For many bloggers, ones who are working a full-time job, or have kids to take care of all day, ones who want to grow quickly, or those who do not yet have the excess funds to cover a Virtual Assistant, having technology work for you is super important! That means finding simple ways to make your time count using tools that help complete multiple tasks for you. Tailwind is one of those simple to use tools that has made my life as a blogger 100x easier. That is not to say that there is not a learning curve with using Tailwind though.
What is Tailwind?
Tailwind is a management tool for Pinterest (and Instagram, I do not use it for that though, one step at a time!!). It will help you manage your presence across the visual web. What does this mean? Pinterest is a search engine, like Google, but it is based upon pictures and text, not mainly text. Tailwind specialize in Pinterest and is their marketing partner.
I use it to help make sure that I post consistently but not in a spammy way! It helps you to meter out your posts and on to multiple boards, so you do not have to spend a ton of time setting up for pins for the week. It allows you to pre-plan what you are posting so you can spend time on other more important tasks. This is a huge time saver. I can easily post for a week or more in an hour. Let me tell you batch posting is the way to go when you are in a time crunch. You can just set it and forget it!
Tailwind has a complete suite of marketing tools:
- Smart Scheduling – Tailwind figures out the best time to put your pins on Pinterest by watching when you get the most traffic.
- Analytics & Monitoring – helps you figure out your most important pins.
- Content Discovery – give you a place to find new content through Tribes.
- Promotion – helps you to properly promote your blog / site through Pinterest.
- Education – offers a TON of free education on how to use it, which is awesome when you are just starting out.
- Tribes – a way to share content faster.
- Hashtag Suggestions – helps you figure out what hashtags you should use based on popularity.
Awesome Sharing Feature
It also has this awesome feature called Tailwind Tribes. Tribes are a way to meet like-minded people to share your content with, allowing you to gain greater exposure. Once you join a Tribe you can share your content (make sure it meets the rules!) to the tribe board and others can decide to re-pin it to their boars. Tribes also offer a way to get top-notch content from other people too. Once you are in Tribe rules usually require that you share as many pins of others (some require 2 for every one) per pin you share of yours. Do at least that, but I recommend you pin more of other peoples content than posting your own. It will come back to you!
With this tool, you will be able to add your own content to a Tribe and have others view, schedule and share your content to their own audience. This is so helpful because not only are you sharing your own content, but you are leveraging the collectively large audience of your peers.
Although collaborating, networking, and sharing content is not a new strategy, Tribes makes it easier for anyone to build a relationships and develop a healthy marketing strategy. As a Plus member you can join up to 5 Tribes and post 30 pieces of content every 30 days.
I can tell you with the use of Tailwind and specifically the Tribes feature I have increased my viewers by about 300%. That was just in the first 60 days of use.
Despite Tailwind being a simple tool to use to help improve your sites reach, there were a few things that I had to learn on the way! Here is a simple checklist for you to follow while you get the hang of using Tailwind for yourself.
10 Things you need to check before you post with Tailwind
- Check that your uploaded photo has your website address on it,
- includes a compelling title and photo,
- is the correct size – depending on who you talk to it should be
- Make a second (Style B) pin as well to test
- Added all relevant boards, making sure your Blog board (or most important board) is pinned to first
- Included a great Pin description that includes key words and long tail key words
- Add hashtags that are relevant (key words) and one for your brand
- Confirm URL source is correct – important if you are uploading a picture from your desktop!
- It multiple pins make sure to use the interval scheduler. So you do not have to delete and start over. Use a few days between each pin. I use up to 7 – 10 days on pins that are not time sensitive
- Decide if you want to pin it to Twitter or Facebook.
- If you are setting up this pin in advance of the content being posted on your blog, make sure NOT to add to Tribes instead wait until after (keep a list – make checklist to provide)
- If you are keeping it has a draft WAIT to put your boards in until before you are ready to go, otherwise you have to individually go and revise your pins!
Happy pinning with Tailwind. If you do not have Tailwind yet, sign up through this link for 1 month paid free to try it.
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