Pinterest is a great tool for artists to get their art noticed. It’s a social media platform and visual search engine that allows users to upload content in form of vertical images, called pins. As opposed to other social media networks, it’s much more effective and rewarding. I managed to make my art go viral on Pinterest in less than a year, driving lots of free, organic traffic to my website and art store. In this post, I share with you my 9 best strategies to make your art go viral on Pinterest!
Pinterest is a great marketing tool for artists and art bloggers to get the word out about their content, showcase and sell their art. It’s one of the most effective ways to grab the attention of an interested audience, drive organic (i.e. free) traffic to your website or art store, thus growing your audience and generating an income.
When I decided to go all in with my art business in December 2023, I would have never thought that Pinterest would turn out to be so valuable for me for generating traffic. Now, slightly more than 10 months in, Pinterest is one of the main sources that gets me website visitors.
But what actually is Pinterest and why does it have so much potential to make your art go viral?
Pinterest is a social media platform. But more importantly, it is also a visual search engine.
Just like on other social media networks, users can upload content to Pinterest. However, unlike on Facebook or Twitter, content on Pinterest can only be posted in the form of images. Pretty much like on Instagram.
The images that users post to Pinterest are called Pins. The good thing is that Pinterest Pins have a much longer lifespan than any other social media posts. Your pins will always be visible and searchable, as long as you keep your Pinterest account active.
This is one of the main things that sets Pinterest apart from other social media networks and makes it such a great tool for content creators who appreciate sustainability.
Related: Is Instagram Still Worth It For Artists?
It’s pretty incredible when you think about it: a well-crafted small image on a platform full of other small images can generate millions of clicks to your website. And those clicks come from real people who are interested in reading your content and possibly purchase your art.
But why do some pins go viral while others get lost in a sea of rectangular images? Can you actually create pins that are likely to go viral on Pinterest?
Well, there is no sure-fire, one-fits-all strategy to make your art go viral on Pinterest.
But I’m going to share with you what I did to achieve more than 1 million pin impressions in less than a year, get more than 11k clicks to my website, grow my Pinterest audience to over 560k people, and generate almost 300k monthly pageviews!
If achieving these numbers is something that interests you, especially as a new art blogger or a small art business owner, keep reading. I’m sure I have some bits of information that you might not have known yet and that will help you grow your Pinterest account, too!
One thing that can definitely help you achieve that goal is my 50 High-Conversion Pinterest Pin Templates that I have used to make my art pins go viral. You can download the templates in my Web Store and customize them in Photoshop or any other program that is able to handle PSD files (→ TOP 4 FREE Alternatives To Photoshop).
50 High-Conversion Pinterest Pin Templates
New to Photoshop? ⇒ Try it here FREE for 7 days!
How to get your art noticed on Pinterest?
Pinterest is the third-most-popular social media platform, right after Facebook and Instagram. It’s image-based, and as I already mentioned above, your pins have a much longer lifespan on Pinterest than on any other social network.
If you ask me, these are three good reasons why it’s worth putting some time and effort into Pinterest, trying to get your art seen on the platform.
In fact, I already wrote a post on how to get your art noticed on Pinterest. My 15 Must-Know Tips For Artists Using Pinterest To Promote Their Artwork show you everything you need to know to get the most out of the platform.
Then, for all those of you who want to use the platform to monetize their work, I’ve put together 7 Simple Steps To Get You Selling Digital Art On Pinterest FAST.
If that’s something that interests you, feel free to check out those two posts after reading this one! ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
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How I made my art go viral on Pinterest
in less than a year
First of all, it’s important to know that here isn’t a specific number that defines “going viral on Pinterest.”
What I consider “going viral” might not be your definition of virality. Your criteria might be based on pin impressions, clicks, shares, or overall engagement, depending on what’s most important for your brand.
Of course, it also depends on how long you’ve been using Pinterest. If you’ve been on the platform for 5 or 10 years, the numbers that I achieved in less than a year might not mean anything you…
Generally speaking, a pin is considered viral if it receives at least three times the impressions, clicks, or repins compared to your usual posts. If a pin continues to gain consistent views and clicks over time, you can confidently say it’s gone viral. Give yourself credit for a job well done!
As a new art blogger, Pinterest has completely transformed my approach to content marketing. Since my first viral pin, my blog traffic has been growing steadily, and Pinterest has become my primary source of traffic to my new website. Mind you, organic free traffic.
And I’m not alone in this. If you’re in an art niche like me, or a related industry like interior design, fashion, crafts, or any other female-focused blogging space, Pinterest can be a major traffic generator for you. If you’re in one of these niches and haven’t seen significant traffic from Pinterest yet, keep reading.
During the 11 months I've been on the platform, I've seen a steady—and for me quite significant—growth in pin impressions, pin clicks and engagement:
Plus, I was lucky enough to have some pins that went viral on Pinterest, achieving impressions in the five-digit numbers! Those pins did not only significantly help me grow my overall monthly views on the platform, but also drove a remarkable amount of traffic to my website.
My best performing pin, so far, is about the best-selling size for art prints, followed by a 10-step approach on how to start a small art business.
Looking at my Pinterest analytics, I can say that money-making tips for artists generally perform well, followed by inspirational artist quotes and social media advice.
The first Pin from my art blog to go viral on Pinterest. Obviously, lots of artists on Pinterest are interested in the best size for art prints that sells the most.
Pins about art business tips are popular on Pinterest. Here’s one of my Pins about starting a small art business in 10 steps going viral as well.
How to make your art go viral on Pinterest
Apart from the best performing blogging topics in the art niche that I mentioned above and the other tips I’ve shared from my Pinterest journey in the past, I now want to offer more detailed strategies to make your art posts go viral on Pinterest.
A few years back, repinning a certain image often or having it frequently saved by others increased its visibility significantly, especially on group boards. However, achieving virality today is more complex. Pinterest’s updated algorithms focus more on the quality of pins than on the quantity of repins.
Nowadays, Pinterest prioritizes fresh, high-quality content from users with “a solid track record.” A solid track record for Pinterest means that the user
- posts fresh content on a regular basis,
- has high click-through rates, and
- has been running their Pinterest account for a while.
Don’t expect your pins to go viral after being on Pinterest for only a couple of months!
Besides that, Pinterest also evaluates the quality of the linked pages (i.e. your blog posts or shop pages) and the domain authority of your website.
Unsurprisingly, Pinterest’s emphasis on fresh quality content makes it harder than ever before to reach the top.
If you want your art to go viral on Pinterest, there’s no way around creating your own pins—which brings us right to my first tip for you, pin design.
9 Proven Strategies
to Make Your Art Go Viral on Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the best platforms for artists to get their art noticed. Not only do the arts and crafts belong to the most popular niches on Pinterest, but your pins will also remain searchable forever, meaning you’ll maintain visibility as long as you have an account on the platform.
This is a significant advantage that you don’t get on any other social media network where your posts become irrelevant already after a couple of hours…
So, if you’re an artist like me, you should definitely give Pinterest a shot. It’s a worthwhile investment of your time and effort!
Here's what worked for me to make my art pins go viral on Pinterest:
1. Focus on Pin Design
One of the biggest mistakes you can make on Pinterest is not putting enough thought into pin design. Pinterest is a visual search engine. People get to see images all the time while being on the platform, so it’s important that your pin stands out.
You can’t expect a poorly designed pin to go viral. It just won’t happen.
As an artist, you have good prerequisites to create your own pins. You know how to use color, text, and images.
When I started out on Pinterest in December 2023, it took me countless attempts to figure out how to create high-quality pins, but once I did, my traffic started skyrocketing!
Here are my best tips for you to make viral-worthy pins:
- Use vertical images with a 2:3 ratio. That translates to pin dimensions of 600 × 900 pixels or 1000 × 1500 pixels. These dimensions are also recommended by Pinterest itself and ensure that your images have enough real estate to stand out in Pinterest’s feed. Alternatively, you can experiment with the dimensions and post some pins between 1000 x 1600 and 1000 x 2000 pixels. Those can generate great results as well!
- Whenever possible, use authentic photos that you’ve taken yourself. As an artist, you should have a great enough selection to fill your pins with your own work. These do not only add a personal touch to your images and help you build your brand, but also feed Pinterest’s hunger for fresh content. By using stock photos too often, you run the risk of your pins being considered as “already having been there” by the platform.
- Use text overlays on your pins to display your blog post title, an attention-grabbing question, or a catchy phrase that will spark the viewer’s interest. Many viral pins effectively use this strategy.
- Use easy-to-read fonts and avoid script or cursive styles that are hard to read for both your viewers and the Pinterest algorithm!
- To maximize engagement and click-through rates, make sure to have calls-to-action on your pins, encouraging viewers to click through by effectively combining color, text, and other graphic elements like arrows, buttons, and pointers.
Many bloggers use Canva to create their pins. It’s a free app for mobile and desktop that offers a wide selection of premade pin templates. The designs come complete with images and fonts and can be customized with a couple of clicks.
For all those of you who like to use Photoshop and similar editing programs (→ TOP 4 FREE Alternatives To Photoshop), I have 50 High-Conversion Pinterest Pin Templates that helped me make my art go viral on Pinterest!
2. Research Keywords
Google searches revolve around keywords, and Pinterest—being a visual search engine—functions pretty much the same way.
Although Pinterest displays images instead of text in response to a search query, the algorithm analyzes and ranks those pins based on the text associated with them.
The keywords used most frequently in searches related to your topic should be the ones you include in your pins. Using these popular keywords will help your pins rank higher in search results, increasing the likelihood of them being seen and clicked on!
Here’s where you should place these valuable keywords to make your pins more searchable and visible:
Pin title: This is the most obvious place to include relevant keywords. Focus on adding the most important ones here.
Pin description: Any important keywords that didn’t fit in the title should go in the description. Just on a side note: Pinterest used to work with hashtags, like Instagram. However, hashtags are not a thing anymore on Pinterest. So, instead of adding hashtags, rather throw in more relevant keywords and keyphrases!
Image file name: Surprisingly, the Pinterest algorithm also scans the names of image files. So, instead of using generic names like “photo123.jpg,” give your images descriptive names that include keywords.
Text on the image: Another detail you might not have expected—Pinterest is also capable of reading the text embedded in your image. The AI analyzes the text to figure out what your pin is about, and then categorizes and ranks it accordingly.
So far, so good. But how do you find relevant keywords on Pinterest that will help you make your pins go viral?
Don’t worry. It’s not hard. All you need to do is start typing the keyword that best describes the topic of your pin in the search bar. Once you start typing, Pinterest will give you suggestions.
The words and phrases that come up in the list are the most popular keywords around that topic. They are what users type into Pinterest when looking for the topic in question. That’s why you should make sure to use a good amount of those related keywords when uploading your pin to the platform!
Another way to find popular keywords is by using a keyword research tool. Those tools usually analyze what people type into search engines like Google. But since searches on Google don’t differ much from searches on Pinterest, keyword research tools will give you great results that work well on both platforms!
I’m using the KWFinder to research keywords for my blog posts. Other good options are Ahrefs Keyword Generator and Moz.
More keyword research tips for artists: SEO Works For Artists — And Here’s How To Do It
3. Use Attention-Grabbing Pin Titles
This is a no-brainer: the pin title is what people read first. That’s why your pin titles need to be engaging enough to make people want to click through and learn more.
What’s the secret to writing pin titles that make people want to click?
Well, just like you and me, people are on the outlook for things that solve their problems.
If users cannot immediately see what benefit they’ll get from your article by looking at your pin title, they’ll simply keep scrolling. So, apart from addressing a problem fellow artists in your niche deal with, your pin titles should also reveal how your blog post will help them tackle it.
Let me give you an example: instead “why many artists suffer from anxiety,” use a pin title like “5 tips to tackle your art anxiety.” (By the way, a have post about that topic here. ◕ᴗ◕) The second title makes it immediately clear how the post will help the reader—and thus is more click-worthy!
More click-worthy titles: 102 Best Blog Post Ideas For Artists That Will Get You Clicks
4. Write Engaging Pin Descriptions
Once your pin title made the viewer curious enough to click on the pin, it’s important to provide them with more information. That’s what the pin description is for.
Write a brief yet informative description for your pin. This helps people understand what your pin is about and how it can benefit them. Highlight again the advantages they’ll gain by clicking through to your website.
Don’t forget to include relevant keywords in the description as well, because that will help the algorithm rank your pin in the Pinterest search results!
5. Tag Your Pins Under Relevant Categories
Pinterest gives you the option to tag your pins under relevant categories. This might look unnecessary at first glance, but it’s something you should always do.
By selecting the categories that best match your post’s topic, you help the algorithm classify your pin correctly, making it more likely to appear in the search results.
Currently, you can tag up to 7 categories. If you can find that many relevant categories, make use of them! However, you should never tag categories that don’t match your pin’s topic. This will only confuse the algorithmic calculations and eventually harm your ranking.
6. Do More of What Works
One sure-fire way to make pins that are popular on Pinterest is by doing more of what works.
Regularly review your Pinterest analytics and identify what’s effective and what isn’t. Look closely at which pins and boards are performing well, and use this information to leverage your Pinterest visibility.
To access your analytics, you’ll need a Pinterest Business account. A business account provides insights into your pin performance, allowing you to track which pins are driving the most traffic. Setting up a Pinterest Business account is completely free. If you don’t have a business account yet, you can learn how to set up one here.
As a rule of thumb, you can create at least five different pins for each new blog post. If your analytics show that a particular pin is performing exceptionally well, you can create more pins about the same topic.
In the same manner, you can create new pins for older blog posts that have become relevant again. This not only increases the visibility of your posts but also allows you to generate more pins without needing to produce new content. Those new pins have the potential to achieve the same virality as your older top-performing pins!
Let me quickly give you two hands-on examples from my experience. Since my pin about the best-selling art print sizes went viral on Pinterest, I created another pin about the same topic. Although the second pin isn’t getting the same amount of virality, it still has a decent performance.
Another way to “do more of what works” is by creating pins around topics that are related to what your viral pins are about. Since my “art business startup” pin above turned out to have virality potential, it was just logical to create more pins about similar topics, such as ways to make a living as an artist.
Both new pins (that you can see below) are getting a decent number of views and have already send a couple of hundred people over to my website. ʕᴖᴥᴖʔ
If one pin has gone viral, you can create other pins about the same topic. Here’s a second pin of mine about the best size for art prints about to go viral on Pinterest as well.
Pins about similar topics that have gone viral are usually popular on Pinterest as well. My pin about how to make a living as an artist is a good example of another money-related topic getting attention on the platform.
7. Use a Pinterest Scheduler
Just like any other social media platform, Pinterest wants you to post frequently. To be successful on Pinterest, you’ll need to post at least 3 pins per day. Some users even recommend posting up to 10 pins daily.
To post that amount of pins on a daily basis, you obviously need to have lots of content. You either need a very big website with a myriad of blog posts, or a wide range of artworks in your online store. So, this isn’t doable for anyone—especially not for new artists and art bloggers.
However, aiming to upload 3 pins daily is feasible for almost everyone and should be your goal, if you want Pinterest to become a major source of traffic to your website.
That being said, posting more than a dozen pins per week is already a good load of work. And you want to do that all week every week—all year long.
To manage that workload effectively and still have enough time to create art and take care of your art blog, I recommend using a Pinterest scheduler.
I wouldn’t have been able to grow my Pinterest traffic as much, if I didn’t have a scheduling tool that does most of the work for me. Tailwind allows me to schedule pins weeks in advance, saving me hours of work every month and freeing up time to focus on other areas, like my art business and content creation.
One thing that I like the most about Tailwind is that it provides me insight into the best times to pin for maximum engagement. All I need to do is drag my pins into the suggested slots—and I’m done! The Pinterest success can begin.
If you want to learn more about the Pinterest scheduler, read my Tailwind Review for Artists and Art Bloggers.
Best Pinterest Scheduler
8. Include Pinnable Images in Your Blog Posts
This is another big mistake that I see art bloggers make: not including pinnable images in their blog posts.
More mistakes: 8 Huge Mistakes Art Bloggers Make & How To Avoid Them
If you want to be successful on Pinterest, it is essential that your blog images can be pinned! Many bloggers place a pinnable image at the top of the post, making it prominent and easily noticeable. Just like I did in this post. It’s like a friendly reminder signaling to your readers: “Hey, this post can be pinned. Share the love!”
Apart from that, you should make sure to include a “Pin It” button at both the beginning and end of your blog posts. If you’re using WordPress, there are many free plugins available that make it easy to add popular sharing options. (I’m using Sassy Social Share for my blog.)
As content marketers say: “Don’t make your readers work for anything.” Aim to make your site as straightforward and user-friendly as possible. Having a “Pin It” button readily accessible is a smart move if you want to increase your chances of going viral on Pinterest.
More marketing tips for artists: Why Marketing Is An Art & How To Market Your Art
9. Take Advantage of Pinterest Trends
My last tip for you to make your art go viral on Pinterest is to leverage Pinterest Trends.
Pinterest users often search for holiday inspiration in advance. By posting pins related to seasonal trends and special events at least a month prior to the occasion allows you to increase views, clicks and saves for your pins once the event is taking place.
It’s like big brands putting their holiday merchandise on shelves months ahead of the actual event.
When you have a topic or an artwork that aligns with trends in your niche, you can create pins that address exactly those trends. Post pins with content or products you have some time ahead of related trend peaks so you can funnel leads to your blog posts and convert them into customers who purchase your art.
For example, if you have artwork that features a “bunny,” you can use it to take advantage of the Easter holiday trend on Pinterest. And before you are asking: yes, I have artworks that do feature bunnies. Here are three of them:
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Okay, my artsy friend. These were all the tips I could give you to make your art go viral on Pinterest. I hope you found this post useful and were able to take home some helpful bits of information. I wish you all the best for getting your art noticed on the platform! Let me know how you’re getting along in the comments below. I’d love to here from you!
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