How to Use Tailwind Communities for FREE + Schedule Pins EVEN AFTER Your Trial Runs Out!
Blogger friends, we need to talk about this: YES, there IS a way to continue using Tailwind Communities for FREE AND continue scheduling pins on Tailwind EVEN AFTER YOUR FREE TAILWIND TRIAL RUNS OUT.
You read that right! I've been so frustrated that I couldn't find this information on Google or from Tailwind Support. All you have to do is sign up for a free Tailwind trial, join five Communities, and after your free trial runs out (when you hit 100 pins), you must MANUALLY click the “Pin Now” button in Tailwind.
What Is Tailwind?
Tailwind is a PINTEREST-APPROVED scheduler, meaning it's totally safe to use it to schedule pins without getting blocked because of it. It is an OFFICIAL Pinterest Partner. You can automate your pinning and grow your traffic using Tailwind and its Communities.
What Is Tailwind Communities?
Communities are a feature of Tailwind where you can join a group (i.e., a “Communities”) based on a specific topic (e.g., baking, blogging, DIY) and submit your pins to it. In exchange, you must also REPIN the content of your community members. It's a tit for tat type of deal, where each Community member helps each other out, helping everyone to grow their content's reach.
Sign Me Up! How Can I Get Tailwind Communities for Free??
Tailwind Communities is always free up to 30 submissions (pins) per month—but to get it, you must first sign up for a trial of Tailwind (which is free up to 100 pins).
What's Included in Tailwind Communities Free Version?
- You can join up to 5 Communities.
- You can submit up to 30 of your own pins per month.
What's Included in Tailwind's Free Trial?
Tailwind offers a FREE trial of its Plus Plan, and this trial allows you to
- Schedule and automatically publish 100 pins before deciding if you want to pay to stay with Tailwind
- Access analytics reports: Brand Profile Performance, Pin Inspector, Board Insights, and Monitor Your Domain
The Catch-22 Problem I Couldn't Figure Out from Googling or Asking Tailwind Support
Yes, Tailwind says Communities are always free—BUT, most Communities require that you reshare other members content to remain a part of the Tribe. If you do not reshare (which means schedule their pins to post to your Pinterest), you will get kicked out!
The problem arises because after your Tailwind trial runs out (once you've published 100 pins), how can you keep submitting to Communities AND keep resharing from them?
Well, what Tailwind doesn't make clear is that even when your Tailwind free trial runs out, you can still SCHEDULE pins—these pins just won't publish automatically anymore. So that means you must manually click “Pin Now.”
I'll explain everything in detail below:
How to Use Tailwind and Tailwind Communities for FREE Indefinitely
Step 1: Sign up for a free trial of Tailwind
Go to Tailwindapp.com and click “Signup with Pinterest.”
Step 2: Give Tailwind access to your Pinterest account
Step 3: Enter your details for your new account
Step 4: Build your Pinterest pinning schedule inside Tailwind
Welcome to your new Tailwind dashboard! Now, first things first: Hover over the menu on the lefthand side and click Publisher > Your Schedule.
This is where you will set your pinning schedule, so Tailwind knows how many times per day and at what time of day it should automatically publish your scheduled pins for you.
So how many times per day should you pin to Pinterest? Tailwind recommends keeping it to fewer than 50 pins per day. According to Tailwind's website: “the most successful Pinners publish closer to 15-25 Pins per day, on average!”
For me, I want to set my pinning schedule to 25 times per day. That means I will pin 25 different pieces of content from myself and from my Communities .
To do this, click the “Recreate Schedule” button in the upper left corner of the screen:
Once you've entered your number of timeslots, click “Recreate Schedule.” As you can see, Tailwind has now picked the BEST 25 times of day to pin my content. How does it know? It uses “Smart Schedule” technology to analyze your Pinterest account and select the times when your followers are most active.
Step 4: Join 5 relevant Communities.
Alright, we've got your weekly pinning schedule setup. Now on to the main prize: Tailwind Communities !
Hover over the lefthand side menu and click Communities . Then click the big green button that says “Get Started with Communities!”
It's going to ask you which topics you like to pin about so it can suggest the best Communities for you:
When you click “Next,” Tailwind is going to recommend some Communities for you to join. To move on to the next step, you need to pick one—any one—of these suggested Communities by clicking “Join Now” (you can always leave later!). You just need to join a Community so you can move on to the next step and use the search function to find the best Communities .
You can go ahead and join the Tailwind Welcome Communities (again, you can leave later).
Okay, so this is the inside of your Tailwind Welcome Communities —but don't waste time here. Immediately click on “Find a Communities ” in the upper left corner.
Now, you can use the search function to enter keywords about the topics you blog about. This will show you the most relevant Communities you can join!
Enter a keyword in the search bar:
Now, scroll down to look at the relevant Communities . Here is the criteria you want to look for in the ideal Communities:
- Decent amount of members (50 or more)
- High level of activity (at LEAST 4 out of 5 bars)
- Optional: “Join Now” button. If it says “Request to Join,” it takes longer to join and may be harder to get accepted. It also probably means it's a higher quality group though since they vet members. If you are NEW to this, try to find “Join Now” so you bypass vetting and can get started ASAP.
Here is an example of an ideal Communities that has all of the three above-mentioned traits:
Step 5: Read Communities rules and be sure to follow them.
Click “Join Now.” Let's take a look at the Communities rules. You want to make sure to follow these because if you don't you could get kicked out!
You can find Communities Rules on the left side of the Communities page:
The most important information to look for in Communities rules are the reciprocation or ratio rules. In other words, each time you submit one of your OWN pins, how many OTHER pins must you reshare from your Community mates? In the above example, it says “1:2” so for every ONE pin you submit, you must reshare TWO pins from your Community.
Step 6: Submit your first pins to your Communities.
To easily schedule your pins and submit them to Communities, install Tailwind's Chrome extension. (They also have extensions for Firefox and Safari!)
Go to a blog post you want to pin. Hover over the Pinterest graphic you made for it until you see the “Schedule” button appear. Here's an example from my blog:
Tailwind's screen will pop up. Click the button that says “Add to Tribe.”
Check the boxes next to the Communities you'd like to submit your pin to.
Step 7: Reciprocate by repinning your Community mates content REGULARLY!
Now, go to the Communities you just submitted your pin to and make sure to reciprocate by resharing other pins. Scan through the pins and find one you like.
Let's say I want to reshare this awesome SEO pin from my Communities. Click the little box that says “Type a Board Name.” I'll pin this to my “SEO Tips for Bloggers” board:
Once you pick a board, click “Add to Queue”:
Now, what happens when you click “Add to Queue” is that pin goes to your Scheduled Pins. To see what happened to the SEO pin from above, we'll go to Publisher > Scheduled Pins and there it is:
Your Communitieswill note when you reshare other content. Every Communities keeps a counter of how many pins you submitted and how many pins you reshared—this is how Communities admins can keep track of you (and kick you out if you don't follow reciprocity rules).
Step 8: When your free trial runs out (i.e., you reach 100 pins), continue as usual with submitting content to Communitiesand re-pinning pins from your Communities.
The ONLY difference, now that your trial has run out, is that you now must go to Scheduler and MANUALLY CLICK “Pin Now” every day. It takes a second.
So there you have it: The “Pin Now” button is how you can keep using Tailwind Communities for FREE after your free trial runs out—AND still reciprocate by resharing so you don't get kicked out of your Communities!
Even when you run out of your free 100 pins—you DO NOT NEED TO UPGRADE to continue scheduling pins. Your Community members pins, when you click “Add to Queue,” will still go to your Scheduled Pins. The ONLY DIFFERENCE is that now you must click “Pin Now” because it won't be published automatically like before.
Why You May Still Want to Upgrade After the Free Trial Is Over
I don't mind manually pinning; I honestly don't think it's that much trouble. The BIG reason why I'd recommend upgrading to a paid Tailwind Plus Plan is that that's the only way you can then upgrade your Tailwind Communities plan. Thirty pins a month to submit to Communities is definitely better than nothing—but with Communities, the more you can submit, the better! I think you'd definitely see a MASSIVE increase in traffic if you purchased a Powerup.
Let me be clear: You cannot purchase a Powerup alone. You HAVE to purchase the paid Tailwind Plus Plan to then be able to purchase the Powerup.
Go Get Your Free Tailwind Account!
I hope this guide on how to use Tailwind Communities for free even AFTER your trial runs out helped you.
