Learning the basics for how to use Tailwind

Last Updated on June 21, 2021 by scottkandh

This post is about learning the basics of using Tailwind.  There is a lot to learn so I’m just going to be concentrating on three aspects:

1. Setting up your boards for Pinterest
2. Downloading pins from their tribe to your boards
3. Uploading pins from your boards or website to the Tribe. 

This post contains affiliate links, which means I will make a commission at no extra cost to you should you click through and make a purchase.

July 12, 2020:  Since this is a blog about my development of my blog.  I would like to start off with a few comments on my progress blogging over a period of 13 days.  If you want to skip this blogging update, go to Read me first – Tailwind Overview.   Before diving into my experience of using Tailwind here’s what other people had to say about using Tailwind.  For this blog post I’m only concentrating on Tailwind for Pinterest. The trial to Tailwind is based on 100 scheduled Pins. For your information, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tailwind are separate paid subscriptions. One major reason to use Tailwind is that Tailwind is a Pinterest and Instagram Partner.

Comments about Tailwind app

“Want to rock Pinterest marketing – without spending a bundle, or adding hours to your day?  You need Tailwind for Pinterest!  Tailwind app is simply the most efficient way to drive traffic to your blog or online store.  Once you get the hang of it, you can set up a week’s worth of traffic-driving Pins in an hour.” 

Google Search

“I would definitely say it’s worth it if you’re prepared to spend time scheduling pins, I’ve heard some great success stories about bloggers who have used it.”

Google Search

“As stated on their homepage, Tailwind is an “Official Pinterest Marketing Developer Partner for Content Marketing” … I’d like to draw your attention to one very important word here: Official:   it’s an official Pinterest partner.”

Google Search

Update of developing my blog. 

Look at how your Pinterest boards can grow by viewing typical results for Pinterest users.

In this blog post, these are my personal results, but Tailwind also publishes the Typical Results of Tailwind Members every year, so you can see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members.”

I developed a huge laundry list of to do items and many posts that I want to discuss.  In addition, I need to take a look at my first draft (of my To Do list) and put it into a priority sequence for items that I want to blog about. 

One of the primary reasons for doing this organizing is based on comments I read about blogging.  Blogs should be focused on the contents of the blog by relying on quality and not quantity.  Instead of pushing out daily blogs advice given from other bloggers to bring in more users and money is to post less frequently. 

I had notes of my different ideas to post and what I had learned scattered throughout three notebooks.  Eventually I got to the point that because I was grabbing the nearest notebook to put my notes.  It was hard to return to the notebook where I had made an entry and I had to fumble through all the notebooks. 

It’s my hopes that by sharing my progress with you that your journey building your website and pinning will be less hectic and you’ll have several ready references for yourself and that you can quickly familiarize yourself with Tailwind. 

I have now been using Tailwind for nearly a week.  When I first started using the program it was daunting to use, but with time and forcing myself to use this highly recommended program within the Pinterest Community I knew it had to be mastered. 

If you’re using Pinterest and you’re just updating your Pinterest Board and no one else’s your missing out on a great way to get the word out to other people and brand your product (through pins).   

Tailwind is great program that you can review pins and push them out to several different users at one time and you specify the board that they are assigned to. These are my personal results, but Tailwind also publishes the Typical Results of Tailwind Members every year, so you can see exactly what the average growth rate looks like for their members.”

I was getting frustrated because I really got the hang of scheduling down easy but the navigation panel (and it’s no better in the Pro version) is that it keeps sliding back and forth to hide the menus that makes it hard to navigate. 

Let me tell you something about myself, I like visuals because a visual is a lot easier to use when you’re first learning a product.  I’m also one of those types of people that when I open a new computer program one of the things that draws me to new programs is the ease of the program.  As I mentioned this wasn’t easy to use.  It took me a few days to get comfortable using it.  For the most part I’m able to get into the program to publish my pins, but it’d be so much easier that if I were to have step-by-step procedures so that I wouldn’t have to fumble with the buttons. 

Read me first – Tailwind Overview

1. First time logging into Tailwind (see Table #1)
2. Tailwind buttons (see Table #2)
3. Read me first – Tailwind Overview
4. Tailwind
5. Creating your board lists – Step 1
6. Tribes – Step 2 (Downloading to your board). 
7. Tribes – Step 3 (Uploading pins from board or website to tribes). 

Before you jump straight into the Tailwind program, here’s a general overview of the buttons. Please print this out and the next three pages and keep them in a handy place until you get comfortable using the program.  If you want to go right into using the program jump down to Creating Your Board lists.    The other thing that I want to tell you straight up is that there’s an annoying screen that toggles back and forth so that the buttons depicted in tables 2 and 3 are hard to distinguish.  Be patient with the program and I’ll write about how to use it so that you’ll be able to use the program and jump straight into it feeling extremely comfortable within a few days of using it. 

Look at the first button depicted that doesn’t have a name.  For now, let’s call it Toggle button.  Clicking on this will allow you to toggle on and off the buttons.  Hopefully, you’ll take my advice that I recommend you printing out the next three pages until you get comfortable using the program. 

Use the weekly summary (a house –) button to look at your # of followers (if you’d like).  Personally, I don’t give it a lot of attention at this venture. 

1. First time logging into Tailwind (see Table #1)

As soon as you log into Tailwind, it automatically goes to the Insight section to display the Profile Performance Screen.  From here you’re able to see that there are three tabs you can select from at the top of the screen:

1. Profile Performance
2. Board Insights
3. Pin Inspector

In addition, there are three performance indicators:  Virality score, engagement score, and engagement rate.  At this point, the only thing that really matters to me (of my venture) is to keep track of the number of followers at the top and watch for improvement.   You can also find the number of followers at the top of your main Pinterest Board.  This will probably be more beneficial as your followers substantially increase.  The picture of table #1 above was taken about a week ago.  In that time, my followers have slightly changed from 25 to 44.  I’m glad that it’s almost double.  But there’s a long way to go. 

Tailwind buttons overview (see Table #2)

1. Toggle button
2. Bio
3. Weekly Summary 
4. Tribes (used often)
5. Publisher
6. Insights
7. Profile Performance

Tailwind Buttons overview

.

To the left are the main buttons that your going to be using.  If you hover over the top button, Tailwind doesn’t provide you with the name for this button.   Clicking on it will make the Insight Report or Profile Performance toggle back and forth to see the menus.  Let’s call it the toggle button.  Tailwind will get the picture from Pinterest of your bio (if you have put it into your Pinterest profile).  The weekly summary button (a house) is something you might want to take a look at occasionally.  The Tribes button is especially useful, get used to it.  When you open tribes, create a new tribe on the far right of Tribes.   Look at other tribes for sample rules.     This is the Publisher (See Table #3)   The Publisher button is a handy dandy tool to see what pins or boards might need room for improvement.  It includes:  Profile Performance, Board Insights, Pin Inspector, Website Insights, Top Pins, Organic Activity, and Referral Traffic.  (See Table #3)   I already covered the Profile Performance button (Table #1 which displays by default).     The other six buttons are depicted below in Table #3 under Insights (on the right).

Publisher: 

There are seven buttons under the category of Publisher:

1. Drafts
2. Scheduled Pins
3. SmartLoop
4. Published Pins
5. Your Schedule
6. Board Lists
7. Pin from Instagram

Insights: 

There are seven buttons under the category of Insights:

1.  Profile Performance
2.  Board Insights
3.  Pin Inspector
4.  Website Insights
5.  Top Pins
6.  Organic Activity
7.  Referral Traffic

(Note:  I couldn’t find anything about the Referral Traffic button, that’ll be a blog for another day). 

C.  Creating your board lists – Step 1

Okay gang let’s get started using Tailwind. Real men don’t need instructions, right?  Wrong on this program.  So that’s why I’m writing this blog as well as a handy quick reference I can use for myself. 

It’s absolutely necessary for you to build your boards first.  Tribes is where you can display all your pins, new pins to add, just your pins, and select pins for you to schedule or skip. 

What I would suggest to you if this is your first time using the program, to click on: “Watch this video for a quick demo!” 

After you’ve viewed the demo and you’re ready to plunge into the program, click on the star in the Publisher section.   Add hyperlink if it’s available.

Creating Your Board Lists (table #5)

1. Click on the big “+” to add a list. 
2. At the top of each board add a board name (blank ……  lines). 
3. Start adding each board (from your Pinterest) into the predefined Groups. 

It’s a lot easier than it sounds, after you’ve named the board, you just click in a blank space and underneath and find the board(s) that you want to add.   If you add a board at a later time, select the Refresh Boards. 

Tribes – Step 2 (Downloading to your board). 

What you’ll need to do is go to Tribes.  Then select a tribe that you want to download their pictures or upload some of your pins to their tribe for others to view.  There’s a feature called “Skip this content and hide it from your tribe feed.” You can skip content by hovering over it and clicking the crossed-out eye icon.  It’s a little hard to see, it’s a little eye located in the top right hand-side of the pin.   Sometimes it takes a little while for the pin to disappear.  I imagine its because so many people are using the program. 

• All: Click here to see everything that has been added to the Tribe
• New: Shows you New content added by others that you haven’t yet “Shared” or “Skipped” (this tab loads by default)
• Yours: Is where you go to see the content you’ve added to the Tribe
• Shared: Shows you everything you’ve scheduled from the Tribe
• Skipped: Is where all the content you decided not to share from the Tribe lives.

Click on Find a Tribe.  Once you’ve defined your tribes you can use the first field (Your Tribes) to toggle between the different tribes.  I recommend that you don’t use the search button at the top (in Find a Tribe) that says: “Find tribes to join by keyword or category”.  It locks up too often. 

Use the popular tribe categories (the 12 buttons on top) or use the other ones called “Other Popular Tribes Topics”.  The difference between the two is that the ones on top allow you to narrow in your focus to other categories within that topic. 

Select the Tribe Category that you want.  For the purpose of demonstration, I selected:  Health and Fitness and the subcategory was Motivation. 

Before your too quick on the draw and select Join Now or Request to Join preview the tribe first, that’s to the right of the Tribe’s name:  Preview Tribe.  Once you’ve made your decision, select Join Now or Request to Join. 

Find a pin that you like.  Where it has: “Type in the Board Name” – Enter the board name.  Underneath that select which board or boards you want to place the pin. 

Once it’s been input, click on add to queue.  Don’t forget all the pins before they get added to the queue need to have a pin description.  I don’t know why, but once in a while they’ll be blank. 

The pin has been placed in the queue, but you’re not done yet.  It still needs to get scheduled so that Tailwind knows which board to schedule the pin. 

In the scheduler you’ll decide which tribes to put pins and I’ll provide step-by-step directions.   This helps me immensely by putting into this format so that I as well have a nice reference tool to use this program that you’re probably going to want to use over and over if you want to build your Pinterest followers. 

Pins that you placed in the queue are now in your Scheduled Pins (2^nd button down under Publisher).  Click on Scheduled Pins.  This is for if all you want to do is to pin it to your board without adding to the tribe.  That’s a different process. 

Also, you can click on pins that are on the right-hand side and move the pins manually to a different time by dragging the pin to its new position. 

Tribes – Step 3 (Uploading pins from board or website to tribes). 

We’re almost at the finish line.  Now it’s time to play with uploading a pin
from one of your boards or from your website. 

Select Pin Inspector (3^rd button under Insight – see Table #6 above) – Select Insights and then Pin Inspector.

For the pin that your selecting chose “Add to Tribes” on the right.

Select the Tribe that you want to submit the pin and press Add to Tribe.

Hopefully now your ready and eager to play around with Tailwind. Good luck and Happy Pinning.

If you like this post, please take a look at this cornerstone article: Effective ways to increase website traffic.