If you want an introduction to Pinterest and to expanding your business with the aid of this social media tool, this is a well-designed, accessible book for basic concepts. I liked the physical design of the book for clarity. Good graphics, checks, tips, light and dark print so it's well formatted.
I bought several copies of this book to use for a tutorial for a client who has a clothing design business who knows nothing about pinterest and wants help setting up her profile, naming and organizing her boards, pinning images, following leaders in her business, transporting images from design websites, blogs, magazine sites and repinning others' images.
What I liked about the book is that it is written for the beginner and it has tips for marketing your business so you get two for the price of one. I have been using Pinterest for about 6 months for my interior design classes that I teach. I use pinterest to catalog and store images which I use in class. I have 40,000 images stored on Pinterest, and over 6000 followers who follow my boards, but I still learned some essential concepts reading this book as I never read any how-to's on Pinterest. I found some gaps in my knowledge of Pinterest which this book filled in.
I've been stumbling along through trial and error, but when you are being paid to teach someone, felt I needed to find out what I hadn't discovered on my own. And there were some key activities this book taught me. It was helpful to have a couple of copies so I could send the student home with the book for homework help as she sets up her boards until our next session.
The author is active on Pinterest. You can check out her profile on Pinterest. She has a board on this book and pinterest tips. The chapters in this book provide a great overview of the following material:
Chapter 1: Understanding why you need a pinterest presence
Chapter 2: Setting up a pinterest account
Chapter 3: Following people on pinterest
Chapter 4: Creating boards and pins
Chapter 5: Pinning and repinning
Chapter 6: Getting active on pinterest
Chapter 7: Getting fans, customers and clients to follow you
Chapter 8: Engaging on pinterest
Chapter 9: Creating pin-worthy content
Chapter 10: Generating buzz on pinterest
Chapter 11: Tracking pinterest metrics
Chapter 12: Ten pins that went viral
I found my personal experience on pinterest corroborated what the author suggests in this book as to what works, what doesn't and general pin dynamics. Pinterest is constantly upgrading and improving, so one suggestion which the author had as to following ALL of someone's boards and then unfollowing the ones you don't want to ensure you show up as a follower of theirs I don't do. Usually there are only a few boards in each profile I am interested in for my students, so I just follow those boards and it appears that I still show up as a follower of theirs when I checked. So, Pinterest may have changed that feature since this book was written.
As an introductory book, I found this book very helpful. I found it a very accessible read.
