Pinterest, believe it or not, is super helpful. Yes, it’s great for searching recipes, house makeover ideas, and finding craft ideas to do with your children. Or maybe if you’re a guy, your wife is constantly showing you DIY projects for your house that you know aren’t actually possible with your budget or skills (<<this is my hubby!) Like this one:
But I promise you that Pinterest is an asset when it comes to brainstorming ideas for your website. You can see what styles you like—whether it’s logos, website layouts, colors, images, or typography.
Once you pin things you like, we both go and make comments on it and narrow all your pins down to things we can use to come up with your brand identity or website elements.
Then we deconstruct those pins and strategize on how we can use ideas like this for your project’s plan.
What is a Pinterest Pin?
A “Pinterest pin” is kind of like sticking a thumbtack into a bulletin board of a ripped out magazine page of something you like, except you don’t have to buy a ton of magazines or go through your recycling bin! The possibilities of what you can pin are endless. So when you search Pinterest, you easily save the item to a board you created or create a new board when you pin.
What is a Pinterest Board?
Well, think of it like a bulletin board that has no dimensions. You can pin as much as you like or as little as you like! Some of my clients understand the value of pinning and therefore pin a lot of items. Since 100+ items can be hard to view at once, they can create new boards or sections within one board (a newer feature). Since the board is secret, we would ask that if you’d like separate your ideas (logos, colors, website elements for example), that you create new sections in your secret board by clicking the big plus sign in the upper right-hand corner of your board. Then you can select “Section” which you can name and add.
Getting Started on the Form Creating a Fabulous Pinterest Board
So, let’s go through the form Creating a Fabulous Pinterest Board together.
First, we need to make sure we’re connected on Pinterest! In your Online Account Information form where it asks you for your Pinterest handle. Please make sure you provide that information on the form. If you don’t have a Pinterest account, you can sign up for one here: https://www.pinterest.com/ and then go to the Online Account Information form in your Client Portal of your website project and provide your information. You can find your Client Portal in the Welcome Email that was sent to you after you made your first payment.
Once you fill out the Online Account Information form, we will get notified and hopefully invite you to the secret board we create, before you get to the Creating a Fabulous Pinterest Board form. If not, would you kindly send us a quick email to let us know you are working lightning fast? If you aren’t sure who to email, you can always email me, Leanne, at leanne@lucidandluxe.com.
What is a secret board?
A secret board is a Pinterest board that cannot be seen by your followers. So no one will be able to see the things you are pinning to it—only you and my team.
Pinterest tip: If you go to settings you can change how you receive Pinterest notifications. See screenshot below:
Once we invite you to the secret board, you should get a notification on Pinterest, or in your email if you set up the settings to notify you by email. Maybe for this project, you should make sure you’re receiving the notifications by email, and/or push notification on your phone so you don’t miss a thing! The notifications inside Pinterest app or on your desktop, is shown with a little bell, and a message (someone sending you a pin), is shown by the message bubble icon. You will need to accept the invitation we send to collaborate on the secret board we create. We usually name the secret board your company name.
Ok, on to the next step.
Step 2 on Creating a Fabulous Pinterest Board form
If you haven’t filled out your Design Discovery Brief yet, please head to your Client Portal and do that before filling out this form. You can also always view the task board in your Client Portal to see the tasks needed to be done—and in order.
The Design Discovery brief asks you to list 3-5 of your personal strengths because we want to know what you, the business owner is bringing to the table. Your business is not a business without your strengths, so those must be included in the design brainstorming.
For example, I, Leanne—owner of Lucid & Luxe Web Design am a very passionate person. I’m not sure there is someone out there as passionate about things as I am! My passion is fueled when I meet, or virtually meet, my client and hear their story and why they’re doing what they’re doing. Without my passion, clients wouldn’t feel the partnership I want with them and the strong desire for them to succeed and have the best website possible for them to get measurable results. My passion leads me into my other strength—excitement! I get EXCITED about things that I’m passionate about, and my excitement brings encouragement and contagious energy to my client and their projects. I’m also a very loyal person and committed to my clients. These are all strengths of my personality. Now, how this displays visually—the pink in my brand exudes passion. Even some of the pictures have a passionate and loyal feel to them. Take a peek >
Then you are to list 3-5 words that best describe your company’s personality and also 3-5 words that describe the desired look and feel of your future website (see screenshot):
Now you might be thinking, aren’t they the same? No! They’re not. We want to include the company’s personality when considering the website brand, but we also want you to identify the desired look because both are important in brand discovery.
For instance, Lucid & Luxe Web Design Studio’s brand is bold, sassy, and passionate in personality. But the desired look and feel is classic, inviting, simple and yes, bold as well. The colors of black, white, and gold are classic and bold. The pink adds boldness as well. The images I chose invites the site user into the experience.
Thinking about these things will only benefit the user’s experience, as well as the overall mood, impression, and feel you want your user to have when visiting your website.
Next step is to use the words you answered in Step 2 above and plug them in to the search Pinterest search bar with other words such as: decor, branding, color palettes, moodboards, logo, home office, fashion, website, etc.
So for example, the words used for my company classic, bold, passionate, when typed into Pinterest may come up with searches like this:
When you pin items, please also comment on the image you pinned by clicking on the pin and then adding a comment. Once you start pinning and/or adding comments, the people assigned to your website project (myself and usually one or two others) will receive notifications. Once the Onboarding forms are complete (all the forms in your client portal after your initial payment), we will go in and comment on your comments and pins and will when we have our strategy session after the Onboarding process, we will discuss all the things and narrow down the things that you pinned.
In addition, you can go to some stock image sites like these: https://stocksy.com, https://shutterstock.com, https://pexels.com, https://unsplash.com, https://kaboompics.com, or https://depositphotos.com/ to find images that you like for website inspiration and also pin them to your board. We’re not asking you to purchase these images yet, just have some inspiration for photography and website images.
As you can see by the image below, I have a Pinterest save button. Some websites have this embedded automatically on their images so you can pin ideas from the web quickly and easily. If you find an image that does not have this capability, you can always download a composition image (will have a watermark on the image so you cannot use it for professional use). Many of the download buttons may prompt you to purchase an image plan, but there is a “try” button or a “download comp” button. Use that, save the image with a file name you’ll remember, then go to your Pinterest board and click the plus button as mentioned above to create a section, but this time click “add pin” then you can upload the image you just saved. In addition, there is an option to add Pinterest extension to your Chrome browser to make pinning even easier. Just follow this link and add to the extension to your browser and then many images will have the pinning capability. As you can see below, there is a Pinterest “save” button on the top left image to save the composition to Pinterest which I find super helpful. But it’s not always the case. Saving the image isn’t super quick, but it is easy. Never hesitate to reach out to us if you are having trouble!
If in the case you find an image you love and want to use for your website you can purchase or download it. If it’s from depositphotos.com, just comment on the image after you pin it, the link to the image so I can purchase it with our agency account which is part of your website project (number of images allowed for this depends on your website proposal. If you have questions about this, just ask!)
In addition, our board has several boards you can view and pin from to start! If we our schedule isn’t crazy full and we know a bit about what you’re doing, we often peruse Pinterest as well for ideas for your project. You might find things in the secret board that we pinned and commented on! Feel free to provide feedback on what we pin too by adding a comment under ours.
This step is crucial in identifying how your business is seen by others so don’t limit this step. If anything, do more than you need to here. Explore other words—especially if the words you use aren’t pulling the kind of imagery you want. If you change the word you use, please also add it to the Design Discovery Brief!
This is your website project and we want it to reflect your company so well that when someone walks into your brick and mortar place, or calls you on the phone, the website is seamless of your offerings, your personality, and the uniqueness your company has.
And of course, have a fun doing it!!
