Planning the look, feel and concept of your trade show exhibit can be a daunting task, and with increasing creativity and spectacle on the trade show floor I’m sure you’ve been feeling the pressure to get more and more creative with you booths.

Creativity starts with the planning process, so my suggestion? Breathe some new life into your brainstorming and design process by taking advantage of Pinterest. Here are three easy ways Pinterest can help you and your team create your best booth ever:

1. Find & organize inspiration for all aspects

How many times have you found yourself dumping ideas into desktop folders and Word docs or going really old school and physically pinning ideas to a cork board? While Pinterest may have become a social outreach tool for your company, don’t forget that it can also be a great tool for internal use. Pinterest boards can help you visualize your exhibit in ways Word documents and closed folders cannot.

There are a variety of visual aspects that go into planning an exhibit including design, graphics, clothing, digital elements, interactive elements, giveaways…do you need me to list more? With Pinterest you can create an inspiration board for each aspect. Plus, Pinterest isn’t limited to visual elements, you can also find marketing ideas or opt to pin inspiring content from anywhere you choose online. Once you narrow things down you can pin the top contenders to an overall vision board for your exhibit.

2. Collaborate With Team Members

Hopefully you know that pulling in all kinds of viewpoints can bring new and exciting ideas to the table, but in the early exhibit planning stages you may feel like inviting too many cooks to the kitchen can have the opposite effect. After all, with too many people in one room sharing opinions, you may end up overwhelmed and walk out with no real ideas at all. Not to mention the fact that sharing ideas face-to-face could be intimidating for some team members.

Pinterest is the perfect way to get your whole team involved in sharing ideas in a way that is more organized, less intimidating and doesn’t restrict idea generation to a 1-hour meeting. Your team members can pin their ideas wherever and whenever. So how do you do this? Create group boards and invite your team members to pin. It’s that easy. Let the boards grow and watch for crossover in ideas. Once you have a healthy amount of pins, gather the team to collectively discuss favorites. Give team members a chance to elaborate on their pins and work together to boil down all the ideas into one solid concept.

3. Better Communicate Ideas

Communicating visual and conceptual ideas is not easy. I once interviewed a glass blower, and when I asked him to explain the biggest challenge in creating art with clients he described the communication barrier like this,

“There are a million types of blues in the world so when a client says blue and I say blue, we could both be thinking about a completely different color.

Using a Pinterest board to communicate concepts can help remove ambiguity and the threat of false expectations. Once you have an idea board down that truly represents your vision for the exhibit, it can be shared with team members to get everyone on the same page. Then in the construction phase, share with your exhibit designers so they have a real feel for what you want in color combos, shape and form. You can even take it one step further, by making and sharing inspiration boards for collateral, email and giveaway designs.

Using Pinterest boards for exhibit idea development and design is an easy way to get everyone on board (pun intended), and ultimately help your whole team create a strong, cohesive exhibit concept that could blow last year’s exhibit out of the water.