One of the questions I see people ask in Facebook groups is 'Are Tailwind Communities (previously known as Tribes) worth it?'
I have seen people say they are, and other people say they're not getting good results from them. And I must admit that when I started to use them I wasn't very good at them, so I have been trying different experiments and trying to figure out what works.
And I thought I'd put together a list of tips you can use to make the most of your Communities.
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This blog post was originally published in 2019 and updated in December 2020.
Just in case you don't know what Tailwind is, Tailwind is a Pinterest scheduler, it's one of the few Pinterest approved partners and in my opinion, the best tool you can use for Pinterest.
If you're in a hurry to see how it works, try Tailwind's Tribes for FREE now.
Using Tailwind is good because you get more followers, more saves and you are also pinning a lot more consistently.
Using Tailwind helps you leverage the power of Pinterest to drive consistent traffic to your blog.
But one thing I love about Tailwind is its Communities. The other thing is SmartLoop, of course.
Also, since Pinterest Group Boards are not as good as they used to be, I think using Tailwind Communities properly has become more important if you want to drive the right type of traffic to your blog.
A Tailwind Community is a group of people that contribute pins to the Tribe and then share pins other people have added. They are all reciprocal and you are expected to share as many pins as you add from the tribe.
Some of them are add 1 share 2 pins, but that's easily done.
You can use Tailwind Communities for FREE when you start using Tailwind. You get 5 FREE Communities and 30 submissions a month. Sign up for free to start.
But if you want to get more submissions, you'll need a Tailwind Communities PowerUp. My advice is to start using them For FREE first, and then see if they work for you.
When you are ready to schedule a pin, you'll see two options at the bottom of the pin, once is Communities and the other is SmartLoop.
Click the + Community button and then it will give you the option to schedule to all your tribes.
The easiest answer is that you're leveraging the reach others have to help you get more repins and send more traffic to your site.
If you are starting out with your online business or blog, getting somebody with thousands of followers to share your pins can give you a huge boost.
And your other social media aren't likely to be as effective either.
Anyway here are some things you might want to do to make the most of Tailwind Communities:
The same way you use different keywords in your blog posts, your pins and pin descriptions, you should use different keywords to find the right Communities for you.
Cos using different keywords will give you different results in many cases and you might discover a few more Communities you wouldn't have found otherwise.
(Please bear in mind most of these images were taken before they renamed the Communities and I still haven't got around to change them).
This will also help you find Communities that use specific keywords you hadn't thought about and might help you find more relevant Communities.
For example, home business, small business and online business can often mean the same thing and some Tailwind Communities will include them all in their descriptions. But others may only use one of them.
And you might not find a specific Community if you only used one of the keywords to do a search.
Joining a few general or all-niches Communities is good.
But you don't want to end up having to share a pin about how to grow tomatoes or the best finds for this winter's wardrobe if your niche is programming in Python just because you have to reciprocate and you can't find anything else.
Finding the right Communities for your niche will save you time and make pinning for them easier for you.
Also, even if it's a smaller Community, these Communities with a narrower niche can help your pins reach the right boards and the right people on Pinterest.
If you can't find the right Tailwind Community, create a Community yourself. Even if there is nobody else in your niche.
Then, when you find somebody that is from your niche, invite them to your Tailwind Community.
You can also invite people to your Community in your social media posts and even your blog posts. Like this:
It might take a little while, but Pinterest marketing is a long-term thing anyway.
Search for new Tailwind Communities once every 3-4 months. New Communities are popping up all the time.
So keep an eye on any new Communities and join them if they fit your niche.
You never know how they're going to perform, so try them.
One of the most time-consuming things in the all-niches Communities, is to go through all the pins. So use the search bar and type in a keyword to get relevant pins only.
It also helps if you do your batch pinning by category.
You don't want to see the same pins you've already pinned in every Community you've visited.
So tick the box to hide them. You can see mine is ticked in the image above.
Pin your brand new pins manually and share them in Tailwind's Communities. Wait a few weeks and then choose the best performer to add to your SmartLoops.
This is to make sure you share great content. Because great content gets you more followers and more reach.
So use the search bar, click on the person you want, and then you'll only see their pins.
And you can use this to reciprocate if somebody shares your pins too.
You can spend hours scheduling from Communities, if you're not careful.
So unless you're scheduling for the entire year, batch your Community scheduling.
If your time is limited, look for the Communities from which you have scheduled nothing for a while. And do a few of those.
One little trick I found is to have several boards that can be used for each topic to make it faster to schedule from Tailwind Communities and keep your queue full.
I either have a few boards that go from the most specific to the most general:
Pinterest Tips for Bloggers > Pinterest Tips and Tricks > Social Media Tips and Tricks.
Or boards that use different keywords but are basically the same thing.
How to Start a blog - Blogging Tips for Beginners
Blog Income Tips - Making Money from Blogging
And I use Tailwind's Board lists to put them together, also from specific to more general.
And while it's true, I end up with lots of Board Lists, it saves me time when I do my scheduling.
Because when I share one pin, it doesn't just go to 1 board, it goes to 2-6 different boards. And this fills up my schedule much faster.
Don't share the same pin to every Community on the same day. Share a couple of different pins to different Community instead.
People usually belong to several Tailwind Communities in the same niche.
So even if somebody shares your first pin, they will find the second pin in a different Community and might share it as well.
Then swap them a few days later and share the same pins to the Communities that haven't had them yet.
This can also help you learn which pins are more popular. A sort of A-B test for pins.
The times when I get more engagement from the Communities is when I am sharing a new pin regularly.
So, if you have 5 pin designs for each of your blog posts, share 1 every couple of days rather than do them all at once.
Remember to start sharing your seasonal pins early enough. So when the right time comes and other pinners are ready to share them for the season, they're all there.
I can't promise this is going to work for everybody, but many Tailwind users use the weekend to do their Pinterest scheduling.
So add some great pins during the weekends so they come up at the top of the feed.
If you don't have the Unlimited Communities PowerUp, you have a limited number of submissions to the Communities.
Use them all. It's easy to forget and not submit all your pins for the month.
That's also why I like to submit new pins to my Communities regularly, so I can keep an eye on how many submissions I have left.
When you submit a new pin design for the same URL to your Tailwind Communities, you get a little warning that shows you if and when you last posted it to the Community.
But I like keeping track somewhere else because some times Tailwind gets it wrong. So I want to make sure I know which designs I added to each Community.
Also, if you're posting a brand new pin and you still haven't published it on Pinterest (by hand or using Pinterest), you need to keep track of your submissions, because it might take a little while for the pin to be published.
You can use a spreadsheet, but I like using Airtable, cos it looks much nicer, and it's much easier to use than a spreadsheet.
Create a Base for your Tailwind Communities Submissions make sure you have the Pin Title, Pin URL (customise as URL) and the image (customise as Attachment) and add a column for each Community and customise the Field Type as DATE,.
Then fill it in as you submit new pins.
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