We are BIG fans of Pinterest in the Creating Media office, and we regularly use the secret board feature for researching clients, leads and inspiration. That’s why we were absolutely thrilled to find out the Pinterest will now offer unlimited secret boards (there used to be a maximum of three – so we were forever deleting and recreating boards)
We came up with our top 5 tips for using the secret boards on Pinterest:
1. Market research. We very often use secret Pinterest boards as part of our research process for new clients and leads – you can share the link if you want to show the mood board to anyone, but the pins aren’t publicly searchable or visible on your profile. We research the clients competitors, and pin all the websites and marketing materials, and sometimes key pieces of industry news, to a secret Pinterest board so that all of our research is in one place in a lovely visual form.
2. Gifts and parties. Is it nearly Christmas or a big family birthday? Are you planning a big birthday party? A secret Pinterest board is a great place to gather all those links to different gift ideas, venue websites, decorations, caterers, entertainments, party food recipes or whatever you might need to throw the biggest and best Christmas or birthday you’ve ever had! As the board is secret it also helps keep the surprise for any guests/gift recipients, while it lets you share the link with your ‘partners in crime’.
3. Redecorating. Pinterest is so full or fantastic inspiration for furniture, decoration and ‘lifehack’ style hints and tips for organising your home. You could use a secret board to plan ideas for your own home, and the DIY and homewares shops where you find the materials to carry out the project.
4. Holidays planning. What better place to pin your dream destinations, and the hotel deals and cheap flights you come across? You could even use it once the holiday is booked to pin must-see landmarks and attractions, the upload your own snapshots from the holiday as a sort of online scrapbook of the entire process from planning to finally going and doing. Then if you want you can make the board public and share your adventure with the world!
5. Fabulous planned boards. Take a look at this beautiful board from Caribou Coffee and you’ll see that hours of planning and testing must have gone into the positioning of individual pins – they actually join up into sentences that tell a story. A fabulous, inventive and creative use of a Pinterest board, which undoubtedly took a lot of testing and tweaking while the board was still secret before a grand unveiling. This brings to mind lots of creative things you could do – a visual project where motifs run between images where, for example, a head of one creature lines up with the body of another.
But don’t let these ideas limit you! I know people who have planned tattoos, spectacular engagements and all sorts of things with Pinterest – a fantastic visual ‘mood board’ tool (and fantastic way to procrastinate). Take a look at our boards over at www.pinterest.com/creatingmedia.
