Pinterest For Recipe Lovers

Do you Pin?

If you love finding new recipes and salivating over mouth watering food photos, Pinterest is a fun way to discover, save, and organize recipes and other ideas you see on the web so you can find them later.

Whether you're thinking of checking out Pinterest or already pinning away, I'll share a few of tips for using it:

Getting Started with Pinterest:

If you haven't tried Pinterest yet, here are the Pinterest Basics from Pinterest.  In addition, this article from Real Simple Magazine gives you step by step instructions for how to set up your account and get started. Reading both of these articles will give you a great over view on how to use this really fun and helpful platform.

My Tips for Active Pinners

Pinterest can be great, but it can also be frustrating if people don't pin properly.  I can't tell you how many times I see an amazing looking recipe and click on it and find that it wasn't pinned properly which make it pretty difficult for me to find the original recipe.  So, here are some of my basic tips to make sure you're a great pinner:

Click Before You Pin:  There are some photos that seem like a no-brainer to re-pin BUT the original pinner may not have pinned properly and the pin may not lead you to the original content (very annoying, see my next tip!)

Propper Pinning:  If you are pinning from a blog post, make sure you aren't pinning the home page of the blog, which changes, but are on the specific blog page for the content you want to pin.  To do this, usually you just have to click on the blog title and make sure the url in the browser matches the name of the recipe

Manage Your Boards:  It's usually helpful to have more boards with specific names than a few boards loaded with pins.  So, rather than just having a board for "Recipes to Try", you maight want a board for "Chicken Recipes", "Meatless Meals", "Breakfast Ideas" etc.  You can move your boards around too, so they are in alphabetical order.  Having 60 boards, I just did this and it makes finding things much easier!

Finding People to Follow:  Usually this happens naturally, but you can speed it up a bit by doing the following:

* Click on your picture/pinterest name on the top right and then click on find friends.  While you can just click follow on the friends you see, I like to click on a friend's name and then just follow the boards of theirs that I'm interested in.  If you just click on follow by their name you will be following all of their boards

* Go to a friend's profile and look at the top right corner to see the people that they repin from the most.  You can click on those people and see if you want to follow them. 

* Use the search box on the top left and type in something you're interested in.  If you see a pin you like, you may want to check out the pinner and possibly follow them

Using Pinterest to Search:  I find the search function in Pinterest is better than using a regular search engine.  If people have added a description to their pins, there pins will come up in search.  So you can type in 4th of July recipes or ice cream pie recipes and see what you discover!

How to Get More Followers:  This too usually evolves as you pin, but you can also:

*repin other's pins, your profile will show up in their numbers box (that shows new activity) and they may decide to follow you

*share and comment on pins you like, again your profile will show up under those pins, increasing your visibility.

*follow others and they may follow you

*if you're invited to a group board, pin there as well to increase your visibility

I'd also love for you to follow me on Pinterest if you like recipes and cooking.  I have 60 boards right now and yes I do have recipes posted from my site but I post recipes from lots of other sites that I run across as well.  If you like any of my pins, I'd really appreciate you re-pinning!

If you have other tips for using Pinterest, please comment below!

Happy Pinning!