If you haven’t heard of my intense love for Pinterest as a marketing strategy, then you may need to start there! I go over why I love Pinterest more than Instagram, how I’m using Group Boards to boost my growth, and what I would do if I was starting my account from scratch.

In most of these posts, I’ve also shared that I love Tailwind for scheduling my pins out each week. I love that I can schedule everything out in advance, that I can select multiple boards to send each pin to, and that I can use Tailwind’s tribe features to further grow and network with like-minded businesses.

But the strategy that I use to schedule my posts is pretty specific. Nothing that I do is without strategy and forethought. I want to be careful while I plan out a week of “free” advertising—I may only be exchanging the time that I spend in exchange for this, but my time is valuable to me and I don’t want to waste it! I’m sure that you don’t want to waste your time either, so let’s dive in and I’ll show you how to schedule Tailwind content to grow your business.

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Overall Philosophy: Share The Aesthetic You Want To Attract

Establishing an overall aesthetic (fancy art word for “style” and overall visual appearance) for your Pinterest page is very important (in my opinion), so you want to start there as you plan out your Tailwind schedule.

Think about it this way: if you went to a brand’s Pinterest and only found items from their website, it wouldn’t be super interesting, would it? You might as well just visit the website or leave! There is no incentive to keep following or to stick around. If, however, you visit another brand’s page and the overall “feel” of the boards exactly match the look that you are going for—there is variety in content, but the same style is everywhere—isn’t it love at first sight? There is more reason to stick around in this case!

You’ll draw a crowd that is in love with the same style that you are and is are looking for and hungry for more! While browsing, they notice how beautiful and natural your own items look within the collection you have created. It’s only natural for them to pin a few of your items—or, better yet—to click on the pin, explore your website and purchase something!

1: Pin your target items for the week

This is a given. If you’re not pinning your own work, then you can’t actually USE Pinterest to help your business grow. BUT, you don’t want to just pin the same few images over and over again! That’s a great way to get the glazed over look from potential clients and you definitely want them to be tuned in and interested in your pins.

I recommend working in shifts. I have a few topics that I touch on for my audience: Wedding Stationery, Artwork and Business (obviously). So each week that I schedule highlights a different side of my business. And it usually directly correlates with the blog post that I am sending out that week, which helps me to keep everything straight! I’ll go to that particular blog post and add some of the images (not all—I save a few for next time I’m promoting that subject) to my tailwind schedule—highlighting the boards that it make the most sense to share it to. Then I grab an image from the last blog post or product that I created that has a similar audience. If there is someone interested in one of my items, I want to be able to show them a second one right away!

This process tends to fluctuate for me. Most weeks I have a new blog post to highlight and one or two related item from my shop that I’ll showcase as well. Other days I have a lot to share—especially if I have an image filled blog post or I just had a launch. During those weeks, I have a lot more personal content that I’m pinning than content from others. As long as I still have some pins in there that highlight the work of other creators, I think it’s perfectly fine and normal to have a few weeks every year that are more “Blushed” heavy than others in my Tailwind Schedule!

Make sure that these pins are optimized for Pinterest—they should be vertical (tall), not too high res and have a captivating title (when applicable). These pins perform much better overall. If you’re frustrated on where to get started, you can use the templates that I have created to use in my own business every week!

Schedule your pins with tailwind! Use the tried and true strategies that I have used for my business #pinterestforbusiness

2: Pin Like-Minded Work From Others

After I’ve added my own files and pins to my Tailwind Schedule, it’s time to fill in the rest of the slots.
I don’t think there is REALLY a proper ratio for sharing your own work vs the work of other people (though many Pinterest experts will try to tell you otherwise), but I do believe that it will help to not only draw the right crowd to your boards, but will also help to set yourself up as a professional in your field. Plus, etiquette. It’s just the nice thing to do!

When you’re looking for pins from other sources to share, look for pins that have the same overall aesthetic that you are looking for in an ideal client and use this content to fill in the “holes” in your schedule. For me, as a fine art wedding stationer, I’m looking for brides who love the “old world” style. Think high end weddings, light and airy photography, extravagant floral arrangements and stunning venues. So I tend to skip the pins that feature “DIY this-or-that”, because those aren’t the brides I’m after.

To find the right pins for my target audience, I go to wedding blogs that fit my aesthetic, such as Once Wed, Wedding Sparrow or White Wren. Bonus points if I’ve already been featured on their site! I will pull up a few blog posts that I like and pin all of the images in a vertical(tall) format—occasionally a square format if I really love it.

Add a great description to your tailwind pins to work with your tailwind schedule strategy #tailwindstrategy #pinterestforbusiness

3: Make Those Descriptions COUNT

The default descriptions for most wedding blogs have is rather pointless. Some of them still feature file names instead of the blog post title or a brief description. It is really important that you at least add a small description—I am usually in a bit of a hurry, so I throw in the overall title or something that I think works on a broad scale. Then add 3-5ish hashtags that fit your board and pinterest account underneath. I have a few that I use for every single post because that’s what I want to be found for on Pinterest. If someone is searching for a specific post or style on Pinterest and comes across one of my pins, they are way more likely to browse through my work or even follow my boards. I want to take advantage of that opportunity!

Then I usually just use the same description for each item—unless there’s a specific board that I know I will be pinning to, like my Flat Lay Photography board. Then I add a line about how beautiful the flat lay is right to the top and add a related hashtag or two under that.

Still stumped on what to do about your pin descriptions? Get my cheat sheet! This lays out the exact process that I use for every single one of my pins—walks you through it and adds tips along the way.

4: Use Tailwind TRIBES

The last thing that I do when I’m adding items to my Tailwind schedule for the week is to go through my tribes. These are similar to Instagram Pods or Group Boards on Pinterest. It’s a great place to share pins and find like-minded pins to share. Most of these boards have rules about how often you can share vs how many pins from others that you need to maintain, but they are usually a 1:1 ratio. I will scan the board and add anything to my Q or schedule that I think that my audience will like (or that I just like, for one of my more personal boards). I also share my own work to the proper Tailwind tribes (I usually do this while I’m adding my own work to the schedule) so that it can be re-pinned by other members to audiences that don’t even know that I exist! This is one of the best ways to grow your audience quickly with Pinterest!

How I strategically schedule my tailwind pins to promote my website and business

5: Shuffle The Queue

After you have all of the slots filled that you need, I recommend Shuffling the Queue a few times. I like to have my pins spread out during the week rather than being shoved out on Monday and Tuesday and have nothing left for the next few days/weeks! So I usually shuffle everything a few times. If you have something that you want to schedule at a specific time (like a launch or when I am scheduling a few weeks out and want to highlight my blog posts), then you can always lock those into place and they won’t be shuffled with the rest.

My Routine:

In general, I try to make sure that I have about a week scheduled out the day that my new blog posts go live. It usually takes me about an hour to get everything together for a week or two—even less time if I find some good blog posts to share quickly or have a lot of my own content. I love that the rest of the time I spend absolutely no time working on my Pinterest strategy. And yet, I have a steady stream of traffic coming from to my website every day, exploring my products and services. I wish I had started using this years ago, but it is so incredible to see the difference that it has made in my business in the past 7 months!