Pinterest Marketing Tips

What does it take to make a viral pin Pinterest? This is a question that many bloggers and online business owners who use Pinterest ponder. I myself was fixated on this question for months as I experimented with different pin designs and pinning strategies to find an answer. In the end, I narrowed down seven characteristics that make the odds of a pin going viral high.  

What is a viral pin?

Generally speaking, a viral pin is a pinnable image on Pinterest that gets saved many times and/or drives a ton of clicks to a blog/website. For the purpose of this post, we will define a viral pin as a pin that drives at least 1,000 pageviews to a blog within a 30-day period. We’re not concerned with the number of impressions or saves, just the clicks. At the end of the day, the goal of Pinterest is to drive page views so that’s the metric we’ll evaluate. 

Viral Pin Formula

Over the past two and a half years, I have created over 1,000 pins for my own blogs as well as for clients. After experimenting with hundreds of pin designs, I have identified seven key features that make a pin go viral.

1. A popular topic 

The first factor that determines the likelihood that your pin will go viral is the topic. Not all topics do well on Pinterest. That’s because Pinterest emphasizes pins that teach and inspire. Its primary goal is to help users not only find what they’re searching for but also discover new ideas. Accordingly, topics like travel, home decor, food, fashion, and DIY are popular on Pinterest. These topics lend themselves to new ideas and inspiration.  

How do you discover what topics are popular on Pinterest? One way is to use the  Pinterest Trends tool. It shows you the search history of different keywords on Pinterest over time. If you search for a term, you can see whether the searches for that term are on the rise, on the decline, or flat. That can help you decide what content to promote. For instance, in October, Pinterest users start searching for Christmas gifts and decor ideas. This would be a good time to start introducing your holiday pins to give time to gain traction and increase their chances of going viral. 

2. Long and vertical shape 

The dimensions of your pin also play an important role in determining whether it goes viral. You’ve probably already noticed that pins on Pinterest tend to be long and vertical. There’s a reason for that. Pinterest recommends 600 x 900 or a 2:3 ratio for pins. Vertical pins take up enough space to stand out on a user’s home feed. On the other hand, horizontal pins would get lost among the sea of pins.  

I create pins of different sizes to see which one does best. No matter the dimension, the pins are always long and vertical. Pin dimensions that I’ve found to have major viral potential include:

• 600 x 900
• 1000 x 1500 
• 735 x 1102
• 750 x 1125
• 600 x 1250

My pins don’t get bigger than 735 x 1,400 unless it’s an infographic. Those can get as long as 735 x 2000. Note that if a pin is too long, Pinterest may cut off the bottom portion of it when displaying it on home feeds and search results. Although pins that don’t follow the recommended 2:3 ratio can do well, be careful not to make your pins long. What is too long? I would say a pin with a length greater than 2000 pixels is too long.

3. High-resolution images

Pinterest is a visual search engine so images are absolutely critical to your success on the platform. Unless you’re a professional photographer, I recommend you invest in paid stock photos. They are better than the free stock photos you find on sites like Pixabay and Pexels. This is because paid stock photos tend to be more unique, professional, and aesthetically pleasing. I have a subscription with Deposit Photos for $29/month, and it’s worth every penny. Since I started using professional stock photos, my pins went from 20-50 repins to 1,000+ repins. Unique, high-quality photos make a big difference. That’s why I highly recommend you invest in professional stock photos instead of using free stock photos.

Another issue with free stock photos is that they are ubiquitous on Pinterest. Your pins will blend in with thousands of other pins that use the same images. With paid stock photos, however, you get access to high-quality images that not many other people are using. That way your pins stand out. Using professional stock photos has been one of the biggest game-changers in my Pinterest strategy. If you’re serious about driving traffic to your blog with Pinterest, I would seriously consider using paid stock photos. 

4. Proper use of keywords

Keywords will make or break your success on Pinterest. They are extremely important! Remember that Pinterest is a visual search engine. Just like Google, it relies on SEO to determine how to categorize and display not only pins, but also boards and profiles. The Pinterest algorithm primarily considers your keywords, pin image(s), and boards to determine what your pin is about and decide when to show it.

Keywords are search phrases that people use to find what they’re looking for on Pinterest. If you want the right people to find your pin, you need to describe your pin using the keywords they’re searching for. Keyword research is so important that I devoted an entire chapter to show you how to do it (lesson 7).

The great thing is that identifying those keywords is quite simple. When you search for the topic you’re writing about in the Pinterest search bar, Pinterest will show you the most searched keywords related to that topic.

Once you have the keywords people are searching for, you need to place them in strategic places so that your content can come up in search results and smart feeds.

To make your pin go viral, you absolutely have to teach Pinterest what it’s about. This 

5. A click-worthy title 

The content creator who can grab the most people’s attention and convert that to action wins on Pinterest. In addition to using high-quality images, your pin needs to communicate what Pinterest users can gain by clicking it. This is where pin titles come in. You want to include a title that communicates the benefit of reading your post in a way that piques the user’s curiosity. These titles should be specific, descriptive, and answer the question: ‘What’s in it for me?’ Here are five title formats that drive clicks and examples of them in action.

1. The List – tells the reader exactly what they’re getting and how long it’ll be.

• 50 Simple Ways To Save More Money
• 10 Budgeting Mistakes You’re Probably Making 

2. How To –  gives the reader a concrete solution to a problem or question.

• How To Prepare a Keto Meal in 30 Minutes
• Or, How To Spend 3 Days in Barcelona 

3. The Question – a thought-provoking question that entices someone to find out more.

• Are You Making These 5 Pinterest Mistakes?
• Is Your Mindset Making 

4. The Case Study – offers a real-life example of how someone accomplished a goal of interest to the reader

• How Michelle Went From $0 to $50,000 a Month With Affiliate Marketing
• 3 Simple Changes That Doubled My Traffic in 30 Days 

5. REASONS WHY – offers an explanation for why something is the way it is. This could be why something happens, works, or doesn’t work.

• Here’s Why Pinterest Isn’t Sending You Traffic
• 5 Reasons Why Bluehost is a Terrible Hosting Service for Your Blog

Note that the title that appears on a pin doesn’t have to match the exact title of the blog post or landing page it leads to. For instance, you can create three separate pins for one blog post using three different title formats. This is a great way to appeal to different users on Pinterest and increase your chances of getting a viral pin.

6. Easy-to-read fonts 

For Pinterest users to read your click-worthy title, you to use legible fonts. Be careful with fancy script fonts. They can work, but make sure they are legible. I don’t usually use script fonts for travel pins because I’ve found that regular, block fonts, like Playfair Display, Montserrat, and Oswald perform better. and text that tells viewers exactly what they’ll get. Be careful with fancy script fonts. They can work, but make sure they are legible.

A bonus incentive

When you include something extra, like a checklist, worksheet, printable, or some other kind of download, you increase the incentive for people to click on your pin. When you write a post, think about a bonus you can add to it.

For instance, if you write an itinerary post, you can use Google Maps to pinpoint all the places in the itinerary and embed it in the post. Take a screenshot of the map and include it in at least one pin. If you write about things to pack for a long flight, you can quickly make a checklist on Canva and include it in your post. Then include a blurb about the checklist in at least one pin.

You’ve created a Pinterest business account and claimed your website. Now, it’s time for the next key step: enabling rich pins.

Enabling rich pins is a must to unlock all the Pinterest business features. 

In this post, you’ll learn and quick and straightforward way to enable rich pins on your Pinterest business account. That way, you can use Pinterest to grow your traffic, get more leads, and make more sales.

What are rich pins?

Rich pins contain extra information about the content being shown, such as the website it’s from and a short summary. A regular pin just shows the pin title and author. There are four types of rich pins: app, article. recipe, and product. 

For most bloggers, rich pins will appear as article pins. Article pins contain a headline, author, and a short description of the post. This gives Pinterest users a sneak peek at what the post is about, helping them decide whether or not to click on it.

Recipe pins are designed for food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers who write about food, and other content creators in the food niche. These pins allow Pinterest users to see the ingredients, cooking times, and serving information for the dish in question. That way, they don’t actually have to leave Pinterest to get the necessary information 

Product pins are for e-commerce businesses, like Shopify and Etsy store owners. These pins show important information about the product featured, such as price and availability. Product pins are also called ‘Buyable Pins’ because they make it easier for Pinterest users to make buying decisions. That said, you cannot buy a product directly on Pinterest. You have to click on the product pin to be taken to the website of the business, where you can make a purchase. 

Lastly, app pins, which are the least common, are used to showcase apps for download. These pins are geared towards app developers. They contain a title and description of the app and the price.

Why should you enable rich pins?

Enabling rich pins on your Pinterest business account will help your Pinterest SEO, which makes it easier for your content to get found. Remember that Pinterest is a visual search engine. To get discovered on the platform, you have to teach Pinterest what your pins are about using keywords. Whenever Pinterest gives you an opportunity to use keywords, you should definitely take it!

When you enable rich pins, Pinterest pulls metadata from your website or online store. Metadata refers to your post title and meta description, or SEO description. Pinterest is able to pull your metadata because you’ve claimed your website. This allows Pinterest to access your website information and the description for every blog post you share on Pinterest. Let’s take a look at one of my article pins to see how this works. 

This is a pin I created for my blog post, 5 Pinterest Myths You Should Ignore

On WordPress, you can see the meta description and SEO title of the blog post that has been entered into the Yoast SEO plugin.

Now, let’s take a look at what the pin looks like on Pinterest. As you can see the blog post title and meta description are listed as part of the details for the pin. Pinterest does this for every pin you share once you’ve enabled rich pins. 

Rich pin example

Without rich pins, your pins would only include the information you provide to Pinterest – a title and a pin description. With rich pins, however, your pins contain extra information. This means that you have double the opportunity to showcase what your content is about and rank highly on Pinterest search results. 

How to enable rich pins on WordPress?

As mentioned before, you first need to claim your website before you can enable rich pins. Pinterest is only able to pull data from your website once you’ve verified that you own it and allowed Pinterest access to your website data. 

Steps to enable rich pins on WordPress

You can enable rich pins once you’ve claimed your website. You’ll only need to do this once for your site. Follow these steps.

1. Download the Yoast SEO plugin (if you don’t already have it.) The Yoast SEO plugin will allow you to skip dealing with code. It automates the process of enabling rich pins. 
2. Under Yoast SEO, go to Social > Facebook and check “add open graph metadata.”
3. Choose any blog post from your website and copy the URL.
4. Go to the Rich Pins Validator page.
5. Enter the blog post URL you’ve copied into the box provided. Make sure you post the URL of a blog post and not your homepage. 
6. Click validate

Then just wait for your confirmation email from Pinterest. It could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Pinterest can be unpredictable in that way. The first time I validated rich pins, it took about 24 hours. The last time, it took about five minutes. 

How to enable rich pins for your Shopify store?

As with a WordPress blog, you need to claim your Shopify store before you can enable rich pins. Once you do that, then Pinterest can pull product information to display on your pins, 

Steps to enable rich pins for your Shopify store

1. Open a specific product URL on your Shopify site. This is a page that has a Buy or Add to bag button.
2. Copy and paste this product URL into the Rich Pin validator and type .oembed at the end of your product URL. You’ll see all the Rich Pin information for your product.
3. Click Validate.
4. After the preview appears, click Apply. You only need to apply with a single product URL from your website.
5. Your product Pins will become Rich Pins within 24 hours.

Pinterest rich pins not working?

If you followed the steps above and your rich pins aren’t working, there are some troubleshooting steps you can take. The first step is to contact Pinterest support to see if they can diagnose the problem on their end. Pinterest can be glitchy at times so you want to first make sure that the problem isn’t coming from Pinterest.

If you check in with Pinterest support and things are fine on their end, then the other possible culprit could be your web host. Contact your web hosting provider to see if there could be any error preventing Pinterest from accessing your metadata. 

Helpful Pinterest Tools and Resources 

If you want to grow your traffic with Pinterest, here are some additional tools and resources I would recommend.

• PicMonkey – I use PicMonkey to make professional-looking pins to promote my blog posts and affiliate products. It comes with a wide variety of fonts, templates, and many cool features.
• Canva – I use this to make pins in addition to PicMonkey. It’s easier to use if you’re new to graphic design but isn’t as sophisticated as PicMonkey. It does come with 400,000 premium photos, which is 100x more than PicMonkey.
• DepositPhotos – This is my go-to source for high-quality stock photos that I use in both blog posts and pins. The website has over 70 million stock photos, covering virtually every topic you can think of! Deposit Photos is one essential tool that has improved my blog’s appearance and skyrocketed my traffic. I can’t recommend it enough!
• Pinterest Ninja – This beginner Pinterest course teaches you the fundamentals of keyword research, pin design, and branding. It’s taught by Pinterest marketing expert, Megan Johnson, who gets 8-10k page views a day from Pinterest.
• Pinteresting Strategies – Want to learn how to get massive traffic from Pinterest without a scheduler? This is by far the best course for that. It’s taught my mommy blogger, Carly Carly Campbell gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. 

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I’ve had my Pinterest account suspended twice. The first time was back in March 2018, when I had just hired a new Pinterest account manager.

Pinterest flagged my account for suspicious activity and suspended it. It took about a week of back and forth with Pinterest support to get my account reactivated.

The second account suspension happened just last month. This time, Pinterest said it was “because of some activity that goes against our spam policies.”

I hadn’t done anything different than usual or engaged in any spammy activity so I was confused. But I took one simple action and got my account reactivated within a few days. 

If you find your account suspended by Pinterest, don’t panic. You’re not alone. This happens quite often, even to accounts that follow all the rules. There are simple steps you can take to reactivate your account. Let’s go over them.

Ways to appeal a Pinterest account suspension

There are two paths to follow to appeal your Pinterest account suspension. The first step is passive while the second requires a bit more work.

Option 1: Request an account review and wait

The first time my Pinterest account was suspended, I panicked and contacted Pinterest support every day. This last time, I just shrugged, thinking ‘here we go again.” I didn’t reach out to Pinterest support. Rather, I simply took one step that Pinterest suggested. Then, I just sat back and waited.

In the account suspension email I received from Pinterest, they included a link that I could click if I believed they made a mistake. The Pinterest team would review my account within 48 hours to check if I had indeed been spammy. So I just clicked the link and went back to work on other things. I knew I hadn’t been spammy so it was just a matter of time before I got my account back. In the meantime, I put all my Pinterest activities on hold. Four days later, I got this email.

Pinterest reactivated my account, and I went back to business as usual. In the end, it was just a glitch on Pinterest’s part, which is typically the case with account suspensions. 

Option 2: Contact Pinterest support

The second option is to click the link sent in your email AND contact Pinterest support, also known as the Pinterest Help Center. Contacting Pinterest support may help you get your account reactivated faster by speeding up the account review process. Here are the steps to contact Pinterest support.

Go to https://help.pinterest.com/en/article/account-suspension

Fill out your personal information – your name, Pinterest username, and business email. Next, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this. 

This is your opportunity to plead your case. However, it doesn’t mean you should get mad or go on a rant (even though you may be tempted to.) Take a deep breathe. Then write a message that is polite and professional. There’s a real person on the Pinterest support team who will be reviewing your message. Here are three things you want to address in your message:

1. Briefly explain the situation.
2. State that you have never knowingly been spammy (the wording here is important. Don’t say that you definitely weren’t spammy as it would be defensive.)
3. Acknowledge that you’ve read the Pinterest Community Guidelines.
4. Thank the Pinterest representative for their assistance. 

Why does Pinterest suspend accounts for no apparent reason?

Pinterest is a visual search engine. Like any search engine, it has bots that crawl through the content it has indexed. These bots also monitor users’ activities, like the frequency of pinning and the types of content pinned. 

Pinterest’s main goal is to ensure a good user experience. It takes its community guidelines seriously.  This means that it performs regular sweeps to track down accounts whose actions could result in a negative user experience. Posting the same pin 50 times or pinning inappropriate content can turn users away. That’s why Pinterest’s bots and teams are at work 24/7 to prevent spammy content and get rid of spammy accounts.

While Pinterest’s anti-spam activities help protect the community, sometimes rule-abiding accounts are incorrectly flagged. There are hundreds of different signals that can trigger the Pinterest algorithm to mark you as spam. For instance, if you pin more than usual, that can cause Pinterest to believe your spamming. I believe this might have been the reason my account got suspended the last time. And, I had logged in and pinned some content to my boards for the first time in about a week. I had Tailwind automatically scheduling my pins and Pinterest ads running. Other than that, I hadn’t been as active on Pinterest. 

Do you need to message Pinterest support multiple times?

Some bloggers suggest that you should keep messaging Pinterest until it reinstates your account. I don’t believe that this is necessary. The first time my account was suspended, I messaged Pinterest support every day. Still, it took more than a week to get my account reactivated. 

The Pinterest team receives thousands of requests and messages every day. Pinterest representatives must sort through those requests and respond to them in the order in which they came. I think submitting your support ticket once is sufficient. Just be patient. Your account will get reinstated. It could take anywhere from a few hours to 10 days, but it will be reactivated 

How to prevent your Pinterest account from getting suspended again 

We don’t have 100% control over what Pinterest does to our accounts. Bots can be glitchy and mistakenly flag out content. That, said we can take steps to ensure that we’re following Pinterest best practices to reduce the likelihood of getting suspended. Here are some suggestions:

1. Follow a solid pinning strategy. 

You must have an effective pinning strategy in place to succeed on Pinterest. Whether you’re using Tailwind or pinning manually, you don’t want to pin too much or too little. Pinning too much get your account suspended. Pinning too little can prevent you from maximizing your traffic from Pinterest. 

With the 2020 Pinterest algorithm updates, Pinterest is looking for more fresh content and fewer pins from us. When I first joined Pinterest in 2018, you could get away with pinning 100 times a day. You could also share the same pin to multiple boards. Nowadays, that would be marked as spam. Pinning the same pin to multiple boards creates duplicate content, which Pinterest doesn’t want. You only need to save a new pin to one board, and it’s best to stay within 15-20 pins a day. 

2. Stay up-to-date on Pinterest best practices

Pinterest is always evolving. The Pinterest of today is vastly different from the one I joined in 2018. That means that Pinterest users must keep up with changes to remain compliant with best practices.

If you use Tailwind and want to ensure that your pinning strategy follows best practices, I would recommend the course Pinterest Ninja. It covers the Taiwind strategy that Pinterest expert, Megan Johnson, uses to get 200,000 monthly pageviews from Pinterest. On the other hand, if you don’t want to use Tailwind, I would recommend Pinteresting Strategies. This course explains how mommy blogger, Carly Campbell, gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. Both of these courses are updated regularly so you’ll know whenever Pinterest introduces new rules or algorithm changes. 

3. Understand Pinterest’s community guidelines 

As I mentioned before, Pinterest takes its community guidelines seriously. If you haven’t already, take the time to review these guidelines and become intimately familiar with them. They lay out all the rules and regulations that keep Pinterest running smoothly. These are essential all the things you need to do (and not do) to stay on Pinterest’s good side.  

Well, there you have it. These are the steps you can follow to get out of Pinterest jail and stay out of it. Have you had your Pinterest account suspended lately? What was your experience? Comment below. 

Helpful Pinterest Tools and Resources 

If you want to grow your business with Pinterest, here are some additional tools and resources I would recommend.

• PicMonkey – I use PicMonkey to make professional-looking pins to promote my blog posts and affiliate products. It comes with a wide variety of fonts, templates, and many cool features.
• Canva – I use this design tool to make pins in addition to PicMonkey. It’s easier to use if you’re new to graphic design but isn’t as sophisticated as PicMonkey. It does come with 400,000 premium photos, which is 100x more than PicMonkey.
• DepositPhotos – This is my go-to source for high-quality stock photos that I use in both blog posts and pins. The website has over 70 million stock photos, covering virtually every topic you can think of! Deposit Photos is one essential tool that has improved my blog’s appearance and skyrocketed my traffic. I can’t recommend it enough!
• Pinterest Ninja – This beginner Pinterest course teaches you the fundamentals of keyword research, pin design, and branding. It’s taught by Pinterest marketing expert, Megan Johnson, who gets 8-10k page views a day from Pinterest.
• Pinteresting Strategies – Want to learn how to get massive traffic from Pinterest without a scheduler? This is by far the best course for that. It’s taught my mommy blogger, Carly Carly Campbell gets 200,000 page views a month from Pinterest using manual pinning. 

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