It’s amazing how quickly social sites have grown in the last few years. One of the newest is Pinterest, described by the site as a “virtual pinboard.” Using Pinterest, you can pin websites, pictures, documents, etc.
The site makes it easy to create boards. For campus ministry, some boards may be: Books, Bibles, Events, Weekly Schedule, Missions, Food, Music, Hot Topics, Call to Action, Parents, Serious Conversation, Nashville (or your city), For the Girls, For the Guys, etc.
Pins for:
Books might include something you and your students are studying, what everyone is reading, books that might need discussion. You may find Books to be too broad a topic; you may need to break it down further.
Bibles might include the different translations and paraphrases. A comment on each translation could help your students decide on a Bible or help them know the differences between translations and paraphrases. What’s the difference between The Message and The New Revised Standard Version?
Events might include anything special going on through the campus ministry, campus or town.
Weekly Schedule might just be a pdf uploaded.
Parents may include pins that relate to the college or the ministry.
Hot Topics can come from the secular or Christian media or even something going on around campus or your ministry.
Serious Conversation could include topics that would relate to college students. Recently, a study came out about the expansions of eating disorder diagnoses. Post that and make a comment. Another study came out about single Christians having sex
You might like to include a board for special events. If you have a scavenger hunt, you can use the board to post pins of what you want students to find or use it for the students to upload their finds.
Is there a funny inside joke you have with your students? Maybe you joke about different hairstyles. Make a Hairstyles board.
If you allow, anyone (including students and strangers) will be able to add pins to the boards. Comments on pins make it more social. Email settings can be adjusted to personal preference. You can receive emails for any action on the boards or just for specific boards.
There is another aspect of Pinterest that makes it more social. You can follow profiles or specific boards. Perhaps you find a profile that includes a Campus Ministry board. You may not want to follow the profile’s other boards so you can just click the follow button under the Campus Ministry board or another board you’d like to follow.
How do you find things on Pinterest? There is a search bar on the top left of the Pinterest page. Underneath the search, you will see Pins, Boards and People (which includes brands, businesses). Input your search. The first search that comes up are for pins, but you can easily switch between the three by a simple click. If you see a pin you like, hover over it and you will see three options: repin, like, comment. If you’d like for the pin to appear on one of your boards just click repin. You may just want to like the pin or write a comment. (You are able to see your likes under the drop down menu under your profile picture in the right top corner.) For boards you’d like to follow, just push the follow button displayed on the board.
Tips:
Brainstorm possible names for boards.
Boards can be rearranged.
Pinterest does not have a way to subcategorize under a board. You’ll need to break down broad topics into more specific topics. Ex: Books would become Study Reading, Current Reading, Books to Talk About.
You can now choose which pin can be your board’s picture.
Get the Pin It button (located in drop down under About.) This button makes Pinterest so much easier. Put the button on your bookmarks bar. When you come to something online that you’d like to pin, just hit the button. It’s so simple!
When you pin something, make sure the link goes to what you intend. For example: I want to pin Guy’s 8 Things Our Young People Can Learn From Tim Tebow. I need to be on that specific page to pin. If I’m scrolling through his posts on his landing page and pin, the pin on my board when clicked will send a person directly to his blog and not to the specific post.
Upload your own pictures or videos.
Remember there is nothing private about Pinterest. There is no option to have a board be visible only to you.
Pinterest can be a great addition to your ministry. Happy pinning!
*Disclaimer: My Pinterest profile is a mess which is how I learned these tips. My fingers are crossed that Pinterest will eventually allow moving pins within boards or to other boards and adding sub-categorization.
Some (p)interesting Pinterest boards to look at:
Glee (look at their board titles)
[ BACK TO THE TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL MEDIA & MINISTRY HOMEPAGE ]
6 thoughts on “Pintrestry (or Pinterest in Ministry)”
Great post, Heather. I especially like the idea about using pins to comment on different translations of the Bible. That would have been super helpful to me when I was a campus minister.
How do you find yourself using Pinterest most often? As a way to point out to other content (like a visual bookmarks)? Or more pins as content themselves, contained on a board (ie, it doesn’t matter where the pin links, it’s the pin in concert with the others on the board that is important)?
Thank you Anderson.
Most pins (on all of Pinterest) are food-related, recipes or cute food. My Recipes board has the most pins. I’ve been making other food categories in order to be better organized. Those pins mostly go directly to recipes. I’ll browse through a site to see if there are other recipes to pin or see what other information is on the site. If I really like it and I think it will be more beneficial than just one pin, I created an Online Places board and will pin to the homepage or I’ll put a note in the pin comments that it’s a site I should peruse more.
I pin for myself, but I also pin in order to promote or give a review like boards Products I Love or Book Recommendations.
Did I answer your question? You can check out my boards at http://pinterest.com/ttennheat/. I’m in the midst of reorganization, but maybe you’ll get an idea.
Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of boards of food and book recommendations. It still seems to me that there are largely two reasons that people pin things: as a way of visually bookmarking the link (so you can get to that recipe you want to try or that book you want to read) or as a way to collect images/ideas which inspire (bridal hairstyles comes to mind).
In those respects, it is a great way to curate content that you want to cull through again later. But I’m still having a hard time seeing the social aspect of Pinterest. There is the whole commenting on other people’s pins… but is it really all that conversational in your experience? It hasn’t been in mine. Repinning is kind of like a visual retweet, I suppose.
I’m still having a hard time imagining how I’d integrate this into an online campus ministry social media presence. I’m totally intrigued by it, and it’s easy enough to use. I’ve got several boards of pins myself. But haven’t yet made the leap to using it in ministry.
Great blog and terrific tips
I have just discovered Pinterest and have been mulling over its implications for campus ministry. Thanks for this primer.
As of right now, my Pinterest profile has a board dedicated to our campus ministry:
http://pinterest.com/mynameisbrandon/christian-campus-house/
When I created the board, I invited two girls (our biggest Pinterest junkies) to be contributors, so they can pin things they find that is relevant to our ministry. We’re just getting started, but it’s been interesting so far.
OK, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been looking into this for quite some time, and now you’ve totally got my interest peaked. I can definitely see serious campus ministry implication with Pinterest. After reading your post, I’ve got 3 or 4 of my leaders…who use Pinterest…researching the possibilities. Thanks for a great idea!!
Jim
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