I joined the Pinterest Creator Program, and started exploring the Pinterest Academy last month.
Pinterest is not your typical social media platform. In fact, for many, the term “social media platform” doesn’t really apply to Pinterest. Not even to its founder Ben Silbermann, who told The Guardian back in 2016 that, “When we talk to people about Pinterest we often describe it as not a social network … Social networks are about communicating with other people. Pinterest is really about planning and getting ideas for your own personal life.”
Pinterest has always been more of a visually dazzling search engine than a traditional social platform, indeed. It’s not a place where you go to follow celebrities, but where you go to see “creators” in the truest form. Many of the most successful pinners on the platform are simply showcasing their work and/or business in a way that inspires. Though they may not be influencers in the Instagram sense, they’re influencers in their very own, singular way. And to celebrate the innovators that help to fuel the discovery engine that is Pinterest, the platform is in the nascent stages of producing its own resources and tools for influencers with Pinterest Creators.
In keeping with Pinterest’s left of center identity amongst the social platforms, its Pinterest Creator page is not your typical resource center. Just like any other pinner page, it comes with its own boards, highlights and pins. It’s not your run-of-the-mill cavalcade of essays on how to elevate your Pinterest game. The platform uses its own functions to tell the story and few channels know how to tell an engaging, beautiful story quite like Pinterest. They use their endless well of data to paint colorful stories and leverage those stories to guide creators in the right direction, which they put to great use in showcasing how creators can make and leverage Story Pins.
More traditional creator resources and tools, like how to successfully tackle “Campaign objectives,” “Building and launching a campaign,” and “Targeting and buying,” are all part of the Pinterest Academy, a center of free online courses created to aid creators with business pages to master the more technical, back-end part of the creative process. Another engaging piece of the newfound Pinterest Creators universe is “Mavens,” a video series that highlights some of the small business success stories on the platform.