Tailwind is a brilliant tool for growing your blog organically.
In fact, I haven't met a blogger who doesn't rave about Tailwind and I think that says a lot. I spent my first few years of blogging struggling to get page views or visitors to my website and I saw a lot of bloggers on Pinterest talking about how they used Tailwind to drive traffice to their blog.
Within days I noticed a difference. The numbers started going up, my subscribers were increasing and my ad revenue was higher than it had ever been. Thanks to Tailwind, my blog traffic went from around 2,700 daily viewers to 129,000 daily viewers.
Read more on this topic:
- My step-by-step guide on Pinterest marketing
- The Pinterest marketing course all bloggers swear by
- Blogging income report: How I made $1257.89 this month
- How I made my blog a full time job
Why use Tailwind?
Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduling tool that can pin way more pins that you can manually, meaning you can grow your blog traffic without spending hours pinning on Pinterest.
You can schedule posts to pin to different group boards on Pinterest and it only takes about 10 minutes every few weeks to set up.
Tailwind has a Smart Schedule that spreads pins evenly throughout the day to different boards, so you're not pinning too much of the same content. You can also use Tailwind for Instagram if you promote your blog there, and all from the same dashboard.
Here's what Tailwind can do:
- Schedules your posts and pins.
- Posts at the best times for audience engagement.
- Reposts your content at intervals of your choosing.
- Discovers related content to your niche that you can share.
- Connects you with Pinners to share content in Tailwind Tribes.
- Gets more pageviews and impressions by being active on Pinterest.
- Gets more reach for your website.
- Uses analytics to measure how well your pins are performing.
All with one easy to use tool! This is the strategy I used to grow my blog to a professional business with the help of Tailwind.
Before you start!
It's important you know your way around Pinterest and have your group boards set up before starting to use Tailwind.
I'll show you my exact Pinterst strategy in detail in this blog post: How I grew my blog to 2million+ readers with Pinterest
To get the best results with Tailwind you need to make sure you're using the right keywords, the best SEO, striking eye-catching pins and have joined the right group boards for your blog's niche. Your Pinterest profile and description plays a big role in the success of your Tailwind journey, so make sure you've brushed up on that first then come back and get ready to schedule your pins.
How to use Tailwind for Pinterest
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Sign up for Tailwind
Start by signing up for your Tailwind account. The good thing is that Tailwind offers a free trial so you can try out all the features and see if it's the right tool for you and your blog. I tried the free trial then moved on to one of the paid options when I saw how much it improved my traffic (and I made my money back on the subscription in no time.)
After your free month, there are several options such as month-to-month or yearly plans so it's totally up to you how long you can use the pinning tool for.
Head over to Tailwind and sign up with your Pinterest account. You'll then be asked to enter your email address and set up a password to login.
Create your Tailwind schedule
The next step is to set up your pinning schedule - this is what Tailwind wiill use to pin to Pinterest at times that will grow your traffic the best. It's personalised to you and will use data to pin at optimised times for your audience and demographics.
To do this go to Publisher > Your Schedule (in the left-hand menu) and you will be prompted on how many times you would like to pin per day. I pin around 25 pins per day as this stays within Pinterest's 'safe limit' and doesn't pin too much to the same boards. Pinterest is a search engine so you want to pin other people's conent too so people don't get bored of seeing the same pins.
Choose how many pins you want to pin per day and click recreate schedule. Tailwind will create your Smart Schedule with slots that they will pin on your behalf. It's important for pins to be spaced out and Tailwind will give you suggested time slots.
You can edit your schedule and change how much you're pinning at any time. To get the most out of the Pinterest algorithm, it's good to follow to 80-20 rule - pin 20% of your own content and 80% of others'. It's important to upload fresh content for older posts as well as repinning.
Download the Tailwind browser extension
Installing the Tailwind browser extension will make it quick and easy to pin from any website. To do this, go to the Tailwind Chrome Extension and click install. You'll be guided through the steps to set this up.
Once it's been installed, you can hover over any pin or image and a Tailwind icon will appear, which will allow you to pin it to your schedule.
How I use this on my own Pinterest account - I go to my board where I pin images from blog posts, click on the extension, and select as many images as I want to pin to my schedule. This saves me so much time rather than doing it individually from each blog post.
Create board lists
If your blog is part of a particular niche or several different niches, you can create board lists which are essentailly a list of every group board you're part of to pin to all at once automatically. This saves you so much time rather than selecting each board individually.
For example, if you join 15 group boards, you can add these to a list and pin all your selected pins at once rather than doing it 15 imes over. You can create board lists from the Publisher tab on Tailwind and select create lists.
Select which lists you want to pin to and select add to queue - et voila!
Shuffle your pins
The only annoying thing I find about Tailwind is that when you pin all your desired pins, they automatically go into your schedule one after another, so you have to manually shuffle them so you don't pin the same image 20 times over. You want to be pinning different content throughout the day, not the same pin over and over again.
In the right-hand menu in your publisher tab, click 'shuffle queue' in your schedule, a pop up will appear asking you to confirm this and select yes shuffle my queue. Your Pinterest schedule is now ready to go!
Join Tailwind Tribes
Tailwind tribes work like group boards but they differ in that when you schedule a pin on Tailwind, you can add it to a tribe which will get you more reach. They often have their own rules such as repinning a specific number of pins from other members in the tribe to your own baords.
Tribes are really great at boosting your reach and getting your content out there. To join tribes, type a keyword into the Tribe search bar on the Tailwind website but make sure they have a good activity level and they're active. You can join a maximum of 5 free tribes and can add to this with 'power ups'.
Loop your pins with SmartLoop
Another greeat feature is SmartLoop where you can create loops that will pin evergreen content to your selected boards. You can choose the frequency of these pins at particular times of the year, such as seasonal content around Christmas or Easter. So if you set these up you don't have to worry about repinning these to seasonal boards every year.
Seasonal content tends to get extra traffic so this requires zero effort on your part and takes the hassle out of repininng content. It's good to set up SmartLoops for content like gift guides holiday niches like Summer favourites or Easter baking etc.
You can also loop your top performing pins, so check your analytics to see which pins are doing best. This is a great tip to get a viral pin at the best time.
How much is Tailwind?
Tailwind has a few different affordable plans and pricing for bloggers.
They offer bigger pinning plans but for most bloggers and small businesses starting out, the Plus Plan is the best option. (that's what I use.)
The Tailwind Plus plan includes:
- Unlimited pinning schedule.
- Bulk uploads.
- Facebook cross-posting.
- Browser extension.
- Smart Schedule to automatically pin at the best times.
- Analyitcs and insights for you boards, pins and profile.
- 5 tribe memberhsips and 30 tribe submissions per month.
- 250 SmartLoop Pins.
- Website insights.
- Linking your Pinterest account.
This works out at $9.99 per month on the annual plan, saving you $60 rather than the monthly plan of $14.99. There are also other plans for bigger businesses and blogs which you can contact Tailwind about at help@tailwindapp.com.
If you're ready to grow your blog traffic and see your Pinterest traffic skyrocket then try it for yourslef with a free trial of the Pinterest Plus plan.
That's how I use Tailwind to get millions of monthly views and I hope you see the same success too. If you have any comments on questions leave them below or reach out to me on Pinterest to chat.
Read more on this topic:
- My step-by-step guide on Pinterest marketing
- The Pinterest marketing course all bloggers swear by
- Blogging income report: How I made $1257.89 this month
- How I made my blog a full time job
