OK – I’ve joined pinterest.
I have no real idea what I’m doing – some of you will have a lot more experience and ideas about how to use pinterest… Or maybe this will just be a waste of time… In the comments you can put ideas how liturgy, spirituality, and worship can be represented on pinterest. Please let us know some of your ideas. Maybe a social network that focuses less on words can be an important place for liturgy… Maybe there are also links to pages which give good, brief introductions to how to use Pinterest. Maybe you are on pinterest and can provide a link to show how to usefully use pinterest; how you do it. The comments here then might be a resource to help others get started… if this is useful at all…
I would type spirituality in the search box and then click on boards to get an idea of what others pin to their boards and how they see spirituality and what it means to them. Then do same for other topics till you get a feel for it. You do have up to 500 characters you can type for each pin. You are bright & witty so don’t be afraid say something:)
Thanks for the hints, Bill. It took me a while to get the hang of twitter, and now I really see its value. Are you on Pinterest? It would be interesting, if you are, to see how you use it. Blessings.
One approach is to think about the different categories of your life or ministry for which you want to gather images or links (pinboards organize both). I have lots of the usual boards – recipes, crafts, home decor, clothing – but I also have a board for quotations I like, and I’m experimenting with a board for my church (I’m associate pastor) and one for the non-profit org I work for part-time. You could have a board of images for use in worship, one of favorite scriptures, one for links to helpful liturgy resource sites, images of nature that help you connect with God, faces of God’s children… there are lots of possibilities. It does take a little while to find people or boards that you want to follow; you can do a search, as Bill suggested, or choose a category of pinboards to view from the drop-down list (mouse over Pinterest at the top) to find like-minded pinners. I’m on Twitter as @revpeacegirl if you want to chat more.
Thanks, Kerry. Two questions spring to my mind:
How do I put “links to helpful liturgy resources sites”? It seems that Pinterest collects images – not links?
What is the effect of “following” someone or a board – where does that appear – what does it do? (you can probably see what a nooby I am!) Maybe I should just try following you on pinterest and see what that does… (Ok – I’m following two of your boards now…)
Blessings
Each of the images you pin also contains a link back to the online source where you (or someone else) first found it. If you’re pinning from your hard drive, of course, that link won’t be there, but if you click on a pin (image) to bring it up full-size and then click on it again, you’ll open the source site.
As you’re probably figuring out, following someone’s boards means that each new pin they put on one of those boards shows up in your home page, making it easy for you to “repin” to one of your boards if you want to – or just enjoy looking at without preserving in your own profile. Your home page (not profile page, but where pinterest.com takes you if you stay logged in) is much like a Facebook or Twitter feed: all the posts of people you follow show up there. Your profile page also has parallels to FB and Twitter; mouse over your name in the upper right corner and select “Boards” from the drop-down to see not only all your boards and pins, but also a description of how many people are following you and how many you follow, and recent interactions other people have had with you or your pins. Hope that helps!
It helps a lot, Kerry. I’m sure this will also help others who visit here and are thinking this through. Thanks and blessings.
I have found that Pinterest makes it much easier for me to keep track of almost every kind of bookmark. I’m very visual, so keeping them in the regular browser bookmarks folder makes it much harder for me to find anything. I have one board dedicated to “encouragement” so far, it has a lot of scriptures and excellent quotes. I’ve started following you there, so if you have the notifications on you’ll get an email about it and can follow me back if you like. You may not want to follow *all* my boards, I have hairstyles and recipes and girly craft things in abundance… lol.
Thanks, Christy. I’m following some of your boards, now. Blessings.
I am on pinterest. At the moment I just see it as a piece of fun rather than as achieving anything useful. I’ve seen collections of religious art (e.g., my board credo), collections of photos of nature and the universe explicitly labelled as praise for God’s creation, and cards with pithy one-liners about religious topics. I don’t remember seeing anything specifically liturgical.
If you wanted to drive more traffic to the blog, you could pin art related to the day’s bible readings, videos of people doing liturgy, cartoons or other illustrations relevant to blog posts, pictures of the aftermath of your earthquakes, book covers of whatever you’re reading, and just generally think visually in terms of images rather than words.
OK, Robert. I’m following some of your boards. Still not sure how this all works…
You speak of driving more traffic to my blog – can you explain a bit more in detail how that works, specifically? How do I get people to my blog from Pinterest – in fact also: how do they find my Pinterest at all?
Blessings.
When you pin something, everyone following you sees the pin (if they’re following the board that you pin it to), and it also can show up in searches for the general public, and probably a “most recent” kind of thing on the main Pinterest page. The more people re-pin it, the more other people see it, etc. If the link goes back to your blog, a fair number of people that click the pin will stick around and see what else is here 🙂 I’ve actually seen some people saying that Pinterest currently drives more traffic to blogs than Twitter does. It’s quite the phenomenon.
Thanks, Christy. Yes, I’ve spotted these claims about Pinterest. I’ve also seen discussions whether Pinterest leads to “conversions” – which is an interesting distinction for a priest 😉 I have seen the twitter “driving” lessen. It will be interesting to see how Pinterest develops… Blessings.
Hi, Bosco – I was on Pinterest for a few weeks but abandoned it. I found it to be a lot of fun for those who are visually oriented individuals (like me). There are lots of people collecting images of sacred art and other images that are awesome and inspiring.
To drive people to your blog you should pin images you’ve already posted on your blog and Pinterest will automatically link to the URL for that post. To get people to find you on Pinterest, tweet the links to your boards as you create them, or post on your blog, and people will eventually find you.
Having given you all these helpful comments, though, I have to urge caution! Copyright issues are not being handled carefully in Pinterest and users are in danger of being sued, the way Napster users were sued for sharing music back when it first started. Read my blog post for more info, if you haven’t already. http://raimalarter.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-i-deleted-my-pinterest-account.html
I’m posting the link here so others can read, too. I deleted my Pinterest account because I think this is a serious problem, but I hope somebody will fix it and come out with a better system soon, because I really loved it while I was there!
Raima
Yes, Raima, I had read your post prior to joining Pinterest. I’ve added a comment there now. I am confused… Blessings.
Thanks, Bosco – and I added a reply to yours as well, over on my site!
The main way I’ve found people is by searching for pins on a particular topic or by seeing their pins which other people have repinned. Also if you click on the word Pinterest at the top of the page and then click on ‘everything’ or on something from the drop down menu, you can see the most recent pins generally or in a particular category.
If people click on a thumbnail of a pin they can see a bigger image of the pin and if they click on that, another window opens showing the pin on its original site (if you pinned it from somewhere on the internet). This could bring people to your blog if you pinned a picture from the blog or you could also include a link as the title to the pin or in the comments.
Little by little, Robert, I’m getting to see how this works… Thanks, and blessings.
What makes you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit? Is it a song, a poem, a story, a miracle? Have a board for each category. Favorite renditions of hymns, videos of moving sermons, links to stories about miracles that bring people together. Right now in the US there is a huge disconnect between what is church dogma& what people actually believe. Maybe you can use Pinterest to help find some common ground and connect people together.
Thanks, Bill, for your thought-provoking suggestion. Blessings.
On my personal account, I’ve set up boards that provide inspiration to/for me. For @chsocm, I’ve setting up group boards for members of the #chsocm chat to add to: http://www.pinterest.com/chsocm.
Elsewhere, I’ve written about the palliative (and spiritual) value of Pinterest: http://bit.ly/zJrseZ. I believe many of my points here can be extrapolated for Church.
Thanks, Meredith, very helpful. Blessings.