Update: See My Updated Page views, close-ups, and saves at the bottom of the Page! It’s WAY more than 34K! And as Always Thanks for your awesome support!
I just had a Pinterest Pin go Viral with 34K views and 396 saves in 24 hours: Here’s What I Learned
- You’re already too late
- Promote, promote, promote and promote some more
- Some pins are for specific articles and some are not?
- What goes viral and why?
The other day I woke up to check my Pinterest and found this:
12.6K views overnight might not sound like much to you, but before this, I had only had pins with 4K or less (and these pins only got that far from ads mind you). So to wake up to this was exciting for me.
And what made it even better for me, this pin was completely organic.
I DID NOT use Pinterest ads to get this pin noticed.
In fact, I had published this pin a week or weeks earlier and forgot about it. I didn’t think this pin was very good, to be honest.
It was very exciting and as the day went on it just kept growing and growing. I couldn’t stop checking my Pinterest and my site to see what was going on and trying to make the best of it.
Before 24 hours was over I had 34K organic views and 396 organic saves of my pin, and it didn’t stop there.
So here are some things I picked up from this event and where it ended up leading.
I hope you can use these insights to make a good Pinterest Marketing Strategy and avoid some mistakes I made!
You’re Already Too Late.
That’s right. By the time your pin goes viral, you are already too late.
If you haven’t planned for the virality than you missed opportunities to capture emails and send people to the URL you desire.
Things you should consider doing before your pin goes viral to get ready for the traffic:
Make an email capture funnel.
- Create an email capture form pop up for the URL attached to the Pin
- Create a lead magnet for gathering emails. Capturing emails happens MUCH more effectively if you give visitors something for their email. Create a free piece of content they’ll want and offer it to them for their email.
- Make sure you have a good landing page created for capturing emails.
Use a Viral Pin ahead Strategy when creating pins:
- Understand that certain pins that carry the same URL as the Pin that went viral will also do well with the virality. These can be referred to as “sibling pins.”
- Sibling pins carry the same URL and sometimes boost each other on Pinterest based on how the other “siblings” are doing.
- Plan ahead when making pins and linking back to your site which pins and links you want to have more attention when a viral pin occurs.
By planning ahead you can control which pins will carry more traffic to your site and which pages you send people to.
Pins go viral fast and without much notice, so prep for it beforehand so you can make the most of it when it happens.
Promote, promote, promote and promote some more.
When a pin goes viral on Pinterest you will want to make sure to push it out to all your social channels to keep the flow of traffic from it going.
The more fuel you put under the fire the longer it will last and the more the attention will spread further.
You can make ads. You can make ads on Pinterest, Google, and FaceBook.
You can tweet it.
Send it to your FaceBook page.
Mention it in your Facebook groups. (I got some extra following from doing this.) Invite your friends to like it and pin it. Whatever you can think of, make sure to keep the fire going.
Even though the initial burst will make you very excited the reality is that it will boom for about 2 days and then turn into a passive trickle to your site.
Use the momentum to make it reach as far as you can.
Some pins are for specific articles and some are not?
I did what is apparently considered to be a Pinterest no-no.
I started putting my home page as the link to many of my pins.
There was a method to this madness (I’m still not sure yet if it was the right one.)
When I had sent people to my specific pages they would read for 1-3 minutes and then leave. I didn’t like this, but I did notice if I sent visitors to my home page they would check out more of my pages, but this did make my bounce rate go up, so still working out the kinks.
Pinterest traditional wisdom would say you should link your pins to specific articles and optimize from there. I’m not sure what I’ll do specifically yet, but I have changed my pin strategy a little and I’ll try to keep you updated on what’s working for me.
Another interesting insight from this event.
Since some of my pins are not for specific pages, they are quotes and tips and things like that. Pins that are like that share extremely well, BUT they don’t generate as many clicks as pins that lead to articles that make people curious.
Since the pin that went viral was more of a quote pin, even though I got TONS of shares, it didn’t lead to many clicks.
So it should be considered, if you want good clicks from your pins, consider this fact.
I’m not going to change this part of my strategy, I like creating these types of pins, but if you want to get more clicks from your pins, make sure they are pins that make people curious and teach something people want to learn, that way when your pin goes viral it will lead to clicks instead of just shares.
What goes viral and why?
That’s the all-consuming question, isn’t it?
Honestly, I don’t know, but I do have some guestimations based on why my pin got repinned so many times.
This pin is neat and clean and clear.
Here’s a link to the pin so you can see it for reference: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/621848661029319587/
It looks good. The typewriter gives it a good look to go along with my “writing” niche.
It has a touch of humor to it, but nothing very funny. (In other words, it didn’t go viral because it was funny.)
I think the biggest thing is that it lists an older movie that writers can watch and enjoy and also learn some writing lessons from. (It’s an easy way to learn more about writing and doing it in an easy and entertaining way.)
My guess is that most 18-24 year olds haven’t heard of the movie “Finding Forrester.” (Which is the majority of my audience.) Make sure you set up a Pinterest Business account to figure out your audience stats if you have not yet.
I don’t think people saved it because it looks cool or what it says, I think they saved it because they thought “hmmm, I’d like to watch that movie later, but I’ll forget it later. I’ll pin it and then I can just look it up here.”
That’s just my thought with this one.
So what’s the takeaway? Try to make pins that people will want to try later, they are more likely to repin it. When a bunch of people repin it so they can try it later it’ll go viral.
And another key lesson to take away from this is you never know what is going to catch on. I’ve created a lot of pins that I thought were sure to catch on quickly that ended up going nowhere.
This pin I didn’t think would go anywhere and it reached the farthest out of all my pins so far.
So if you love to create, don’t be shy, just put it out there. You never know who’s looking for what you love creating.
IF you want your pins to be more Viral you need to try Tailwind.
Tailwind posts your pins for you and it posts them at optimal viral times for your subject matter.
Use this link and get one month of Tailwind plus free!
I’ll try to keep you updated as I find out more.
Update: This pin reached 93K. Thanks for reading 🙂
Update: 97K views and 738 saves. Thanks for the support 🙂
Thanks so much for all the Shares, Saves, and Support! Couldn’t do it without you! 🙂
If you’d like my 20 Free Tips for Writing that’ll crush your writer’s block, you can find it here: https://howtodothewritething.com/get-20-writing-tips-and-tricks-to-make-you-a-better-writer-instantly/
If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog of your own and blogging for money, find some more inspiration here: https://howtodothewritething.com/why-start-a-blog/
Have you had a pin go viral?
What did you learn?
Share your viral Pin below.
You might be wondering, "Why aren’t my emails getting opened and read?" Hopefully, with this list, you will get better Read more
5 Powerful Words that Express Danger + Writing Prompts 1. Peril “You need to leave, my young prince. You cannot Read more
5 Powerful Words that Show Tragedy + Writing Prompts 1. Mishap “Where is John?” “He had an unfortunate mishap. He Read more
5 Powerful Words that Show Doom + Writing Prompts 1. Disaster The largest disaster mankind was ever to experience globally Read more
