Web Hosting. Not the most visually captivating industry on the planet. Sure, we have some pretty slick servers, nifty racks, cords, and gigantic generators, but how do we get these things to be pin-worthy? Well the fact is, we don’t.  Most of our customers never even see the server where their data is hosted, and that’s OK. They’re not buying the flickering lights and gleaming hard drives. They’re buying power and connectivity. So what are we supposed to pin?

Many companies jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon merely because of the FOMO. Never heard of it? It’s the fear of missing out. Much like the fear that if you don’t go to that party, everyone will have the most excellent time ever had, a celebrity will show up, free stuff will be given out, while you decided to sit home and eat cheese puffs.

OK, so whether it’s fear of missing out or more strategically, tapping into Pinterest’s 70 million registered users and their purchasing power, you’ve decided to start a Pinterest.

I’ve seen multiple tech related companies tackle the challenge.  Microsoft has one. So does Sony.  Mashable has turned its hundreds of blog posts into pins.  The tactic here is to find the visually compelling bit of the story to represent the link.

Here at HostDime we have a board dedicated to “Stuff We Write About” linking you to all of the super awesome blog posts (like this one) written by our Marketing team, and most specifically our content creator, Jared Smith.

However the reigning champ of our pins has always been and probably always will be Pizza Cones. Wait… Pizza Cones? Go ahead click the picture, we’ll wait….

So, what does that have to do with an International Data Center company?? Simple. Nothing. It has to do with appealing to our target audience.  We’ve met very few people who don’t like pizza and by golly how handy is it to have it be so portable.  The point here is, we created our Gadgets and Cool Stuff board to lure geeky, gadgety, nerdy, awesomesauce people to our page to check out other boards like our Data Center pictures, our HostDime crew, and some cool throwback pics.  The idea here is not just be self-promotional but to serve a greater good by sharing with our followers the neatest stuff we can find on the Internet.

One of the keys to maintaining a page like this is to insure that all of your own really cool pictures make it to your boards and that they link back to your site. One of the coolest photo collections we have features HostDime Alex, our mascot for our superior support center.  See, Alex is more interesting than any of us. He travels the world, gets to do nifty things like carve pumpkins at work and somehow seems to make to it every conference, team outing, and international location.  He never misses out on free food and is always up for doing contests and promotions.  He’s even been spotted at the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Sounds great you say, but isn’t this a gigantic time suck? Actually no. We spend about 10-15 minutes a week looking at, uploading and repinning pins.  The takeaway here is that you need to be following the right people to make the process easier.

So how do we decide what to pin? Well Gadgets and Cool Stuff really ought to be labeled “Things Vikki Likes” because it’s rife with computer do-dads, ephemera for 80’s movies and TV shows (most especially Star Wars), dog stuff, life hacking devices, and kitchen tools.

149 people seem to think it’s cool enough to follow our every move on this board. And over 1200 people have repinned those crazy Pizza Cones. In order to find neat stuff to repin we follow brands ThinkGeek, and Design Toscano, and individuals like Christina Blake and Lindy Sauer

And refreshingly you will never find on our boards Marilyn Monroe quotes, fashion ensembles, or impossible crafts made from plastic spoons.

So be brave, and get started! Happy Pinning!

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Vikki Fraser is the Director of Marketing for HostDime.