Why Most of Your Pins Won’t Go Viral—And An Easy Hack To Create Fresh Pins

Feeling Like Your Pins Are Flopping? Let’s Reframe That.

Here’s a hard truth wrapped in good news:
Most of your pins—up to 80%—won’t get much engagement. And that’s completely normal.

Pinterest isn’t about perfection. It’s about persistence. Think of it like a lottery: each Fresh Pin you publish is a new ticket. The more you share, the better your chances of hitting a winner.

So instead of chasing virality with every design, focus on building momentum over time. That’s where real Pinterest marketing power lives.

The Viral Pin Lifecycle (What the Data Shows)

According to Tailwind’s study of viral Pinterest behavior:

• The sweet spot for engagement is between 1 and 2 years after a pin goes live.

• Pins in that age range were saved an average of 68 times in just 90 days.

• Compare that to newer pins (under 1 year), which averaged 44 saves, or pins older than 2 years, which averaged 49 saves.

One pin from 2010 even drove over 10,000 impressions and 200 clicks in the last 90 days alone! 😲

Viral Pins can live on past the two-year mark to achieve legacy status, but let’s be real, that’s the exception, not the rule.

The real trick is to continue entering the lottery with new Pins or what Pinterest likes to call ‘fresh’ Pins, to create more opportunities for another Pin to go viral. 

This process does not need to be overly complicated. The beauty of Pinterest is that you don’t need to be on a content hamster wheel. All you need to do is create a ‘fresh’ image for the same URL of your viral Pin.

The actual takeaway?

Refresh your past viral Pins with new Pin images to increase your chances for another Viral Pin

Even your best-performing pin will eventually slow down.

So what do you do?
Keep going. Keep pinning. Keep adding Fresh content that gives you more chances to win.

Because that one pin you almost didn’t publish? It could be the one driving traffic for the next 18 months.

Pinterest Strategy That Actually Works

Let’s simplify this:
Pinterest is a marathon, not a sprint.

Your job isn’t to go viral every time. Your job is to build a library of evergreen content that shows up again and again over time.

Here’s how:

Immediate Action Steps:

• Pin 5–25 Fresh Pins per day. Don’t panic, this seems harder than it is. I’ll give you some tips to prevent any overwhelm (more on that soon).

• Space them out: If you’re pinning the same product to multiple boards, leave at least 1 day between each board. If you really want to set it and forget it, schedule Pins 7 days between each board.

• Focus on quality and context: Match the Pin to relevant board topics to achieve optimal keyword alignment and enhance your Pin's distribution.

Example:

If you’re posting about “Amethyst Earrings”
➡ Pin it to boards like:

• “Amethyst Jewelry”

• “Gemstone Earrings”

• “Long Drop Earrings”

Remember… spaced across a few days, not all at once.

Bonus Tip (If 5–25 Pins/Day Sounds Overwhelming)

You don’t have to do it all starting from scratch.

Let me break this down for you, covering the most official to the current official version of what defines a ‘Fresh’ Pin. I’ll give you insight into the unofficial version later. You won’t want to miss that.

In 2020, Pinterest first alerted creators to an algorithm change that would favor what it called ‘Fresh’ Pins. Pinterest claims users prefer to engage with fresh content on the platform over legacy Pins. To improve the user experience and optimize for the new search behavior, Pinterest made foundational changes to identify ‘Fresh’ Pins and give them priority in distribution across the platform.

Below is an infographic of Pinterest’s original definition of a Fresh Pin (the most official) and how Pinterest defines a Fresh Pin today.

This got me thinking, if a Fresh Pin is simply a new image, then repurposing the same Pin design template and switching out the image, or changing the colors, would constitute a new image. See my examples below. 

As it turns out, these small changes do qualify as a Fresh Pin. These slight tweaks beat creating multiple original designs any day. I understand that your bandwidth is limited as a creative solopreneur who needs to be in the studio to produce products to sell. 

So I dug even deeper to see if there was an even simpler way to get a Pin image to register as ‘Fresh’. As it turns out, there is.

This is my process:

1. Make multiple copies of the Pin template in Canva.

2. Use different transparent overlays selected from the Elements toolbar and place them over the image.

3. Adjust the transparency so that the overlay is barely perceptible to the eye, without setting it below 15%. 

Below are examples of the results utilizing this method. The change in pixel depth, the amount of data (in bits) used to store color information for a single pixel in an image, is enough for your Pins to register as a Fresh Pin in the algorithm. 

The beauty of this workaround is that it barely affects the appearance of the original Pin design, while creating multiple copies for batch scheduling a volume of Pins at a time.

The best part, however, is removing the overwhelm of scheduling 25 Pins a day and making this task more actionable. This method is approachable and will help you consistently show up, increasing the chances of your Pins going viral. 

You’ll thank yourself later when your Pins are still bringing in leads six months from now.

Wrapping It Up

To recap:

• Most of your Pins won’t go viral—and that’s okay.

• Pinterest success is about consistency, Fresh content, and a long-game mindset.

• You can streamline your workflow for creating Fresh Pins without the overwhelm.

• You’re not failing if you’re not seeing instant results.
  You’re building something sustainable. One Pin at a time.

So here’s your next move:
Design one new Fresh Pin today. Just one. Make multiple copies. Batch a few if you’re feeling motivated.
Then come back tomorrow and do it again.

I’d love to hear from you:
Do you feel pressure for your Pins to perform right away? What’s been your biggest Pinterest win—or learning moment—this year? Drop a comment and let’s chat.

Thanks for sticking with me through the (non-viral but very real) Pinterest truth talk. Your attention and trust mean everything.

Coming up next week:
We’re digging into the best Pin formats for viral Pins on Pinterest—including why you may not need to overthink your Pin designs.