Finding Travel Inspiration on Pinterest

Pinterest used to be a four-letter word in my mind. I hated it. When my kids were younger, Pinterest was all the rage for stay-at-home moms.

I remember walking my kids to school with their home-made Valentine boxes they decorated. Their boxes looked unique to each child, with pictures of their interests glued on and their cute hearts made with construction paper and markers.

But then, we got to school and saw other kids’ boxes that looked like professionally themed masterpieces. How? Pinterest. (And a lot of help from Mom, no doubt).

Since Pinterest launched back in 2010, I had managed to stay away from Pinterest most of the time. I did create an account for “emergency” craft situations, like the time when my son was running for student council and I knew he’d be out-matched unless we got some poster ideas off Pinterest.

I’m not a crafty mom at all. I’ve attended MOPs meetings for years, but I’m probably the only mom who doesn’t look forward to our meetings where we just sit around and do a craft. It’s just not my thing.

I’m more of a budget-planning, financial-geek, dreaming-about-travel type mom. And Pinterest just wasn’t for me.

Why I’ve Changed My Tune About Pinterest

In recent months, I’ve read articles about how Pinterest is becoming one of the fastest growing social media platforms, and many bloggers are getting a significant source of blog traffic from Pinterest. Say what?

You can read some recent stats here. Pinterest now has over 150 million users, and although the majority are women, men are now signing up in higher numbers.

I decided to get back on Pinterest and check it out again. And guess what? It wasn’t just about crafts and recipes. I discovered that travel articles make up a large portion of Pinterest pins. Now that’s something I could get into!

How Pinterest Differs from Feedly, Twitter and Facebook

If you’re not familiar with Pinterest, it’s set up to be sort of an online organizational system for things that interest you. You create boards (like online folders) for your interests, and then pin articles or photos onto the appropriate board. The hope is that you go back and read everything you have pinned.

Pinterest calls itself “the world’s catalog of ideas”. One of my friends calls it online clutter. It just depends on your perspective.

Articles on Pinterest have a longer shelf life than articles on Feedly, Twitter and Facebook. On those other social media platforms, articles come into your feed and then other articles keep coming in on top of them. If you aren’t keeping up, you can miss things or the information gets buried.

Pinterest makes it easier to save articles in an organized manner according to topic so you can refer back to them. You can pin articles from the internet, or pin them from your Pinterest feed, or pin them from people you are connected to on Pinterest.

Articles on Pinterest tend to be less conversational and more aspirational, and more evergreen vs. time sensitive. Pinterest is very visual, with most articles displaying a vertical photo with the title and hints about the content on the pin.

At first, I was surprised to not see more miles and points bloggers on Pinterest. But, many of the articles we write are time sensitive, with deals that are over in a manner of hours or days. Also, many miles and points bloggers are men, and statistically speaking, men don’t have a large presence on Pinterest (yet).

Using Pinterest for Travel Inspiration and Organization

If you want to find articles about destinations where you would like to travel, you can start by searching in the search field within Pinterest. Trust me, there will be a ton of pins and articles about almost every destination. Create a board for your next destination, and start pinning relevant articles to it.

I also recommend following a few key players in the travel industry and some group travel boards. Miles For Family is a contributor to a large Travel Inspiration from Top Travel Bloggers board that is very active with a lot of followers and new pins every day. Just click the red “follow” button to have new articles appear in your Pinterest feed. We also just joined the All Things Travel board by The Thirsty Tourist.

Others I recommend following for family travel: Trips with Tykes, Globetrotting, and Kids Are a Trip, just to name a few.

Pinterest can be very handy if you are planning a trip with extended family members or friends. You can set up a board where multiple people can contribute pins from a variety of sources.

For example, let’s say you are planning a big family trip to New York City. You can create a shared board specifically for that trip, and then pin articles about tourist attractions and restaurants to your shared board. Your family members can read the information and then narrow down your choices as a group for your vacation. It’s a very easy way to share information with a group of people.

Miles For Family is Now Pinterest-Friendly

If you are on Pinterest, or think you may now want to join it, please check out our Miles For Family business page and follow us. We post some of our more evergreen content in our boards, plus we also pin other articles that may be of interest to you. And yes, we even have a recipe board, although I draw the line at having a board on crafts!

You may have noticed that we now have some photos in our posts that are ideal for pinning on Pinterest in the vertical format with the title:

If you have the Pinterest shortcut button installed on your computer, you can easily pin any of our posts to Pinterest. Or, you can go to the end of the post and use our social media sharing buttons to pin to Pinterest.

Final Thoughts on Travel Inspiration on Pinterest

I am by no means an expert on Pinterest. However, I’m enjoying the content I’m seeing and sharing on it. And, I definitely see value on Pinterest for people who like to research travel destinations.

If you found our blog through Pinterest, welcome!

Readers, do you use Pinterest for travel planning and inspiration?

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