So, you’re already using Facebook and sending the occasional tweet. Some of you are on YouTube and Google+ as well. We all know how powerful social media can be, yet the last thing you want to hear is that you should be using another social network as well. But…

What if I told you this one was different? That it is as useful for your staff as it is for your parents? That it doesn’t need updating every two seconds? That it drives more web traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined? You’d be interested, right? And rightly so, because Pinterest is a must for every discerning nursery and nursery group. Here’s why.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is an online pinboard that allows you to digitally pin the things you love. Content is organized around boards that are split up into themes. The idea is that you pin things that interest you on to different boards of your own making.

You can add visuals to a board either by clicking a special button in your browser, adding the web address or uploading images from your computer or mobile device. Everything is based around images and each image always contains a link back to the original source.

It is different to other social media sites because it is entirely based around themes and images, rather than a chronology of updates or events. Let’s imagine you create a board all about Literacy, for example. Whether you continue to add images and ideas to the board or not, it will look just as relevant today as it will in six months because it is not time weighted.

A visitor to your Pinterest site will just see your great ideas, and not your periods of absence. This makes it permanently fresh and relevant – and fully manageable for a busy nursery!

Getting started.

You can sign up for Pinterest using your Facebook or Twitter account, or you can use your email address. If you are setting up an account for the nursery, it is worth creating a business profile and officially linking your website and other social networks to it.

Once you have created your account, be sure to upload a profile pic – your logo will probably be best – and complete as many details about yourself as you can. Pinterest will suggest some boards for you, but you can just as easily create your own.

The easiest way to find things to pin is to type a key word into the search box in the top left of the screen. It will show you images pinned about this topic, boards related to this topic, and people related to this topic – it can be hugely inspiring!

By hovering your mouse over an image you like you’ll see a red ‘Pin It’ button. This then enables you to pin the image on to your own board. Be warned – pinning can become highly addictive!

Using Pinterest to promote your nursery.

You’ll be amazed at the sheer volume of ideas and inspiration for early years on Pinterest. As well a being a great source of inspiration for planning your own activities, it is a brilliant way of showcasing your own ethos and unique offerings to the world.

Pinterest is an incredible tool for anyone in education. It is great for organising vast quantities of information and collating ideas. Some suggestions for ways you can use it include:

• Organising and storing ideas eg. Craft Ideas
• Creating boards related to different topics the children are studying
• Encouraging home based learning
• Secret boards just for staff
• Compiling content, including educational video
• Boards about different outings and special events
• Nursery photos
• Creating group projects and collaborating with others
• Sharing boards with parents and encouraging them to contribute
• Boards that represent your values eg. Sharing or Outdoor Play
• Showing off the children’s artwork
• Boards that focus on activities
• Boards about different rooms within the nursery
• A board for each member of staff to showcase their talents and interests

The list is endless!

Business benefits.

Pinterest has a number of benefits for you as a business:

It makes your team more efficient.

One of Pinterest’s main advantages is its ability to save links to resources that you discover online. We all find useful and interesting articles and ideas on the web that would be useful for another day. The problem until now has been finding a way of keeping these together and being able to easily refer back to them.

The visual nature of Pinterest makes it really easy to rediscover resources and organise them under different themes or headings. You can always link back to the original source, and everyone in the team can access them, meaning no duplicated work. A real time saver!

It shows parents and other stakeholders what you’re really about.

Pinterest can, at a glance, show a newcomer to your nursery what areas you focus on, what matters to you, and how you value your children’s work, your staff and your parents. It can show off resources, values, site and people in a matter of moments. It can inspire and amaze.

See it less as another network you have to update and more as an online brochure for everything you stand for. The visual impact is not to be underestimated.

It promotes your achievements.

Pinterest is all about showing instead of telling. You can tell prospective parents that you promote independence or you can show it through a board of activities on Pinterest. You can tell Ofsted that you encourage home based learning or you can show it through a related Pinterest board that contains suggested activities and parental contributions. You can tell parents and carers that you’re currently looking at creepy crawlies with the pre-schoolers or you can show it through a Pinterest board of their artwork and other images. This approach builds PR and is infinitely more powerful.

It makes you stand out online.

With Pinterest, you can create a glossy, image-packed online showcase for your offerings as a nursery, without having to pay professional photographers or designers a penny. Every picture you select, every activity you pin, every image you collect shows off your expertise and enthusiasm in a way that is fresh, varied – and unique to your nursery.

Parents feel as if they’re flicking through a glossy brochure about what you do and it hasn’t cost you anything except a little bit of time. You could create an incredible Pinterest showcase in an afternoon – and it will look just as fresh in six months time and it will right now. It really is a winner.

By Kate Tyler

Kate is a social media marketing expert, published writer and Managing Director of Shake Social Ltd. Struggling to maintain your own blog? We can help!

This article first appeared in Nursery Management Today in August 2014.