesting items become our favorite blogs or sites. What Pinterest allows us to do is take the best images that we’ve found and show them off to our friends, thereby cutting through the garbage straight to the gems.

Your Pinterest feed is simply a “Best of the Internet” according to the people you follow.

In a time when, according to Google’s Eric Schmidt “Every day we produce as much content as was produced by all of mankind for the 20,000 years before 2003″, finding beautiful, interesting, genuine content on the internet becomes more difficult everyday.

That’s why Pinterest has been picked up by so many people so quickly.

Pinterest in the Bridal Business

Brides are using Pinterest everyday to plan their weddings. Remember, nearly every girl considers herself as a future bride, so nearly every girl has a Wedding Board somewhere in her Pinterest.

Future brides aggregate their favorite things into a single board in order to fantasize about their dream weddings. As they big day comes closer, they use their boards in ever more creative ways. Some have taken to giving their bridal parties some input on their outfits, so they post a variety of gowns, shoes and accessories for everyone to discuss. Similarly, wedding planners will post a mood board onto Pinterest for the bride and her party to look through. Simple substitutions can be made, ensuring that everyone is working towards the same vision.

Everyday people are coming up with new ways to use Pinterest to benefit weddings, at the very least it makes sense to make your content available to be included in those boards.

What Does That Mean For My Business?

Business content on the internet does not have to be a negative thing, although the spammers of the past few years have led us to think otherwise. As long as stores have existed, people have loved to window-shop. They take time and effort out of their days to gaze at pretty things and fantasize about owning them all.

Pinterest gives your business the opportunity to show off what you do in its most gorgeous light and allow people to indulge in its fantasy.

The best businesses use Pinterest to post beautiful shots of their products or services and in the modern days of apps and filters, beautiful photos don’t need to cost you any more than the time that it takes you to pull your phone out and hit click.

In addition to your own photos, Pinterest allows your business to share its personality and make connections with other profiles. Given that, make sure that your account is following interesting accounts that post content that you can turn around and share with your followers by “repinning”.

As with every social media platform, the businesses who use some personality and a sense of fun do best, so have a good time with it: pin what you love, what inspires you or what puts a smile on your face.

There are a lot of businesses who have dipped their toes in the Pinterest water already, and there are some who are doing it well. Here are a few to check out: