Learn About Social Media Through Pictures on Pinterest!

If you would like to learn a lot more about social media by simply looking at pictures instead of reading boring blog posts, I can tell you how to do it … but first you have to get to the end of this boring blog post (hint: or just skip right to the bottom if you want!). Let me explain what I am talking about …

A few weeks ago I joined the ranks of those who have become obsessed with Pinterest. We can thank my wife for that as she was the “early adopter” in our family, as well as our daughter Clara (but that is a whole ‘nuther post).

According to Pinterest’s About page,

“Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. . . . Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.”

If that doesn’t tell you enough just go have a look for yourself by clicking HERE! You will need an invite to Pinterest and you can request one HERE — or send me an email and I’ll be happy to invite you. Simply put, Pinterest is a bunch of pictures. That’s it. Pictures of everything you can imagine. It is the world displayed visually through pictures.

Shortly after I began using Pinterest I began exchanging ideas about it with Jay Pinkert, a well respected legal marketer (among other things), who manages Shatterbox Marketing & Communications, and we talked about whether there were ways that professionals such as lawyers could use Pinterest for marketing purposes. At that time all I could envision doing with Pinterest was (a) using it for fun and (b) using it to help develop relationships with other people which is, after all, the foundation of social media. I really did not see any substantive value, however, for a lawyer such as myself who focuses on issues like social media law, technology law, and computer fraud beyond the fact that I need to have an in depth understanding of these social media services to best enable me to advise my clients about the legal issues involved with using them.

Then an epiphany hit me!

Earlier this morning I had the wonderful opportunity of attending the Social Media Breakfast Dallas where I met many others who are also passionate about social media. I found myself in a conversation with two new friends, Tonya Delano and Jackie Bese and you will never believe what I learned: they were into Pinterest also, as well as virtually everyone else I talked with! In fact, Tonya has even recently blogged about Pinterest: Like I need another social media addiction!

Talking with them about it got me to thinking that, with that many “social media types” interested in Pinterest there had to be some interesting social media graphics on there because the “social media types” are generally very graphic-oriented people. Forgive the stereotype but you know I’m right about this one, and that’s a plus!

So, I decided to spend some time on Pinterest this evening and was amazed with all of the “infographics” (pictures to most of us) that I found. Seriously, take a look at the picture to the right that is on Pinterest but originally came from a blog post titled Social Media Marketing — 10 Inspiring Infographics written by Jeff Bullas. This is just one example of the tons of other infographics you can find there.

The more I thought about it, the more I reflected back to the discussion Jay and I had and I realized that information such as this may be of interest to people I connect with on social media and is also related to the social media law aspect of my practice. So, I spent about half an hour looking at these amazing and informative pictures and “pinned” as many as I could on social media and put it in a “board” called “social media” that you really need to go check out right HERE.

There is some very helpful information about social media that you can learn just from looking at these really awesome pictures and it is a heck of a lot more fun than reading boring blog posts like this one. So, here you go, if you want to learn a lot about social media just from looking at pictures, Pinterest is the place to go and my social media board is the perfect place to start.

Have fun pinning and let me know what you think about whether there is any real value in using Pinterest for something like this, or, if you just think I’m being goofy (p.s., kiddos, this is not a license to criticize dad).