I have been using Pinterest for a long time now and it has conquered it’s own place in my daily social media routine. After two years, I have a couple of pins that work best on Pinterest. I will tell you why in this blogpost. Want to join me on Pinterest? My profile name is Justkirsten.

Pinterest is my favorite visual pinboard, like I use Pocket (and Delicious before Pocket) as my website pinboard: to remember things, articles, projects and websites I discover on the web.

I also use Pinterest more and more to save the things I see or discover in real life, like today, when I was at a lecture and the lecturer told us about BioLace. I loved the picture and the concept, so I immediately looked it up through google, went to the original website and pinned BioLace on my pinboard ‘Concepts’. From my iPhone. I mostly place pins through on Twitter too. I use Pinterest mostly on my iPad and iPhone these days, like 35% of all Pinterest users.

Thirdly I like to create projects with Pinterest like the pinboard  ’50‘ I created for a colleague when she had her 50th birthday. I invited 10 other colleagues to pin everything they thought that was fitting wih the birthday girl (and the age 50). Another interesting pinboard is SXSW, a big conference I visited in Austin Texas. I Pinned all cool stuff to do over there during the conference.

My pics are mostly pics I find on the web, but I am trying to create boards with my own pics like ‘Places I ‘ve been’ with the most beautiful pics of my holidays. Offcourse I am starting to add maps to those kinds of boards, because then these boards will become more relevant and much nicer.

[highlight] The 5 pins that worked best for me and why: [/highlight]
Click on the images if you want to go to the image on Pinterest.

>>>>>>UPDATE article on saturday the 29th march (10 weeks later)
My Johnny Depp pin has been repinned over a thousand times and I found out the main reason: when you search for “Johnny Depp” on Pinterest, my pin is high in the results. Why it is high in the results has to do with the reasons I gave you earlier: being the first pinner of this image from a well known website. Same counts for some other pins os mine, search for “handwriting font”  and you’ll find the pin you see underneath Johnny Depp.

Referring other PINBOARDS 
The second thing that plays an important role in new followers and being discovered on Pinterest I found out lately is the refers Pinterest gives you when you placed a new pin. You get a suggestion: this pin has also been pinned on …. That is how you find relevant other pinboards and pins about the subject you were pinning. This is very useful and also gets you discovered by more pinners.
I created new pinboards about my expertise: blogging, Instagram tips and examples and online influencers. I pin 2 or 3 pins every couple of days on these boards and it’s got me 200 followers the last 4 weeks. Faster than ever. So referral pinboards and pinning regularly will boost your traffic too! And it works best if you really know a lot about the subject, so your pinboard is a collection of quality pins from different sites.
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146 repins and 23 likes.
>> update 29 march 1003 repins and 150 likes <<
I read the Guardian article of best pics from photographer Mark Seliger on the moment it came out. I love the pic and Johnny Depp has always been one of my favorite men. I pinned it on sunday january 5th. It got repinned a lot the days after, but 8 days later and it STILL gets repinned a lot!
WHY?
– It’s an amazing pic (duh)
– Johnny Depp is popular
– I was the first and original pinner and most pinners like to pin from the original curator
– If you search for Johnny Depp on Pinterest this pin is high in the results

73 repins, 10 likes and still counting
>> update 29 march 218 repins and 44 likes <<
I pinned this image a year ago. Reason of popularity:
– Handwriting fonts / illustrations are popular subjects
– I am the first and original pinner
– It also contains an inspiring quote which are popular too
– If you search for Handwriting font on Pinterest this pin is high in the results

14 repins and 3 likes.
My pinboard ‘Infographics’ has a lot of followers, even a lot of men! This infographic is my most popular one with and this is why:
– I am a blogexpert, the reason most people follow me
– My pinboard Infographics is popular and I pin lots of infographics regularly

32 repins, 17 likes.
Why:
– I was one of the first to create a board called magazines on which I pin covers of magazines who are active on Pinterest.
– Country Living is a very popular magazine in the US, i have a lot of followers from there

22 repins, 5 likes
Why:
– I was the first and original pinner
– the style of this image is romantic and popular among lots of people
– I have a lot of interiorlovers in my following (because I worked at home deco brands vtwonen and 101 woonideeen)

Want to know more about Pinterest users and stats? Here is an overview from november 2013, with 36 amazing facts.  I also wrote a blogpost on Pinterest for the website Fast Moving Targets (it’s in Dutch) with the title: ‘Pinterest is for women what Google is for men.’