With all the apps out there you're probably wondering why I'm recommending Evernote. Well, with Evernote users can just snap a photo, record some audio and save it to the app for future use. The great part about Evernote is it helps keep all of the user's work in one convenient location. It's the perfect app for pinterest users. With this app users can save entire web pages to their Evernote account with the nifty web clipper browser extensions. Users can get the whole page: text, images and links. With Evernote it's even possible to search images for text. This app is a virtual planner/organizer. It allows users to store important information and access it with ease. So specifically for Pinterest, users could plan parties and vacations or use the app to store recipes, the possibilities are endless with Evernote. This app is available for both iPhone and Android applications and it's free for basic and $4.99 per month or $44.99 per year for premium.

One of the most popular categories on Pinterest is the humor section. Users pin funny memes, stories and pictures from humor websites such as 9gag, buzzfeed, photodump and other like sites. The branded meme is not a new concept but they are increasing in popularity. These days, a meme is an umbrella term for copied and altered tidbits of amusing online content, from animations and photo captions to viral videos that inspire a flood of parodies. Within weeks, most memes fade into oblivion, but those with endurance make the leap to the commercial world. Properly exploited, some memes can bring in anywhere from a few thousand dollars for a single licensed broadcast of a popular video to six figures for an integrated marketing campaign based around a meme. So when I was given the assignment to brand asparagus I immediately thought I would utilize the humor section of Pinterest. But then came the issue, how does one make asparagus funny or relevant in pop culture? I thought I would utilize Buddy the Elf. As some of you may have recognized the title of this blog is from the popular movie. Listen to Buddy and eat your asparagus! Asparagus is awesome!

In November 2012 the creative geniuses over at Pinterest launched a hot new feature, "secret boards!" On Pinterest's official blog, they say, "You can use secret boards to keep track of holiday gifts, plan a special event, or work on a project you aren't yet ready to share with the rest of the world." Like most people when I first heard the news I was elated! Now I could pin all of those guilty pleasures and nobody has to know about it! Single women don't have to feel guilty for creating a wedding board. Users can create gift boards, date idea boards, or a board devoted to your boarder line creepy obsession with Johnny Depp. Yay! Everybody wins. Except, maybe not. On a personal level secret boards are great, awesome even magical! But on a business and professional level secret boards are not the greatest invention since sliced bread especially for retailers, photographers and bloggers. These professionals rely on other people to keep pinning their product. For example I follow American Eagle, I log on to see that they just pinned a new pair of boots they are carrying I like them so I'm going to pin them but instead of pinning them to my "Style" board for everyone that follows my board to see (as well as anyone who clicks on the Women's Fashion tab where my "Style" board could randomly pop up) I instead pin the boots to my secret "gifts" board American Eagle potentially lost 100's if not 1000's of views. The same could be said about photographers who get lots of pins into "Wedding" boards but if people start creating secret "Wedding" boards the amount of times their pictures will get re-pinned will cut down. Also bloggers who talk about DIY and cheap wedding ideas their traffic will slow if people don't keep re-pinning so that their followers will see the link and re-pin again. Secret boards have been out for a couple of months now and I haven't heard any negative feed back about them thus far but I can see this developing into an issue. Luckily each user is only allowed 3 secret boards and it is impossible to make an already created board secret. Also if a user has created a secret board it is possible to make it public later on so when that single girl finds her soul mate she can switch the settings and let the whole world know she's off the market! How do you feel about secret boards? Do you love them or hate them? What are some good uses for secret boards?

I have been racking my brain all week trying to think of a "famous" blogger.  I did several searches trying to discover a blog that sky rocketed to stardom. But as I was searching I started thinking to myself, "What blogs do I like that I have found because of Pinterest?" While I have discovered many awesome blogs through Pinterest one of my absolute favorites is Sugar Pie Farm House. The author of the blog refers to herself as Aunt Ruthie and creates the most wonderful "homey" atmosphere. How one goes about creating a homey atmosphere in cyberspace is beyond me but Aunt Ruthie did it perfectly. Maybe it's the whimsical way she writes or how she let's her readers into her home every season showing how she decorates for holiday's around the farm. I first came across Sugar Pie Farm House when I clicked the glass of Christmas eggnog. Click the picture to see her site!

Aunt Ruthie's most popular pins include this Ceder Farm Hill sign and her fall inspired chalk board design. She has about 7,500 followers on Pinterest and is very good about pinning mostly other people's pins. Her top two boards are her Down on the Farm board  and Christmas board with roughly 300 pins each. Her own board titled Aunt Ruthie's Farm House has only 9 pins and this is the only board she will pin stuff from her own blog. She is aware that the key to Pinterest is let people know who you are create a small board with your content and let your followers do the rest. 

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site in the history of the internet. According to Jason Miles and Karen Lacey, authors of the book, Pinterest Power, it grew faster than Facebook,  YouTube and Twitter. As a business owner or public relations or marketing professional this website cannot be overlooked. Already businesses of all sizes have increased sales and revenue through using Pinterest. Businesses such as ModCloth, Berda Style and Lil Blue Boo have attributed much of their success to Pinterest. 

Holiday shopping traffic from Pinterest doubled in December 2012 from December 2011, and now counts for nearly 10 percent of all traffic from social stores. While Facebook still dominates social e-commerce referrals, its share dropped 5 percent to reach 90 percent. And despite Twitter’s claims to the contrary, according to this study based on RichRelvance’s analysis of 490 million shopping sessions which took place in 2012 and 2011 during a ten day period beginning on Thanksgiving, Twitter contributed less than 1 percent of Social E-commerce. (http://www.richrelevance.com/blog/2012/12/holiday-insights-2012/)

One of the main reasons why Pinterest is growing so quickly is because businesses’ content keeps working for them months after they have “pinned” or posted it onto Pinterest. Unlike Facebook and Twitter where the user must constantly be making posts or tweets users on Pinterest can let their content do the work for them. According to Miles and Lacey, over 80 percent of pins are repins; this means that the followers and their followers and their followers will do the marketing for you. 

To view the PDF info graphic published by RichRelevance click on the document below.