How I gained 1.6M views and 2.1k followers on Pinterest from 1 short video

Frank EldaFrank Elda
2 min read

I teach piano. Or rather, I used to.

Not as a regular piano teacher, though. As an online educator/blogger/course creator/content creator.

This is how I step into blogging first, then YouTube, and then every major social media.

One of them being Pinterest.

This was (still is) a source of traffic for many blogs among many industries.

I have created many pins. Hundreds. With some success (a few thousand visitors to my blog Guide2Music each month).

Then I experimented with short videos called Idea Pins (weird name, I know).

In these videos, I show how to play simple but beautiful melodies on the piano. Cool tunes anybody can play and have fun.

But I did something that worked: using popular/trendy songs instead of the traditional stuff. Nothing against classical music, I love it, but it is not what most people are looking for, even when learning how to play the piano.

Here is the video:

Nothing complicated, as you see. I mostly made the effort to create the keyboard view with the name of the notes and colors (using Google Chrome Experiments and the video editing software iMovie).

And it went "viral". More than 1.6 million views and 2.1k followers, almost 8k reactions and many comments.

That's amazing. Not for my ego. But because it means that I could reach so many people and make their lives slightly better with a few seconds of video.

The superpower of content creators.

Virality on social media is a fascinating topic, but I am not an expert yet to write about it. However, there is one lesson I can share with you today.

It comes when you don't expect it. There are a few tricks, such as hopping on trends. But no guarantees it will work. It won't most of the time.

In my case, it happened for this one and only video. Why? Because I only posted 9 videos in total on this account.

*Imagine what could have happened if I didn't stop and produced 100s more videos?

  • The only thing that guarantees you to increase your chances of getting your content to become viral is: to create more and experiment more with your content.

Luck comes with the number of actions you take.

luck_actions.jpg

Don't give up, it can happen to you too!

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Written by

Frank Elda
Frank Elda

SEO copywriter for SaaS companies, marketing and tech nerd with a knack for long-form content that attracts and converts.