As a Pinterest user who gets over 4 million impressions a month on my two accounts, I want to talk to you about the “right” way to use Tailwind now!
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Why I Wrote This Post
Oh my gosh, I have so many reasons for writing this post about Tailwind… to help new bloggers, to give relevant and practical knowledge, to battle some of the disinformation out there.
But really I am writing this post because Carly Campbell, the gal I follow most for Pinterest advice said that you should know WHY you are using Tailwind. I thought that was a super interesting question and I wanted to write about it so I could get an even better grip on my Tailwind strategies!
General Pinterest and Tailwind Talk
There are some things that you might need to know before diving into the details of how to use Tailwind!
Why I Use Tailwind
One of Carly's tenants of her training is that she manually pins or uses the native Pinterest scheduler for all her posts.
I had to look this up, but the Pinterest native scheduler allows you to schedule up to 30 days in advance and have up to 10 pins scheduled at a time.
That is cute! I publish at a minimum 3-7 posts a week and want to schedule them out months in advance. There is no way that I could take the time each day to go in and “refill” my Pinterest native scheduler.
My Reverse Time Management system means that I only do what I want to do each day and scheduling pins daily is not on my favorites list!
While I love Carly, I have heard her say multiple times that she has “fallen off the pinning wagon” and one of her accounts even got suppressed because of that.
If I got hit by a bus today, I would have pins going out and driving traffic well into next year. I can take a week off and see no difference in my Pinterest accounts because everything is already in there and ready to go!
New Pins, Fresh Pins and Repins
One last thing that I think we need to talk about is how Pinterest thinks about “fresh pins”.
New pin… A new pin is the FIRST pin from a BRAND NEW url. This is the pin that has the most chance of doing the best in the Pinterest algorithm. You should manually post this very first pin to the most keyword relevant board.
Fresh pin… After that first pin, other fresh pins are images that Pinterest has never seen before. So you could have 20 pins from the same blog post, and if you make the design of each one different Pinterest would be considered a fresh pin. You would use these other pins to target different keywords in the design, title and description.
Repins… Years ago we would make one pin for a post and then repin it over and over again to different boards. That doesn't work anymore, don't do it. If regular Pinterest users repin your pins great! Just let that happen naturally and stop repinning your old pins.
Manual Pinning
That said, I do start every post with at least one or two manual pins! Each new posts gets at least one new pin on the day it launches and many times I cross post it to my second account.
Manual pinning means that you can go in and set EXACTLY the title, description and keywords that you want, without Pinterest stripping anything down and defaulting to what is in your blog post.
Both the Pinterest scheduler and Tailwind's pins sometimes get stripped down the blog post so I think it is a tie whether that happens or not.
Scheduling Pins
There is a lot of talk about the shortest time you need to take between scheduling pins. Should you wait 24 hours to pin again to the same URL, 48 hours, a week, 10 days?
Since I have a “long game” Pinterest strategy I schedule pins out every two weeks for the first couple of months and then once a month for the rest of the time.
My Pinterest accounts are the reason I can earn money so I am not messing around with them and trying for a fast buck. (I have heard recently someone recommending that you can pin 50 fresh pins a day to the same URL… that is not anything I would ever do!)
Amazing Tailwind Features
Here are some of the reasons and ways to use Tailwind that I love!
Bulk Uploading Pins To Drafts
I love how easy it is to drag all the pins into Tailwind! I can add them in bulk!
And then they are sitting in your drafts ready to work on whenever you are ready!
You can add your board, title, description and URL link… I recommend using different titles and descriptions for each fresh pin!
I use ChatGPT to write these for me so everything is super easy-peasy!
Visual Scheduling
I love that Tailwind has a visual scheduler that I can see at a glance what I have scheduled for the coming days. AND if you see they are all bunched up you can easily reschedule them if needs be!
Adding To Boards
Here is the thing that perked my ears up when Carly asked “what is your strategy to using Tailwind?”
Besides the scheduling, planning out which boards I am going to post these fresh pins is the most important part of Tailwind for me!
While there are many ways to get keywords associated with your pins, it is pretty widely known that Board Titles are a way to attach keywords to your pins.
I use Tailwind to schedule out pins to different, keyword relevant boards…
And you can see that it is working by this pin that was pinned to my planner covers board and has the planner covers keyword associated with it!
And yes, it me who pinned it to both the “planner covers” and “planner dashboard” boards that gave it those keywords! (you can see this info in an incognito window)
So my strategy with Pinterest is to have super strong, keyword specific boards that help boost my pins when I pin them to that board!
Tailwind Keeps Boards Active
Since one of my main goals is to have strong boards, using Tailwind allows me to keep my boards active all year long!
Say I have a Christmas Decor board so I make an “Easy DIY Christmas Trees” post. I will send that post out starting in July and then twice a month until the end of the year and then once a month for few more months after the first of the year.
Each individual pin takes 6-9 months for Pinterest to recognize it, label it and then it to start getting traction so those pins are a rolling addition to not just the Christmas Decor board, but the Holiday Decorations, Christmas DIY and any other boards I have made to pin that kind of pin to!
If I only had one post about this topic that wouldn't make as much sense as knowing that I have a minimum of 10 posts about any topic that I write about and usually at least 3-4 specific boards I can pin them to!
Pin Insights In Tailwind
The last major thing I do with Tailwind is looking at the Pin Insights report!
You can see at a glance which Top 50 pins are driving the most impressions, engagement, outbound clicks (my favorite), pin clicks AND the date you pinned it!
According to this report the youngest pin that is there was posted a year and half ago which is why Pinterest game is a long term strategy!
Tailwind Features I Don't Use Anymore
Over the years Tailwind has launched many different features, some that worked for bit and some that weren't that great for my business.
Here are the Tailwind features that I don't think are worth using anymore.
Tailwind Board Lists NO!
Back in the day we would use board lists to repetitively pin the same pin over and over again to different boards. You would load the boards into the scheduler, set a time interval and then schedule that out.
If you are using the board lists to remember which boards go together, great. But don't repetitively pin the same pin to multiple boards.
Communities (Formerly Tribes)
Communities are a GREAT idea! You share your pins with a group of blog owners with similar content and generally there is a one to one ratio. So if you want to post one pin, you have to share one pin to your Tailwind scheduler.
For me the time to do this isn't moving the needle enough to make a difference. That said if you are a brand new blogger it can be a great way to get your pins started rolling!
Tailwind Create
This is a way that you can drop images into Tailwind and it will automatically generate pins you can use.
There are a couple of things that I don't like with this part of Tailwind.
First, the pins are not good enough to compete with people in my niche. Maybe if I just published Business To Business posts I could use it, but to compete with the DIY and Food girlies I have to up my game.
I think that tools like Canva have come so far that I don't need to have this as part of my scheduling software.
Second I don't like they only make short pins. If you look at my insights I have a mix of Top 50 pins that are tall and short. If I only used Create I would lose half of my top pin rankings.
Using Tailwind In 2024 Wrapup
As you can tell, I love using Tailwind for Pinterest as my main social media scheduler! Some of that is just because I have used it so long and I know what to do, but some of it is unique things that Tailwind does that other services don't have!
If you are interested in Tailwind, please consider ordering through my link… I will get a bit of affiliate income!
If you want to check out my Pinterest accounts here is my old one Tara Jacobsen and my newer one is Artsy Fartsy Life.
If you have any questions feel free to email me ([email protected]) and I will be happy to try to help!
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