My traffic hasn’t just doubled in the last 3 months since my Tailwind efforts have started paying off. It hasn’t tripled. It has more than quadrupled. In fact, I’m only 17% away from having 5 times the Pinterest traffic I had before. The screenshot below shows it.
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I’m not going to lie. Tailwind isn’t some magic miracle. If you’ve seen the post about “I got a million page views in a month because of Tailwind,” you know what I’m talking about. Honestly, I don’t believe those posts. I do believe this post about “Typical Results of Tailwind.” Maybe the million page views happens for some people, but I have to wonder how much of that is good, quality traffic.
For me, more traffic from Pinterest has been followed recently by more traffic from Google ranking me higher in the search results. I can’t swear the two are related, but to say my website has finally taken off is an understatement. Here is a screenshot of Google Analytics comparing the last three months…keep in mind this is ONLY Pinterest traffic.
Now, I had been using Tailwind for a few months before I started exploring the features and using them. And it wasn’t until after I started consistently using the features provided that my traffic took off. So below, I’m going to go over exactly how to use Tailwind and all the features you need to know.
If you’re interested in more about blogging, check out my “Blogging Resources” page.
You might also find the following posts interesting: “Pinterest Scheduling: Tailwind, Boardbooster, ViralTag, & More“, “8 Ways to Create Perfect Pin Images,” and “Where to Find Images: 75+ Best Places for Free Photos.”
Queue & Suggested Time Slots:
If you already use Tailwind, you know about the queue and that it is the fundamental reason to use Tailwind. With Pinterest, you want to vary your scheduling. You don’t just want to get on and pin 50 pins at one time. “Varying your timing exposes you to different segments of the Pinterest population and can lead to more exposure, repins and followers” (according to one scheduling app pulling on Pinterest research).
But since most of us can’t get on Pinterest multiple times per day (especially during the most ideal times) to pin regularly, Tailwind is the answer.
• Feature: Smart Schedule
Generating or changing a schedule is easy. Under ‘Publish,’ simply click on ‘Your Schedule’ (circled in red on image below).
• Your first option is to simply generate a smart schedule (circled in blue on image below). This is where I started. However, when I first started out it had too many time slots. Simply delete any extras.
• Your second option is to click the ‘add time slot’. You can then manually pick a time. Or- better- click on one of the smart spots generated by Tailwind (circled in purple on image below).
As you can see, most of my time slots are their suggested ones.
The ones in gray are ones I manually added (one of the courses I took recommended that time frame).
The ones in green are suggested slots I added.
If you want to add more slots, I recommend using the suggested spots recommended by Tailwind (circled in purple on image below).
Tailwind has access to millions of bytes of data on pins, pin performance, users, etc. Take their advice on when to schedule.
• Feature: Shuffle Queue
Once you add pins to your schedule, they’ll show up in your queue. I didn’t discover the shuffle queue feature for awhile. But I really like it.
I have a tendency to “batch add”. For example, I’ll be in a tribe on printables or visiting all the of the many printables group boards I’m a member of, find 30 pins I like and schedule them all at once. But that means my Pinterest followers are going to only see printables pins for 3 days! (I only pin about 10 times a day…I’m working my way up).
Or I’ll find a great pin on a mint dessert. I have mint board and Tailwind has a related feature (I’ll go into it below)…but I don’t want 10 mint recipes in a row pinning to Pinterest.
For both situations above, I just schedule the pins like normal. Then go to Tailwind. And click on ‘shuffle queue’ (circled in red on image below). Don’t worry about any pins you have scheduled for specific times/boards (I’ll go into why you would below), they’ll stay locked. You can see which pins will stay in their spots because of of the little padlock on the lower right corner of the pin (circled in blue on the image below).
Interval Scheduling:
If you’re using Pinterest properly, you don’t just pin a post from your website once. You should be pinning it to multiple boards, including some group boards. (If you’re not a member of group boards, there is more on them in the “Board Lists” section below).
But you don’t want to flood your feed with a pin for “Reese’s Muddy Buddies” to 10 different food boards at one time. People might follow multiple boards you’re pinning too, especially niche boards. While seeing the same pin immediately on different boards gives people the impression of spam, if people see it over time, they get the impression that it’s popular, making it more likely they’ll click through or re-pin.
Plus, if you’re scheduling to group boards, they each have their own rules. If you just put your pins in the queue to be shuffled, you could have three food pins hit the same food board the same day, violating board rules and getting you kicked out.
• Feature: Pick All Your Boards of Choice
To pick your boards, all you do is go to pin the post like normal in Tailwind.
• Either type the board name (circled in red in the image). As you start to type the board name, the list below will narrow to your search.
• If you use board lists (I explain the feature below), they’ll be listed at the very top with orange star next to them (circled in blue in the image).
• In addition, if you use board lists, but want to remove a particular board from the list, simply click the ‘x’ (circled in red in the second image) to remove it from the scheduling list.
• Feature: Custom Set Interval
Once you have your boards listed, you can set them to trickle out starting whenever, at whatever interval you want. To pick the start date, simply click on the area labeled ‘Schedule first pin at:’ (circled in green in the image).
From there, you can pick any interval you want by either adjusting the slider or typing in the small box below the slider (circled in red in the image). If you want an interval besides ‘days,’ type something such as ‘4d, 12hr’ for 4 days and 12 hours.
If I’m close to a holiday and am trying to get pins out to multiple boards quickly, I schedule at no closer than 3 day minimum interval. On a regular basis, I schedule at a 7 day interval. This is simply a personal preference. Others suggest 4 days, or 5 days, or even 2 weeks.
I like the 7 day interval because it means the average pin trickles out over about a 3 month period (the average pin of mine goes out to about 12 boards). This means:
• I don’t have to worry about re-marketing this particular pin for 3 months.
• But it’s frequent enough that any changes I’ve made (dropped a group board due to bad performance, added a group board, added a new tribe) will go into effect fairly soon.
An example: I just joined a GREAT new food board that performs well “Amazing Desserts.” Instead of going through and having to manually re-pin all my great desserts to this new board, I simply add it to my board lists. Next time I go through to re-market posts that perform well (such as S’mores Muddy Buddies or Layered Red Velvet and White Chocolate Cheesecake), it will automatically get added this new food board along with all the other food boards. If I had tried to take care of marketing that particular pin for the next year, for example, I would have to go back and manually make any changes.
• Feature: Open, Optimized, or Exact Slots
Once the interval is set, you have three options for the time. You can click either ‘open time slots’, ‘optimized,’ or ‘exact’ (circled in blue in the image).
I choose optimized. It makes sure the pin is a locked pin (so it doesn’t get shuffled), but allows Tailwind a bit of wiggle room on exactly when to pin it. You can also choose ‘exact’ if you like, though. I wouldn’t suggest ‘open time slots.’
Board Lists:
I admit that I had used Tailwind for at least a month before I discovered Board Lists. In fact, I had even thought to myself “I really hate typing in all 10 of these food boards every single time”.
And then I discovered Board Lists.
Side note: You should be in group boards on Pinterest. I’ll be doing an entire post in the future on what group boards are, where to find them, how to join, etc. A group board is a board that has multiple contributors. People like to follow these boards because: they’re usually thematic (example: if someone loves free printables, the board is full of only free printables) and they have more content than one pinner usually can pin.
• Feature: Group Your Boards
To get to board lists, simply go to ‘publish’ section, then click on ‘board lists’ (circled in blue on image).
To make a new list, click on appropriate section.
You can edit the board name by clicking on the little pencil on the top of board (circled in red on image).
Then add board names by starting to type board name (circled in green on image). As you start to type, the list populated below will narrow to include only what you’re typing. You can add as many or as few boards as you want.
As you can see from the image, I have mine categorized. All the food boards are together, blogging together, etc. Note that some of the food boards don’t work for all recipes. I still keep them on the list. If you remember from above, it’s really easy to remove specific boards when scheduling the pins.
Board Insights:
This is probably one of my favorite features about Tailwind. And it’s something you can’t find anywhere else. While you can check Pinterest to find out how your pins are doing, it does NOT provide the ability to see how certain boards are doing.
• Feature: Virality Score
To get to board insights, go to ‘Track your brand page,’ and click on ‘Board Insights’ (circled in blue on image).
Once the list populates, make sure only ‘Group boards’ is checked (circled in green on image).
Then sort the list by ‘Virality score’ (circled in red on image).
I can’t give you an absolute number that you’re aiming for. I’ve heard (from other bloggers) that anything better than 1.0 is good (that means on average, every pin gets repinned at least once). But no matter the number, the higher, the better.
One of the things that has saved me both time and resulted in better traffic is dropping low performing boards. You might think “well, it can’t hurt to pin it.” Actually, if Pinterest sees that you consistently pin and nobody is re-pinning, then the algorithms think you don’t pin good content. So it shows all your other content to fewer people.
Concrete steps to take:
Drop low-performing boards.
Find out your high-performing boards. Go back and pin (or re-pin) your best content to those boards.
• Feature: Your Pin Performance on a Particular Board
Keep in mind that just because a board has great performance doesn’t necessarily mean YOUR pins are doing great on that board. But you can go in and see exactly how well your pins are performing on that board!
On the ‘Board Insights’ page, just click on the board name to open up and see your pin performance. You’ll get a screen looking just like the one below.
You can sort by ‘Repins’ (circled in blue on image below) or ‘Date pinned’ (circled in red on image below). Repins will sort by your best performing…as you can see, my “Reindeer Chow” does well!
However, I most often sort by ‘Date pinned’ to see my most recent pins. I’ve had good boards go sour. I was a member of a group board called “Food Porn” that was great for years! But the owner got uninterested and allowed other people to add contributors. While I visited the board regularly to pin (an obligation if you’re a member of group boards), I hadn’t realized exactly how bad it had gotten until not a single one of my last 5 pins hadn’t been re-pinned.
On the converse, I had a board that was ‘okay’. Not great, not bad. I was on the verge of dropping. And had I just looked at virality, I probably would have. But pin insights showed that my recent Stocking Stuffer post had been repinned over 300 times. I stayed on the board.
Tribes:
Tribes is one of my favorite features on Tailwind. Not only do I find good content to feel up my queue, but my pins get re-shared.
Lauren from “Delicious Little Bites” sums up one of my favorite features about Tailwind:
I like finding high quality, relevant content to schedule in my tribes. I share way more of other peoples pins than I submit of my own.
• Feature: Tribes to Share Content
There are multiple ways to find tribes.
• Tailwind has a feature to search tribes. Click on ‘Tribes’, then ‘Find a Tribe’ (circled in blue on image). Then type in a search term such as “food” or “blogging” (circled in green on image). A list will be populated. If you find a tribe of interest, click on either “Join now” or “Request to Join” (the leader of the tribe chooses whether people can join on demand or not). Where this would normally be is on the image circled in red (since I’m already of a member of those tribes, there isn’t the option to join).
• Join a Facebook group dedicated to finding tribes. Two groups I below to are: “Tailwind Tribes for Pinterest” and “Pinterest Tailwind Tribes.”
• Find a post about Tailwind tribes. Do either a Google search or a Pinterest search about “Tailwind tribes to join.” I found a lot this way.
• Feature: Tribe Stats
Once you join a tribe, make sure you follow that tribe’s rules or you could get kicked out. Plus, it’s just good manners. (Tribe rules are circled in green on image). One of the standard rules is share one for every one you pin to tribe. You can easily see how many you’ve pinned TO tribe and how many you’ve pinned FROM tribe (circled in blue on image).
To see how your pin is performing in that particular tribe, look at the section below the board rules (circled in red on image).
• Re-shares is how many times your pins have been re-shared from the tribe.
• Repins is how many times those re-shares have been pinned by other people people. This is an important number. For all you know, people are sharing your stuff to bad boards or don’t have a lot of followers. Knowing that they’re not only re-sharing, but that those shares are getting re-pinned is important.
• Reach is the number of people your pin has potentially reached. In all honesty, this metric is fairly useless. It looks nice…but doesn’t really mean a lot.
Profile Insights:
Profile Performance is a useful feature, though one I don’t use often. I glance at it now and then to make sure I’m going in the right direction (up).
• Feature: Follower Growth
Out of profile performance, follower growth is my favorite of the insights provided. Instead of having to manually track how many Pinterest followers I have to see if I’m growing at a decent rate, I just pop into here to see how my growth has been.
To find this, go to “Track Your Brand page,” Click on “Profile Performance” and make sure you select “Followers” (both circled in blue in image).
Daily follower growth is on the right (circled in red on image). As you can see, I’m slowly gaining followers everyday. Not a ton, but steady consistent growth. Yay!
• Feature: Repin Growth
Another metric in profile performance is repin growth.
To find this, go to “Track Your Brand page,” Click on “Profile Performance” and make sure you select “Repins” (both circled in blue in image).
Daily repins growth is on the right (circled in red on image). As you can see, I have a fairly steady repin rate. Keep in mind that this is repins on everything you’ve pinned on Pinterest via Tailwind…not just pins from your website. So while it’s interesting to make sure that your followers are actually re-pinning your content, it doesn’t provide any amazing insight into your website in particular.
Suggested Pins:
If you’re looking to fill up your pin queue, suggested pins is a great way to do so. I don’t need to use this feature very often because between group boards and tribes, I have plenty of content…but I do use it on occasion.
• Feature: Suggested Pins
Just schedule a pin like normal. This will automatically populate on the screen afterwards. Tailwind picks them out, so they’re almost always great pins! Just click on the image to go see the content or add to queue to do so.
Whew! That was a lot of information. I hope you enjoyed reading about these amazing Tailwind features.
Let me know: What is your favorite Tailwind feature? Comment below!
Susan Velez says
Hi,
Wow, what a great write up on how to use Tailwind. I have just started really digging in and learning the ins and outs of it. I’ve been using it for a while, but haven’t really spent enough time learning everything about it.
Thanks for the tips on the virality score. I wasn’t sure what a good virality score was, but it makes sense to shoot for at least a one.
I think maybe this week, I need to sit down and see if the group boards that I belong to are actually beneficial or not.
Thanks for taking the time to put this write up together for us.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Jennie says
Thank you! I appreciate the feedback. Like I said with the virality score, I haven’t found an actual, solid answer from Tailwind about what is good (I wish they would tell us!), but fellow bloggers said “aim for 1.0”. Plus, I basically just look at best and worst performing boards from me…and those are usually either way above or way below the 1.0 mark.