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If you’re using Pinterest for Business, you’ve likely spent a lot of time trying to replicate the success of other creators who’ve produced viral Pins. Going viral on Pinterest may seem like a magical event that happens randomly, but there’s more science and less luck involved than you’d think. For those of us who believe in making our own luck, there’s a fairly simple formula for creating successful Pins!

What’s the secret? Since Pinterest is a visual search and discovery platform, designing beautiful images is definitely important. The look of your Pin alone won’t be enough to make it go viral, though. That’s only one part of the formula that makes a Pin highly share-worthy.

I’ve studied some of the most successful images from the Pinterest for Business accounts that are regularly creating viral Pins. How are they getting this done? I’ve taken everything I learned and boiled it down to these seven characteristics of viral Pins. With this information, you can position your own content for widespread success by creating your Pins with virality in mind. You’ll design beautiful images that will drive traffic to your website, inspire other Pinners to share your content for you, and give your Pins the best chance for going viral!

1. Viral Pins lead to great content.

We all know by now that “content is king,” and this is undeniably true on Pinterest too. Going viral starts with great content! The goal is to create Pins that link to content that will truly serve the needs of your target audience. A stunning image with a compelling call to action may inspire people to click through to your website, but they won’t stay for long if you’re not delivering the awesome content promised in your Pin. Even if you follow every other recommendation for creating viral Pins, your image will be dead in the water if it links to disappointing content.

Pins that lead to “thin” content (or worse yet, content unrelated to the Pin) will quickly sour people on your brand. If visitors to your website are disappointed by what they find, they definitely won’t share your Pin. Worse yet, this visitor will hastily navigate away, never to return. They will also scroll right past any of your future Pins or unfollow you altogether.

You want to make loyal fans out of anyone who clicks over to your website from Pinterest. The best way to do this is by delivering the valuable information they came to see. Awesome content is the foundation for viral Pins! This is Rule #1 for creating viral Pins, so make sure that all of you Pins link to content that serves the needs of your audience.

2. Viral Pins are images created specifically for Pinterest.

If you want others to share your content on Pinterest, then you must design at least one Pinterest-optimized image specifically for this purpose. Many new bloggers make the mistake of creating just one image for each blog post and hoping for the best. What they don’t realize is that images that work well for social media will fail to get traction on Pinterest.

Best practice is to create one featured image to share on social media and at least one (ideally two) images specifically for Pinterest. If you can’t commit to creating multiple Pins for every post right away, I totally get it. You’re busy doing the million other things it takes to build your brand! What I do is create at least one featured image and one Pinnable image for every post. If a certain blog post does well on Pinterest, I go back and create a second Pin for that post. This strategy saves me a little time because I don’t create multiple Pins for every post. It also allows me to maximize my best content and extend its shelf life by circulating new Pins!

After working hard to create a beautiful image for Pinterest, how do you make sure that a Pinterest newbie doesn’t come along and Pin a different image? It’s possible that a visitor to your site might hurriedly Pin the wrong image (such as your horizontal featured image or worse yet- some unrelated ad from your sidebar). There are plug-ins you can use that will limit the images users can Pin from your website. I use Social Warfare for this purpose. I love Social Warfare because I can use it to encourage (or force!) my readers to Pin the one Pinterest-optimized image that I created for each blog post. This makes it harder for someone to come along and Pin something silly like my logo or headshot.

Social Warfare has a free plan, but for a small annual fee, I upgraded to the Pro version to get all of the awesome Pinterest-related functionality. It also comes with some cool sharing and following features for social media too. You can see my Social Warfare buttons before, after, and down the left-hand side of every blog post. Other than purchasing a theme for my website, Social Warfare is the only plug-in I pay for. I run a pretty tight ship here at Pinfluential (budget-wise, anyway!), so I don’t shell out money for a paid plug-in or recommend it to my readers without carefully considering its true value. For me, Social Warfare has been more than worth it. You can read more about Social Warfare here to learn more and decide if it’s right for you too.

3. Viral Pins fit the recommended Pinterest ratio.

Gone are the days when the horizontal “featured image” from your blog post could get Pinned and go viral. Square and landscape-oriented images have notoriously low engagement rates on Pinterest. By now, most Pinners have caught on to this, and you’re going to have a hard time convincing them to re-Pin anything other than a long, vertical image. In fact, there are group boards and Tailwind Tribes that consider Pinning a horizontal image to be a serious offense. You may even get banned from the group for such a wicked misdeed!

When designing your Pins, it’s really important to use a vertical image. Pinterest recommends a 2:3 ratio for its Pins, so go long! Your images should be 1.5 times longer than they are wide. Long Pins win on Pinterest for a couple of different reasons. First, you have more space to optimize with text and imagery than you would have on a short Pin. With a long Pin, you have more real estate to use for showing a step-by-step process or for giving your readers a detailed call to action. A second reason that long Pins do well is that they stand out better in Pinterest’s feeds. It’s very easy for a short Pin to get lost in a sea of bigger, better Pinterest-optimized images.

So what do I mean by “long” Pins, exactly? Don’t worry – I have specific measurements for you, straight from the source! Pinterest recommends a Pin size of 600px x 900px. As long as you’re creating Pins within the 2:3 aspect ratio, your Pin’s distribution won’t be negatively affected. Another popular Pin size that fits the 2:3 ratio is 735 x 1132 pixels. The design tool Canva provides a Pin template with these exact dimensions to get you started.

Going longer than the 2:3 ratio can help your Pin to stand out in the feed and get noticed, but it is possible to create Pins that are too long. Any Pin longer than 1260px will be cut off at the bottom. This would obviously cause a problem if you have important text, images, or logos at the bottom of your Pin. For this reason, you need to keep your images shorter than 1260px and keep your most important text above the 900px mark just in case. Pinterest has been strongly encouraging the use of its recommended 600px x 900px image size for some time now, and experienced Pinners would not be surprised if someday Pinterest started cutting off all Pins at the 900px mark.

4. Viral Pins all share similar design elements.

On a visual platform like Pinterest, creating beautiful images is essential for encouraging others to engage with your content. Pinterest users tend to scroll quickly through their feeds, scanning for anything that grabs their attention. I don’t know anyone who reads every Pin description. Most users decide from a brief glance at the image whether they want to click on it and learn more. The images that get the most engagement on Pinterest feature an attractive design, bright colors, and a compelling call to action.

Thankfully, you don’t need a degree in graphic design to create stunning images for your Pins. There are so many different tools and software programs out there to help you get the job done. Personally, I use Canva to design all of my Pinterest and social media images. It’s one of the free online tools that actually lets you do quite a bit with the free version. I didn’t need to upgrade to the paid version until I started making more of a conscious effort to brand my images with specific fonts, colors, and logos (more on that later). Canva is simple to use and it allows a person like me (completely devoid of artistic ability), to create beautiful images quickly.

To begin designing a new Pin, start with a high-quality photo. It can be one that you’ve taken yourself (if you’re good at that sort of thing) or a stock photo. There are lots of websites out there that offer free, styled stock photos. I’ve had success with a few in particular, including Unsplash and Pexels. You can always invest in a stock photo membership, too. There are countless paid services that offer high-quality photos you won’t see on the free stock photo websites.

When selecting your photos, keep in mind that viral Pins have a certain look to them. For inspiration, you can design your Pin with these same elements in mind. On Pinterest, images with a light, bright look do better than those that appear dark and moody. Don’t go too far to the other extreme though, as washed-out images don’t get a lot of attention either.

Choose images with lots of white space to maintain a clean, uncluttered look. It’s also best practice to seek out photos that feature multiple dominant colors. Red and other warm colors do especially well on Pinterest. Finally, remember that Pins showing human faces get fewer clicks than those without. Keep that in mind when selecting your image, and if you must use a photo with a human face, make sure that it’s not the focal point.

5. Viral Pins make strategic use of text overlay.

On Pinterest, images with a compelling, easy to read text overlay win out over plain images every time. Make sure that you keep your message short, simple, and easy to read, though! Select two clean, bold, fonts and use them on all your Pins for a cohesive look. Limit your use of script fonts to just one or two keywords to ensure that your call to action is perfectly clear and easy to read. Select two to four colors from your brand’s style guide and use them consistently to maintain a unified look.

Speaking of branding, you’ll definitely want to add a small, tasteful logo so that when your Pin does go viral, people can easily identify you as the source! Be strategic about the placement of your logo. The best place to position it is at the top center or bottom center of your Pin. Avoid the lower right-hand corner, as your logo may end up being hidden behind one of Pinterest’s product icons.

6. Viral Pins are created with SEO in mind.

Hopefully, you’ve already done the hard work of keyword research, so now it’s your chance to make sure your Pin can rank for the target keyword(s) you’ve selected. Once you’ve designed your Pin, be sure to save it with a keyword-rich file name. In other words, don’t leave your images looking like “IMG-1234.jpg.” Although Pinterest pays more attention to Pin and board descriptions than image names these days, giving your images keyword-rich file names makes Google happy and it’s an SEO practice worth adopting.

Now you’re ready to upload your future viral Pin to your blog post! During this process you should fill the alt text field with a clear description of what your Pin looks like. Remember that alt text was designed for the benefit of visually impaired users who use screen readers when browsing. Think about how you would describe your Pin to someone who can’t see it as you write your alt text. There’s no need to do any keyword-stuffing here. Pinterest will only use your alt text for a Pin description as a last resort (if it can’t find a Pin description anywhere else).

Where should you enter the Pin description so that Pinterest can find it? The official recommendation from Pinterest is to use the data-pin-description attribute. This does involve working with a tiny bit of HTML code, though. If that seems a little intimidating, you’re not alone. Lots of bloggers skip this step, which causes Pinterest to use the image title text as the Pin description. As a last resort, Pinterest will pull the alt text for a Pin description if no other description is available. Neither of these outcomes is ideal if you’re trying to use SEO to reach a bigger audience with your Pin. Thankfully, one of the awesome Social Warfare features I mentioned earlier is a very simple “Pin Description” box. I love having the ability to just type in my Pin description without worrying about making a mess out of my HTML code.

Finally, make sure that you have Rich Pins enabled for your website if you haven’t already done so. With Rich Pins, important information (like your article title, keyword-rich meta description, date of publication, and sometimes the author’s name) will remain embedded in the Pin wherever it goes!

7. Viral Pins were Pinned strategically from day one.

Did you know that your follower count does not determine the virality of your Pins? It is totally possible and not at all uncommon to produce viral Pins without a huge following on Pinterest. This is great news for those of us who are not big-time influencers! While followers are great and tactical Pin design is essential, the most important factor for determining whether a Pin will go viral is what happens after the Pin has been created. Strategic Pinning is the key for getting enough eyeballs on your Pin to achieve viral status.

Not only does Pinterest use your Pin description to learn what your Pin is about, but it also uses information from the boards to which your Pin has been saved. The Pinterest algorithm pays especially close attention to the first board on which fresh content was Pinned. With this in mind, carefully select the first board to which you’ll add your new Pin and Pin it directly from your website. I talk about all the reasons Pinning fresh content directly from the source is so important in my Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Best Practice.

Think of your board descriptions, their keywords, and their hashtags, then choose the board that best fits the content of your new Pin. Your Pin’s first activity on Pinterest teaches the algorithm a lot about how to distribute that content in the future. Take your time and really give some thought to the best board for your Pin. This is important for giving your Pin the best shot at wider distribution!

After you’ve strategically Pinned your new image to its first board, you can Pin it to your other relevant boards. Selecting boards that have closely-related keywords will help your Pin rank higher in Pinterest’s search results. Finally, you should extend the reach of your Pin by sharing it with as many relevant group boards and Tailwind Tribes as possible.

Strategic Pinning should be a part of your regular Pinterest workflow, but it’s especially important if you’re hoping to push your Pin toward viral status. Even if your Pin gets a lot of organic shares from your Pinterest followers and visitors to your website, it’s virtually impossible to produce viral Pins without a little help from Pinterest. You can get that help if you make it easy for the Pinterest algorithm to correctly categorize your Pin by following these recommendations for Strategic Pinning.

Conclusion

Like drivers cruising past billboards on the highway, your target audience is scrolling through their Pinterest feeds at a furious pace. You only have a brief moment to capture their attention. I hope that understanding the qualities of viral Pins and how they captivate the interest of Pinners can help you to create more click-worthy Pins of your own. If you follow this method of Pin creation and back it up with great content, you’ll be able to reach a bigger audience and maybe even have some Pins go viral in the process!

Have you ever had a Pin go viral? I’d love to hear about your most successful Pin, and why you believe it resonated so well with your audience. Leave a reply below!

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