Get more eyes, and shares on your pins with Tailwind Tribes.

Tailwind tribes are a great way to get more exposure to your pins, resulting in more visits to your blog. I recently created a bunch of tribes for my local blogging community, but many are not currently using Tailwind. The good news is that they can still take advantage of Tailwind’s Tribe feature and so can you!

UPDATED November 1, 2017

Links to Tailwind in this post are affiliate links. I’ll get a cut if you end up buying – at no additional cost to you. I’ve been using Tailwind since 2015 and still happy!

What are Tailwind Tribes? Tribes are a Pinterest sharing platform within the Tailwind dashboard (Tailwind is a Pinterest schedule and analytics tool). Tribes allow you to connect with other bloggers in your niche to find and share great content. It’s basically Pinterest inside of Tailwind. Except, you see pins chronologically and only from the people that have joined the Tribe you belong to. Win! Tribes are a community over competition kind of a thing. It’s helping each other grow.

From Tailwind, “Tribes are formed by groups of trusted peers, generally with a focus on aggregating content in a specific topic or niche of interest to them. As Tribemates add great content to their Tribe, a feed is created for easy review and sharing. By collaborating in this way, everyone in the Tribe has a continuous stream of hand-curated content from people they trust, saving them time and improving their content quality. And, when someone shares their content from the Tribe, they also get exposure to a highly-relevant audience. It’s a win-win”

Here’s a little video for you to get a better idea of how Tribes work.

You know that old saying, “It takes a village to raise a child” well

[clickToTweet tweet=”It takes a tribe to grow on Pinterest. Learn how to [email protected] tribes” quote=”It takes a tribe to grow on Pinterest”]

I say this everytime I talk about Pinterest, but if you’re the only one saving your content on Pinterest it will take a lot of time to get any traction there. You need a tribe to help you out!

Tailwind Tribes make it easier for you to grow your traffic from Pinterest.

You don’t need to purchase a plan to use tribes. From Tailwind, “Tribes will always have a free version available for use. We want it to always be easy for you to collaborate with people in your community.” Yep,  you can keep on using Tribes for free, even after your free trial of Tailwind is up. The free plan of Tailwind Tribes allows access to 5 Tribes and the submission of 30 pieces of content a month. Let me show you how to use Tailwind Tribes (Of course, if you end up loving Tailwind as much as I do, you can use them to schedule pins too!)

How to use Tailwind Tribes

1. Sign up for a free trial of Tailwind
2. Connect your Pinterest account to Tailwind
3. Install the browser extension
4. Find a tribe to join
5. Add your pins to the tribe
6. Pin your tribemate’s content

Step 1 > Sign up for a free trial of Tailwind

The first step to joining a Tribe is to sign up for your free trial of Tailwind.

Use Tailwind Tribes!
The trial comes with 100 scheduled pins, access to 5 tribes a month, and the tribe submission of 30 pieces of content a month. You’ll also get access to the Tailwind analytics, which allows you to take a deep dive into how well (or not) your boards and pins are performing on Pinterest. Yes! I want to start my free trial!

Step 2 > Connect your Pinterest account to Tailwind.

It’s all good. Pinterest is an approved API, meaning you won’t get dinged for having them access your Pinterest account.

Step 3 > Install the browser extension

You’ll need to install the extension in order to add your own pins to Tribes. This is also how you schedule pins if you choose to do so. Once it’s installed, you’ll have the little blue Tailwind logo in your browser toolbar.

Step 4 > Find a tribe to join

Next, you need to find some tribes to join. First, talk to your blogging friends in your niche and see if any of them belong to or host a tribe. If you strike out there or simply want to join more tribes, here’s how you can find Tailwind Tribes.

The new Find a Tribe feature lets you search for Tailwind Tribes to join by keyword or by category. Before you join, you’ll be able to preview a Tribe’s content to see if it’s a good fit. You’ll also see how many Tribemates it contains and how active the Tribe is. Of course, you can create your own tribe and invite your blogging friends to join!

My favorite Pinterest Facebook group also has a running document for Tailwind Tribes.

Step 5 > Add your pins to the Tribe

I’m going to show you how to do this directly on your blog or from Pinterest.

Adding pins to Tribes from your blog

Open up the post that you want to share in your Tribe. I am using my friend’s blog postcardstoseattle.com for the tutorial pictures. Click the little blue Tailwind icon in your browser toolbar.

Select an image you want to share with the tribe and then click the green schedule button. Once the image pops up in the Tailwind box, click add to tribes.

Select the tribe(s) you want to share the pin to and then click add to tribe. Ta-da it will show up in the Tribe for your buddies to see and hopefully share on Pinterest.

Adding pins to Tribes from Pinterest

You can also share directly from Pinterest. Head to the pin you want to share with your Tribe. Since you’ve connected Pinterest and Tailwind, you should have a the Tailwind schedule button show up on your pins (you might have to hover over it to get it to show up). Click that button and then repeat the same steps as above.

Make sure you are sharing quality pins, this will increase the chance of people sharing your pins. Great pins are, “helpful, beautiful, and tasteful.” – Pinterest  Great pins are vertical, with at least a 2:3 ratio and 600 pixels wide (600×900). You can read more about the best sizing for Pins and how to create pin-worthy graphics.

Note: when adding pins to your Tribes, this will also add the pin to your drafts folder for Tailwind’s scheduling tool. Your trial comes with 100 free pins, so test it out! If you love it, sign up. If you don’t end up loving it, keep on using Tribes and ignore the drafts or delete them.

Step 6 > Share your tribe’s pins

If you use Tailwind to schedule your pins, then sharing other people’s pins is super easy. You just click the little green add to queue button after choosing a board to save it to. If you aren’t using Tailwind, there are a few extra steps, but it is not difficult.

If you don’t use Tailwind to schedule your pins you can still pin your Tribemates pins. Click on the pins source page at the bottom and then save the image directly from their site. OR click the Pinterest icon and repin directly from the pin they shared.

The downfall is, that even though you are sharing your friends’ pins, it won’t look like it from the Tribes dashboard. Next to your name, it will show 0 shared. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you have a strict tribe chief (I made that up, but it seems fitting that the admin should be referred to as a chief).

Your pin to their site will still help them grow. If the chief or someone asks, just let them know you are saving their content but that you live pin instead of use Tailwind to schedule pins. 🙂

Step 7 > Repeat steps 5 and 6

There. Now you know how to use Tailwind Tribes, regardless of whether or not you are a paid subscriber to Tailwind. Keep adding quality pins to your tribes and keep sharing your tribemates content. If you’re not getting engagement in a particular tribe, look for or create another tribe.

Bonus Step: Track Tailwind Tribe Results

I think it is important to see how well the things we do work for our blogs. Tailwind Tribes add tracking codes to your post URL so that you can track traffic that comes to your blog as a result of Tailwind Tribes! Yay. From your Google Analytics dashboard, navigate to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns > tailwind_tribes.

Add a secondary dimension Landing Page to break them down by posts.

I made it even easier to see all your Pinterest traffic in Google Analytics with a custom dashboard! With the dashboard, you can easily see posts getting love from Tailwind Tribes, your top performing posts, top performing pins, and other helpful insights about your Pinterest traffic.

Subscribe to receive the Pinterest Dashboard!
Leave your email below to sign up for my blogging/Pinterest newsletter and I’ll send you the custom dashboard so that you can also track your Pinterest efforts.
[ninja_form id=40]

How I use Tailwind Tribes

I like to use Tribes to get my new content out there faster. The day a new post goes live, I share my pin with my tribes.

However, I also like to add old pins to Tribes and they usually get more pins than new pins. Why? Tailwind includes the share counts on the pins and people like to save pins that already have a higher viral score. If you look at the picture below, the image on the left was an old, very established post. It had a share popularity of over 12,000. As a result, 33 people from my Tribe saved it on Pinterest (thank you, friends!). The picture on the right is for a new post and had a popularity count of nine. Only one person from my Tailwind Tribe saved it to Pinterest (thank you, awesome tribemate!)

Long story short: share new and old posts. Tribes are a great way to revive those old posts and keep them working for you.

Tailwind tribes also help me fill up my queue of pins. When I sit down to schedule out all of my pins for the week, I check my tribes first and find things I would like to pin from there.

Tailwind Tribes as PART of your Pinterest Marketing Strategy

Tailwind Tribes should only be one part of your Pinterest marketing strategy. Make sure you’re doing all the other good stuff too: creating quality content, beautiful pins, and encouraging your existing readers to save your articles to Pinterest. In all honesty, I don’t think Tailwind Tribes need to be part of your long-term pinning strategy. Hopefully, you can Tribes to get momentum going for Pinterest and build up your audience. If that works, then you can rely on your tribes (the people that read your blog on a regular basis and love it) to share your content. 🙂

To recap, Tailwind Tribes are awesome because:

1. Tribes help you get your blog content in front of an audience that is actively looking for pins to share with their audience.
2. You can easily, and quickly find high-quality content to share with your own Pinterest audience.

To use Tailwind to schedule pins or not?

I use Tailwind because I have better things to do with my time than be on Pinterest all day. Scheduling my pins also helps me be more strategic with my pinning. It let’s me take a look at the bigger picture of my pin feed. For me, Tailwind is a worthwhile investment. If it’s not in your budget, don’t feel like you have to pay to schedule pins. Work out a pinning plan that works for you. Luckily, a free version of Tribes will always be available.

Ready to join tribes? Sign up for your trial of Tailwind!