With over 75 billion ideas to choose from, Pinterest is one of the best resources for creative inspiration.

While we all have fun pinning ideas for DIY terrariums or artisan cocktails, we also know it can be a great place to promote your business. Today, we're honing in on how to use Pinterest if you're an interior designer.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just need a little fresh marketing inspiration, we hope you can find some new ideas in this collection. 

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Let's get started with a few must create boards...

Whether you create your own custom content, stick to repining, or bring in content from your website, these boards are the perfect way to display your creative expertise for your clients.

Prints & Patterns
From florals to stripes, prints help add character to any room.

 Home Décor
Pinterest is a haven for home design! We especially love how you can search for just about any style or room you can imagine.

Color Play
Pinterest is full of great color scheme ideas for any aesthetic.

Lighting
A collection of Edison lamps, decorative sconces, and chandeliers offer an upgrade to the basic table lamp.

Textiles
What better way to add a touch of color and texture than a rug, tapestry, or dramatic pair of drapes?

Storage
Pin a collection of creative storage solutions to keep clutter at bay.

Travel
From Grecian sea sides to Italian landscapes, design inspiration can be found worldwide.

Furniture
No room would be complete without the perfect furniture. Pin great finds from online stores or innovative ways to arrange each piece.

Hotels & Hospitality
Whether you’re creating a relaxing escape for visitors or streamlined designs to appeal to a wide audience, Pinterest is full of ideas.

Tablescapes
Create a beautiful scene for photoshoots, gatherings, and events.

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Need some new sources to pin from? These accounts are full of creative ideas and gorgeous images:
 

My Design Agenda
A great source for international design, installations, home décor.
 

Apartment Therapy
This well-known name has a loyal following of over 877,000 pinners. This account is full of shopping guides and design inspiration for every room.
 

Old Brand New 
Old-Brand New is curated by a LA-based blogger, Dabito. This diverse account is filled with art, style, and playful color combinations.
 

Design Milk
Interested in modern, minimalistic aesthetic? Design Milk is a stylish resource for clean design.
 

Remodelista
This account is perfect for designers that are drawn to cozy interiors and soft color palates.

Have a favorite account that we left out? Let us know in the comments!

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Design & Marketing in Greensboro, NC

Ready to start seeing results? From design to delivery, Hue & Tone can help you create a truly unique social campaign. If you’re ready to start seeing a return on your social media dollars then it’s time to invest in a creative agency that can give you more. If you’re interested in social media management, a new campaign, or another creative service, give us a call today so we can set up a social media audit.

Think your business needs to be on Pinterest, but not sure what you should be pinning?

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Having a profile on every platform is guaranteed to turn people off if your profiles are weak or inactive. Focus your energy on 2 or 3 platforms to avoid your social presence declining over time.

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We’ll start by saying not every business should be on Pinterest. One of our top tips for clients (especially small business clients) is to start out by putting your energy into the 2 or 3 social media platforms that make the most sense for your business. This will help keep you focused on connecting with potential clients -- instead of scrambling on a daily basis to develop content. Plus, once you’ve mastered 2 or 3 platforms, you can always branch out!

Pinterest is the platform for you if you’re looking to reach women -- specifically those with disposable income. If you’re a luxury brand, designer, clothing retailer, or restaurant Pinterest is a smart platform to test out. It’s also great for those in the wedding industry, or those whose business will appeal to moms.

No matter what your business, there’s a few board ideas every business Pinner should consider. Use these topics to come up with creative board themes tailored to your business:

Show your products off on Pinterest!

• Your products: Display the products you make or sell on different product boards. If you have an overwhelming amount of merchandise, consider creating separate boards for different product lines or collections.
• How-to's: How to style an outfit, make your own bouquets, swaddle a baby, or make a craft! The options are endless!
• Industry resources: Compile useful videos and articles -- as well as content from your own website.
• Your work/portfolio: Show off your best work or developing projects on a dedicated Pinterest board.
• Behind-the-scenes: Give clients and customers a glimpse into a regular day at your store or office.
• User + customers pics: Pull together photos users have submitted via social media in one place! It’s a great way to show off real people using your product.
• Press coverage: Aggregate all of your press mentions in one place.
• Testimonials
• Quotes (Industry related)
• Your blog: Pin images from your blog to get maximum referrer traffic!
• Examples of great work: Show off your style by pinning aspirational examples.
• Mission/values: Don’t just tell us what your company stands for -- show us. Show us the non-profits your organization supports, pin results-driven case studies, and create custom graphics focused around your guiding principles.  
• Guest Pinners: Have an industry leader craft a board for you -- they’ll send traffic your way and increase your credibility.
• Meet the team: Snap a few pictures of your team members and help people get to know them with a few informal facts.
• Customer Favorites: Have a product that’s selling like crazy? Highlight it on Pinterest for even more sales!

Looking for even more? We’ve got a few industry-focused suggestions.

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Not sure what theme to go with? Don't over think it! Consider organizing boards by things like color, style, or room type! For example: “Reds, Midcentury Modern, Kitchens, Stripes.”

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Coffee Shop: Espresso drink recipes, frozen drinks, tea recipes, your merchandise, fancy coffee photography, coffee/tea branding, food recipes, holiday drinks, brunch ideas, fall inspiration, coffee quotes

Weddings: Event venues, honeymoon destinations, flower arrangements/types, creative table settings, creative reuse/repurposing, dress/hair inspiration, plated meals, dessert ideas, creative Hors d’oeuvres, catering inspiration, menu display ideas, table numbers, seating charts, party drinks, centerpiece ideas

Marketing: Words in the wild, photo editing tips, brand identity inspiration, content marketing stats, podcast marketing, blogging for business, fonts/type, video marketing, templates, clever advertising, the best of the web, infographics, flat lays, photography tips, different holiday graphics boards, tutorials

Kids/Babies: Nursery ideas, cute kid photography, Fathers/Mothers day, baby proofing, holiday activities, free/cheap summer activities, recommended reading, pregnancy, prenatal/birth photography, prepping for baby, back to school, maternity style, kid style/outfits, gifts for kids

Lifestyle: Summer entertaining ideas, gifts for him/her/a specific holiday, urban backyards,  staycation ideas, pantry + kitchen organization, small space hacks, playlists, Etsy finds

The ideas are endless! But, no matter what you want to focus on, the important thing is to get out there and start pinning quality content.

Looking for ideas tailored specifically to your business? We can help with that! Contact us about our social media services today.

We’ve mentioned our love of Pinterest before -- we even rounded up 10 of our favorite inspiration boards. This week, we’re back with a link round-up of a few must follow Pinners. We promise we’ll break this obsession soon… well, sooner or later.

One | The Creative Market: our favorite digital design marketplace, The Creative Market’s 'Infographics' board is a creative hodgepodge of all things information design.

Two | Rebecca Finn: Rebecca’s obvious passion for graphic design and art makes her Pinterest one of our favorites. For a wide variety of creative typography and out of the box lettering ideas, check out her ‘Typography’ board.

Three | Design Quixotic: a finalist at the Shorty Awards for best Best Pinner, how could we not love her boars? 'Logos, Marks, and Icons' is our personal favorite, but with 77 boards to follow there’s bound to be a little something for everyone.

Four | Constant Contact: This well-known email marketing company knows their stuff -- their 'Marketing, Stats, and Facts' board is a potpourri of what appears to be pretty much every infographic ever made on digital marketing.

Five | Joy Cho:  a lifestyle blogger with an eye for design, Joy Cho’s boards span a variety of interests from food and fashion to patterns and type. Her 'Pattern' board embodies our taste perfectly!

There’s so many inspiring pinners out there, we know we can’t cover them all. Who did we miss? Who’s your favorite pinner?

Hi all, Camille (the new intern) here!

This week I’ve decided to try my hand at making a mood board. While looking for design inspiration, I'd been seen tons of inspiration mood board. Not only did they look fun to make, I felt like they were a perfect first project for Adobe Illustrator! I’ll preface by saying, I've never made a mood board before. I decided to walk you through the step-by-step process of creating my first one!  I should also mention that I am a beginner with Adobe Illustrator, so this is all a learning process for me. So...*finger’s crossed.*

My first real step was to find pictures, but before that -- a theme! Pinterest is always my go to for inspiration of any kind, especially pictures. I chose to do a summer theme (because who doesn’t have summer on the brain right now?) and I love looking at bright, colorful colors... so, that’s the theme for the day!

STEP ONE: PINTEREST BOARD. First, I made a summer mood board on Pinterest, and began to search “summer” items. I pinned about 19 images to this board (I got a little excited!)

I planned to only use about 10 of the 19 images, but it’s always great to have extras. I was looking for images that not only had a common theme, but that had similar colors so that they would mesh well together for the final mood board.

STEP TWO: CHOOSING IMAGES. I chose about 10 images that I thought was the most “summer inspired” images   

STEP THREE: MOOD BOARD TEMPLATE. I found a few mood board templates to use here here and here. If you’re ever in need of a template these are great to use! I used one of these template to get started on my board.

STEP FOUR: PLACE IMAGES. ‘File’ → ‘Place’ → Locate images.

STEP FIVE: IMPORT TEMPLATE. Repeat the same steps above to import your template! (This one was perfect for me because it even came with instructions!)

Step Seven

STEP SIX: LAYOUT PHOTOS. Next, I spent some time playing around with the position of the images.

STEP SEVEN: CLIPPING MASK. Once I had the images all lined up with my template I clipped them to fit the space. Just draw a box over the image → select the image and box → ‘Object’ → ‘Clipping Mask’ → ‘Make’. This will crop the image to fit in the box you just made.

STEP EIGHT: REPEAT. I continued to do this with all of the images, and felt like I was starting to get the hang of it! At this point, it was looking better than I had thought it might… and so far it was even easier than I expected.

Borders!

STEP NINE: BORDERS. I could see the finish line at this point! Now that all the pictures were imported I wanted to put white borders around each picture. Not going to lie, I had to Google how to do this. It turned out to be pretty simple -- just not very intuitive to a first time user. For my first attempt, I added a border around each of my images, but this ended up making the lines uneven. Some of them were overlapping, or uneven.

So, I pulled all the borders off and drew regular lines in the pattern of mood board. This made a much more even end result!

STEP TEN: VOILA! Finished product. My first ever mood board, complete.

Sources: One  |  Two  |  Three  |  Four  |  Five  |  Six  |  Seven

The best part of this process was definitely pinning the pictures and watching the whole thing come together. Who knew a bunch of random pictures I pinned on Pinterest could form into something so cohesive? Something that could actually inspire a project?  A lot of googling was involved, but I know I’ll remember what I’ve learned and be able to build off of it for next time.

Thanks for following along, until next time,

Social media can be an overwhelming thing to do well -- between Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and niche sites (like Untappd or Houzz), it can be a lot to juggle. Managing multiple sites can turn into a full time job, so it’s important to pick and choose the sites that will work best for you.

Always remember that the main goal of social media is to connect with potential customers -- and to do this you have to be strategic in the sites that you choose to use. While social media is an important part of almost any digital marketing plan, spreading yourself too thin by trying to manage every site available won’t get you anywhere. We recommend selecting two or three sites that will give you the best return on the time you invest.

Each platform has a unique identity based on the people who view it and how they are engaged. It’s important to know where different demographics spend their time online, what kind of content will catch their eye, and what platform will best showcase your products or services.

When thinking about your target demographic, you should ask yourself two things:

1- Who are your current clients?
2- And who do you want your clients to be?

Social media isn’t a quick fix to getting you the types of customers that you want -- but, done consistently and done well, social will develop into one of the most valuable tools in your marketing arsenal.

So, without further adieu let’s jump into some quick facts about each platform.

FACEBOOK: Let’s start with the most obvious site -- Facebook. With 1.44 billion monthly active users, Facebook is arguably the most well-known and widely used social site there is. Because of its wide reach and varied user base, Facebook is a must for business. 63% of people 50-64 and 56% of people 65+ use Facebook -- this makes it the best platform if you’re aiming to reach older people. The leading demographic of Facebook users are also college educated. And 74% and 72% of adults who make $50,000-$74,999 and $75k+ (respectively) use Facebook -- making it a good place to market luxury brands.

Post ideas: Announcing limited edition products or daily specials, sharing customer reviews, or the details about an upcoming events.

TWITTER: If you’re looking for the challenge of whittling your message down to 140 characters or less, then Twitter is for you. Twitter is best described as an ongoing conversation… kind of like texting back and forth with someone. Connecting with clients has never been easier. By retweeting, utilizing trending hashtags, and following others, you can quickly gain a lot of reach. Like most social sites, Twitter skews towards the younger crowd, with 37% of 18-29 using Twitter. Because of it’s fast paced nature, Twitter is great for quick feedback and breaking news. One of the best ways to gain some fast reach on Twitter is to hop onto a trending hashtag!

Post ideas: Your take on trending topics, polls, quick tips and tricks.

INSTAGRAM: Where are you? What are you doing now? Who are you with? Instagram is one of the best places to answer these questions for your potential customers. Perfect for behind-the-scenes updates, Instagram can help your customers get to know the “real” you. With the capability to upload snippets of video, an arsenal of filters, and handy editing tools, you can take a picture from blah to drool-worthy. If you take great photos and invest time in finding the right hashtags, you can make Instagram work for you. Instagram is one of the trendiest platforms right now, and is perfect if you’re looking to capture 18–29 year olds. With over 53% of 18-28 year olds using Instagram, it has overtaken Facebook and Twitter as the most popular site with younger audiences. It also has a predominately female user base.

Our top tip? Take the time to stage photos properly. For more on that go here and here.

Post ideas: Feature customer reviews, behind-the-scenes shots of your office, or show off a collection of your products.

PINTEREST:  A mecca for designers, interior decorators, and brides-to-be, Pinterest is the place for all things girly. On a site built for browsing, you have to be able to catch a potential customer's eye -- this means carefully curating the look of each board, and keeping your boards organized by category (such as food, travel, design, etc) so that people can follow just the board they're interested in. Pinterest has a predominantly female audience with 42% of online women pinning on the regular. These women also tend to have more disposable income -- make it a good place to sell expensive products or optional services.

Post ideas: Organize boards focused around your products, or inspiration that relates to the services you sell.

SNAPCHAT: With 79% of its users under the age of 25, Snapchat is definitely a younger man’s game. Use Snapchat to share real-life action -- it allows your clients to see exactly what you’re doing, and if you are selling products it’s perfect for taking your audience behind-the-scenes. We don’t know alot about the average Snapchat user -- but we do know that 71% of everyone who uses the platform is under 25, and around 70% are female. With the exception of business like boutiques, Snapchat probably isn’t the best platform for a small business to utilize.

Post ideas: Employee takeovers, behind the scenes, and day-to-day life.

PERISCOPE: Periscope is a video streaming app that allows real time interaction with your followers. By “going live” with Periscope you stream and connect with your followers at any time, from any location. The best part about Periscope is that it integrates with Twitter -- allowing you to utilize your existing audience and reach a larger audience.

Post ideas: live Q & A, tutorial on how to use a new product, or live event updates.  

LINKEDIN: LinkedIn is like a virtual resume -- it’s all about making connections with other professionals. You can upload your resume, link to your portfolio website, share your professional insight, apply to jobs, and connect with employers all in one place. LinkedIn is great for people who need to market business-to-business or business owners who are looking to use their personal profile to make direct connections with potential customers. Specifically, LinkedIn Pulse is a great place to stay in the know about industry information, and show off your own expertise. A news feed within LinkedIn, Pulse is designed for members to share self-published content. You can also follow major brands or industry leaders!

Post ideas: Business insights, new job postings, and industry updates.

Each network has it’s own benefits and drawbacks, and there are tons of sites we weren’t even able to cover! The key to success is picking 2-3 sites that work well with your services/products, sticking with them, and posting regularly. Seeing a return on social media can take months of diligence -- but in a digital world, it’s an inevitable investment.

Thinking social media still might be a little much for you to handle? Need full time help? Give us a call at 336-365-8559 and we can set you up with all the help you need to get your social media up and running smoothly!

If you think Pinterest is just a site to find cooking recipes, think again!  Think of Pinterest as a site where at the click of a search button, you can find any and everything you’re looking for.  It's perfect for wardrobe tips, photo styling, and design inspiration (of course)!  We love to use Pinterest whenever we get stuck or need a little boost of creativity.

Need your own boost? We’ve picked out our top 10 Pinterest boards to spark design inspiration:

Rekita Nicole | Live Colorfully/Golds

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Natasha// Violet Tinder Studios | Styling + Staging

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Ashley Brooke Designs | Pattern Play

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Megan Kabre | Print, Pattern and Paper

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Whitney
Blake | Inspire

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Amy Howard Social | Watercolor

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Courtney Shelton |
C O L O R

Zie Darling | Color +
Pattern

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Bonnie Tsang | Color
Colour

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LISH Creative | Art &
Design

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What boards do we need to be following? Leave a comment!