I have been obsessed with Pinterest since I first started using it 5 or so years ago. Like back when you had to get an invite to sign up. Do you remember that? I've used it personally for recipes, craft ideas and home decor ideas. When I started using it for business, it was a different ballgame. It was no longer just finding pins that I loved and pinning them to a relevant board. Suddenly I was worried about collaborative boards, peak times, smart feeds, algorithms and analytics. It started to become stressful and take some of the fun out of Pinterest for me. If you own a small business (TpT store, Etsy store, etc.), you know how important Pinterest is for marketing and getting your products out there, but there is more to it than just pinning your products. Last spring, I discovered the website Tailwind. Tailwind is a pin scheduler and it also gives a lot of analytics about your account. Let me explain why I love Tailwind so much.
1. The customer service is fantastic.
When I first discovered this company and heard about other TpTers that were using it, I was intrigued. I hadn't really taken the plunge and signed up or maybe I had just signed up for a trial, when I first contacted the company. I took a shot and asked them for a donation to our Vegas meetup for Full Time TpTers/Work at Home Moms. Imagine my shock when the president emailed me back saying he'd love to help and wanted to talk to me on the phone. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with president of Tailwind not only explaining our group and why were were meeting up and what their donations would be used for, but also explaining our needs as TpTers as far as Pinterest was concerned. Based on their incredible generosity and their genuine desire to help our community, I was completely sold and signed up for a paid account right away. Their customer service continues to impress me. They love to hear from their clients and respond very quickly. You can email them or start a chat on the websit through your dashboard. I went back and forth with one of their employees a few days ago and she was responding to my questions within the hour (usually faster) with detailed and thoughtful responses. I found out exactly what I needed without having to wait around forever to hear back from them.
2. I can pin daily without having to be online daily.
When you are pinning for fun on Pinterest, you can go on whenever you want, whenever you have time, whenever you are bored. However, it is a different ballgame when you are pinning for business. You need to pin regularly and consistently to get your pins seen. As much as I love Pinterest, I know I don't have the time to be on it daily especially at peak times which I hear is around dinner time and into the evening. Umm hold on kids, mommy can't make dinner right now because I need to pin some things first. Ha. Yeah right. That isn't an option. With scheduling my pins through Tailwind, I can schedule them out ahead of time (I currently have my pins scheduled for the entire month) so that they pin at peak times to make them more visible to my target audience. I still go on Pinterest at other times for fun, if I'm looking for something specific or to save some pins to schedule later, but there is no pressure to pin daily now.
3. Tailwind tells me my optimized times for pinning.
When you first start your account with Tailwind, they analyze your Pinterest account. Part of that analysis is determining who your target audience is (who is repinning your pins) and when they are the most active. This is crucial because then the people you want to see your pins are actually seeing your pins. What a concept!! Things have changed a bit with the smart feed changes in the algorithm as far as what your followers are seeing, but it is still important to be pinning when your audience is pinning. Obviously it would be easy for me to pin during naptime but most teachers are at work and most moms are busy with their kids during the day, so my target audience isn't on Pinterest seeing my pins at that point. Tailwind suggests ideal times for you to pin each day and you can select as many or as few as you want to add to your schedule.4. Tailwind gives me a lot of analytics and insights into my Pinterest account.
I will have to admit that this is the feature I use the least on Tailwind. I like to check into my numbers on my various social media accounts but I don't have time to dig deeply. Now I have the option with Tailwind if I want it. One of my favorite insights that they give me is my progress for the past seven days. They will tell me how many followers and repins I got in the past week and then they will tell me if that is above or below what I've been averaging weekly.
5. I've been gaining more followers and getting more repins since starting Tailwind.
Now I'm not a Pinterest rockstar by any means. I don't have a ton of followers or repins but I have been growing. I kept my weekly stats before Tailwind and you can clearly see when I started because I was gaining more followers each week than I ever have before. I really think it goes back to my target audience being active while my pins are being pinned.I could probably go on and on about Tailwind. I know that it can be sort of overwhelming when you first get started. I am helping a friend get started on Tailwind and it got me thinking - if she needs help and has questions, I'm sure there are others who have the same needs, so I decided to write a blog post. Because I feel like there is a lot to explain but I want to break it into smaller chunks, I decided to do a series of blog posts starting next week on my blog Sara J Creations. If you have any specific questions that you want me to address, leave them below in the comments. If you want to try out Tailwind and get your account set up and ready for my how to series next week, you can sign up for a free month trial by clicking HERE. (Full disclosure - that is an affiliate link that gets you the free month.) I started with the free trial so I could play around with the site and see if it made a difference in my Pinterest schedule. I don't think I even lasted the full month before I signed up for a paid subscription. Let me know what questions you have about Tailwind that I can try to answer for you.
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