How To Make Your Pinterest Pins Go Viral

ByVanessa

I can’t go a day without pinning on Pinterest. I’m addicted. But it’s a good addiction… as with every minute I spend on Pinterest, I’m driving more and more traffic to my blog.

To really succeed at Pinterest and turn it into your top blog traffic referral, you need to get your pins to go viral. It may sound like a daunting and difficult task, but trust me, it’s possible and it’s so worth it! I have quite a few viral pins. Some that I pinned several years ago are still being re-pinned and sending traffic my way.

Following are all the things I think you should consider when wanting to add a pin of your own to Pinterest, so you can give it the best chance to be seen and to be re-pinned thousands of times.



how to make your pinterest pins go viral

Choose The Best Colour

Did you know, the colours you use in an image can effect the amount of re-pins it will get? Everyone is drawn to particular colours and which colours will suit their Pinterest boards, however it has been found that images using red or orange are re-pinned 200% more than those that are blue. If you are creating an image from scratch, try leaning towards more bright, warm colours and leave the cool-toned colours for Instagram.

Size It Right

On Pinterest, the term “real estate” is used to describe how much space an image takes up on the page as you’re scrolling through. Every image pinned to Pinterest will show up in the feed at the same width, but will vary in regards to length. Vertically longer portrait-style images take up more Pinterest “real estate” than square or landscape images. For that reason, the image you’re wanting to pin from your blog to Pinterest should be long. You want your images to be seen, so a great image size to use is 735 x 1102 pixels.

Branding Is Important

To really dominate the field in Pinterest, branding is key. If you have branded your blog, it’s important to incorporate that branding into the images you take from your blog to your Pinterest boards. That way, your work will slowly become recognisable and can result in more re-pins, as you’ll be seen as a trustworthy source of great content. Branding involves using your logo, your font set (no more than two fonts) and your colour palette, as well as getting your blog URL out there. I go more into branding in the Blog Pretty eBook!

Use Catchy Words

Most pins that blow up on Pinterest have a big catchy headline that draws pinners in. You have maybe two seconds to capture someone’s attention with your image, so think about something you could say that is bound to get someone to click on or re-pin the image for their followers. It doesn’t always have to be the title of your blog post, it also doesn’t need to go as far as to be considered “click bait”. Be honest, but create excitement at the same time. Use numbers, exciting words and even $ figures if you can.

Ask Your Followers To Pin It

If you think you’ve created a great image for Pinterest and have added it to a blog post, ask your followers in that post to share it! There is no problem with asking. You can include a sentence underneath the image saying “Pin me for later!” or conclude the post by letting your followers know they can pin your top image if they are interested. A little reminder like that can work wonders.



The Bolder The Better

As you’re scrolling through Pinterest, you’ll most likely find that your eyes are drawn to images that have bold text. The bolder it is, the easier it is to read. Images that have thin text or use a font that’s overly too fancy aren’t going to draw as much as attention. You need to make an impact when your image is sitting alongside an image with bold writing, one that is basically screaming at you to take notice.

If you’re a relatively new pinner and you don’t have the following that will re-pin anything you put out there, go bold with your text. Make it stand out.

Make It A Rich Pin

Setting up Rich Pins will result in your pins having more information attached to them, and therefore they will appear more important and more reliable. Pinterest will recommend your pins to more people if they’re considered to be “high quality”, and one of the ways you can increase the quality of the pins from your blog is to make sure they’re pinned as Rich Pins.

Add The Browser Button

To get your images from your blog to your Pinterest boards, you need to add the Pinterest browser button to your internet browser. By doing this, you can go to a particular blog post of your’s and using that button, pin an image straight from your own blog to Pinterest. It will end up on Pinterest with a direct link to your blog post, already attached to the image. Pinterest will consider you to be a “valuable pinner” if you’re adding content from other websites (like your own), rather than just re-pinning images that are already on the platform.

Don’t Forget A Caption

As Pinterest is such a visual platform and many images have text already on them, it can be easy to get caught up, pinning away while forgetting about the little caption section. Whether you’re pinning your own pins or someone elses, you need to make sure this section is filled out. Even if it’s just one sentence, you need a caption with a few key words about the pin to boost it in search results and to have it classed as a high quality pin as well.

When adding one of your own images to Pinterest, try writing a caption that has between 20 – 50 words about the pin, including phrases and particular words you think people would search for when trying to find it.

Pin It Multiple Times

If you want an image to go viral, you can’t just pin it once and expect it to magically happen. You need to re-pin it yourself, several times over the space of a few hours to get it going, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, many people are aware that re-pinning an image that has less than 5 re-pins, reduces the quality of the board they’re pinning it to. That means they’re going to see your new pin and avoid it, because it doesn’t look like a popular, high quality pin. Another reason is that it can get easily lost in the crowd. There are so many images to look at while scrolling through Pinterest, especially if you’re following hundreds of people, so you can’t expect everyone to see it from being pinned that one time.

Try following these steps:

  • Pin your image to the most obvious board first.
  • Spend some time re-pinning other people’s images.
  • Re-pin your image to another board it relates to.
  • Spend some time re-pinning other people’s images.
  • Re-pin your image to a Group Board.
  • Spend a few days re-pinning other people’s images.
  • Repeat the whole process with that same image again, re-pinning it to those same 3 boards

There’s no limit to how many times you can re-pin an image you’ve added. Just make sure you space it out, as you will lose followers if you’re re-pinning it over and over, too many times in a row.

Get It On A Group Board

And that brings me to one of the best tips, which is to get your image onto a Group Board. If you’re not already part of a Group Board on Pinterest, you need to find one asap, especially if you’re a new pinner with a small amount of followers. If you don’t have the following waiting there to repin your blog pins, you will need to use someone else’s!

Finding an active Group Board to join that is in the same category as your blog, will help the images you pin reach a wider audience. Therefore, they have more of a chance of being re-pinned. If you don’t know where to find a Group Board, I’d suggest checking out the Facebook groups I listed in my Blogging Resource List, join up and ask around in there. I’m sure you’ll be bombarded with Group Board recommendations!


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36 Comments

  1. Yes – I love Pinterest! One of my Instagram photos got repinned 120K times and then ended up in a post on makeup storage on Rachel Zoe's blog once! So surreal.

    I recommend everyone to Pinterest over any other "social media" method… it's so measurable.

    I admin a group board called "Australian Beauty Bloggers" but I'm finding it hard to keep contributors going as many still think succeeding on Instagram is the way to go.

    Maddie | http://www.maddiesbeautyspot.com

  3. You provided a lot of new and useful information that I have been waiting sooooo long to read about! Thank you so much for writing this post, especially the re-pinning to-do list you made. I will use that as my Pinterest growth strategy from now on!

  5. I’ve read your blog and there is great info here but I don’t understand the “group” statement. Looking for group boards. I’m not familiar with that term. Could you explain it a bit further? Thank you

  6. i came across your blog when searching got free commercial use fonts and yours was the best one of like 150000 pages i’ve viewd…so thank you! (I pinned that post) and this post is very helpful, especially since i’m just starting out! excited to follow you on pinterest!

  11. Thanks for the Tips. I’ve recently started an Etsy shop and trying to get my shop name (OAKSI) out there and images of my jewellery out there too, particularly on Pinterest so this was really helpful!

  13. Thank you so much for this! I’m fairly new to Pinterest and I’m finding it difficult to grow my following, so I’ll definitely keep this in mind (I’ve also pinned this for later). One of the mistakes I think I’m making is not putting my titles in bold text; the text is also quite small so I’ll have to work on choosing a different format. By the way, your website is beautiful! x

    Alicia | https://www.alifestlyeblog.co.uk

  14. Wow. great post. So helpful and so great to actually get information instead of the “get the free ebook to discover….” I am much more likely to want to see more material from someone who is wiling to share good advice. So again thank you for the helpful advice!

  17. I admit that up until recently I was just sort of letting pins happen and not paying that much attention to how I was doing. I was getting traffic from Pinterest, a good bit even, so I just sort of let it do its own thing. I realized this week that I’ve been seriously under-utilizing Pinterest and I’m making an effort to learn a little more about it and going back to optimize some old blog posts for better sharing and getting ready to try some promoted pins!

  18. Thank you for sharing! This was valuable information! I recently started a blog Fabulously Single along with t shirts, coffee mugs, etc for sale. I am using your recommendations.

  20. Hi Vanessa. Just want to say this was a really good post. Straight to the point, packed with value and not that much of a long read. The tip that you mentioned about simply asking for pins from your followers is so simple yet like you say, has huge potential. I am definitely going to be putting some of these tips into practice! I have recently launched my new blog chrisryankingston.com as I want to start teaching and consulting others on social media and marketing. I like having my own client base, however, for me, I find much more fulfillment in the physical teaching of others and helping others to learn. Anyway, loved the post 🙂 Keep up the great work!

    All the best,
    Chris

  23. This was very helpful! I legit started my business Pinterest account back in December. I then launched my site on New Year’s. Needless to say I’m not creating content that I would LOVE to go viral. I’m in a few tribes but I’m about to try your method and see what my new pins do. Thank you for this article!

  24. I’m at the beginning with Pinterest and still trying to figure things out. I’ve tried to repin on the same board, but this does not serm to be allowed anymore? Is there a way to organizd pins in a board? My pins got at the bottom of my boards and harly get any views, while the ones on top do get. Thank you

  25. Some super helpful tips ! I am trying to navigate pinterest before launching my first blog . I feel like i am a slowly learning the ropes about building a brand ! Your site has really inspired me to have a go at blogging. Thanks !

  26. This was a great article! Very good pointers for a newbie at pinterest. Im attempting to get the hang of it and your pointers help so much!
    Also I love the color combination you have on your blog!

    Nicole yet2bedetermined.wordpress.com

  31. This post is so useful!

    Hi Vanessa!
    First I want to thank you for ALL of your amazing content! I started blogging WAAAY back in -97, long before there even existed any blog platforms. This girl made her first blog in a notepad document, in straight HTML coding. 😀
    Then came Blogger. Was a Blogger blogger for so many years, and it’s funny, I can clearly see your Blogger background influencing your style even now. It makes me feel right at home. <3 I moved on to self-hosting and WordPress later on.

    Well, fast forward to 2020. I haven't been blogging for years, you know life got in between. But now, with the kids moved out and life slows down a bit, I want to start up again. The problem is I forgot a lot of the tech stuff and even if I WOULD remember, there is so much new things that have popped up during my absence.

    So, there is one particular thing I want to ask you:
    I bought your kit Floriana ( It's solo gorgeous! ) and want to make a customized pin button for my Pinterest ready pictures on my blog. The design part is no problem, but how on earth do you upload a custom pin button to your site, like you have done? I would love it if you could do a tutorial post on that!
    And btw, your article about branding was superb! Blogging, and especially if you want to monetize it, is essential today. Back in the day, it was enough to HAVE a blog to get noticed (especially in a small country like Sweden. I even made it in the newspapers as the new "phenomena" , writing a Dairy on the web. ;D), I have so much to learn!
    // Linda

    1. OMG! Apparently, I can’t spell in the morning! Hahaha, please don’t pay attention to grammar and spelling. It’s 06:00 and the coffee haven’t kicked in yet. 😉

  33. This was SO helpful! I had a pin go slightly viral a month ago for a fashion post of mine, but I have been struggling to get more momentum going on my Pinterest account. I’ve been making new pins daily, but I am going to definitely start re-pinning them throughout the day.

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