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

Now I’m not one for bragging, but 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 visitors went from just 43 last Wednesday to 641 visitors on Thursday and a cracking 1,211 last Friday.

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

Pinterest Full Disclosure

I don’t want to mislead you. It was a whopping jump in traffic. But my traffic has now dropped back 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 keeps hitting 1000+].

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 Pinterest in the 41 days 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 is about. I’m 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:

Growing Traffic With Pinterest (For My New Lifestyle Blog)

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.

Tailwind Tribes

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 Tribes come in. 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.

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

Just like group boards, you share your pins to the tribe 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 tribes 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 your pins will be shared.

My pins have been getting loads of shares!

I’ve been sharing a lot of other pins from the tribes to kick start my own boards. When you share pins from other tribe 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.

This post will give you some guidance:

10 Types Of Blogs That Make Money (And The Money Making Rules)

I’m not saying you can’t write about anything. That’s up to you. But it will take longer 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 six 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 Tribes or group boards. That’s all there is to it…

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