Guest Post by {grow} community member Lauren Schaefer

This is Kate.

She’s a hairstylist, jewelry maker, and all-around crafter based in North Carolina. Kate started her blog (thesmallthingsblog.com) exactly one year ago. And like most of us, it was a labor of love without a whole lot of “community.” In fact, for the first eight months, she had a grand total of seven readers.  But between August of 2011 and today Kate has had over 10 million page views!  How did she achieve this amazing success in just five months?  Pinterest!

Pinterest is the hottest social media platform around right now. Created in March 2010, it’s still only available by signing up for a waiting list. Pinterest is probably best described as a “virtual pinboard.” Based on the idea that many people have magazine clippings of their dream vacations, weight loss goals, or perfect weddings, Pinterest allows users to create “boards” and share content by uploading images, “pin” from other sites, or “re-pin” from other user boards.

And there is an important social element too as you can comment, like, share, email content, and search based off of your customized interests.

If you snoop around Pinterest, for a little while, chances are you’ll run into a high-quality image of a beautifully coiffed hairstyle from Kate.  “My whole goal behind the blog was to share my ideas and information,” she said, “so I thought Pinterest would be a great way to share video tutorials of my hairstyles.”

“I pinned a photo of a completed style, which directed Pinterest users back to my blog to watch the tutorial video. And then I sat back and watched as the numbers rolled in.  I was stunned as I watched my blog quickly approach the first 100,000 page views! My husband and I sat at the computer, hitting refresh over and over until it hit 100,001. We were amazed.”   Since then, Kate’s success with Pinterest has continued to skyrocket. Thanks to Pinterest, Kate has now gained 16,000 blog subscribers and 14,000 Pinterest followers in just a few months.

“Almost daily I get a comment or email saying ‘I found you on Pinterest!’,” she said. “My top 10 traffic referring URLs are all Pinterest.”

Kate believes her success comes down to a careful balance between her original content and self-promotion for her blog and business.

“I think there is a fine line between self-promotion and obnoxious self-promotion. I decided to only pin hair photos to my own boards [from her blog], and a maximum of two per week.  The rest of the week, if any blog readers want to pin things from my blog, it’s up to them.”

“What I don’t want is for my 14,000 Pinterest followers to log on to Pinterest and see all the photos from my blog. I think that would be obnoxious,” she continued.  “I had one instance where I was following a blogger on Pinterest and she would pin things from her posts multiple times a day. I stopped following her.”

Beyond the blog numbers, Kate is also obtaining new business due to her Pinterest success.  In September, she took on her first blog sponsor. She also has had interest in her private hairstyling business. “It’s brought so many people to my blog who now want to be my clients!”

One of the reasons for Kate’s Pinterest success is that her hairstyling photos create intrigue.  If you pin an image of a dog, you know it is a dog. But with a hairstyle, a recipe, or a DIY project, there is a backstory.  You need to keep digging if you want to know how to do it. That “intrigue” is an opportunity to drive people back to your blog or website.

How about you?  Do you have an opportunity to create intrigue for your blog or business through Pinterest?

Lauren Schaefer is a recent college grad, NYC resident, and nonprofit event planner with an interest in all things social media. She documents her new journey as a young professional at her blog From the Fifth Floor. Twitter: @leschaef