Social Media Spotlight: Pinterest - Your Virtual Bulletin Board

Megan Zinn-Sanchez
Public Relations & Marketing Coordinator

Before computers revolutionized the way we do everything, when you wanted new ideas for crafts, décor, fashion, fundraising or recipes, you probably looked through magazines or newspapers and clipped ideas that appealed to you. You may have even organized them in binders or put them on a bulletin board and referred to them when you started a project or planned an event.

Pinterest utilizes that concept and puts it in a virtual space. It’s a free visual discovery, collection, sharing, and storage tool; it allows you to discover and save ideas you can refer back to in a virtual format.

Terminology:

Boards – Think of these as virtual, topic-specific bulletin boards. For example, you might create a “Patriotic Holidays” board, “Patriotic Food” board or “Hospital Volunteering” board and save or “pin” images related to each topic to their respective boards. How general or specific you want your boards is up to you.

Pin or Pinning – Think of this as cutting out a photo from a magazine and saving it in a specific binder, i.e. “Welcome Home Events” or “Fundraising Ideas.” The point of Pinterest is to save or “pin” images to your various boards. You can find images to pin by searching the Pinterest site, or by pinning ideas you find on other websites.

We encourage you to visit the National Organization’s Pinterest page. There are 25 boards and more than 1,400 pins (ideas) we want to share with you, our members! You can find images related to patriotic crafts and décor, patriotic clothing, patriotic crafts for kids, hospital door decorating ideas, hospital tray decorating ideas and many holiday-specific ideas. Take a look around and get your creative juices flowing!

Tip: You DO NOT need a Pinterest account to view the National Organization’s Pinterest page. You may see all of the ideas we’ve pinned for you by:

• Going to the National Organization’s Facebook page
• Clicking on “More” and
• Selecting “Pinterest”
• You can also access it here.

However, if you go to www.pinterest.com, you WILL need to create an account to view the National Organization’s Pinterest page.

Please contact Megan Zinn-Sanchez at mzinn-sanchez@ladiesauxvfw.org if you have any questions.