7 Tips to Create Great Viral Pinterest Pins to Get Traffic!

Have you created a bunch of pins on Pinterest and found that you are not getting much traffic to your site? Or are you just getting started with Pinterest and wondering how to drive high volumes of traffic to your site using Pinterest?

Viral Pinterest pins are a great and free way to get seen online and in this post, I will explain 7 techniques to get higher traffic through Pinterest.

The Power of Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual search engine and it is much easier to get results on Pinterest versus Google when getting started.

It is much easier, for example, to get your image onto the 1st page of results in Pinterest than page 1 of Google (for a given search term) but both can drive good traffic to your site.

Making high-quality pins that also have the chance to go viral is possible and there are some definite rules of etiquette to follow. So let’s dig straight into it!

1. Best Pin Size for Pinterest

The first thing you will want to do is make sure that you are using the optimum size for Pinterest pins.

These days the size that Pinterest suggests is to use:

• 2 to 3 ratio.
• and the best option is 1000 x 1500 pixels.
• On a free tool such as Canva (great for making jazzy Pinterest images) the default Pinterest templates are 735 x 1102 pixels (so still 2:3 ratio) but a little bigger. You want to try and reduce the file size in terms of kb so I recommend 1000 x 1500 pixels.
• Vertical images are the very best as they suit the layout of Pinterest search results the best.

2. Finding and Including a High-Quality Image or Icon in the Pin Design

First of all, you want to use high-quality and professional-looking photos, images, or icons.

I suspect you might now be asking yourself where you are meant to get these high-quality images and icons.

How are you meant to find images for every post and every Pinterest image? You are not a professional photographer, right?

Alas, DO NOT STRESS. Help is at hand!

There are some fantastic and totally FREE resources for using rights-free images.

This means that you can use these images on commercial and non-commercial materials. Basically, you can use the images for whatever you want.

These are some of the sites you can get great free images from:

• Unsplash
• Pexels
• Pixabay

Another way to use free images or icons is to use the ones that are already accessible inside Canva. On the left side of Canva select ‘Photos’ or ‘Elements’ (for icons)

3. Making Sure Key Elements are on the Pin and Solving Someone’s Problem

Next, you want to make sure that you use text correctly on the Pinterest image.

By this, I mean that you want to make it clear what the benefit is for the user, i.e. the person you want to click your pin and go to your site to read the post that the image is from.

• So what problem are you solving for them?
• What are you offering them?
• What is the benefit for them, the user?

In this respect, think about using text that touches a nerve with the reader i.e. is aimed at their pain points. Take a look at this image below to see what I mean:

In the Pin above, entitled “How to melt more belly fat when running”, notice 4 key things.

• Firstly, it tackles a problem that people have, that is that they want to lose weight.
• Secondly, the pin has very clear text and what the pin is about is obvious.
• Thirdly, the pin provides an image that clearly matches the topic and shows, in this case, the target that you can reach from losing weight running.
• Finally, the pin provides enough information for you to know what the page that the pin is from is about, whilst still leaving you curious (if you are interested in this solution) such that you need to visit the post to learn the solutions. There is, in other words, not too much information such that you immediately know the answers to the solution. Indeed, you must visit the post to learn more.

For the text, consider also using bold text and make sure that it is READABLE!

4. Use Tailwind and Tribes

Tailwind Tribes

In order to get your pin shared, you want to make sure that you are also sharing other people’s pins.

Pinterest is very much a community-based search engine where people follow each other’s board and share each other’s pins.

Start to engage with others through Pinterest and the easiest way to do this is by joining Tailwind Tribes.

With Tailwind Tribes you join a bunch of people who are in the same niche and you share each other’s content.

Each tribe has its own rules but most of the tribes have a 1:1 rule meaning that for every pin you add, you must share one.

Pin Scheduling

Tailwind is also a scheduler! Use Tailwind to schedule all your Pins so that you can plan a week’s worth of pinning at one time.

Time management is always a problem when blogging as who has enough time to blog, create great pins and do everything else like shopping, school run, and so on.

Tailwind is an essential blogging tool for time-saving!

You can read our post on using Tailwind to schedule pins here!

You will, for example, want and need to use the ‘Interval’ scheduler.

If you are posting your pin to 10 group boards, you do not want to post them all at the same time but to post them at intervals such as a day apart.

This will save you from being seen as spam by Pinterest.

5. Colour Schemes

To make viral Pinterest pins, consider carefully the color scheme you use for the pins and branding.

Power bloggers such as Melyssa Griffin and Twins Mommy both use soft colors in their pins.

Soft colors such as light blue, pink, and yellow can be very good for use in viral pins. These colors subconsciously suggest comfort and being at ease.

Soft colors relax us and for you, as the designer, this means better engagement with your readers.

6. Optimize the Pin

Make sure also to optimize your pins, to greatly increase the chance of your pins going viral.

There are several sections you need to optimize and these are:

• Give your pin a clear title and include (but do not stuff) the main keywords and expression related to the pin. Do not forget also to create curiosity with the reader to make them want to learn more, through your title.
• Ensure you also add a clear Pin Description, once again taking into consideration trying to include important keywords (in a natural sentence) and entice the reader to want to click the pin.

7. Use Group Boards on Pinterest

In addition to Tailwind Tribes, as we have mentioned above, making use of Pinterest Group Boards is also a great way to get your pins shared and make them go viral.

Join between 10 and 20 group boards and start sharing your posts.

When joining group boards, do though ensure that you:

• follow boards that are relevant to your niche so that your own Pinterest profile is clearly themed and based around your own niche.
• follow the rules of the group. If you have to share 1 pin from someone else for every pin you add, then make sure to abide by the rule.
• use the Tailwind interval scheduler that we talked about earlier, to space out any pin you are pinning multiple times. You do not want your profile to show the last 10 pins on your profile as being the same.

Finding Group Boards

1. You can use a free tool such as Pinterest Insights to find groups to join. This is one easy way.

2. To spot if a board is a group board, look for multiple profiles showing on the board profile image as you can see below.

3. To then work out who to contact, look at the URL when you click on the board. On the ‘Career Path’ board above, you can see, for example, that it goes to www.pinterest.co.uk/corporatetraininguk/boards/

So the text before /boards/ is corporatetraininguk. That is the user profile to who you need to write to.

How to join the group board will normally also be explained in the group description.