5 Tips to Explode Your Blog Traffic with Pinterest

 

When I was brand new to the blogging world, one thing that I was constantly seeing as I read about how best to improve my site traffic was bloggers telling me to look into Tailwind. After reading enough success stories, I decided to take their advice and check it out. And I am SO GLAD that I did!

I wanted to share my experience using Tailwind with you so that you can see just how it works and how big of an impact it’s had on my blog since I started using it.

I’ve included 5 tips for HOW to maximize your use of Tailwind after explaining what it is and how it’s helped me average over 4 million monthly views on Pinterest and how that’s helped my blog!

 

5 TIPS FOR EXPLODING YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC WITH PINTEREST:

1. Pin Consistently. Pinterest is a gold mine for blog traffic, but the only way to get consistent results is to put in consistent effort. I think this is probably my favorite thing about Tailwind: it allows me to be consistent with pretty minimal effort. I love to pin on Pinterest anyway, so spending some time to do so to better my business is a no brainer. My advice is schedule at LEAST 40-60 pins a day, if not more.

2. Pin for Yourself AND your Audience. You have to share things you truly like and believe in in order to come off as authentic. Don’t just pin anything and everything, pin things that you love and that you think your followers will love. If they follow you, chances are they like your style and taste. Share only what truly reflects that instead of just pinning to pin. There has to be cohesion.

3. Re-Pin Your Posts, Instagram Pics, Your Own Pins, etc. This one surprised me! I didn’t realize it was ok to pin the same things I had pinned before. Turns out, it’s a GOOD thing!! At least in moderation. Obviously don’t pin the same thing all day every day. But every time I am doing my bulk pinning, I go through my most popular posts and re-pin them. I’m always gaining new followers so people are always seeing them for the first time, or maybe seeing something they hadn’t seen the last time I shared it. This is the best way to keep traffic up to your entire blog instead of just your most recent posts.

4. Re-Pin Popular and Trending things. This one comes with an asterisk of ONLY if you like them and they suit you and your style. Tailwind recommends things for you any time you schedule a pin and it will show you a little flame in the corner with a number. The higher the number, the more that pin is trending. Pinning it can bring more traffic and/or re-pins. You also want to re-pin your most popular pins, which Tailwind keeps all in one place for you to make it very easy.

5. Pin 60/40. When pinning, you want 60% of what you pin to be your own material (blog posts, instagram posts, pins you’ve created) and 40% to be other people’s stuff. Pins you like, tips for blogging, articles, whatever. Variety is a good thing and helps draw interest for all areas, so don’t ONLY pin your own stuff. Let there be a healthy mix so people want to keep coming back.

 

I used to be lucky to get 1 sale a month through my affiliate links. Now, I consistently getting multiple sales a day! It’s not where I want to be yet but it is definitely on the right path!! And I 100% know that Tailwind is the reason for that.

 

So, what is Tailwind?

Simply put, it’s a scheduler. I use it for Pin Scheduling for Pinterest, but you can also use it to schedule your Instagram posts, too. You select the pins that you like, put them in your queue and they post them for you at specific times based on a few things which I’ll get to in just a second.

 

 

What’s so great about it? 

Pinterest works best (like most things) with consistency. Since it’s not really possible for me to be pinning all day every day (and probably not for you, either), Tailwind lets me spend time bulk pinning by saving a bunch of pins in my queue, and then their algorithm plans out the best times to pin your pins for you.

I spend 1 hour each week scheduling my pins for the next 7 days, and Tailwind does the work for me. In the first month of using it, my blog traffic jumped up over 5,000 monthly views and has been steadily climbing since.

It’s so great because it saves time and it’s so wonderfully easy. The Tailwind button is in my menu bar, so if I ever am on a page where I want to pin an image, I can either hover over the picture and see the “Schedule” button pop up in the bottom corner, or I can click the Tailwind Icon in my browser which will pull all of the pictures from that page and let me choose which ones I want to pin.

This is what it looks like on a Mac:

 

This is what it looks like on Chrome:

It is always up there, so no matter what website I’m on, I can save things to pin later! I love that.

 

The Schedule Algorithm: 

Tailwind has collected an exceptional amount of data to know when the best times of day are to post based on what your pins are to reach your target audience. How handy is that?!

You choose how many pins you want to pin a day, and Tailwind populates time bubbles for what it considers the best times for you. It’s that easy!

This is what the Pinterest Schedule looks like:

The filled in green bubbles are the times they selected based on the number of times I said I wanted to pin a day. I go a little above and beyond and pin over 100 pins a day because I’m trying to GROW.

The recommended amount is 40-60 a day. The empty bubbles are extra times that you can add if you want to. They’re suggestions from Tailwind that basically say “all of these are ideal, but these are good, too” if you just want more.

I try to fill in all of the late night ones, as that’s when most people are on. You can also add your own times if you really want to.

Tailwind also offers Instagram scheduling, which I’m creating a separate post on.

 

Trying Tailwind out – for FREE!

Tailwind offers a free trial to try out their service and see how you like it. You can sync up both your Pinterest and Instagram to try them out. Keep in mind, if you do sign up, you sign up each account seperately. I personally chose to only do Pinterest because that’s all I felt like I needed right now. I’m very hands on with my Instagram and don’t think I could plan my posts out a week ahead of time.

The trial includes 100 free pins and/or 30 Instagram posts before you decide if you wish to continue with the paid plan. The trial gives you access to some reports like Brand Performance, Pin Inspector, Board Insights and more to really experience the full effect.

If you choose to continue after the trial, it’s $15 a month for up to 400 pins that month. I personally am a bit crazy with it and schedule 100 pins a day. So that plan just wasn’t gonna work for me. I went with the Plus plan and paid $120 up front which gives you 4 months free if you do the math. For bloggers, they recommend you pin 40-50 a day. I am just a bit gung-ho about growing :).

That $120 has been a very solid investment in my blog, and I’ll show you why below. It’s already paid for itself in the affiliate sales I’ve generated in less than a month!!

 

Why I use Tailwind – My Personal Results:

Before I started using Tailwind, I had 140 followers and probably 95% of them were people I know. Once I changed my Pinterest from being a Personal account to being a Business account, I could see all of my stats.

After seeing that things were starting to go well in the beginning, I started to keep better track of it. I was shocked at what the consistency was doing.

Just to schedule all of these pins to be pinned at various times was getting my views way up! But, then I realized..those are other people’s pins. I need to pin my own stuff! That’s where the traffic comes from.

And so I did. And a week later, my traffic from Pinterest, which was practically non-existent before, went from about 5 visits to over 300. ONE WEEK. Not too shabby, huh? I had also gained almost 100 followers in that one week period, when I don’t think I had gained a Pinterest follower in years..seriously.

I just never used it except for weddings stuff and the occasional outfit inspo. Goodness, I was missing out.

 

Here are the results from the following week, March 14th:

PINTEREST STATS:

 

TAILWIND STATS:

 

As you can see, there is an insane increase in all areas. It was safe to say at this point, I was hooked!

Now, keep in mind: every website has it’s ups and downs. There are weeks when my numbers dip down. Weekends are always huge increases, obviously because people have more time to be on Pinterest.

 

Next, from April 26-May 3rd 2018

 

UPDATE: My most recent Tailwind Stats from August 2018

 

Pinterst has become my NUMBER 1 source of traffic, hands down.

When I first started blogging I relied a lot on Facebook, but now that I have Tailwind and share my posts on Pinterest, it’s immensely helped my blog, as well as helping me make affiliate sales through my posts since I’m getting more traffic to my page.

Right now I have an average of over 4 MILLION monthly views on Pinterest. All because of this lovely program.

Also, if you don’t follow me on Pinterest, please do!!

 

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I obviously highly recommend at least doing the trial. Who doesn’t love free trials?! And please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. I’ll try to update this page as often as I think will be beneficial to you guys 🙂

 

XO,

Dani