My Pinterest Traffic Explosion (A Viral Pin For My Lifestyle Blog)

Now I’m not one for bragging, but the web traffic on my lifestyle blog traffic jumped 2800% in just two days – a Pinterest traffic explosion!

Yes you did read that right. For my brand new lifestyle blog daily visits went from only 43 to a cracking 1,211 in just two days!

This is the effect of a viral pin. Read on to find out how it happened...

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Pinterest Traffic Full Disclosure

I don’t want to mislead you. It was a whopping jump in pinterest traffic, but my traffic dropped back down to about 400 visitors a day.

That’s still a 600% increase on the average traffic I was getting before the viral pin.

UPDATE: A week later I had my second viral pin! My traffic kept hitting 1000+. By the end of July, my second month of blogging, I hit 18,000+ sessions.

And at the time, my Pinterest account had less than 500 followers!

So how did it happen?

The Groundwork – Pinterest SEO

Now of course I could have just got lucky. It happens. But I’d like to think this jump had something to do with all the work I put into building my Pinterest traffic before my pin went viral.

[UPDATE: With my second viral pin in a week – it doesn’t look like luck!]

(Now I realise there might be experienced bloggers out there saying “that’s not a viral pin – 1,211 visits in a day is nothing! Well it is when you’re starting a new blog and that’s what my summer project last year was about. Starting a brand new lifestyle blog to demonstrate how to make money from blogging.)

You can read about how I set up my Pinterest boards in this post:

How To Grow A Lifestyle Blog (With Pinterest)

If you’re new to Pinterest, these posts will tell you all about setting up your account and how to think of Pinterest as a search engine:

What Is Pinterest? (Marketing Tips For Bloggers)

Pinterest SEO (Learn How To Sky Rocket Your Blog Traffic)

I like to think getting the groundwork right made all the difference.

Using Tailwind Communities To Grow Pinterest Traffic

When you’re a new blogger, with a brand new Pinterest account, you need to give your pins a bit of a push. A little bit of help to send them out into the big wide world.

That’s where Tailwind Communities come in. (Renamed recently from Tailwind Tribes). Tailwind is a scheduling tool. It saves me a heap of time so I don’t have to manually pin all day long. Instead, I can schedule my pins once a week.

I still do a little manual pinning each day but most of my pins are scheduled using Tailwind.

(My results are unique to my blog and may not be typical of using Tailwind. I do think the Tailwind scheduler and Tailwind Tribes have been a big part of my growth on Pinterest, but you can read the typical results of Tailwind’s members on their blog and see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members. Here’s the link.)

Tailwind Communities

Tailwind Communities are groups of pinners using Tailwind. It’s a bit like using Pinterest group boards but there’s no downside if your community performs badly. (Poorly performing Pinterest group boards can negatively impact your Pinterest account).

Just like group boards, you share your pins to the community and in return share the pins of other members to your own boards. This is really helpful when you’re starting a new blog!

The communities are full of pro-bloggers with a huge following. Of course, they may not share your pins, but if your pins are well designed and link to a great topic, there’s every chance of a share.

My pins have been getting loads of shares! Try Tailwind out for free and if it works for you, get a $30 credit towards your first subscription!

I’ve been sharing a lot of other pins from the communities to kick start my own boards. When you share pins from other community members they notice and often return the favor!

Blog About Popular Topics

If you want viral pins, you have to blog about popular topics. Match your material to your chosen social media platform.

There are certain topics on Pinterest that do really well, others not so much. If you want to grow traffic quickly, you have to stick to popular topics and write a helpful post that solves people’s problems.

I’m not saying you can’t write about anything you like. That’s up to you. But it’s not the best approach if you want to grow your blog.

Create Eye-Catching Pins

You may have written the best blog post in the world but if your pin (or other social media hook), doesn’t attract attention – no-one will read it!

If you’re using Pinterest your pins have to be as good, (or better), than the next guys.

Different topics have different styles, so check before you design your pins. The same approach applies to all social media. Make sure your post hits the standard. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.

Viral Pins Have A Long Life Span

What do I mean by this? I still get regular traffic from pins I created for Simply Hatch twelve months ago.

I expect this pin on my lifestyle blog will still be sending me traffic a year from now. The pin has been shared to over 500 pinterest boards so far.

There’s a high chance it will be rediscovered again and again.

Conclusion

Getting a viral pin doesn’t happen by chance. Yes there’s a little bit of luck involved but there’s also a system to follow to give your pins every chance of success.

Pick a popular topic, write a helpful post that solves people’s problems, create a terrific pin with a catching headline and a hook to get people to click through to your post.

Give your pin a little push using Tailwind Communities or group boards. That’s all there is to it…