Virtual Moxie - The Cure For The Common Virtual Assistance Practice

I love, love, LOVE Pinterest.

If you’ve not visited the site, it’s pretty much a beautiful haven for the “mature” woman (according to Forbes). There are guys, but guys aren't the main users. Chicks are. And Pinterest is full of user-created “pin” boards of things that people find that they want to keep and remember or want to share with others.

I have 13 pin boards, with names like All You Need is Love (which has images and quotations of the same sorts of things I post to my LoveLavishly blog), Trees, Giraffes, and Places That Call To Me. If it's beautiful and I love it, there's a pinboard for it.

When moseying around the Net as I am want to do in my work and life, I frequently find something (an image or video) that fits one of my pinboards. With a mouse click, I pin it, add a comment, and share it with the world.

Addictive? Could be. For me, it’s actually been quite sweet and easy to add into my day rather than something disruptive.

And when I’m wanting a dose of beauty, I go explore what other people are pinning. There are DIY project pin boards, and meal pin boards, and beautiful clothes pin boards… you name it, I’ve probably seen a pin board for it.

What I’ve never seen is anything negative or crappy. And that makes Pinterest one heck of a cool place to me. It sure seems like we don't have many of those places available to use anymore, you know? No fighting, no whining, no negative talk... it's heavenly.

As for the rest of what goes on there--it's that people follow you, you follow people, there’s following of specific pin boards that are admirable, and there’s liking pins, commenting on specific pins that you like, and repinning to your own pin boards so people who like you can see more of what you find beautiful and interesting. That’s really the whole of it.

There are possible down sides… no privacy settings (but nor, really, has Twitter and that doesn’t stop people from Tweeting) for instance. But it’s FUN.

Remember FUN? That thing we did, back in the day, before everybody got so serious about building business, and "sharing useful content" most of the time? It's still alive, and living on Pinterest.

Recently, the social media folk have started to explore how one could use Pinterest for business, and how to get a good ROI on the time investment. I get why they'd be exploring. After all, according to Forbes, “Pinterest is perhaps the biggest web phenomenon of this winter. The site hit 11 Million unique users during one December week alone. Alexa now pegs it as the 32nd most popular website in the United States. Visitors spend more than 11 minutes on the site daily, crushing Twitter on this metric by more than 50%.”

I’m a-ok with those who want to do that, and have seen that, at least right now, there’s probably more bang for the time investment for people and companies who sell products, than for those of us who provide services.

I’ve seen a bunch of people blow it off entirely because there was no way for them to strategically make it work for them to get business--the ROI is simply too low.

And that’s why I decided to write about this.

Life is simply more than work or business. It's more than planning one strategic move after another. It's more than gaming people based on metrics—talking with them at this time of day because it’s “proven” to get better engagement than fifteen minutes later, for instance. And it's certainly more than looking for the continual stream of things “share” so that you don’t fall off the radar of your market.

And there’s more to “social” media than that, too.

I think gobs of people routinely forget that.

But what this post is really about is Attraction. If you know me, you know that I’ve taught Attraction in business for close to 15 years. For me, at it’s purest, Attraction is framed like this: you live your life, share yourself authentically and openly, share what matters to you, are interesting (and interested), and the people who are naturally attracted to you pay attention (and often buy).

I’m not entirely sure when we moved into an era of seduction and manipulation, with long sales pages, free offers (that aren’t actually free), creating false scarcity, getting folks in a room for the sole purpose of selling them bigger more expensive programs, saying anything needed to make more money, or when we became obsessed with becoming chicks with shticks, and having tag lines that all sound the same (million-dollar/six-figure mindset and mastery blahblahblah).

We've become a world of copycats rather than being the originals we were born to be, and letting our share of the world come to us accordingly. It hurts my heart.

One thing I know for sure, Attraction cannot exist in the same space where seduction and manipulation exists. Another thing I know for sure—Attraction is about pull, not push.

And that may be why, for now, Pinterest is so interesting to me. It’s not yet easy to seduce and/or manipulate others while using it. There’s no push. It’s the purest Attraction-based social site I think I’ve ever seen. It feels great. It’s all about good stuff. And it’s lovely.

So if you’re looking for a place still untainted (for the most part!) by the Internet marketing game, you might look at it. If you want to see and share beautiful things, you might look at it.

And, the big news of the day? In doing so, you could still potentially find business (gasp… Attraction in action? Say it ain't so!); two coaching clients have found their way to me in the past week through Pinterest (and me with only 63 followers). Not through anything I’ve tried to do, not through strategic maneuvers, but through being who I am and sharing what’s beautiful to me. They both loved my pins, read my profile, visited my site, then emailed me to set up a time to talk. What a lovely surprise from two very special lovely and talented women.

And what a radical concept that should be anything but.

So, do you pin? If so, tell me where to find you and what you love about Pinterest! Who knows what magic could show up as a result! And if you'd like to visit with me, I'm here.