How to use Tailwind
What is your posting strategy?
Are you the type of person who likes to be super organised and plan out everything in advance that you are thinking or doing? Or, are you more of an organic, make it up as you go along person?
There is merit in saying that as long as you have a strategy and you are following it then you are on the right track. However, anyone who successfully promotes their own business will tell you that you want to organise and automate as many things as you can.
Regardless of your strategy it is important that you are aware of what your habits and goals are. You want to be able to notice when you are doing things that work so that you can recreate them.
How much time do you spend posting?
Do you have a specific part of the day or week that you put aside for posting? Or do you prefer to just wing it and post whenever inspiration hits?
HonestlyI’m a bit of an impromptu addict. Doing a little something and watching the numbers go up gives such a release of instant gratification that it can become almost like a hobby that you struggle to step away from. This is clearly not the best business strategy, and if you are anything like me, you may need to force some structure into your routine.
We all know that consistency is key, and we need to be constantly showing up to stay favourable with the dreaded algorithms, but that doesn’t mean we need to stay glued to our screens or be hit with guilt if we have fallen short of our own posting targets. Use a scheduling tool like Tailwind to take control of your posting habits and get some freedom to do other things.
How do you know your target audience?
Do you have a specific audience or are you just posting generic content and hoping some people in your niche see it?
This is a shot statement…do not post generic content! Generic appeals to nobody and you will not fit in to what anyone is looking for. It is important to be specific with your content and have a very specific niche that you want to be your audience.
Whatever your business category is will likely have a few sub-categories. If you are a food blogger you may have specific niche for different meals, or styles of food, or restaurants. These are all very different things so just having food as a niche is obviously too wide. Imagine if you are looking for something specific what you would type down. How would you search for information? What type of content would catch your eye? Once you know your content themes you can start to think of who your audience is, and from there begin to think of a strategy to post appropriate content in the right places at the right times of day.
Do you know your communities of peers?
What do I mean by community of peers? I mean the other people in your niche who are doing similar things to what you are. You might be thinking of them as competitors, but really they are people who you can learn from, cross pollinate your audience with and support each other to succeed.
If you are going to be scheduling posts are you aware of what is the best time of day to do it, or are you fitting things into your work schedule. Time zones are important here. Remember the digital world is a small place and you may not necessarily have a local audience. If your biggest audience is on the other side of the world then you may want to post to their optimum viewing times rather than the one you live in.
Make connections with your communities and work with them rather than against them to build your audience. Capitalism would have you believe that you need one person to succeed and others to facilitate it, but that doesn’t need to be the case. We can all support and promote each other so everyone can have a cut of the cake. In fact, by interacting with our own niche communities we are all becoming more visible to our audience and ultimately we can all support each other to grow.
So where can you find there elusive communities? Tailwind has a brilliant feature that lets you join and create communities with others who are in your niche. This is a great way of finding high quality and directly relevant pins to repin to your own boards. As you submit pins to the communities others may repin your items and thus make them available to a wider part of your niche audience.
How much is your time worth?
Think of how much your ideal hourly rate of pay is. This might be different for different aspects of your business but just get a rough number in your head. Now think about the earlier questions in this article about how much time you spend on posting. Include the time it takes you to come up with ideas, design and build the posts, and come up with your written content and hashtag list. If you do this every day then work out how much it is costing you in your time every week. This is time that you could be dedicating to the actual product or services that you want to be doing.
So do you think it would be a better use of your time to use a software that drastically reduces the amount of time you spend making posts for social media? Chances are that you are starting a business to do something that you enjoy doing to have a better work/home lifestyle. The constant distraction os promoting your business may be eating in to your idealistic work pattern, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Start using a scheduling tool like Tailwind and see how it helps your balance.
Are you making the most out of your productivity?
If you are posting manually then the answer to this is almost certainly NO. So here are some of my Top Tips to improve your productivity.
1, When using CANVA to design your posts take advantage of their templates. Find a selection that you like and stick with them for a series of posts. Alter the images and text to match your offer and make them your own. This will help you to produce high quality posts that your audience will engage with.
2, Design everything with the aim of it being multipurpose but be specific. Here is an example. The content of this article is about the benefits of using a post scheduling software to increase your productivity. As with all of my articles I will post about them on Pinterest around 14 times. I do 14 because Pinterest lets you schedule 14 days in advance, so as I launch a new article I will schedule a post about it every day for the following two weeks. I use a Canva template and alter it with slightly different information on each pin to appeal to slightly different audiences or catch people’s attention with different images. As I create these pins I also have in my mind that I will use them as images in the content of the article. In 2021 the average article is around 2000 words with at least 10 images. This can seem like a stress to put together, but by re-using the promotional pins I easily create that image content without even thinking about it. For every promotional pin I make I design one or two accompanying pins, usually just an image or a question, that can be used in the article to make it seem more visual and help the viewer to engage with the content. This is exactly what I have done in this article. These images would also be useful if I decide to create an ebook out of the article. I already have a body of text and images that would be suitable to integrate. As you can see, it can be very easy to design things for a multi-purpose, you just need to be organised and have a system.
3, Now we are at the main point of this article, scheduling your posts. I have tried several scheduling softwares, but my favourite by far is Tailwind. Tailwind allows you to sync into your accounts and post directly. I has some great features like automatically choosing the best times to post for you based on your current audience engagement. I lets you automatically include a first comment in your Instagram posts, which is great for getting the best use of your hashtags, and it even saves your hashtag groups to make it easier to prepare and schedule a post in only a few seconds. As well as scheduling your original content it can schedule repins on Pinterest. Tailwind is very user friendly and by far the best scheduling tool I have come across. You are able to use a free version which is great for just getting started and working out what your needs are with your current campaigns. As you decide to grow your audience you may want to invest in the pro version to get many more allocated schedules and really make the most out of your time. Use this link https://www.tailwindapp.com/i/mumpreneurjules to get $15 credit if you sign up to pro.
The question to ask yourself is how much of your valuable time are you committing to posting just now and would this be an investment for you at the stage in your business you are at just now.