Scheduling Pins Using Tailwind

I'm spending a little time this week exploring Tailwind (an online pinterest pin scheduler) a bit more to help my fellow business owners get a sense of what they can do with a Tailwind subscription and how much time they can save themselves.  If you missed my other posts in the series, you can find them here:
Why I Love Using Tailwind For My Business
Getting Started with Tailwind


***Note: Tailwind is in the process of releasing 2.0 and some of these features can only be found if you've upgraded to the new version.  If you don't find a feature I'm mentioning, make sure you are upgraded.  I believe all accounts will be converted to the new version by April, but you can convert sooner if you want.


Today we are going to focus on actually scheduling those pins out.  So how do you do it?  The first thing you are going to want to do is get some draft pins built up.  I've found this to be the fastest way to do it.  Remember I mentioned in my last post that you need to have a mindset shift when it comes to pinning?  This is what I mean.  (Make sure you have the Tailwind extension added to your browser first.)

When you are pinning on Pinterest and you see something you like, you would normally click PIN.  Now you are going to click on the pin and click SCHEDULE.  EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  No more pinning instantly, delay that gratification.  Save those bad boys to schedule out at peak times.  Now, it will not hurt you to pin in the moment and click pin instead of schedule.  I still do it on occasion or if I need something saved immediately to a board, but for the most part I always hit schedule.

Now, once you hit schedule you will get this box.

You can pick your board and schedule from here and it will add it to your queue.  But there is a faster way.  See on the right where it says SAVE FOR LATER?  Click that.  Go through and do that for a bunch of pins.  This is going to save you time because you aren't deciding what board it needs to go to right now.  Just save for later each time and it will start saving all these draft pins.  When I say go through Pinterest, I mean look through your feed, look on boards you follow, look through your own boards, etc.  Remember you can get pins from other places and not just Pinterest.  Go to your blog and schedule/save for later pictures and blog posts.  Go to some of your favorite blogs and save pins from there.  You don't want to just be scheduling out your product pins.  That is SPAMMY!  Don't do it.  Also, you don't want to just be pinning your freebies, blog posts and products.  Yes, you need to pin all of those but you should also be pinning other people's ideas that you are finding and loving.  Think about how you would use Pinterest normally, if Tailwind wasn't involved.  You have to teach about life cycles, so you go to Pinterest and you see cute ideas for crafts, videos, books, projects, etc. and you pin all of it to your life cycles board to remind you to try that out.  You don't take all of your own stuff about life cycles and create a board with only your stuff.  You can mix yours in with others.  That is the same way you will use Tailwind.  A mix of yours and others.  I've heard different percentages that you should be doing but I am always pinning way more of other people's ideas that I find than my own.  Probably 75% other, 25% mine.  


Once you have several drafts saved, you can start scheduling them out.  Go to your dashboard in Tailwind.

Now if you happened to have your dashboard open while you were pinning these drafts in another window, you will need to refresh in order to see the drafts.  On the left side click PUBLISH and then DRAFTS.  You will see all of your drafts in the middle and your scheduled pins on the right.  Now go pin by pin and type in what board you want it to go to.  Change the description if you want and click ADD TO QUEUE and it will schedule the pin to your next available time slot.  You can go through and do this for each pin draft.  But wait - make those pins count for more...

Here is a cool feature and yet another time saver - you can save a pin to multiple boards.  So let's say I'm pinning a blog post I wrote on math workshop.  I'm going to pin it to multiple places - my board for my blog, one of my boards that is a related topic like math ideas, and a few relevant collaborative boards.  Now that one pin is actually going to serve as 4 pins for me.  I don't have to go out and find a ton of pins.  I just make sure each pin is working overtime for me.  Now once you have the boards you want to pin to picked out, you have two options.  You can click ADD TO QUEUE and that post will get scheduled multiple times in back to back slots.  If you want to spread out when they post, you can click USE INTERVAL.

When you do this you can click when you want the first pin posted and how much time you want in between each pin.  You can adjust this information and it will show you what day and time each pin is scheduled for.  With the new version of Tailwind, you will now see the option of USE TIME SLOTS or EXACT TIME.  Use time slots means that it will space it out the amount of time you requested and find the closest available time you have on your schedule.  Exact time means you can pick the specific time you are pinning.  These will be in addition to the times on your normal schedule.  Pick the one that works for you and click SET INTERVAL.  Then click SCHEDULE.

Another time saver tip here.  You can click schedule or add to queue for each pin or you can just put in all the boards you want for all of your draft pins and then click SCHEDULE: ALL DRAFTS at the very bottom.  This can save you time but if you'd rather schedule each pin individually, that's fine too.

Now you are going to go through all your drafts, assign them a board and schedule them.  You don't have to assign each pin to multiple boards.  Some of mine are relevant to my boards and some collaborative boards.  Some of my pins on my Project Life Scrapbook board or my Planners, Journals and Organization don't really go with the educational collaborative blogs I'm apart of so I'm just scheduling it to my own boards.  You still want to pin at peak times even if you are just pinning to your own boards so schedule everything that you are pinning.

Now once you have pins in your schedule on the right, you have a few options.  If you look through your pins you will notice a lock on some of them.

That means you scheduled that pin for an exact time so it is locked there so another pin can't bump it.  If you have other pins that you would like locked in place, just slide the lock over underneath the picture.  Why would I need to do this?  Well the next step I'm going to teach you is the shuffle.  Sometimes, I don't want all of my pins shuffled.  Here is an example.  I spent a few hours the other day scheduling my pins for the rest of the month.  I had a bunch of St. Patrick's Day pins in my schedule.  I wanted to hit shuffle so that similar pins were split up.  If I didn't lock my St. Patrick's pins, they could have been shuffled all throughout the month which means they might pin after the holiday happens.  That's not helpful.  So before I shuffled, I went through and made sure my St. Patrick's Day pins were at the beginning of the month.

You can now drag and drop pins so I just moved them up to the beginning of the month which pushed my more generic pins down.  Then I locked them in place so they would stay at the day and time I just dragged them to.


Now onto the shuffle feature.  Again, when are you going to use this?  Well, I use this a lot because I often schedule the same pin out to multiple boards.  If I don't use the interval scheduling, it will schedule them one after another.  Even though these are going to different boards, some of those times are very close.  If could look very spammy if someone is following me and one or two of the collaborative boards I posted to and they happen to see the same pin over and over again.  I would rather spread it out so it is reaching different people at different times.  Once you have your pins scheduled, you should see something that says SHUFFLE QUEUE near the top where your drafts were.  If you don't, you might need to refresh.  Click shuffle and it will move all of your pins that are NOT locked around.  Again, you can go through and drag and drop if you aren't happy with the placement of one or two or you can shuffle again.  When you are happy with it, just leave it alone and those pins will schedule out for you.


This sounds time consuming right?  How is it saving time?  I'm not going to say this doesn't take time.  It definitely does but it doesn't take as much time as sitting on Pinterest every day so that I can pin at a peak time and make a Pinterest presence.  I might spend a few hours finding and scheduling pins but that usually lasts me for a few weeks or longer.  Here is a way to save yourself time:  Be saving up drafts all the time.  So log into Pinterest a few times a week and save a few pins as drafts.  Read a blog and save a pin as a draft.  Post a blog post on your blog and pin as a draft.  If you are doing this regularly, then you will just need to sit down and pick which board (s) your drafts need to go to.  It takes me several hours when I have to go and find and pin enough pins for a few weeks or a month all in one sitting.  Plus it is Pinterest....so that means I get sucked into the rabbit hole and spend hours searching for things I didn't even plan to search.  So save time and save those drafts a little at a time so they are ready and waiting when you need to schedule them out.


Have I helped you?  Confused you?  Overwhelmed you?  I'm hoping this is helpful but I know there are so many different features on Tailwind so it can seem overwhelming.  Later this week, I will blog specifically about collaborative boards and how to make Tailwind work with those.        

If you want to try out a free month of Tailwind, you can click HERE. (This is an affiliate link if you would like to use it.  If not, you might be able to still get a free trial if you contact Tailwind.)

UPDATE:  Since writing this series, I've taken a course called Pinning Perfect.  I cannot recommend it enough.  It really changed my Pinterest strategy and improved my account.  I still use Tailwind even more than I was before this class.  If you are looking to improve your Pinterest game to promote your blog/business, check out this class.  You won't be sorry.  I'm including my affiliate link - just click the picture if you are interested.