Why You Don’t Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins To Go Viral

I’ve started my Pinterest account last year with absolutely ZERO followers, ZERO pins, ZERO monthly views, and ZERO all over, obviously ( just like most of us do! ).

Actually, it was my first time using Pinterest.

I specifically remembered, after setting up my account I was like –

Now what? How to Pinterest?

With all the trial and errors throughout the last year, I’ve drawn a few conclusion that might debunk the idea that “To grow in Pinterest, Top accounts must repin your pins”! 

The NEW Smart-Feed

With the new enhancement of the Pinterest algorithm, The concept of smart-feed is introduced. Pinterest users will only see pins related to stuff they’ve followed or have searched.

It is highly unlikely for you to see a pin of a cute cat if you have a follow/search interest in cooking or recipes. Moreover, Pinterest will walk a few extra miles to bring out the most relevant and pins with good engagement for its audience.

What it means is, if you have a Pinterest account with your original pins then the algorithm will crawl through your pin title, your pin description, and keywords to decide if this pin is relevant to that audience or not.

So as long as you have a Stunning Pin image with keyword rich call-to-action description, you are good to go! Period!

Exactly these types of pins are more prone to get more engagement than the others.

So what EXACTLY does it mean to have a good/ high engaging pin?

Group Boards And Repins Are Not What They Used To Be

If you are a part of a big group board with over 100,000 followers and you pin your stuff in it, chances are that most people who are following that board WILL NOT even see your pin. 

What?

Shocker! 

I’ve experienced a similar situation, as being a part of this massive Group board called “Blogging Tips” with a whopping 510,000 followers (at the time of writing this) really speaks for itself. If this would not have been the case then I would’ve got massive traffic every time I pin in this board.

But does that happen?

Nope! Not even a fraction!

Moreover,

I have tons of pins that are saved by the top accounts of Pinterest, I’m taking accounts with 10K to More than 100K followers, have multi-million of monthly Pinterest viewers for their account. Woohoo!

Good for me, right?

Well…No and Yes!

No, because getting your pin saved by huge accounts doesn’t guarantee the popularity of that pin (in most of the cases). Pay attention when I say this, “I’ve NEVER had a viral pin because a massive account repinned it, EVER“. And I’ve had quite a few viral pins!

Yes, because though it is not the absolute necessity to get big accounts to repin you but getting repinned by huge accounts gives just enough exposure to the pin so that other small accounts can see it and will probably save it. And thus increases the chances for your pin to be popular. 

So if massive groups and huge Pinterest account don’t (usually) drive traffic then what does?

To answer that, let me show you something first. If you see my traffic referrers, you might notice that more than 90% of my website traffic comes from Pinterest. 

Why You Don't Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins wordpress screenshot

So yeah! I get most of my traffic from Pinterest so I guess that qualifies me to make certain conclusions about getting traffic from Pinterest. ? 

If I click on Pinterest, all the pins that bring the traffic show up along with their pin URL.

Why You Don't Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins wordpress screenshot

Please note that the first two pins with 399 views and 176 views are from my pins that were saved to my own boards, not any other group board. 

The third pin which brought 83 views was not saved by me. And after clicking that pin URL, I got the pin information given below.

Why You Don't Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins pinterest screenshot

If you notice at the bottom of the image, this particular pin was saved by someone named “John Fieweger” in his own board named ” Investing money”.

Normal, right?

Here comes a major twist!

After clicking that “Investing Money” board, I saw that it has only one pin with a whopping 14 followers only!

Why You Don't Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins pinterest screenshot

Huh? How an account with only 14 followers can possibly bring 83 blog clicks?

*Update*

Why You Don’t Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins To Go Viral

What just happened?

The 7.7k impressions increased to 140k and repin went from 83 to 760 and counting. That account with only 14 followers initiated my pin virality that has a total of 190k of Pinterest impression, 6k clicks, and 2.3k repins (after 2 months of pinning) including all its sibling pins which lead to the same blog page. 

*End Of Update*

How exactly Pinterest do this?

Pinterest has a very sophisticated/ smart way to do that. Any guesses? It is the good ‘ol “Engagement Factor”!

Engagement factor is like a filter to the “number of people who will see your pin”. 

The Engagement Factor

When you pin something in any board, you can see the stats of activities over the last 30 days of that pin. (NOTE: This feature is only for those who have a business account. if you have not already, Convert your personal account to a business account for in-depth analytics).   

On that stats area, you will see sections labeled as Impressions, saves, clicks etc.

  • Impressions: No. of times people have seen this pin over the course of last 30 days
  • Saves: No of times people have saved this particular pin in some board 
  • Clicks: No. of time people have clicked this pin to actually read the blog 
  • Close-up: No. of taps for a closer look

 After pinning an image, Pinterest will test your image by showing up this image in a few people’s feeds. Pinterest thinks it can see your pin (with the eyes of other accounts users).

Mind you, if your pin title and keyword rich description is on point, then the pin will be shown to the right of people.

If that particular handful of people interacts with the pin, save it, clicks to the target blog etc your engagement to Impression ratio will go higher and in-turn, Pinterest will show this to few more people and again if it sees engagement it will then again show it to even more people. 

Saves, clicks, and close-ups account for good engagement points. And if these points are high, Impressions go even higher.

On the other hand,

If at the beginning of the process your Engagement to Impression ratio is poor Pinterest will automatically consider your pin to be dull, less helpful, and irrelevant. Pinterest’s algorithm will think that since all the account seeing this pin is ignoring it then it must be an overall BAD pin, and it will restrict your pin to show to more people.

As a result, your pin will be dead without getting much traction.

So in conclusion,

It does not matter if your pins are repinned by massive accounts or by accounts with a mere of 14 followers. As long as your pins have the perfect combination of title, image, keyword etc, it WILL go viral or will bring uniform traffic (at least). 

So…How Does A Pin Go Viral?

Why You Don't Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins pinterest screenshot(with some editting LOL)

Yup! One pin brought over 70K Impressions within two weeks of pinning.

Is it the niche? Is it the pin image? or is it the Pin title? it’s description? What makes a pin go viral? A perfect combination of all! While some niche does play an important role in Pinterest popularity, There are other factors too that might go unnoticed by many!

1: Attention Grabbing titles – Now more than ever, generic titles fail to bring a decent amount of traffic because Pinterest is already saturated with these generic pins.

For example – If your pin has a title ” 7 Ways To Make Money”, unfortunately, most users will not click it (including me). You will have to grab the eyeballs of the reader within the normal attention span (i.e. 3-5 seconds). A pin titled “7 Unique Ways To Earn $5000 Per Month”, has higher engagement potential than the previous title. 

2: Using paid images – Though I myself have used a lot of stock images which were pretty popular, but Pinterest is already filled with stock photos (free images). If your Pin has a stock image, Pinterest has the ability to recognize it and compare it with the already present copy of that image within the system (even if you have used a small portion of the full image). Which may sometimes result in losing value for that particular pin. 

So it is far better to use paid images in your pin. Shutterstock provides a wide range of images of all niches and topics with over 1.3 million images added every week. Shutterstock has a requirement based subscription selection, depending upon the no. of images you need every month your subscription value is determined rather than a set constant fee. 

3: Keyword Rich Description – The description of a pin tells the Pinterest algorithm what your pin is actually about. If your description contains well-crafted sentences with the focus keyword(s), Pinterest will automatically know exactly to which kind of audience it must be shown.

Never ignore writing a keyword rich pin description. NEVERRRRR!

Let’s Wrap up!

Much smaller account user often worry why they are not repinned by huge accounts.” Do huge accounts hate the pins I make? ” These kinds of question run through their minds.

This Article was to show you that you yourself can grow massive on Pinterest with or without the help of huge accounts.  The only thing you should worry about is your Pin’s overall aesthetics, Attention-grabbing Title and keyword rich Descriptions and the right audience will surely follow along.?

Related Posts-

Viral Pin Checklist – How To Force A Pin To Go Full Viral 

10+ Common Mistakes Bloggers Make ( And how to avoid them)

7 Reasons why no one’s reading your blog 

Cheers!

8 thoughts on “Why You Don’t Need Massive Pinterest Accounts To Repin Your pins To Go Viral”

  1. Hi Sayan, thanks for sharing your post. I love creating great descriptions for my pins because I believe that it will get noticed. Also, I’m using Tailwind to schedule my content in advanced whenever I’m traveling.

    Keep it up!

    Valerie

    Reply
    • Thank you for reading! Descriptions are also important as the image itself!

      Reply
  2. Love your post, learnt a lot for it. Same thing happening to though. I remembered setting up a Pinterest account for my review website/ blog. With just few days I got 7 followers and counting I know its not much but its a start. Till now, I’m still surprised because opening Pinterest for the first time was a puzzle. I’d sure convert my account bti a business one shortly. Thanks mate ?

    Reply
    • Thank you for stopping by! Pinterest was a mystery for me for a very long time. But now at least I know how to make it work. You will get there in no time. I promise. ?

      Reply
  3. This is right on. I just had a pinner with 300K+ following Repin me and nothing. A year ago I had a small account repin me and help me go viral for a week! Great post.

    Reply
    • Thanks, Jenn!
      This happens more often than we ever notice, Pinterest is NOT a followers game it’s more like an engagement game. The more engagement you have in your pin the more viral it’s going to be. It doesn’t matter if the pinner has 53 followers or 300k followers.

      Reply
  4. Hi! Thanks for sharing this info!
    What if I have zero impressions on my pins?
    You say that Pinterest will show my pins to people in order to test them, but it doesn’t. And I use keyword-reach descriptions and boards and keywords in profile and even Tailwind. But it’s been a week and my pins are just not showing in other people’s feeds.
    I don’t know what to do.

    Reply

Leave a Comment