How to create a viral blog post - the piñata cake

I love Birthdays and every year I have at least two cakes - one to feature on the blog and another to eat on my actual Birthday. I was sitting at breakfast on my 27th Birthday last year and remembered I had something to show my friend. I opened my Facebook app to show her my blog Birthday cake and was shocked.

My little Birthday cake had been seen by more than 1,000 people. Considering at the time I only had 750 Facebook fans that was pretty special but as the day went on I was blown away. By Birthday dinner time I'd hit 100,000 and the end of the next day 200,000.

The numbers just kept climbing. If you look at the graph of my blog traffic above you can see just before April where I posted the piñata cake. Most of the spikes last year were from the piñata cake being shared.

M&Ms Australia shared it on their Facebook page in May and it received more than 17,000 likes and more than 41,000 shares.

The best Facebook share was when M&Ms USA picked it up and shared it with more than 1 million fans gaining more than 38,000 likes and another 13,000 shares.

I had achieved something I had always dreamed about when I started blogging - to have a blog post go viral.

Over the next year it was featured on quite a few popular websites the biggest of which being the UK Food Network which still drives traffic to my site.

Just a couple of weeks ago it was featured on Yahoo UK's 11 Brilliant piñata and surprise inside cakes roundup.

It seems that piñata cakes are quite the in thing in Australia at the moment too with one donning the cover of this month's Super Food Idea's Magazine.

It's so so exciting to see my cake featured on so many websites but by far the most exciting thing is seeing other people make it. I did a quick Instagram search of #pinatacake and this is just a selection of what I found. I can't tell you how it makes me feel to see so many people recreate something I made. Makes me a little teary (dabs corner of eyes delicately).

My crazy Birthday cake creation has been viewed by 321,353 people since it was posted back in March 2013 and currently accounts for 21% of my total blog traffic would you believe? So, do you want to know how to create a viral blog post? In short.... luck. Lots of luck but I do have a few things that can tip luck your way.

1. Make it unique - a viral recipe is usually one that people haven't seen around much or a unique take on something. I didn't create the piñata cake. I saw it on A Subtle Revelry, but I wanted colourful and I think that's what made it a bit different.
2. Make it eye-catching and 'pinnable' - Pinterest is one of the biggest traffic drivers for food bloggers so an image has to jump out and scream 'pin me.' Making them portrait instead of landscape also gives you more real estate on Pinterest as the height isn't limited but the width is.
3. Easy to re-create - sure people will share cool thing but they'll really share them if they think it's something they can do themselves. This cake looks a bit tricky but it's super simple to make.
4. Easy to customise - the piñata cake can be personalised in so many ways, from how it's decorated and the type of cake to what it's filled with. I've seen a wonderful looking one filled with berries. Yum!
5. Appeal to all ages - everyone loves a celebration cake right?
6. Share, share and share - share your recipe with anyone and everyone. I originally posted it to the M&Ms Australia Facebook page as well as Nestle (I think they make Freckles) and every recipe-sharing website I could think of as well as posting it to my own social media and I did a bit of Facebook promo.
7. I'll add one last point - there's no real recipe. You might think something is fantastic and sure to go viral and it will be a flop while something you're not even sure you want to publish is an internet sensation. You never know.

If you'd like to make the piñata cake, the original recipe can be found here.

What about you? Have you made or has someone you know made a piñata cake?