There’s a song from back then called The Calm Before The Storm. It was performed by Ruben Blades, in a crossover album from his native Spanish. One of the lines runs like this: There was a time when ignorance made our innocence strong. I’ve feared becoming that person, that website, since social media burst onto the scene in the early-2000s. I feel that way today.
There was a time … when all that mattered was Facebook and Twitter. Facebook was that warehouse of information, links, contacts, that sat around like email did and does. And there was Twitter, for immediate engagement, another vehicle for brief bursts of information. Humorous as it is to write, Facebook seemed more developed, like a community. Twitter, on the other hand, was the inebriated guy on the street corner, screaming out an epiphany, then stepping back to the sill, hoping for a reaction.
Then came Pinterest and Instagram. WhaWhat? The latter seemed easier to understand than the former. You take photos, you post photos, people heart them and every so often, leave a comment. Fine, Instagram joined Twitter and Facebook among the BuffaloGolfer things to do. Pinterest, however, remained a challenge to understand, much less utilize.
Pinterest, you see, is a community of scrapbookers. Folks who like to organize ideas they’ve found on the internet in a visual way. It’s a love child of Instagram and Reddit (yet another community, but a high-brow, old-school internet thing-no time for THAT ONE in this piece.) Did we really want to organize other people’s ideas and contributions…sorry, take the time to organize. Absolutely not. we wanted to review golf courses, learn about travel opportunities, visit pro shops, try on new apparel, test out a new golf glove. Not on that list is amalgamate, collect, organize.
For three years, we’ve resisted Pinterest, but no longer. We decided to create a few “Montesano on…” boards, to see if anyone cares. You can now find “Montesano on BuffaloGolfer” and “Montesano on GolfWRX.” We tried to organize our stories from the RonMon blog we used to write on TravelGolf.Com, but they simply won’t pin. How is that possible? Well, the answer seems to be in the images. With Pinterest, you’re pinning images or URLs, but the catch is that there must be an image associated specifically with the URL you wish to pin. On TravelGolf, we weren’t associating images with each post (and we can’t get back in to update them) so all you get is an image associated with the frame. And that image has nothing to do with the story. Bummer.
What’s the goal of this venture? Well, we want to get a bigger sense of Pinterest, and whether it can help us spread the word about what we do. When we pin a URL to our boards, the engine immediately tells us where that piece had previously been pinned. The more pins, the better off you are. Does it translate to higher traffic, greater awareness, expanded conversation? We hope so. If you Pin, swing by and see our boards. If not, reserve a table at our Twitter account, spend a night in our Facebook suite, or have a coffee at our Instagram cafe. The last one is the most eclectic (and the least golfy) so don’t say we offered no warning.
Oh, man, we need an image for this story, in order to pin it.
