One Year Honest Blogger Review of Tailwind Instagram and Pinterest Scheduling App – How to use Tailwind efficiently

Note: I pay for this service, and it is $15/month. This is NOT SPONSORED. I just happen to use it, and really like it, plus they are so nice, they listen to feedback and try to get it fixed. If you happen to use my referral link you will get 1 month free to try it out and I’ll only get a month free if you decide to sign on with them and pay for their service too, so thank you!

Tailwind has saved my life

This is not an understatement.

I am a busy person, with a (sometimes) full-time job, definitely a more than full-time Little Bun who basically sees me as an extension of himself, so we play together all day and he only wants me (really), even if my partner is around.

Not only that, I am such a masochist that I also run a blog full-time, all on my own and post daily. O_o

I have absolutely no blog team or social media help, and even for my personal life I do not have a cleaner, nor a nanny. It is a personal choice I am making to NOT spend the money. The only thing I do spend on is part-time daycare which lets me work at home remotely and in peace, while Little Bun is being taken care of.

So, enter Tailwind. I use it for Instagram and Pinterest, and this is how I do it.

INSTAGRAM

In Tailwind, it looks like this on the left-hand side. I will go into the relevant ones, because the others are self-explanatory:

I have a lot of drafts not by choice, but because I had originally thought I would draft ALL of my posts and just have them ready to pop into the schedule and delete them off my phone to keep my Camera Roll clean, but it became unwieldy and now I am going to slowly clear those drafts one by one, by scheduling them where I see fit. I used to have over 200 drafts, so this is big progress.

STRATEGY

I schedule 3X a day, and well in advance, usually 2 months so I have a nice buffer.

I would not suggest posting or scheduling 3X a day if you cannot keep up with it — CONSISTENCY is key. If you ONLY post once a day, post only once a day.

I like 3 because it gives me a chance to post a personal picture or two like an #OOTD or something I ate, and something brainier for later on.

My Instagram schedule on the right looks like this:

You will notice that I have my Schedule with some blank spots intentionally put in there. It is because I like to shift posts around, depending on what I see is happening, and to do that, you need to have space to move them.

You can shift them easily on the desktop or mobile app and slot them into sections.

Do you use the mobile app or the desktop?

I use a combination of the Tailwind mobile app on my phone and the Tailwind desktop site.

I usually set up my uploads on my phone, write my caption, add hashtags, and then finish it off in the desktop by cross-posting to Pinterest and Facebook, adding Smart.Bio links, and formatting it with proper spacing.

More on that process later – I go into detail with screenshots.

There is an annoying bug that they haven’t fixed yet

Currently, there is an annoying bug where the spaces between your captions are kept in your Tailwind DESKTOP but they disappear in your Tailwind MOBILE app.

So you could have spent a full 30 seconds formatting your post nicely in the Tailwind Mobile app, scheduled it, and then forgot ONE TINY THING, go back into the same post you just formatted, and have all of your hard work with spacing disappear because it ‘resets’ it all into one big block

I have gotten really annoyed at this, they are apparently working on it, and I honestly just write all my captions on my mobile app or my desktop, but ONLY format my posts on the DESKTOP because it’s the only place it’ll keep all the spaces.

You can generate a smart schedule

This is the best part of the service aside from the fact that you can pre-schedule posts months ahead of time and be able to take breaks.

THE SCHEDULE!

They come up with a customized date/schedule based on your posting preferences and how often your audience is engaged.

You can also generate a new smart schedule. I post 3X a day, and I set the posting time WIDE OPEN 24 hours because it does it all automatically – I don’t need to be there or awake to do it or hit “YES” on anything (like in the past), so I let it go whenever it wants:

Smart.Bio Link is genius and free forever

I love that I can post direct links to things like my blog AND I can post links to my actual posts as well. It is easy to set up and use:

You can see how many people have clicked on links (I only set it up very recently), and I have been adding new links as they go…

You also see your most recent posts without links, and if you can retro-fit or add new links in there, it is quite easy:

And these are the published links from posts, along with how many people clicked on what.

You can also customize the link labels.

The Full Instagram with Tailwind Process

I usually upload all my photos from my phone because.. that’s usually where I have all my pictures for Instagram.

From there, I add no text, all of the hashtags I want. So for instance in the mobile app, it would look like this – I upload a photo, leave a blank caption, and I can immediately tap on Saved Hashtags just above the keyboard to just populate the First Comment (Hashtags Only) section with my tags, OR I manually select from the Recently Used Hashtags list that shows up.

I more often than not, click on my hashtag list, and then populate the First Comment with them:

So now my draft looks like this:

I can now Save As Draft so that I have the post ready to go, and THEN schedule it & write a caption later.

The reason why I do this is for two reasons:

(A) I have written long captions before and then hit exit which made me lose all of my hard work (OMFG)

(B) if you don’t save it as a draft first and after writing your caption, you add it to queue immediately, you actually lose all of your hashtags (this is another bug they are working on fixing).

Moving on! It is now saved in my drafts folder.

I now take the time to write my caption at the top, and because it is already saved as a draft, it AUTO SAVES (magical!).. and is idiot-proof if you do it this way and save it as a Draft after you upload it, because I am definitely someone who would write a huge long caption and then.. not save. *face palm*

After my caption is written, I schedule it immediately.

I only choose the day I want to schedule it on, and whatever time (you can always shift/move it around as you wish, so don’t bother going crazy trying to figure out the exact time to post this thing based on your Tailwind generated schedule).

 

You will now see that it is queued for that day:

And if I go into my scheduled posts for that date, you can see it there.

That little lock in the bottom right corner? I LOVE IT. This means the post is LOCKED and you specifically scheduled it for that day and time, rather than just letting it go anytime it felt like going based on your schedule/unlocked posts.

I am a serious control freak, so I like knowing what day/time it is going, and being careful to not post something like 3 outfits in a row, or 3 food posts in a row because my Instagram is like my blog – varied, diversified and a balance.

In the desktop app you can do this shuffle if you want at the top right corner, but I never use it because I lock all my posts and control when they all go out.

So in the top right – look you can Shuffle Queue which means any UNLOCKED posts will go anywhere they randomly want to go, and you could end up with something like my 9-grid preview where 4 outfit posts in a row, food, random orders to my Instagram which I do not love.

On the left side, is my actual schedule. The blank spots are my Tailwind schedule (pre-generated schedule where I tell them I want to post 3X a day), and the rest are my locked posts.

Again, I leave space because I want the option to let’s say move an outfit post up and swap it out with another post, or if I don’t like the way they look together (too many dull-coloured photos in a row).

Back to the mobile app:

I can also spend time writing my caption AFTER it has been Queued rather than before as a Draft because it will also auto-save. I can make any changes I want to it while it is Queued.

This is what it looks like when it is queued. I can change the caption, do whatever I want and even force a posting to Instagram ASAP by clicking on POST TO INSTAGRAM below.

I can also take a Queued post and delete it, or send it back to drafts.

 

Then, for the formatting bit, I go into the Tailwind DESKTOP app and add in blank spaces, and kind of see what it looks like formatted.

You can also make the typing window bigger

 

And it looks like this:

You will notice the lock on the right to show you it is locked in to that date and time.

You can also post it to Pinterest (which I do), and Facebook, right when your IG post goes up, which saves me a lot of cross-posting time.

I also add a Smart.bio link where applicable at the bottom — super easy to set up and enter.

Few things: Blank Spaces & First Comment

To add in blank spaces, you need to go to the end of the sentence, and THEN press Enter twice to make the space. Otherwise, it doesn’t recognize it needs to be spaced out.

You need to put all of your hashtags AT THE BOTTOM if you plan on using the Post hashtags in first comment option, and to not type anything past it.

If you type a sentence, or a tag after the hashtags, you will end up posting the tags in your post itself, and the tags will NOT move to the First Comment on your post. *face palm*

Then you NEED to save all of this, on the desktop app, it doesn’t auto-save. So click on the green button below.

Some Insights/Analytics

You can also see how you’ve grown in followers, etc.

I am not too fixated on this. I mean, I want to get at least 10K followers so I can get a swipe up option, but I REALLY do not care for the count itself.

I just want the feature of swiping up.

The other downside of this is that they don’t keep your stats longer than a month. So if you want to really track it over the year like I should have done, you should make an Excel sheet/note on the side if you’re into stats..

PINTEREST

I do near zero work here. I honestly just schedule my Instagram posts to also go on Pinterest, I set up a Pinterest schedule and let it ride:

So my Pinterest looks like this with almost zero work. I log in maybe once a month and spend an hour scheduling pins from Pinterest itself.

Note: I pay for this service, and it is $15/month. This is NOT SPONSORED. I just happen to use it, and really like it, plus they are so nice, they listen to feedback and try to get it fixed.

If you happen to use my referral link you will get 1 month free to try it out and I’ll only get a month free if you decide to sign on with them and pay for their service too, so thank you!

The other service I have heard about is Later, but I do not have any experience with them.

I do not really like their pricing because it is $9 for a limited number of posts, which should be more than enough for me, but I don’t like getting pigeonholed into more or less posts.

Sometimes I do ad hoc posts out of the blue because they are time sensitive, like talking about a bank promotion or a free viewing of some documentary.

What if I want to post more?

Hope that helped!

Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions.