Meet Pinterest

First of all, you need to be invited to use Pinterest. If you want an invite, shoot an email to your most stylish female friends, or anyone planning a wedding. There’s probably a good chance they’re using it already, and they can invite you. (Pinterest seems to be very much still a girls’ club, but I think as it gains cred as a sharing space for design, photography and art, we’ll see the demographics even out).

You’ll need to set up an account. You can choose to link with your Facebook or Twitter account or leave it separate. You’ll create a user name and password, and then Pinterest will prompt you to select from some areas of interest (Design, Architecture, Film/TV, Women’s Fashion, etc.)

Once you select these, Pinterest will automatically set you up to follow some users in those categories. If you set up your account through Facebook, it will also add any of your Facebook friends who also have their Facebook and Pinterest accounts linked. You can always unfollow these users later.

Start Pinning

The next step is to create your pinboards. Pinterest will prompt you to create five boards (you can have as many as you want, this is just to get started). You can categorize these any way you like. I made one for design inspiration, one for fashion, one for DIY projects and one for books I’m reading. Next, you’ll want to add a “Pin It” button to your bookmarks tool bar. In Firefox and Chrome, all you have to do is open your bookmarks and drag and drop the “Pin It” button onto the toolbar. You can now use this button as you’re surfing around the web, to “pin” things to your pinboards. When you find something you want to pin, just click the button. Pinterest will open up a page asking which item on the page you want to pin and which board it should be pinned to. The whole interface works very smoothly, and only interrupts your Web browsing for a few seconds.

Find People

If you selected some areas of interest when you set up your account, your homepage will already contain some pins. If you like these users, do nothing, but if they don’t fit you, just unfollow their pins by going to their page and hitting the big unfollow button beneath their profile picture. You can also choose to follow only certain boards by a user.

Make Connections

Now is the time to start thinking like a social media marketer! Pinterest is a great forum for creatives like interior designers, photographers, fashion designers and retailers…the list goes on. Start finding accounts that are similar to you, and accounts that could be potential sales leads. What does a potential sales lead look like on Pinterest? Well, that depends. If you’re a clothing designer, you want to be looking for people like fashion bloggers and editors, buyers for stores and other people talking about fashion and design. If you’re a wedding photographer, start following wedding magazines and the many, many Pinterest accounts that are devoted to wedding planning.  (You get the idea). If you understand Twitter, you can understand Pinterest–in fact, Pinterest is a lot like a visual version of Twitter. You want to be pinning your work and things that inspire your work, and you want as many people as possible to see, like and re-pin your posts–especially your original ones. Curate the pinboards you follow, and use the comment and re-pin function to engage.

We love that Pinterest is intensely visual, making it a perfect place for creative people like designers and photographers to share their work. It also makes it incredibly easy for people to share your posts to their followers, which means it’s easy for something to go viral. Pinterest doesn’t have the widespread base that Twitter or Facebook gives you, but depending on the kind of business you have it might actually be easier to target your audience through Pinterest. For example, if you’re a florist who does a lot of weddings, you’ll find that Pinterest offers you a huge community of potential sales leads that’s already curated for you. To see some local businesses doing cool things with Pinterest, check out Gus & Ruby Letterpress, Concetta’s Closet and Pixels and Pulp.

And it’s not just great local businesses taking advantage of Pinterest. Check out these seven brands who are burning up Pinterest with their marketing awesomeness (post via @hubspot).

In addition to that, people who pin tend to pin a lot. If you come up with something that people on Pinterest like, you’ll have many passionate “pinners” sharing your work all across the site. Pinterest definitely won’t work for every company, but we think that for a certain types of businesses it has incredible potential for social media marketing.

Are you using Pinterest, either personally or for your business? Do you find that it helps you generate leads, find interesting companies, or something else? We’re just getting started on Pinterest so we’d love to here how you’re using it and what you think! Tell us in the comments or talk to us on Facebook or Twitter.

As you move around the Web today, you’ll discover sites that are blacked out to protest this legislation, which is currently on hold. Need an obscure name or date? Sorry, Wikipedia will be blacked out. Want to read blogs? WordPress will be “censoring” blogs too. Jonesing for a picture of a talking cat? Sorry, the “I Can Haz Cheezburger” people are on strike too.

So yes, it’s a big deal. Here’s why.

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act. It has been shelved for the time being in the House, waiting for legislators to “build a consensus” before taking a vote. The Senate is also looking to pass similar legislation, called PIPA. (That’s the Protect IP Act, not the curvaceous Middleton sister.) All of these high profile sites care about SOPA because it would allow copyright holders, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, to get court orders against websites they accuse of copyright infringement.

Now, that doesn’t sound so awful, right? We all know you’re not supposed to steal music, videos and software. Here’s the catch: these court orders could prevent online advertising and commerce, keep the site in question from showing up in search results, and even force ISPs to block the site entirely—even before the allegations of copyright infringement have been substantiated. An accusation alone could potentially shut a site down. It’s the Internet equivalent of being held without bail.

Supporters of the bill say that it’s needed to clamp down on rampant copyright infringement online and to protect intellectual property. Some of SOPA/PIPA’s biggest fans are from Hollywood, and tired of having their TV, movies and music stolen.

The bill would make streaming copyrighted content a crime punishable by up to five years in jail for 10 instances over six months. (Sweating yet?)

Opponents, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and other Internet giants, say that the bill goes way too far, violates the First Amendment and would hamper creativity, free speech and the overall openness of the Internet community.

In the Wikipedia announcement of the blackout, Wikimedia editor Kat Walsh wrote:

“[K]nowledge has to be published somewhere for anyone to find and use it. Where it can be censored without due process, it hurts the speaker, the public, and Wikimedia. Where you can only speak if you have sufficient resources to fight legal challenges, or if your views are pre-approved by someone who does, the same narrow set of ideas already popular will continue to be all anyone has meaningful access to.”

The Internet is a community that allows an incredible amount of sharing and communication, and gives a voice to quite literally anyone with an Internet connection. As Web designers, bloggers and social media geeks, we believe that’s important. Many of your favorite websites are blacked out today because SOPA/PIPA would change the face of that community irrevocably, curtailing the free flow of information, ideas, and yes, cat pictures that makes the Internet so cool in the first place.

What do you think of SOPA/PIPA? Is it a good idea that goes too far, or something out of “1984?” Are you doing anything to protest SOPA today? Exercise your First Amendment rights and tell us in the comments!

Earlier this year, we launched a new site for DataRisk, a Portsmouth, NH company that helps business manage risk. When it came to redesigning their look, the risk specialists weren’t taking any chances. They chose to put their online and design needs in Vital’s hands.

The new site is the perfect place for potential clients and individuals to get started and learn more about DataRisk’s services.

When DataRisk came to us, they wanted a design firm to tie all of their branding together with an polished and professional look.

Vital Design’s creative team produced an  effective business website that has everything DataRisk needs to go toe-to-toe with their larger competitors online.

Visitors to the site will find information about risk management consulting, specialized brokerages and executive personal lines of insurance; as well as resources, news and information about the DataRisk team.

Current and potential clients can connect to DataRisk with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with icons on the homepage. They can also sign up for DataRisk’s newsletter with a simple form, powered by MailChimp.

What do you think? Questions? Comments? Connect with us by email or in comments below!

We recently finished a new website design for Applecrest Farm, New Hampshire’s oldest and largest apple orchard. It’s an earthy, rustic design, a bit like the smooth scroll website we developed last spring.

The new web development showcases the tasty offerings of Applecrest (located in Hampton Falls, NH), such as pick-your-own schedules and festival dates and other info. The site also offers a registration form for private parties, allowing users to reserve dates online.

“This website design ties in four generations of the Wagner family. We are really excited about our new web design,” said Applecrest’s Todd Wagner. “Vital Design combined all of our attributes into one well-organized site to showcase everything our family has created throughout the years.”

We had a lot of fun designing this site because it brought together generations of hard work and development. (The Applecrest barn itself is more than 200 years old.) Applecrest Farm is a family fun day mecca, offering pick-your-own fruit and hay rides to their pumpkin patch. The new website also offers festival and event schedules.

Another cool feature of the Applecrest website is the ability to buy gift packages of apples online and have them shipped to a friend, business associate or family member. This would be great for a transplanted New Englander. They hand select each item for the gift basket. To top it off, they add a handwritten card to accompany the package. It’s sweet. Go pick some apples next fall and check out the site and let us know what you think!