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Helping small business owners, virtual assistants, and creative entrepreneurs grow their business.
Hi, I'm Tara! I'm a multi-passionate business and marketing coach.
A lot of Pinterest clients and people who are using Pinterest as a part of their marketing strategy have thought, “How do I make a pin go viral? What do I need to do?” If only it was that simple. I’m not writing this post to give you a magical solution on how to get a Pinterest pin to go viral, but I will give you some helpful tips and tricks to make it more likely to get that pin to go viral and grow your traffic.
When something goes viral, that means tons of people are sharing it in a short period of time. You’ve likely noticed many viral posts on Facebook, you know the ones where everyone on your friend’s list is suddenly sharing the same post or image? That’s something that has gone viral.
How long the virality of something lasts can vary, but usually, something viral is shared thousands of times very quickly, in a short period of time.
If you suddenly see a huge spike in your analytics one day, take a look at your individual pin stats. Is there one pin that is way outperforming the rest? That pin could be going viral, or at least semi-viral. Sometimes it can happen quickly if someone with a huge following shares the pin and people who see it are loving it and resharing it on Pinterest, too.
Remember: Pinterest is a search engine, NOT a social media platform.
When it comes to Pinterest, sometimes going viral isn’t the thing you want to strive for. The best-case scenario for Pinterest is that you have slow and steady organic growth, month over month, just like you want with most search engines.
Think about it in terms of another search engine, Google, for example, most websites and articles don’t suddenly drop in the number one spot in search results on Google. They have improved their ranking over time, usually over months or years, to slowly get to that important 1st spot in the search results. Getting there too suddenly can mean that you can lose that 1st spot as quickly as you achieved it. That’s why, in general, steady growth on Pinterest is better than 1 or 2 pins suddenly going viral.
With that said, we all want more eyes on our pins and content. So, how do we do that?
First, click-throughs are what matters. We are using Pinterest to drive traffic to our website or blog, not just share pretty images that people want to reshare.
While keyword research and optimization are what get your pins seen and ranking in search results, the pin design is what actually gets people to click over to your website or blog. It’s important to have a design that entices your target audience to click-through and perform the end goal you want. For example, signing up for your free offer, reading your blog post, making an affiliate purchase, etc.
Make sure to use complementary colors, large text that is easily readable, and a photo or stock image that compliments the pin but doesn’t overpower the text.
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I mentioned keyword research above, and it’s such an important step in getting your pins noticed on Pinterest. For any new blog post I write, I perform keyword research on the blog topic in order to write optimized pin descriptions.
Use the search bar to brainstorm keywords and understand how Pinterest users are searching. I also love using Pinterest’s own trend tool to find new or additional keywords to use.
Once you have the keywords or phrases you want to optimize your pin for, you’ll need to write the optimized pin description. You want to write the description in sentence form with the keywords flowing naturally in the pin description. Add 3-5 hashtags at the end of the pin description, too.
Here is an example where I optimized for the keywords “working from home”, “becoming a virtual assistant” and “time management”. I also included the words ‘ideas’ and ‘tips’ that could be added onto the end of any of my key search terms, too:
Tailwind Communities aren’t dead! People are still sharing relevant content from other Community members, and it can really give your new pin a great boost when first published.
When adding your new pin to your schedule, make sure you are pinning it to the most relevant personal board you have first. For example, if I was to pin this post, I would choose the first board as ‘Pinterest Marketing Tips’ and then add to other relevant boards, such as, ‘How to Grow Your Blog’ and ‘Business Marketing Tips’.
With Pinterest’s new guidelines for 2020, don’t pin each new pin design to more than 10 boards total. And, make sure you use Tailwind‘s interval feature to schedule the new pin out with an interval of 3-5 days between pins to the different boards.
Make sure you aren’t just putting pins out there and hoping for a slam dunk. When it comes to pin design, what works for one audience may not work for another. It’s important to test different pin styles, fonts, colors, and even types with your audience and see what tends to perform better.
Notice that video pins outperform your static pins? Create a few more of those next month!
Are certain colors performing better than others? Create more pin designs in those colors to continue testing if it was a one-time thing or if that color scheme tends to resonate more with your audience (and results in more clicks!). Remember, Pinterest IS NOT social media, your aesthetic doesn’t matter as much when it comes to Pinterest pins. Yes, you want them to be on-brand, but it’s not as important to keep to your brand aesthetic on Pinterest vs Instagram, for example.
Have you had a pin go viral? Are you reviewing your pin stats monthly to see if there are any trends with your audience? Share in the comments! And don’t forget to grab your FREE 20 Canva templates to help with your marketing needs.
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