[This is sponsored content. However, I give my honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on these topics, events, or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely my own.]

New year, new goals, plans and dreams abound, right? 

Every new year, two types of people pop out from about December 1st to the end of February. They are either the planners (“Are you ready?” “Have a plan?”) or the anti-planners (“Do what you want, when you want!”). If you’re here, you’ve been in my world for a while, and my mantra is simple, do what you want, when you want but do it with a plan-- SIMPLY. 

So I love tools. I love new platforms, systems and strategies to ensure that my business runs smoothly, without me having to micro-manage every little aspect along the way. This is why automation tools are essential for online businesses like yours and mine. 

Think about it, how many hours a day do you average working on your business? For some of you, babies need feeding, kids need more one-to-one screen time with socially distant learning, and maybe your partner is home working remotely, loud talking in the next room (IFEELyou on that one). This means your attention is now divided more than ever. 

So to ensure you’re not dropping any balls it’s important to invest in tools that take your business further. This is where Tailwind is such an excellent solution for you, my creative friend. 

For many of you, Pinterest and Instagram are where you connect with your audience. It may even be where most of your sales come from, so it’s imperative to keep that consistency going. 

How Can Tailwind Help? 

Tailwind is a social media scheduling tool that allows you to pre-plan your content at your convenience and promote your content betweenbothPinterest and Instagram OR one or the other. 

They have additional features that make scheduling even easier. For example, their Google Chrome Extension. Talk about convenience! And for you, this means you can easily schedule content while simultaneously working on your Shopify website in Google Chrome.

Simply download the Google Chrome Extension. You'll receive a prompt to do this when setting up a new Tailwind account. 

Then open up one of your Shopify listings (from your customer’s point of view) and click Schedule on the main product image. 

A window will pop up where you can create and schedule your next pin. It’s as easy as 1-2-3!

For some of you, I’m sure you’re thinking, “but I follow you to help me with the tech!” or “Not one more tool!”. Okay, I hear you and I would never talk to you about something that I don’t fully believe anyone can learn. 

One thing I love about Tailwind is that it guides you from the moment you sign up until you’ve scheduled your first post. This means you’re not left figuring out the platform on your own through Help Docs or Youtube videos (although it has these as well, perfectly timed whenever you may have that feeling of “what’s next?”). It’s hand-holding in the best way possible. 

As creatives, I know visuals make a huge difference for you and, for me I find this to be one area Tailwind makes the task of scheduling pins and posts as easy as possible. Quickly see what you’re posting and when it will go live using ‘Your Schedule’. 

Additional Honourable Mentions For Tailwind for Pinterest 

I know most (if not all of you) reading this use Pinterest so I wanted to throw some extra love on Tailwind for Pinterest. 

Let’s start with Tailwind Create. This area allows you to upload your brand colours and fonts and save yourself so much time. Instead of creating unique pins over and over again, simply add your brand colours, fonts and logo once like so:

And either upload your own photos of your beautiful products or select stock photos directly within Tailwind Create to create fast and easy Pins. 

It will generate a few different layouts based on your branding and the images selected that you can take even further by tweaking and adjusting to fit your needs:

Once you’re done, save and schedule so your products are easily added to Pinterest.

And last up, analytics. You know I love all of the data and with Tailwind not only do you get the tools to make utilizing Pinterest a breeze, but the details to see which of your pins are doing the best, where traffic is coming from as well as many other insights. 

Today let’s take a look at Top Pins, an area where many of you will want to focus your attention. If you’re familiar with Pinterest Analytics, you’ll notice a lot of the same information here that you’ll see within your stats. To access your data, click on the Insights Icon on the left-hand side of your Tailwind Dashboard, circled in red here:

 
This will take you to the world of Tailwind Insights, including your overall profile performance, Website Insights and Top Pins-- as well as other analytics available on Tailwind Plus. 

With Top Pins, you’ll be able to immediately and quickly see your regular Pinterest Analytics, like the number of clicks a pin received, number of saves and impressions as well as who pinned it. So in an instant you can see which of your pins are drawing people into your website and from Shopify which of those visitors are turning into customers. 

I have really only just scratched the surface on what is available with Tailwind, so I recommend checking it out for yourself. The best part is this, there’s no day-to-day trial countdown. You can play with Tailwind andschedule up to 100 Pinterest Pins and/or 30 Instagram Postsfor free. Check it outright here. 

If you try out Tailwind for Pinterest or Instagram (or both!), let me know what you think in the comments below. Happy pinning!