Perhaps it’s just me but as every new Social Media tool emerges I get a little carried away. My more recent toy, sorry tool, is Pinterest (Facebook with pictures but so much richer for that). What I wanted to share with you however aren’t the pictures of the places I’ll go to before I die, the knock out dress for the next wedding, the wall paper I’ll have in the lounge when I get round to decorating or the recipe for when my mother arrives – although I could. I wanted to share some other more work related (as in B2B and internal communication) uses I’ve found for it:
Conveying information
I find it surprising that other’s don’t find purchasing as fascinating as me. The challenge I have therefore is how to engage business owners and managers who aren’t interested in purchasing in that very subject. I’ve generated 2 Pinterest boards to offer small visual sound bites that I hope my target audience will find appealing. See Purchasing in business and Cost of getting it wrong pin boards.
In the short term neither of these are likely to generate lots of traffic to my boards directly within Pinterest. Most of my target audience aren’t Pinterest users – yet. However I can link to it from FB, Twitter, blogs and my web site and hope to spread the message in ways these other formats fail to do. Because after all pictures do paint a thousand words.
Training Notes
I recently attended a preview of the Choice Point film – there’s also a book. What I did was take my notes and pull a Pinterest board together that reflected the insights and learning I had from attending. I can certainly say the learning was embedded much more as a result of undertaking the task.
So Pinterest might just be an option for some individuals to support their CPD – especially those more visual amongst us – just a thought.
Coaching
I use a tool with personal coaching clients that can get a little deep. I often use the process on myself but the lack of a coach sometimes can mean I skip the hard parts. Using Pinterest to represent each step of the process and the learning meant it was so much harder for me to cut the corners as I usually do. I’m not suggesting everyone get onto Pinterest and bare all. I do, however, think it’s uses are as yet untapped.
I can image all sorts of uses within business for policy documents, procedures, communications etc. But then perhaps that’s just me just getting carried away. Afterall Pinterest still need to do to help that happen by enabling us to make boards private and allowing us to only share boards with selected others not everyone.
Enjoy – I am and can certainly say it’s keeping me positive and focused as I am able to represent my vision boards and fridge door cluttered with quotes on line and keep them updated daily. Best not tell you about the recipes I’ve used 🙂
Alison
The Purchasing Coach
