Blogging

What Do You Do After Having A Viral Pin?

Have you experienced a viral pin lately?

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to blogging or have been blogging for years – when the powers up in Pinterest honor you with a viral pin, you go with it and run with it!

My very first viral pin happened within months of blogging.

I had no clue what was happening. All of a sudden this new blog I have was getting 20-30 visitors like clock work every night from 8-10 pm. This happend for days.

I was dumbfounded and confused why this was happening. Maybe it was just spammers. It was a new blog so that was it.

But, no, the traffic came from Pinterest.

Real pinners were really going to my post and reading it or sharing it.

But, then it stopped. The viral pin attraction died down and was gone…for good..

Since I didn’t know much about what was happening, I was still very happy that my blog traffic boosted and I moved on.

I’ve learned after a few more viral pins that there are some ways to keep the spark going. Before I tell you what I do with viral pins, I’ll first go over what a viral pin is and how to create one (if you possibly can…).

Want to start a mom blog? Check out my free course on starting a blog and learn how to make money with that new blog!

What is a Viral Pin?

Viral pins only happen on Pinterest. Pinterest is a marketing platform for bloggers to help them grow their blog traffic, income and email list.

By creating pins and saving them to your boards, other pinners that follow you will engage with your pins.

From there, Pinterest may show your pin to a new audience and your pin can be shown to more and more pinners.

This snowball effect is what can create a viral pin – the more pinners engage in your pin, the more viral it can be. This relates to visitors on your blog.

So when your daily visitors increase substantially, mama – you have a viral pin!

How long do viral pins last?

It depends on how viral your pin is. For some bloggers it can solidify them into the eternal group of best pins. These are THE pins Pinterest shows for a category or topic.

Your pin becomes the visual representation for a topic on Pinterest. The go-to pin!

Here is the result for “breastfeeding tips” that I used for three of my profiles – my blogging profile, my parenting profile and my IPM profile.

Each of these profiles have different followers, but you can see that the first two pins are exactly the same no matter what niche you’re in or who is following you.

If you don’t know – your search results in Pinterest are based on partly who you follow. So your follower’s pins will show in your feed when you search for something.

Those two pins are the BEST pins that Pinterest thinks represent that entire topic of breastfeeding tips.

So, when this happens, your viral pin will stay popular and give you long term traffic. Get two more of of these types of pins and you’re good!

For other pinners, their viral pin may only last a day or two or a few days. This is what has happened to me with my viral pins.

My most recent only lasted two days:

But, I’m still happy with that! Over 2500 visitors to ONE blog post in ONE day?

So, how do you create a viral pin and can you really create one?

I feel if you use the best practices for creating Pins then you have the potential to have a viral pin. But, a lot of that depends on your followers and the pinners that see your pin.

Will they engage with your pin? When they do, it sends signals to Pinterest telling them that your pin is a “hot” pin and to keep showing it.

So, let’s go through some best practices for creating a pin.

1. The Font is Large

Pinners are viewing your pins on their mobile, so to attract those pinners to your pin, have large fonts! Here is an example of one of my first pins I created for Twins Mommy and one of my recent pins.

Aside from the pin size difference, the main takeaway here is that my font size became larger and bolder and brighter!

I bet you can read the pin on the right from your phone a lot easier than the pin on the left!

So, if anything, start making your font large, bold and bright. You can add a script font but don’t over do it (and make sure you can read it!).

2. Your Pin Has A Lot of White in It

This tactic doesn’t really hold for other types of creative niches like crafts, food, etc… but it does for other niches like business, finance, parenting, etc..

Make sure your pins aren’t dark, but light and that they aren’t cluttered. Having your pins mostly white also shows better in someone’s feed too.

But, play around; I sometimes do colored and cluttered pins and they do well.

3. Optimize Your Pin Descriptions

To help Pinterest understand what your pin is about, make sure your Pin description has keywords. Here is my pin description for my busy kid activity pin:

Keep kids busy with indoor activities. Toddler activities to keep kids busy all day long so that parents can start a blog and blog! For work from home moms that need to entertain kids and keep kids busy with toddler activities.

Can you guess my keywords?

Write your description as a sentence and use a few keywords per description.

4. Pin to Relevant Boards

A big push Pinterest is telling content creators is that the boards we pin our pins to are important. In fact, the board’s keywords carry on your pins.

What does this mean?

Let’s say I pin my busy kid activity pin to > Toddler Activities. A pinner sees my pin and pins it to their board called > Parenting tips. More pinners see my pin and pin it to some variation of:

  • Activities
  • Toddler activities
  • Kid activities
  • Things for my toddler to do

The keywords from all those boards attach to my pin to help Pinterest understand what my pin is about.

5. Optimize Your Pin Profile

Look, your pin followers are the ones that will first engage with your pin. If you don’t have targeted Pinterest followers, your pins won’t go out to the ethers of Pinterest and get seen my more pinners.

Many bloggers think your Pinterest followers don’t matter anymore, but they really do! Pinterest needs your followers to see if your pin is worthy of being one of the BEST pins out there.

So, make sure you keyword your bio description, boards and title.

From here you can schedule your pins in Tailwind and let Pinterest do the rest.

Bonus: Monetize Your Pin

To capitalize on a viral pin in the future, make sure that you’re monetizing EVERY blog post you have. This might mean doing affiliate marketing, course sales, or selling your services.

If you feel you can’t monetize every blog post (I have some blog posts I can’t monetize either), try promoting your email list by having a content upgrade or an opt-in form in your blog post or on your blog page.

This will help you convert that viral traffic into income or subscribers!

What To Do With a Viral Pin

Okay – you have a viral pin, now what?

While there really isn’t much you can do in the immediate time of a viral pin, you can make sure that it circulates in Pinterest for weeks or months to come.

1. Schedule That Pin

An easy way to keep your viral pin alive is to schedule your pin in Tailwind…again. You can schedule it to more of your boards or to group boards and you can create a new pin description too.

Change it up so that Pinterest can see this pin as a fresh pin and more important, attract new pinners to engage with your pin.

2. Share Your Pin to Tribes

Are you using Tailwind Tribes? I use them when I create a new pin, alternate pin or have a viral pin that needs sharing! Tribes will also become a better way to grow your Pinterest reach as group boards on Pinterest may not be relevant later on.

3. Pin It A Few Times From Your Blog

To keep circulating your pin out there, pin it again from your blog a few times. Create new descriptions of you want and use hashtags too!

4. Create a New Pin (Or a Few)

You can spend the time to create a few alternate pins for your viral pin. I found that this helps revive old viral pins more than save current viral pins.

For example, I created an alternate pin for the very first viral pin I received a year ago and it’s doing well right now:

5. Monitor Your Viral Pin

From here, you just have to monitor your pin on Pinterest and in your Google Analytics. Look at how this is affecting your traffic, your bounce rate and your conversions/sales.

If you see that pin get picked up a month or a few months later, then create an alternate pin and schedule it.

You can even promote that blog post as a popular post on your blog to create more traction by linking it in your About page or having it displayed on your sidebar.

Get Happy! You Have a Viral Pin

Yay! Be happy that your pin got viral! No matter how big or how small, you deserve a win mama!

Over to you – have you had a viral pin? What was the result of having one? Please share your story – I’d love to hear it!

Remember to pin me!

Leave a Reply

30 Comments

Hi Elna, Not sure if I missed this but what tools do you recommend to create your beautiful pins?Reply to Jennifer
Hi Jennifer, I use Canva and Photoshop to create my pins! Thanks for stopping by!Reply to Elna
Thank you for your help! I’m trying to gain some traction as a new blogger. I currently have 1500 impressions/3 saves from a story pin I made this morning, which is a big win for me! Hoping to keep growing!Reply to HappyMamaHappyFam
Hi! Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed this postReply to Elna
Really much required info Elna. I have a recent viral pin I had posted 12 days back. In between I hv pinned same pin from activity tab 5 – 7 times and another created pin of same post. Now the views are decreasing for tht post. Can I create n pin another image of same post? Does the same URL matters? How often we can pin with same url post?Reply to Ipsa
Hi Ipsa! Yes, create lots of alternate pins with new images and new headlines and SEO descriptions to catch a new audience!Reply to Elna
Thank you!! I have had a few pins go viral this week, and I was like uhh oh… what do I do now?! lol! I appreciate it.Reply to Redeemed
Hi Redeemed, That’s awesome! Way to go to have some viral pins!!!! ElnaReply to Elna
Thank you for the post! I love reading your blog. I just had my first viral pin and wasn’t sure what to do. I’ve looked at google analytics 10 times in the last 24 hours). It’s exciting and definitely motivating!Reply to Celina
Hi Celina! Yes! I so know how you feel! I do the same. Well, actually, my Real Time GA is always open as I work with two screens so I notice pretty quickly if a pin is going viral! I hope these tips will help you for your next viral pin!Reply to Elna
Thank you for sharing 🙂 I just had a pin go viral for me and I wasn’t really sure what to do lol!Reply to Francesca
Hey Francesca! Yay! That’s awesome! I had another one too but it was a super fast viral pin and I wasn’t ready! I’m still learning here!Reply to Elna
I had also a viral pin before Elna. I was kinda tongue-tied, my jaw dropped I just didn’t know what to do. I kept on staring at it and for a few days it was a hit. I was then wondering why it became viral, it was just a simple post about starting a blog. (Yay)Reply to Josh
Hi Dearest Elna, Thank you so much for this post. I have learned a lot. So timely, because I am having a pin that is getting hot and Pinterest is emailing me that it’s being a hit. I just felt awed, tongue-tied and frozen (yay!). It just got 20+ repins in just a few days after I created a second pin for that post. But I cannot monetize it or gain some new subscribers. I am just a newbie in this blogging world, so I am still experimenting to level up my knowledge. Really, you are a great help. I am very much grateful to accidentally know you through Pinterest.Reply to Josh
Hey Josh! That’s great to hear! I’ve had a few viral pins but my most recent one was the biggest one yet! I love getting viral pins and learning how to extend that viral traffic for sure!Reply to Elna
Amazing Elna!! This is something I never even considered. I’ve had a few decent pins (I wouldn’t say they were viral) but it’s a great way to see “what sticks” and focus on this content/ type of pins! I’d love to know more about your freelance writing (how you started/ what stuff you write etc.) Please do point me to the post I know you probably already have about that 😉 Mike [email protected]Reply to Mike
Hey Mike! Glad you enjoyed this tips to having a viral pin! Pinterest marketing is the best way to promote new blog post for bloggers! Glad you’re on the Pinterest train!Reply to Elna
Hello, Elna! Ok–first off…love all of your helpful posts. JUST awesome! Still growing that blog of mine but I backed off a bit as I’m also growing my Pinterest VA/Marketing business. On that note…I had a client’s pin “go viral”–or I THINK it did based on Pinterest analytics (I don’t have access to their website analytics as they have a separate person for that!) I’m going to ask them this month if they can share some info regarding some of the pins I’m seeing get a ton of click-throughs! Any advice on fluctuating monthly views and engagement on Pinterest? My blogging account had dipped because I was focusing on the other aspect of my business (whoops) but now that I’m back on it, the engagment rate isn’t increasing. Then with another account of mine, it seems like the views and engagement are stalling but followers keep increasing. Any thoughts on that algorithm? THANK YOU for all of your help! (As always!)Reply to Courtney
Hey Courtney! Regarding your question, that’s stuff I have in my traffic course, but what you can start doing is to make new pins every week or every day or as often as you can. And keep at it! Also, Tribes helps me get my new pins off quicker! I hope this helps!Reply to Elna
Yes! Thank you!Reply to Courtney
I love all of your blog posts! I had a pin go mini-viral at the beginning of the week. It is still going but on a slow burn, downhill. But it was so exciting especially since it was a post I did not expect anything much out of. It was shocking like you said I thought it was spam or a bot at first! Thank you for posting this because I had no idea what to do with that pin to keep it going!Reply to Ashley
Hi Ashley! You’re welcome! I know what you mean! I couldn’t find a post on what to do AFTER you have a viral pin. Just posts on getting that viral pin! I hope these tips help you give your viral pin more push on Pinterest!Reply to Elna
Reading your post was definitely something that I HAD to read. I am still a fairly new blogger and recently I had one of my pins take off and it got me 173 page views for the entire day and then they went down the next day (which was a bit of a bummer, but I was still happy considering I’m only into my third month blogging). Your post has definitely helped A LOT! 🙂Reply to Tegan
Hi Tegan! I’m glad! Yes, I’ve unexpectedly had a viral pin during my first month or two of blogging and I had NO IDEA what to do. I was just shocked I was getting a ton of traffic for days. I thought it was fake! 🙂 Now, I know the process of a viral pin and what to do after to keep it more viral! Glad these tips are helping you!Reply to Elna
Thanks, Elna, for this post about what to do after you have a viral pin! I just had my first “mini-viral” pin (viral for my site’s standards). It caught me off guard and I was kind of winging it to keep it going. This will be helpful next time I have a pin go viral (fingers crossed).Reply to Charissa
Hey Charissa! You’re welcome! Yes, having a viral pin does happen all of a sudden for sure! It does caught me off guard! That mini-viral post still got some great visitors after the initial boost, but it’s on a downfall..that’s okay though! It’s now my #1 post on that blog!Reply to Elna
This post came at just the right time. Yesterday I saw the post and didn’t think it applied to me. Then I went on Pinterest tonight and saw that one of my pins went viral yesterday. I remember your post and came back to see what to do next. Thank you!Reply to Arlene
Hey Arlene! Aww thanks so much! Yes, those viral pins sneak up on you right? 🙂 It’s a good surprise for sure! Have fun watching your traffic go up and up!Reply to Elna
Oh my goodness, thank you! I had a massively viral pin on my site a couple months back and had no idea how to keep the momentum going! Saving this for next time, for sure.Reply to Heather
Hey Heather! You’re welcome! Yes, those viral pins sure sneak up on you eh? 🙂 I try to get this to be more viral, but that’s a challenge as it’s not in your hands. You can only circulate new pins of your viral pin and have a slow burn of traffic 🙂 Good luck!Reply to admin