Pinterest Perfection -
Confession : I love Pinterest! For the past few months, I’ve been lucky enough to be working with this wonderful company, or perhaps, rather than luck, it was fate that made this wild ride possible. Of course, luck is usually the product of consistent hard work... but who knew that my digital marketing obsession that started last year would lead to this? Let me share a little background for those who may not be familiar with my favorite place on the internet.
The Pinterest ‘P’ has become a very familiar symbol online. Even if you’ve never used the platform, chances are that you’ve seen that iconic logo around the web.
Even though it’s commonly grouped with other social media giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, the platform itself retains its own unique corner of the internet. People go to Pinterest to find visual inspiration across all interests, from custom guitars and gluten-free recipes to home decor and engagement ring ideas. There’s an inherent value to that. People are looking for ways to improve their daily lives, and they’re using Pinterest to do it. The platform is a reprieve from the hustle of online vanity metrics, instead opting to show you just how easy it can be to live an inspired life.
What I have recently come to appreciate about Pinterest is how engaged they are with their users - a philosophy that has remained intact since it was founded in 2009. Even then, co-founder Ben Silbermann, said he personally wrote correspondence to the site's first 5,000 users, offering his personal phone number and even meeting with some of its users to solicit feedback and build the community.
From that time, the site has grown to over 250 million monthly active users, with most new growth coming from outside the United States.
Being one of those 250 million users, I was surprised and delighted when somehow, despite the numbers, a member of the development team found my account and invited me to become part of a small group of users to test an upcoming product, called Story Pins.
Excited at the chance to be an early adopter, I jumped right in and started getting to work. Before I knew it my prolific creation of content with the new feature begat a series of email threads with the Pinterest Community Manager. Emails turned into phone calls and phone calls became video conferencing. I was even invited to join the developers leading the project for feedback sessions.
You can check out my Story Pins here. The ability to create Story Pins is only whitelisted to a small group of users but should be widely available soon.
I think my love affair with Pinterest was really cemented when the development team sent me flowers! Receiving flowers from one of the biggest social sites in the world makes a girl feel pretty darn special.
I would have been happy if that was the extent of things. But then, they asked me if I would like to be a presenter at their employee conference Knit Con. An annual event that is strictly closed to the public and press.
As a bonus for participating in Knit Con, they also hosted a “creators event”. This event was centered around an intimate setting in which myself and 11 other hand-selected ”pinners” were given a chance to give feedback to the Pinterest teams. We were asked about what we liked and what we’d like to see more of from Pinterest. Additionally, they gave us insights on other new features they had in development, as well as best practices for us to implement on the site right now.
After the event we hopped into Lyfts and headed to one of Ben Silbermann’s favorite restaurants in San Francisco. There, in the private dining room grotto, I got to meet the co-founder himself and chatted with the brilliant minds that make Pinterest what it is today.
It was a banner day!
Here are some pictures captured at the event below -
Knit Con -
Finally, after a couple months of preparation it was time to teach basic jewelry making to a classroom full of Pinterest employees. Hundreds of hours in the studio can cause one to take for granted the ease of executing your own work. Since I had never actually taught others how to do what I do, it was a fun challenge to make some of the basic concepts of creating jewelry accessible to all.
It was a full house and an incredibly lively session. A ton of laughter resonated within the walls of the room as I bounced around to each student intently executing my instructions.
The time passed swiftly and before I knew it, the moment had come to release my newly minted future jewelry designers into the world. All students left with fully stocked jewelry kits and instructional printouts to continue their journeys at home.
Perhaps the best part of the day was when a group of my students came up to me later while I was touring the headquarters. They told me how much they enjoyed my class and hoped that I would return for next year’s Knit Con. As an educator there is nothing more satisfying than this kind of evaluation.
For those of you who wish to get a little insight into what I do and explore for yourselves how to make jewelry. I made a video using the exact slides from my presentation at Knit Con below.
Read about this years Knit Con on the Pinterest Newsroom site - Here
Pinterest Partnership -
My Pinterest journey continues as I work closely with the Pinterest development team to optimize Story Pin creation on both desktop and the mobile app. The creators video we shot together during my time there will be live on their channels in July. As I continue to learn more about the platform I hope to develop deeper relationships with the Creator management teams in order remain a resource of user feedback.
As Pinterest advances their efforts to prioritize content creators on their platform, it will be very interesting to see what new innovations are in store for new features in the future.
As for me you can find me in my own corner on Pinterest being a prolific content creator and lover of the platform.
Images of the inside of Pinterest headquarters -
