Social networking reach is built around following.
You follow someone and if they are a real person with any knowledge of how social media works, they will follow you back.
Pinterest makes this a little more complicated by giving you two options, therein lies the conundrum.
Option #1 Follow A Person's Profile When you follow a person's profile, you will then be following their entire identity.
This means that you are automatically following all of their current boards, and all of the boards they will make in the future.
Most pinners (the name for a Pinterest user or member) will put up a wide variety of boards to reflect their interests, hobbies and passions, their dreams, their work life, their local area, the food they like to eat, what they want to cook in the future, what they think they ought to eat, etc.
There can be really wide variety.
You may not want to know all that.
And you certainly don't want your feed to be filled with foods you can't eat, or clothes you will never be able to wear or hobbies you have no interest in.
The only advantage here is if you are following someone you love or respect, you will automatically be subscribed to future boards.
This can be a lot of fun discovering more about a person; or it can be a colossal waste of time.
Option #2 Follow Specific Boards While this option makes your feed much richer and more tailored to what you would like to see every time you log in, it does nothing to build your personal statistics.
And it is not a polite way of rewarding true friends.
They then look like they have no followers at all because people are only following some of their boards.
This may be an accurate reality for that person, but it is a depressing one for them.
[Think: junior high school and the popularity nightmares] Recommendation for Following on Pinterest This will take more work and a time investment on your part but the whole community benefits as a result.
Plus you learn something about the people in your sphere of influence you would probably not have discovered any other way.

1. Follow the person's profile.
   
2. Then click on their name so that their full dashboard of boards comes up in neat rows
3. Unfollow anything you have no interest in.
   (By clicking the grayed out area that says "unfollow".
   )

You have no accomplished 3 good things: you have given your connection another follower; you have not junked up your feed with anything you have no interest in; and you will be notified of anything new that they create in the future.