When it comes to technology orlearning new software, I am the person who reads the manual orwatches a video tutorial before attempting to do anything. Moreoften than not, I will crack the shrink wrap when I have a specificproject so that I get real-world practice and not some “samplefiles” to play with.

The downside of this approach is that I often will only learnthose project-specific features of the tool. Others might be morestructured in their approaches to learning—like they begin with anoverview and logically progress through the different elements,adding more knowledge only when they've learned the foundationalmaterial necessary for moving forward.

Related: Read “Is Content Really King?”

I generally don't have the patience for that approach, which isone of the reasons why, when it comes to trying new social mediatools, I jump right in. Typically, I hear about a cool new app froma friend or reliable source and download it to my iPad. SometimesI'll be on iTunes and something will grab my attention so I mightdownload it. All of which is why I have 107 apps on my phonealone—and those don't include the ones that come with the phone. Ihave even more on my iPad.

It's also why I've written about some social media platformsearly on in their existence, like Tumblr, Groupon and Pinterest.Like all of these new tools, it takes time for businesses to climbon the bandwagon and try using them. Similarly, it takes time forthe platform to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up.That's' why I think Pinterest has ripened enough to give agentssome solid ideas for leveraging it.

A thousand words

I've written a lot about the power of the visual, of how imagesconvey so much more information than words alone. It's always beenmy contention that the most effective messages incorporate imagery.I believe that's why we're seeing so many social media platformsbuilt around images or video. Just consider Twitter's Vine orInstagram's new video feature; the move to incorporate video, even if only in 6-secondincrements, illustrates the direction in which marketing isheading.

So it's no surprise that Pinterest is among the top mostpowerful social media marketing platforms out there.

Pinterest was among the first social media tools that trulyleveraged pictures to allow people to “collect” on virtual pinboards images of things and information that are of interest tothem. It began as just a way to share groups of images (photos,graphics and now, videos) with a common theme.

Related: Read: “Make a Scene With Vine“

Businesses that sold products were among the first to tryPinterest as a marketing platform by pinning pictures of theirproducts and their products being used: wedding dresses on brides,food presentations by restaurants and more. Real estate agentsmight pin ­pictures of their listed properties and could ­collectthem on boards by town or type of property.

I've been pinning for a little more than a year and my mostactive board is “All thingsMoonriseKingdom” which curateseverything I come across about the movie my son was in. Because ofthe strong following of the movie and Wes Anderson as a director,whenever I pin something to that board, within 15 or 20 minutes atleast one or two people like it and re-pin my pin or choose to“follow” my board. Then inevitably a little bit later people re-pinmuch older pins from that board or other boards I have.

VentureBeat.com blogger John Koetsier posited, “…the half-life of a Pinterest pin is thousands oftimes longer than a tweet or Facebook post.” When you thinkabout it, it makes perfect sense. Tweets are, by their very nature,fleeting. If you watch a Twitter feed on a website, you need toread fast or you'll miss something. As with Facebook, if your newsfeed is set to show recent posts up top then only if someone adds acomment to an older post will it pop back up top again. Otherwiseyou have to go scrolling, if you're at all interested.

Most social media platforms that have the “post” component tothem, used to trigger you to post by asking a question that wasvery much in the moment. Now both Twitter (“Compose new Tweet…”)and Facebook (“Write something…”) use a very generic,non-directional trigger.

With Pinterest, there's none of that. You can place a “Pin It”button in your browser's bookmark bar so if you're on a site thathas something you want to add to one of your boards, all you needto do is click the button. Pinterest will locate all the images onthe page and offer them up for you to choose from as the one toassociate with your Pin. Remember that Pinterest can't distinguishadvertising images from content images, so be careful to pick theright one. You then can add some comments and a link to yourwebsite.

Insurance on Pinterest

Pinterest helps you give insurance a human face. We allunderstand how dull and dry the subject of insurance can be to thelayperson, which makes it difficult to get people to by attentionunless there's a loss or some other event. By reminding peopleabout the things that insurance protects in a very compellingmanner through visuals, they will begin to associate the importantthings in their lives with protecting them.

Related: Read “Agents: 'Like' New Media“

I was going to give you some examples of how insurance agentsare using Pinterest to promote themselves and the things they careabout, but there is such a wide variety that I thought it best tohave you just do some searches on Pinterest.com.

I just did three different basic searches and came back withlots of results.

• Homeowners insurance – 60 boards
• Auto insurance – several ­hundred boards
• Insurance agencies – 160 boards.

Most of the boards were made up of multiple pins. When you clickon a board, the agency name shows up at the top with a descriptiveprofile, which in most cases talks about the agency.

Drilling down to individual pins on a board, you find thatpeople can share the pin via Twitter, Facebook or get the embedcode to insert it in a website, send it via email or directly toanother Pinterest member. They can “like” it or “pin it” to one oftheir own boards. And that's how it can go viral.

Getting back to the “half life” comment: With Pinterest's searchability and the fact that it's always on the board, it never reallydisappears. People will spend much more time looking at a board onPinterest than they will on a Facebook page.

As Koetsier said when comparing social media, “The keydifference is that while Pinterest is a social network, it's alsoan ideas-and-inspiration website, whereas Twitter and Facebook aresocial networks with a massive emphasis on immediacy.”

Because of the long-tail view of pins, it could be said thatbetween the ease of use (clicking a button on your browser bar topin something) and the bigger picture boards convey, the time youspend on Pinterest could give you greater return in the long runthan Twitter or Facebook.

Check out what your colleagues are doing on Pinterest and let meknow when you throw your agency hat into the ring. I'll be sure tore-pin you.