C. Willis & Co.

View Original

The 5 Best Ways to Grow your Pinterest using Tailwind

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I only share about companies that I truly believe in.


It’s bad enough many people feel like they just understood Pinterest Basics 101 and now they have to understand Tailwind! 

But if you want to use Tailwind to grow your Pinterest, then using a Pinterest scheduler is one of the best ways to help you succeed.

Are you confused about Tailwind? Unsure how it can grow account? In this post, I'm talking about the 5 best ways to grow your pinterest account with Tailwind.

In one of my blog posts, I went into detail describing how Pinterest is not like any other social media platform.

Pinterest is a visual search engine that is all about exploration, discovery, and inspiration. Everyone wants to rank on Google, but as we know, this is very challenging, even for some of the most experienced bloggers who know SEO (search engine optimization) very well.

But, ranking for Pinterest - although still a bit competitive - is definitely not as competitive as Google which means that EVERYONE from teeny tiny small startups to big corporations, all have equal playing field in audience reach.

Doesn’t that sound amazing?!

Quick Tip: Google rankings = SEO; Pinterest rankings = KEYWORDS!

Now, to answer your burning question: What is Tailwind? I thought you’d never ask so I’ll give you a quick breakdown here:

  • Tailwind is a Pinterest-approved social media scheduler

  • Bloggers and business owners can use it to schedule content (Pins) or Instagram posts

  • Gives you more visual presence on social media / internet without spending all day on Pinterest

  • It helps you to be in the right places at the right times

  • It gives you best optimized times to post

  • It protects you from oversharing so you don’t get sent into Pinterest jail aka spamming in your Pinterest group boards

  • You can sign up for free or opt for the paid version.

  • If you want to try signing up to Tailwind, I have a link here for you that gives you a free trial where you'll be able to schedule and publish 30 Instagram posts and 100 Pinterest pins!

Now, here are my 5 favourite ways to use Tailwind for my Pinterest account

Schedule content

Have you noticed with certain social media outlets, you need a constant presence on it or else you risk losing your hard work and efforts to the algorithm? Well, with Tailwind, you don’t have to worry about that.

Let’s be completely honest: it’s really difficult to be online all day everyday! You have so many commitments that take precedence in life such as family, friends, etc. But if you want to increase your engagement on Pinterest, you do need to pin often.

For example, on a weekday, you should be pinning 15-20 times a day, and on weekends I’d aim higher to as many as 30 pins per day. If you need a further understanding of Pinterest and Tailwind, I have a FREE 5-Day Power of Pinterest Email Course you can sign up for. This email course will walk you through and give you an understanding of how Pinterest works and what you can do to instantly improve your audience reach, generate new leads, and build a following of like-minded supporters.

See this content in the original post

Use Smart Loop

Smart loop is an awesome feature in Tailwind that I love to use. Smart Loop shares your most popular content at optimized times by using data to automate your pinning strategy. In other words, your content gets shared over and over, filling in any open gaps you may have in your Tailwind schedule, making you a content winning-pinning machine!

How genius is this little feature? There’s no way that any human being can be on Pinterest that much to do all this. I’m telling you guys, Tailwind’s Smart Loop is where it’s at :)

Make great pins

This is probably my favourite section to talk about (most likely stems from me being a previous home decor blogger)!

In your Pinterest strategy, one of the most important things that will drive traffic to your site, content, or product are your images! Your Pins! Your Graphics!

Whatever name you choose to call it, this is one place where you can make amazing gains in traffic or flop really bad and gain no traffic or subscribers.

If you thinking to yourself, “Say whaa girl??”, don’t worry friend, Canva is has it all set out for you.

I personally use Canva for all graphic designs in my business and make Pins all the time with their pre-set Pinterest template. The size is fully optimized for you so you don’t even have to do a thing! If you’re interested in getting started with Canva at all, try out my link I provide for you here.

Next, you should always have high quality images when you make a Pin. Whether you take your own lifestyle photos (by yourself or with a professional photographer) or you go the stock photography route. You can even do a mix of your own lifestyle photos and stock photography like I do. I feel this brings a more personality and relatability to your brand and business.

When you choose stock photography make sure it’s something you actually like and that’s in alignment with your brand rather than something you see another person using for their business. There are so many great options out there for stock photography but I personally like using stock photography from Creative Market.

Here, I find the most unique stock photography I feel I don’t see anywhere else, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot of the same same stock photography out there!

You can find a ton of stock photography on Creative Market for great price ranges that’s amazing for anyone just starting out. Here are some examples of stock photography I’ve used to make Pins from Creative Market.

I’ve also used stock photography from Ivory Mix. Ivory Mix literally has thousands of images and new stock photos are added every month! Plus, one of the good things about Ivory Mix is there are stock photos you can access from the website FOR FREE to use and start creating your Pin designs right away!

Here are some examples of Pin designs I’ve made with Ivory Mix stock photos to create these Pinterest Template Bundles I have in my shop:

In all, creating good Pin designs is a true art. You have to test out a lot of different styles to see what your audience resonates with, but that’s part of the fun & excitement I think which takes me into my next point.

If you feel like you’re stuck when it comes to Pin designs and don’t know how to get started, download my FREE Pin Design Checklist. It’ll take you through the key steps in crafting amazing scroll-stopping Pins that will catch the attention of your audience.

See this content in the original post

And if the DIY option for Pin design is something you’re not too crazy about doing, we offer our clients an amazing Pin Design Service that’s affordable and best suited to your direct target market.

Make Fresh Pins

Pinterest loves newly created content and recently made changes that curators are able to make more “fresh content” to their platform for distribution.

Now what exactly is a “Fresh Pin”? Fresh Pins defined by Pinterest are images and graphics that have never been seen before.

Now, you are able to create multiple Pin graphics that link to the same URL and Pinterest would consider these new Pins as “fresh”.

This is amazing for all content creators who have older blog posts that want to bring more traffic to, or for newer bloggers who may not have a lot of content on their site yet. Creating multiple Pin images “signals” like you have newer content to share with your audience, therefore, increasing your online visibility to generate more leads and credibility to your business!

The only things that would not be considered fresh are if you:

  • Pin the same image with the same URL but you change the Pin title

  • Make very small changes to the Pin image such as subtle changes in the fonts, image angle, or moving your website URL or logo to a different place.

These practices are considered a huge NO in the Pinterest world which could leave you not in the best books with Pinterest. Remember, Pinterest favours fresh content being added to the platform, because their actually looking out for your best interest! The more fresh content added, the more traffic it will generate to your website, blog, product or service you’re promoting.

See this content in the original post

I used to think that I could get away with creating 2-3 Pins for every blog post. I’d happily design the Pins, post them to my Pinterest board, and schedule them in my Tailwind.

I would gain great traction of the Pins I added to Pinterest, but over time, I would see the traffic dwindle off. It’s not until I learned of the importance of creating more Pins and the reasons why, did I start creating up to 10-15 Pins for every blog post.

I know, I know… You all are thinking that’s absolutely crazy and quite frankly, it does sounds a bit much!

But, once you understand the reasoning behind creating more Pins with varying texts, overlays, backgrounds, and images, you’ll come to realize the not every Pin you create is going to resonate and engage with every person.

I explained in this post that you have to do A LOT of testing of your products to see what favours best with your audience.

Some people may be more likely to save a pin that’s more girly, some would save a pin that’s more minimal. Some people love a farmhouse look, and some like it bold and bright. You’re almost like Goldilocks here, trying out different stuff until you get the one that’s just right.

You see where I’m going with this? Although you may know who your ideal client is (a lot of us do by now), you’re main purpose and goal with a business is to expand your reach. You want to attract clients/customers/fans from various niches that you feel would still benefit from your message as well. This also helps with your engagement factor.

Did you know that if your content is useful, helpful, or inspiring, you’ll likely have a 45 to 55 percent increase in engagement?

Yes, it’s true. The longer you use Pinterest, the more you’ll love it as you will see the conversions for your business.

Tailwind Analytics

Stats on Tailwind are very thorough when you take a deep dive into it but not only does it give you a clear breakdown how your performance is overall, it also tell you what Pins performed well and what boards were most repinned.

As a Pinterest user, you don’t want to get wrapped up in the vanity metrics of your monthly viewers or followers. Remember peeps, Pinterest is not a social media outlet. Pinterest is a search engine outlet.

A great deal of people think that followers and monthly views mean you’re on the right track but these metrics only give you false hope if you continue to use them as gauging the needle point in your business.

In Tailwind Analytics, you want to track your Pin virality, your historical data of progress over time on the platform, what Pin is trending, what Pin is most active

If you look into the Pin Inspector, you’ll find:

  • What pins performed well from what boards they were repinned from

  • If the board not performing well, you’ll be able see the stats on this and look into your strategy to see what you can change as poor performing boards can bring down your ranking on Pinterest

See this content in the original post

Web optimization

I know this portion may seem like it may not belong to here, but I think it’s a pretty important part to add how you can grow your Pinterest account.

Once you have your website chosen and you’re happy with the platform, I want you to make sure it is responsive.

Responsive websites are platforms that will adjust and adapt to any device and screen without distortion or truncation of your images.

For example, if you’re on your desktop but you suddenly have to switch to your mobile phone, tablet, or a laptop, your website will change and adapt to these device screens without losing your data.

When I formulate a strategy for clients, I make sure their Pin images look great on a mobile device first before I settle on the final design.

I suggest this because I’ve had quite a few issues myself when I first started out on with my Pin images. I was designing them based off how they looked on my laptop, but when I viewed the Pins on my mobile, the texts I chose were off or and worse, couldn’t even read the Pin because I decided to choose some fancy letter script.

PLEASE DON’T MAKE THIS MISTAKE!

Sometimes we don’t even realize the small mistakes we’re making in our marketing. We try so many different modalities that we hear or read about (guilty with a capital “G” over here!), that we lose focus and chase after the next shiny new thing. What I now know is that simple is best and your message will come through much more clearly when you adapt this principle.

I know some of you struggle with getting your message across well enough to your target audience, especially when you have to put #allthethings in one tiny Pin! That’s why I created a Pin Design Checklist for you to download and access whenever you are creating a graphic, you have this checklist there to help you. It’s absolutely free for you as I want to give you piece of mind when you’re creating for your audience.

Just remember that most people are viewing their information on a mobile phone more than a laptop or desktop nowadays. I explain in this post that how no one tells you that have to test out things like crazy when you’re first starting out your online journey! Man, how much time I could have saved if I had only knew…

I also want you to make sure you download and have the Pinterest Pin-It Widget embed on your website for easy pinning of your content. This helps to make your website more optimized and easy for pinners to engage with your content and save it to their boards.

If you make multiple Pins (which I highly suggest you do!) you can hide the images in blog post by using TastyPins for Wordpress users or use you can use a custom CSS that will hide your images for Squarespace users.

It’s important to also create compelling call to actions (CTAs) in your Pins that will capture someone’s attention. Some examples of CTAs are:

  • Learn more here…

  • Sign up now…

  • Order today and get…

And always try to capture email address before they bounce off your site. Remember, you want customers for your business, not visitors!

In closing, these are my 5 best tips to growing your account. most important advice. I hope I brought some value to you with ways to grow your Pinterest with Tailwind. Just know that you can get started right now with Tailwind for your business. And if decide to join Tailwind, I encourage you to try it here first so you can get a good feel for this amazing tool. But, I’m sure you’ll love how easy it is to schedule your content and gain back hours of your time so you can really create in your business.


Have you tried Tailwind in your business? If so, how has it worked out for you? If not, what’s been your concern?

See this content in the original post

PIN FOR LATER!


See this content in the original post

Hey, are we friends on Instagram? Join me there so I can get to know you more & follow you back.

See this Instagram gallery in the original post

You may also like…

Want to learn how to use Pinterest for your business? Sign up here for my The Power of Pinterest 5-Day Email Course!

See this content in the original post

If you’re not quite ready to tackle your Pinterest marketing by yourself, let me take the stress off of you!

I offer a range of services here so we can discuss your Pinterest marketing plan further!

See this content in the original post