How I got 100's of NEW Pinterest Followers

Number 1 addictive thing online - Pinterest....shifting through all the pretty pictures, feeling productive but really not being productive whatsoever.  

Pinterest is just as much of a social media site as any other and it can be just as much of a powerful tool for your business or blog as Facebook or Twitter. 

 Buuuuuut you can't create much of an impact without having followers that see everything you Repin.  

Pinterest, is unlike Twitter where you can haphazardly follow everyone and they will all follow you back (totally not recommending this - but it is a strategy used by many).  When you follow someone on Pinterest - your most definitely not guaranteed a follow back.  Pinterest is too much of a personal thing - people are selective on the types of people they follow - customizing their feeds to ones that they WANT to look at. 

Now listen up lovelies...

I currently follow 252 people on Pinterest - which make my feed brilliantly beautiful if you were wondering.  

I HAVE 434 followers on Pinterest.  Admittedly - that's not an outrageous number, but for someone that isn't promoting her account actively on her blog, Twitter, or Facebook...well it's not bad.  Plus - when my friends view my account I ALWAYS get a resounding "Wow.  How do you have that many followers Reyna?"  It's a little pat on my back kinda moment.  

So how did I do it? 

 Do you recognize this little shirt?  If you do - it might be because you saw it on this blog post.  More likely than that though -you saw it on Pinterest from this little pin.  

I sewed this shirt on April 24th, took a pretty self portrait wearing it, created a blog post on it, and then from my blog post pinned it to Pinterest on my "Pretty things to Make" board.  

This shirt has received 347 repins and 84 likes resulting in LOADS of Pinterest exposure and new followers - just today I received an update saying 20 new people have followed my Pretty Things to Make board.  

What was the secret formula to go from uploading a brand new pin and then receiving so many repins?  

1)  Upload new and unique content that people can't resist.  Lace and bows?  Every girly girl is a sucker for them.  Think about the type of followers you want to follow you and that DO follow you - cater to them.  Make sure the quality of the picture is good as well!  I recommend two pictures of the same thing - it is likely that no one will notice one, but the other one will blow up!

2) Put the content on a platform such as in your blog so you have somewhere to link it to (Yay for exposure!).

3) Pin it to Pinterest.

4) Wait for someone of influence to repin it - if you have a decent amount of followers (around 100) this will happen, if your pin is pretty! 

5) Sit back and watch the magic happen!

These were the exact steps that I took to make this little DIY Shirt as popular as it now is!  

This also works on scoring the web (think blogs by designers, websites, etc) and finding unique to pinterest content and uploading it yourself - people get tired of seeing the same things over and over again, if you can offer something unique - well...your golden!  

I want to hear about what pins you received LOADS of unexpected Repins on!  Share it up Lovelies!