A Pinterest -ing Social Media Success Story

photo courtesy of iheartmotherhood.com

Pinterest is the hottest new kid on the social media block right now.

If you haven’t signed up, you’re missing out. If you need an invite, send me a message with your email and I’ll hook you up.

At first glance, Pinterest seems like a chaotic, crazy mess.  It’s just a bunch of boxes full of seemingly random images pulled from all over the web.

But it’s a lot more than that.  Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board; a place to gather and share all things that inspire you, amuse you or just please your eye.

When you find something you like on Pinterest, you “pin it” to your “boards” (categories) with a brief note or description.  The note can be anything you want–why you pinned it, why you like it, what you plan to do with the image, what you want other people to do with it, etc.

You can share your pins via Facebook and Twitter.

Like most other social media, Pinterest offers the opportunity to follow and be followed.  You can follow other accounts or you can follow specific boards from other accounts.  And others can do the same with your account and boards.

If you see something you like on someone else’s board, you can comment on it and you can re-pin it to one of your own boards.  Sharing is big on Pinterest.

So, why am I talking about Pinterest when there is a picture of an incredibly tempting and mouth-watering cake?  I don’t normally post a lot of cake pictures here; after all, this isn’t a food blog.

This cake is all about Pinterest.

It was made by a client of mine: A lovely woman whose wedding I photographed some years ago.  She has a business making cakes and she is clearly very good at it (they taste good, too–I’ve had some).  She has a blog called i heart motherhood if you want to see more of this amazing cake.  Back to this cake.  She made this for a customer’s birthday celebration.  After completing the cake she posted it to her blog and late that night her mom (who is a friend of mine and how I know all this) pinned it to her Pinterest account.

And here’s what her mom told me:

“ By Sunday morning when I got up it had been repinned over 250 times,(most my pins get repinned like 4-6 times) and by 24 hours well over 750 repins that we could see.  It has over 1300 now that we can see, and some we can’t.  She had to upgrade her photo bucket account to pro (and actually pay) because of all the traffic her blog got.  It’s been really fun.

Well today the fun continues.  A friend spotted the cake on Foodista, a big foody blog!  I thought you might have fun going to see like we did. http://www.foodista.com/blog/2012/02/14/5-gorgeous-cakes ”

Are you on Pinterest?  Are you taking advantage of the power of social media?  Do you have a Pinterest experience to share?  I’d love to hear it in the comment section below.

And what do you think of this gorgeous cake?