Pinterest Day 18 | Pinterest Etiquette and Pinning Nice

Everything I know about etiquette I learned from my grandmother, Mimi. I stayed with her in Little Rock for weeks most every summer, and she took the opportunity to make sure I knew my napkin went in my lap, the salad fork was meant for the salad, the soup spoon was never to be left resting in the bowl, that I had a firm handshake and made eye contact when I said hello, that I listened, stood up straight, you get the idea.

I have to wonder what she’d think of social media, and Pinterest especially because she loved everything to be beautiful. But where would Mimi say that manners fit into the Internet. In her honor, I’ve come up with these rules to follow on Pinterest Etiquette. After all, she’d want me to be lady like whether or not I am in the same room as my fellow pinners.

• Let’s start with the obvious: save your porn and nakedness for the sake of nakedness for somewhere else. Pinterest isn’t to get your jollies off, but more to make your crafting, decorating, life inspired heart beat a little faster. You can report questionable pins with the flag icon in the bottom right-hand corner of any pin.
• Give credit where it’s due. Please please please (it’s that important) try to credit the original source. The same way you didn’t want someone stealing your answers in high school Algebra, bloggers and web site owners don’t want credit for their work given to someone else. Take a few minutes to search out the original poster of the fabulous project and pin from there.
• Be kind. (Mimi would love this one.) On Pinterest, more so than Facebook or Twitter, you follow people without knowing them in real life or without even knowing very much about them. But you follow their boards because they’re full of things you love. But sometimes you need to remember that there are people behind those boards. Be kind with your comments. The Golden Rule applies here (and on other social media).
• Pin the post not the blog’s home page. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked on a pin of something I’m super excited to try only to land on the homepage of some blog or on a page with only the image. I’m left wandering on the site, looking for a search bar to try to find the content I’m looking for. Sometimes I give up. But if you pin the image directly from the post, then you save everyone a lot of time, and you’re doing a good job of sharing the love for a specific post.
• Don’t pin from a Google or Bing image search. Please. Click over to the actual post and pin from there.
• Be specific. Give details in the description space on the pin. Bonus points if you also give the site’s name.
• Check to see where pins go before you repin. That way, you can be sure you’re repinning real, quality content, and you can add attribution if it’s missing. Believe it or not, there are plenty of spam pins out there that misrepresent their linked content. Don’t add to the spam.

I know I’m guilty of breaking some of these rules. But I don’t think they’d be hard to follow as I pin and repin into the future. From today on, I’ll be pinning as if Mimi were looking over my shoulder. (And maybe she is.)

What etiquette rules or guidelines do you use on Pinterest that I missed? Share so we’re all pinning like Miss Manners.