New social media sites are cropping up all the time and it seems like I’m being invited to join something-or-other nearly every week. Since it’s unrealistic to try and maintain an active presence everywhere, I tend to wait and see whether a particular site is going to be worth my while before jumping on the bandwagon. Such was the case with Pinterest.

Janet Barclay on Pinterest

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, here’s how Pinterest describes itself:

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

You can almost think of Pinterest as an online bookmarking service, but instead of saving titles of blog posts and web pages that you like, you save an image from the page along with a note about it. Once pinned, the image retains a link back to the original website. You can pin images from any website, and you can even “repin” images that other users have pinned, whether you are following them or not.

A lot of my clients and other contacts were talking about Pinterest, so I signed up, but didn’t immediately see it as a business marketing tool.

I quickly realized that Pinterest is a great way for professional organizers to showcase their organizing projects and their favorite organizing products. Here are just a few of the really great boards I’ve seen:

I decided to create a few boards to reflect my personal interests so I could get a feel for how it works, and it didn’t take me long to realize why Pinterest is so popular and so addictive. I was having trouble figuring out how I could use it to promote Organized Assistant®, however, until Clare Kumar suggested that I post some Before and After screenshots of websites I’ve redesigned. It’s not a complete collection as I haven’t always remembered to take a Before screenshot, and the pictures have to be posted online somewhere in order to pin them to a board, but I think I’m off to a pretty good start!

I’ve also created a Professional Organizers Blog Carnival board with links to all the Carnivals, going back to the very first one in June 2009.

Over the past few weeks, Pinterest has been making big headlines, not just in social media circles but on major business websites like Forbes, Fast Company, and The New York Times, and I’m convinced that it’s going to be an essential marketing tool for promoting your organizing business.

Are you on Pinterest? If so, please post your user name in the Comments section, and let us know how you’re using it.