1. Join up! But why? Pinterest is a wonderful place where you can keep records of images that you find on the web. Once you are signed up, be sure to download their toolbar app. That way, wherever you are on the web, you can hit the Pinterest button in your toolbar and select an image to upload to your account. You have the ability to customize your boards, which makes it a great way for you to organize your interests.

For those of you that are planning a wedding, this is an absolutely brilliant way to keep track of your ideas and inspiration. I’ve had people say to me, “How can I make my wedding reflect my style if I don’t know what my style is?” Pinterest is an easy answer. Start pinning away and after you’ve amassed a collection, you’ll begin to notice a consistent look or vibe. Go with what you pin the most!

Pinterest is also a way to check out some of your wedding vendors and see what inspires them. If they like similar stuff, or have created boards you resonate with, you can bet they’ve got a handle on your sense of style. We heard from a wedding planner just last week who said she booked a bride because she loved one of the planner’s inspiration boards! Genius, right? Creating your own collection of images also helps you to visually communicate with your bridesmaids, helpers, wedding vendors what you imagine for your wedding day!

Lastly, Pinterest is a wonderful resource to go to for image searches. I no longer use google image search, but rather head straight to Pinterest, where I know the images are going to be much higher quality, because of course, they had to be “Pinnable” to get there in the first place, right?

2. Hopefully we’ve convinced you to get on board! Once you’re there, be sure to get the Pin It button in your bookmarks bar. Be sure to create boards in categories you know you’ll want to save images in. If you are using Pinterest for your wedding, don’t just create one board labelled “Wedding Ideas.” Rather, have one for dresses, one for flowers, one for colors, one for stationery…you get the idea right?

Some sites have already implemented “Pin It” buttons onto their pages, but even if they haven’t, you can always revert to that button in your bookmark bar, so get to pinning!

Next up, you’ll want to start following people…that’s where all the repinning fun comes in! Pretty sure this little comic hits the nail on the head. I couldn’t resist sharing, although if you want to see an entire board related to HILARIOUS Pinterest humor (for those of you that are already addicted) head here:

3. With so many people hopping on board with Pinterest, one of the first things you’ll want to do is carefully curate WHO you follow. How do you go about doing this? Most of your fave bloggers are already on Pinterest, so you can start out by following them. If you like what they are pinning, check out who THEY follow.

Once you find some more Pinners you love, continue to move up the chain and watch who your favorites follow. It’s always a surefire way to make sure that the stream of images you see when you sign in to your account is always inspiring and gorgeous. The front page of Pinterest always looks WAY different to me than my own dashboard. That’s because I follow super great peeps that jive with my style! Your experience will be that much better if you make sure to follow folks who pin stuff you love!

Here’s a peek at what I see when I’m signed in right now: (Where’s the “Repin It All” button?)

4. Pinterest has a full page on proper etiquette and answers tons of questions about their site. However, there are still some definite issues with poorly credited sources. There are lots of artists and photographers out there who are working hard at creating all these gorgeous images, and nothing is more annoying than finding a necklace you must have on your body by the weekend but you can’t find where to purchase it! So we thought it is worth mentioning a tiny little guy called a permalink. Yep. It’s a tough techie term, darlings, but it’s an important distinction between sending someone to a specific post and sending them to page 10 of a blog. If I go to page 10 of someone’s blog, at any given time, the content on page 1o will always be changing, because duh, blogs keep getting updated. In order to really properly credit a source, one must click on the TITLE of the blog post to get to the post page. Sometimes you’ll have to click on comment, or a send link. But it’s always there somewhere. From there, you’ll want to hit your “Pin It” button in the toolbar and pin away. Also, the better description you give, the more likely people will find you when they start hunting for images.

We tend to notice that Tumblr is pretty much the worst possible place when it comes proper credits. So if you’ve pinned an image from Tumblr we can pretty much 1000% guarantee that the poster is not the original source. Telling us where YOU found the item isn’t actually proper credit. If you can’t follow the links back to the original publisher, we recommend following this handy guide to attributing images and this one, which shows you how to find an image’s original source for proper crediting using a google image search. You just upload the image and like magic, google tells you where the original source is. (This has worked for us 9 times out of 10, but we hear it can sometimes be incorrect).

The main thing is to really protect Pinterest by safeguarding image sources. Photographers and florists and all kinds of other rad artists will continue to find the value in Pinterest, as long as they are credited so when someone wants to hire them, or buy their product, it’s doable! Right?

Favorite pin of the day is these linen napkins, pinned originally by Martha Stewart Weddings and belonging to Design Mom. (Yes…there’s even a DIY for these pupsters. Brighten it up, ladies!).

Get in my life, gold confetti napkin collection. Right now!

Alright then, darlings. Pin it to win it! (And just for fun, if you are interested in a marketing version of Pinterest benefits, head here.