Pinterest is one of those platforms that’s a little tough to understand – views and traffic are not exactly consistent with success, and it’s tough to figure out the “right” moves to take. Plus, is there an easy way to schedule Pinterest pins? It seems to take so long to come up with new ideas for Pinterest pins! What should you be pinning? How should you pin on Pinterest? When is the best time to pin on Pinterest? Can you schedule Pinterest Pins?

So when I read my friend Carley’s Ultimate Pinterest Guide eBook, it completely changed my perspective on everything Pinterest. Use code LANEY for $5 off, cause we’re business besties – and in case you doubt her cred, Carley regularly has over 1m viewers on Pinterest!

I had this big move coming up from NC to CO and knew that I didn’t want to deal with small things like pinning my work on Pinterest, so I committed to creating and scheduling 1,000 pins one day for my stationery business – and surprisingly, it only took me about 4 hours to make and schedule 1,000+ pins. I scheduled Pinterest pins from April until the end of July, and was even able to add several slots per day because I had created SO MANY pins. The eBook and some tools I’ll share below made it SO EASY to schedule Pinterest pins.

I’ve put in about 10 hours total since that day, and been able to extend that schedule until mid-January. That’s 6+ months of successful pins in only a few hours of work. So what’s the secret to creating Pinterest pins that work?

How to Schedule Pinterest Pins

The secret to scheduling a ton of Pins for your business is two-fold – first, I learned some strategies from the Ultimate Pinterest Guide eBook, which is amazing. She taught me how to think about Pinterest differently, and that you can pin the same pin to multiple boards over time, as long as you don’t do it all one after the other. Which brings me to the second part of this process – Tailwind.

If you’re not a Tailwind user yet, then prepare to have your mind blown. It’s the simplest way to schedule Pinterest pins, and the only way I would’ve been able to create anywhere close to 1,000 pins in 4 hours. Here are some of my tips for generating additional pins!

What is Tailwind?

Tailwind is an app that helps you schedule Pinterest Pins. It does so much more than that now, though. You can now use Tailwind to schedule Instagram posts, and they are rolling out scheduling of Facebook posts soon too. So if the actual process of posting on Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook feels daunting or stressful to you – Tailwind is the tool that will help ease that stress.

One of my favorite things about Tailwind is they now have a tool where you can actually make pins or posts directly in the app (and then schedule them of course). This feature is called Tailwind Create, and it’s really powerful. Here’s a video on how to use Tailwind Create:

Ideas for Pinterest Pins

1. Use Canva to create beautiful pins, or use your own templates in Illustrator. You don’t need a unique image for every pin – we have one look for videos, one for blogs, etc.

2. Pin all of your Instagram photos! This will drive traffic to your Instagram, but captions and hashtags are already pre-loaded if they’re in the caption of your photo

   (bonus, Tailwind can also help you schedule Instagram posts!)

3. Use the Tailwind Chrome Extension – it’s so helpful! You just click it whenever you’re on a page, and it brings up all the images on that page. You can click which ones you want to share, and can add them all to a board/boards, or select boards by photo. This is really helpful to pin all the images from each of my blog posts at once!

   I’ve linked a video below showing you how this works!

4. Pin the same images to multiple boards. Select any boards that image will apply to!

5. Pin your gallery or portfolio images! The Chrome Extension makes this incredibly easy, and they’ll automatically link back to your website.
6. If you have a shop, pin your listing photos. If you use the Extension, the links, titles, and descriptions will pull directly into Pinterest, so you don’t have to worry about writing them!
7. Pin other peoples’ work. In the eBook Carley talks more about this, but the secret is around 80% your own work, and 20% other creators’ work!

Here’s a video all about using the Tailwind Chrome Extension! It was the key to me being able to schedule 1,000 pins in under 4 hours!!!

Using The Tailwind Chrome Extension

The Tailwind Chrome Extension is extremely powerful, and I would never be able to create so many pins without it! It’s perfect for pinning images from your shop listings, your Instagram posts, your blog posts, your Etsy shop, etc. Here’s how the Tailwind Chrome Extension works:

1. Install the Chrome Extension – Tailwind Publisher
2. Navigate to the page you want to pin images from (on Chrome, of course)
3. Click Tailwind Publisher in the corner of your browser
4. It will pull up all the images from that page!
5. Click which ones you want to add to your Tailwind Queue
6. Add boards, edit descriptions, etc. as needed (some of the description info will already be there, along with a direct link to the page!)
7. Click “Schedule” and they’ll be in your Tailwind Queue immediately! Then you can shuffle or move things around as you like to get the perfect schedule for your Pinterest Pins!

Using the Tailwind Published Chrome Extension is a lot easier than uploading each photo individually and linking it to the right page. I use it all the time – you can even use it on other sites when you see inspiration images that you’d like to pin. Remember, the ideal pin ratio is around 80% pins of your own work and 20% pins of other peoples’ work!

Here’s a blog post that dives deeper into using the Tailwind Chrome Extension!

Scheduling Tips for Pinterest

When should you schedule your pins? The key is to do it sporadically throughout the day. This makes Pinterest think you’re actively using their platform (which they like). The good thing is that Tailwind goes ahead and creates time slots based on the best pinning times for you. You can add and remove time slots in your Pinterest schedule if you need more or fewer, but it’s all automatic.

Tailwind will put your scheduled pins in the queue in the next available slot as you go. So then you have to make sure to do one more thing!

…once you’re done, here’s the important part: SHUFFLE YOUR QUEUE. Remember when I said Pinerest doesn’t like if you post the same photos to different boards all at once? That’s where Tailwind comes into play, and their amazing Shuffle feature. This will move everything around so you’re posting more organically, and the same images don’t come up one right after the other. Then you can move around individual pins if you want to, and they’ll post automatically.

Trust me, you should be using Pinterest to marketing your business. It can increase your exposure and is 100% worth it, but it’s tough to get on and add pins every single day for that “organic” look. Take the worry out of it with Tailwind – they can also schedule your Instagram posts if you’re not a fan of that!

And you can get 20 free pins per month on Tailwind to try it out if you want – just click here. Plus, if you want more time-saving Pinterest tips, check out Carley’s eBook here and use LANEY for $5 off. 

I’ll just be rolling around in all my free time over here…until next year, Pinterest!!!