A Congregational Pinterest Primer
I had been mulling on whether or not we should get our congregation on Pinterest for a couple of months. I knew it was the next big thing, and my personal Pinterest account (which I didn’t use that much) kept getting more and more followers. In my mind, the critical mass of folks I personally know using the platform had been reached, so it was time to get our congregation started. We’ve been going for about a week and a half, and we’re learning lessons every day. And out of all of our social media platforms, right now, I’m having the most fun using Pinterest.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social media platform that is all photo and video – the only text allowed are in the captions or comments. I compared it recently to Facebook if Facebook were only photos and no text. There is a heavy, heavy emphasis on sharing over original content. If you’ve ever wanted to curate your own art gallery from all the possible art in existence, Pinterest is right up your alley. Demographic wise, it seems that Pinterest at the moment skews much more heavily female than male in terms of posters.
Here’s a quick glossary of Pinterest’s unique terms:
Pins – individual posts of a picture/video
Repin – similar to reblogging or retweeting, where you repost a pin you’ve found that you like
Like – If you like the pin but don’t think you should go all the way and repin it, like it. It keeps track of what pins you’ve liked.
Boards – you use these to organize pins based on whatever themes you want. You can have boards that just your account curates or group boards that multiple people can curate.
Search – There’s a pretty solid search function where you can search for individual pins, boards, or users. The search looks through the captions on the individual pins, so you want to make sure you are captioning the pins you want to be found using clear keywords.
Why use Pinterest?
First and foremost, people are flocking to Pinterest. I want our congregation to be where the people are going, so when they get there, they see they’ve already got their spiritual home there to welcome them.
Out of all the social media platforms we use, the emphasis on creativity and art is highest on Pinterest, surpassing even Tumblr. It’s hard to not be inspired using Pinterest, and I think our congregations ought to be inspiring not only our members but the greater world.
It’s FUN. As a social media coordinator, sometimes facebook can just be so boring. Pinterest is right now the most fun I’m having as a social media coordinator.
Group boards look to be a pretty powerful tool to collaboratively inspire. We’re just beginning to play with group boards, but it seems a natural fit for congregations and a social media team.
How is UUCA using Pinterest?
We’re still learning, but we’ve got a pretty good set up so far. We have boards for our congregation, Unitarian Universalism, general Inspiration, Atlanta, and each of the six sources of Unitarian Universalism. We’re focused right now on inspiration. We’re searching through relevant posts from the six sources and repining a lot of posts. We’re starting to branch out into posting some original content as well (free stock photos + uu quotes and pictures from our congregation.)
There’s a lot we could do with Pinterest in the future. We’re waiting to really get comfortable with what we’re already doing before expanding our Pinterest efforts. Here are just a couple of the additional ideas so far.
-Sermon talkback. Have a board for a few sermons a month and invite people to post photo/artistic replies.
-Individual RE classes each having their own board, both children’s and adult’s. Make it a group board and invite people to participate. Folks can post inspiration, pictures, lessons, thoughts, etc. from the class. There are a lot of crafts around on Pinterest for children’s RE classes.
What lessons have you learned so far?
-Captions are important. Don’t just repin the caption that came with the initial photo. Change it.
-Group boards have the potential to be an extremely interesting addition to RE programs.
-Get a team. Because Pinterest is so focused on creativity and expression, a congregation should have multiple people posting to its Pinterest account so as to just have one person’s frame of reference. This is more important on Pinterest than say, facebook, if you use facebook primarily for event posting.
-When you create a new board, try to get 9 pins on it quickly so it looks “full.”
-Learn by doing. We decided to start doing Pinterest first, then as a team later come up with specific congregational policies.
-If you’re a blogger or website content manager, PICTURES. If people find a site they like and want to share it on Pinterest, it needs a picture somewhere on the page it can grab.