Have you tried Tailwind Communities yet?
No!
Then you are missing a key traffic source to your blogs.
Before I get into what Tailwind Communities are, I think we will need to understand what Tailwind is and how does it work.
So, it was about 3 years back that I joined Pinterest. But just like a lot many services that you would join and leave it at that, we too never bothered to go back and check what exactly Pinterest was all about.
In fact the reason why we joined Pinterest was for a food blog that me and my wife were running.
We were using Facebook as our primary social media channel and almost all of our traffic was either from Facebook or, Google Organic Search.
Since my blog was in the “affiliate marketing” niche, I too never went back to Pinterest after creating an account. All I saw were pins in the Fashion, food, DIY niche. Most Pinterest accounts were run by women and it gave an impression that it was a social media channel for women (No offenses to women folks here).
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Anyways. I will come back to it a little while later.
So after joining Pinterest, my wife spent a few days trying to understand how the entire thing works. She was pinning regularly and but somehow things weren’t working the way it should be.
Unlike the other social media channels, there was practically no engagement – no comments, no likes, no reshares.
There was something that wasn’t right.
That’s when we started researching how Pinterest works and we came across a couple of posts from Melyssa Griffin.
In fact, Melyssa has a lot of informative posts on Pinterest marketing. You might want to check it out if you are really keen on learning more about Pinterest.
And we realized that we were doing it all wrong.
Our approach to Pinterest marketing itself was wrong.
Why?
Because we were using Pinterest as a social media and were expecting it to behave like a social media channel. But actually Pinterest was never a social media channel.
It was in fact a search engine – an image search engine.
And that’s when we realized what we were doing wrong. We then, changed our approach.
Our entire strategy was to replicate techniques that we would use to in SEO, albeit from an image search engine’s perspective.
We slowly started building her profile optimizing everything from the profile to the pins that we were creating.
In about 3-4 months she had built her profile well. She also built a following and traffic started flowing in.
We were surprised when we checked our Google Analytics data. We found that Pinterest was slowly becoming our 3rd largest traffic source.
But there was one problem. We were managing everything manually which wasn’t easy. We were spending a lot of time in pinning, repinning and creating pins.
We had to do something to automate things.
That’s when we came across Boardbooster. It was an amazing service to automate Pinterest and it helped us build our profile.
We had barely used Boardbooster for about 2-3 months when they stopped the service. Pinterest didn’t approve of them as their official partners. And any service that wasn’t an “official partner” for Pinterest, was being banned by them.
We were back to square one.
Once again the search to automate Pinterest started. Every one of those advises pointed to Tailwind. In fact every Pinterest marketer referred Tailwind.
And finally we decided to try out Tailwind.
We followed the exact same strategy on one of our newest affiliate blogs that we started in January.
Here’s a snapshot of the Google Analytics report for this site for the month of February, March and April. You can see how the traffic has slowly grown from about 200 pageviews to about 1000 pageviews.
And here’s what Pinterest’s contribution to this is. Since the time we got into some of the Tailwind Communities, the traffic just spiked by almost 2 times.
Now that we saw how Tailwind and Pinterest contributes to driving traffic to your affiliate blog, let us first take a look at what Tailwind is and how it works.
Tailwind – The Pinterest Scheduling Tool
Pinterest is time consuming because of the two activities that primarily form part of a successful Pinterest Marketing strategy.
What are these 2 activities?
Designing the Pins
Firstly, it is designing the pins. Your pins have to be beautiful and pin-worthy. If they aren’t, then all of the efforts that you will be putting into pinning and promoting your pins will be of no use.
So, the first thing you might want to do is to learn to design beautiful pins.
We use 3 tools to design our pins
Canva and Stencil are simple tools that we use for multiple designing jobs. You can design blog post images, all social media images and even your profile headers with various social media channels.
But when it comes to Pinterest, these are undoubtedly the best tools around and you just cannot do it without these.
The 3rd option, I am sure came as a surprise to you.
Designing beautiful pins becomes easier if you already have a template. All you need to do is open the template and change a few of the elements like the background picture, texts etc. and you have a new image ready to be pinned to Pinterest.
We found this while using Canva.
Canva has a lot of templates (many of them are paid, so you will need a PRO account). You can just open it and edit it to customize it to your needs and you have your pin ready.
But not everybody has a PRO account or, want to pay for it. Right?
More so, because you are already paying for Tailwind.
That is where Tailwind templates come in handy. They release fresh templates regularly and all you need to use it is click it to open it.
The template opens in Canva. Then just click and edit it. That’s it!
Now that the first part is taken care off, let us look the second aspect in Pinterest Marketing.
Pinning, Pinning and Re-pinning
That’s right.
The 2nd activity is about pinning. Pin your images to different boards; your own boards and group boards. Then re-pin images from others, so that they reciprocate.
Now you get why I called it as “pinning, pinning and re-pinning”?
This is where it can get really time-consuming. Spending hours on Pinterest to pin and re-pin, finding the right slots to pin your images and being there on time to pin it, can all be very hectic.
It is here that an automation tool comes in handy. And Tailwind does that perfectly for you.
In fact you can schedule months worth of content in one go by spending about 30 minutes. That’s it!
If you would like to try out Tailwind for FREE, I have a FREE month for you. Just click here and get your FREE account.
Introducing Tailwind Communities – What are they?
Generating traffic from Pinterest is about putting your pins in front of as many people as possible.
Pinterest’s algorithm works a lot like other search engines. They rank pins for search terms based on multiple aspects, 2 of which include the keywords and the amount of engagement on the pins.
And engagement for Pinterest is not about comments and likes. Instead it is about re-pins and shares.
DISCLAIMER: I don’t mean to say that these are the only 2 aspects that determine how and where a pin ranks on Pinterest’s feed. There are multiple things that go into that and these keep changing based on how they update their algorithm. You can read more about how their algorithm works in this post at SEMRush.
Hence in order for your pins to appear in Pinterest’s search results, it is important that your pins also see that kind of an engagement. And engagement, as we all know is a like-for-like.
The more you engage with other users’ pins, the better your pins will perform. Of course, if they are worthy of that.
Now that brings us to the question – where do we find user’s whose pins we can repin and who can repin and share our pins.
We do that with Group Boards and Tailwind Communities.
Group boards are boards (If you are not sure of what a board is, check this article) where multiple Pinterest users collaborate on pins.
In simple language, group boards are where you can add your pins for people to share/re-pin and where you can re-pin what others are pinning.
Group boards used to be the next best thing on Pinterest and every Pinterest expert recommended joining group boards and using them to drive traffic to your websites/blogs.
But then as Pinterest updated their algorithm and policies, group boards slowly started losing relevance and these days they aren’t as effective as it used to be.
This is where Tailwind Communities comes in.
So what exactly is a Tailwind Community?
This is how Simple Pin Media defines Tailwind Community –
A Tailwind Community is a group of bloggers or people you connect with to share each other’s pins on a common topic. Not only is it a great way to keep track of people in your niche, but it gives you yet another way to assess the pin performance, since Tailwind tracks Community shares and repins for you.
Simple Pin Media
Tailwind Communities work in a very simple way. Tailwind themselves have put together a quick video to explain how it works.
Now that we have understood what Tailwind Communities are and how they work, it is time for us to find good Communities to join. After all, that is what this post is about. Isn’t it?
Tailwind Communities to Join in the Make Money Online Niche
Finding a Tailwind Community to join isn’t difficult.
You can do a quick search on Tailwind and find relevant Communities in your niche. Here’s the first few results when I searched for “travel”.
That’s pretty easy, isn’t it?
I agree.
But there is a slight problem with this.
How do you determine if a Community is good and if it is worthwhile spending time in it?
A good Tailwind Community is one where there is a lot of activity. I am sure you don’t want to join a Community that has a lot of users but nobody seems to be sharing or, pinning. Isn’t it?
But how do you find those?
There are a few very simple metrics that you need to lookout for, when you are searching for Tailwind Communities.
- One where there is a reasonable number of users
- There should be a good amount of activity. You can see this in the number of bars against each of those Communities in the above image
- The number of re-pins in the Community should be more than the number new pins added to the Community
Scanning through the multiple Communities to find one that is worthwhile to join could be extremely time consuming.
So for people who do not want to waste their time in reinventing the wheel, there is another way of finding good Tailwind Communities to join.
Pinterest.
That’s right.
There are numerous boards on pinterest that have collections of good Tailwind Communities to join, in almost every niche. You just need to search on Pinterest.
You can also search on Google and find a lot of websites that publish posts with details of Tailwind Communities to join.
The only drawback with most of these is that they aren’t updated regularly. Communities can lose steam and fall off the list of good ones to join. But since these posts aren’t updated regularly, the information might not be up to date.
My objective with this post is to keep updating it at least every quarter so that the list is up-to-date and has only those Communities that are worth your efforts.
So here’s a list of Tailwind Communities to join if you are an marketer in the “make money online” niche.
Affiliate Marketing Tips
This is a Community I created specifically for affiliate marketing. Most Communities out there were for blogging and blog related pins. I couldn’t find any specifically for affiliate marketing.
Hence I created this Community.
This Community is in the beginner stage and hence the first few pins you submit will not count towards your total limit on Tailwind.
Also, I have plans of strictly monitoring the Community and keeping it relevant and fresh at all times. Hence, if you join in today you have the assurance that you are joining a Community that will stay active for long.
Blog Growth and Monetization Tips
This Community has very simple rules. You can share anything related to blog growth and monetization.
They only require you to maintain a 1:1 ration with pinning your own and re-pinning the Community content. The Community is active and I found that relevant and valuable pins get shared and re-pinned often.
Profitable Blogging Tips
This Community is about pins relating to blogging (blogging tips, blog monetization, blog income reports, blog productivity.
You need to maintain a 1:1 ratio in this Community as well.
This Community has over 1000 members and most are pretty active. The Community has had about 63,000 reshares and about 44,000 repins.
Internet Marketing Super friends
This Community is about everything internet marketing. You can share anything that deals with traffic, content marketing, copywriting, entrepreneurial tips, affiliate marketing and/or email marketing.
In addition to maintaining a 1:1 ratio, this Community has a few more rules and they are very strict with the rules. So you might want to read the rules carefully before joining them.
If you break any of those, you might be kicked out of the Community.
Blogging & Social Media Pins [Run By ClarityAvenue]
This Community is for Pinning social media, craft business, making money and blogging related pins.
They have about 850+ members in the Community and most of them are very active. Collectively they have about 50,000 reshares and about 22,000 repins.
This Community too, is very strict with their rules and they don’t permit direct linking of affiliate pins.
If you join this Community, ensure that you maintain a 1:1 ratio.
Best Blogging and Social Media Tips
This Community is great if you are pinning anything blog or social media related. Blog tips, social media tips, or online business tips, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Squarespace, branding, affiliate marketing related pins are all accepted in this Community.
They have about 800 members and this Community is a hyper-active Community.
They have collectively about 73,000 reshares and 48,000 repins between them.
They have very strict rules and you need to maintain a 1:1 ratio with pinning.
Blogging + Income Tips, Strategies
This Community accepts all blogging and income tips related pins. You can post your best pins here about blogging, social media marketing, Pinterest marketing, affiliate marketing, and side hustles.
This is another hyper-active Community with about 1,300 members.
They have about 69,000 reshares and 30,000 repins between them.
They have a 2:1 ratio as a rule but otherwise aren’t very strict with the rest.
Blogging Tips
This is another Community that accepts most make money online kind of pins. You can pin all your blogging, social media, traffic, affiliate marketing tip pins. They require you to only pin blog posts, no product pins.
This Community too is hyperactive and has about 600 members.
They have a total of about 102,000 reshares and about 86,000 repins between them.
They too have a strict 2:1 ratio requirement. But otherwise the Community rules are simple.
Grow your Blogging Career with Experts
This Community focuses on helping each other to share and discover valuable content related to blogging, Social media tools, and creative online business.
They accept vertical pins on tips, Ideas, & Resources related to all things Blogging, Infopreneurship, & Creative Online Business.
Rules include a 1:1 ratio and staying strictly on topic.
This is a very small Community with about 30 members and they are super-active.
Mona’s Making Money Online Community
This Community accepts everything that can help with making money online and working from home.
Of all the Communities that I am a member of, this is the only Community that accepts affiliate pins as well.
Their rules are simple and includes maintaining a 1:1 ratio.
This Community too, is relatively new but is a very active Tailwind Community with about 60 members.
Social Media & Digital Marketing
This Community is the most hyper active Community of all the Communities that I am a member of.
They accept all kind of pins related to marketing – Marketing tips to help bloggers & small business owners grow their business, Social media, SEO, email list building, content creation, branding and design, growth hacking, digital strategies, website optimization.
They have very simple rules and includes pinning a maximum of 3 pins per day in addition to maintaining a 1:1 ratio.
This Community has about 1,600 members and they have about 132,000 reshares and 74,000 repins between them.
Blogging Friends Pins
This Community is another hyper active Community with over 2,700 members. They accept pins related to blogging and blogging tips.
They have some very strict rules including maintaining a 1:1 ratio and pinning only vertical pins.
Between the users they have about 249,000 reshares and 263,000 repins.
This Community is a must join if you are in the blogging niche.
Tailwind Communities – Over to You
Tailwind is a must-have tool in your arsenal if you are into affiliate marketing and blogging. It can help you build your traffic tremendously.
If you have a new blog and are looking to drive traffic to it, then explore Pinterest right away. You can use Tailwind and generate traffic almost immediately unlike SEO which could take months.
Which out of the Tailwind Communities above do you think is the one most relevant to you. Comment below and let me know.