Are you looking for a Pinterest scheduling tool? Would you like to find out what the most effective ones available are?
In order to get great results from Pinterest you need to pin several times a day - Tailwind found that their users pin 28 times a day on average. These users are serious about building their presence on Pinterest. If you want to compete at the same level you need to pin at a similar frequency, otherwise your pins will be lost among the hundreds and thousands of pins of these users.
Pinning several times can get you more exposure, followers and traffic.
And for best results you should use Pinterest scheduling tools to ensure your pins go out at regular intervals, instead of all at once.
For this post, I tested out the top Pinterest scheduling tools. Here, I'll discuss the features and pros and cons of each tool to help you make a more informed choice on which will best suit your needs.
1. Tailwind
Tailwind is probably the most comprehensive Pinterest scheduling tool, as along with making it easy to schedule pins, it also provides detailed analytics. They now offer Instagram scheduling too, but the tool was initially made specifically for Pinterest.
Using Tailwind, you can easily upload images or share them from any webpage - they even have a browser extension that can help you with this. You can upload pins directly from your device, from your Instagram account and from images you design in Canva as it integrates with Tailwind.
One of my favorite Tailwind features is suggested pins, which highlights pins relevant to the one you've just added. You can begin adding theses suggestions with a single click - if you don't find anything interesting to pin from here, you can just click the refresh button and more new pins will appear. Sometimes I end up pinning five to ten pins from the suggestions, it saves me so much time.
Tailwind also lets you know if you've published a pin before, so you can avoid duplication. As you can see in the above screenshot, Tailwind has an indicator that shows I've already pinned the image on the right.
Another one of their excellent features is Tailwind Tribes. It's sort of like Triberr for Pinterest or Pinterest group boards - you can either join tribes created by others or create your own tribes and invite others. Once you've started or joined a tribe, you can begin submitting pins to these groups so that other Tribe members can begin pinning them. It's a good way to get more repins and traffic.
To encourage others to share your pins, you should look to share the pins they submit. Doing this will also help forge relationships with people in similar niches.
Anyone can use Tribes for free, but you need a Tailwind account to schedule the pins.
As mentioned, Tailwind also provides advanced pin analytics with detailed insights not available via other tools. It even shows stats that Pinterest's in-built analytics don't provide, like follower growth.
Tailwind's analytics tools also analyze your page to highlight the best times to pin, based on engagement. You can then add these times to your pinning schedule in the app to ensure your pins are posted at optimal points.
Tailwind also has a 'Pin Inspector' tool, which shows you what your best performing boards and pins are, and enables you to quickly repin your best work.
By monitoring your domain with Tailwind, you also see the number of pins people pin from your website each day, how many people are pinning them, etc. You can even monitor traffic by linking your Google Analytics account.
For advanced analytics you need to get their Professional plan.
Pricing options:
Free Trial available: Yes, first 100 pins are free.
Basic plan cost: $14.99/month or $9.99/month when paid for the entire year.
Most advanced plan cost: Custom. Requires a personal demo.
2. Viraltag
Viraltag is another good Pinterest scheduling tool, though unlike Tailwind and Buffer, it's not an official Pinterest partner. It's actually more of a visual marketing tool, as you can use Viraltag to schedule to other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr and Instagram.
To make it easy for you to add images to other social networks Viraltag integrates with platforms like Dropbox, Flickr and Google Drive. You can also import images from social networks like Instagram and Facebook.
Viraltag has an evergreen posts option which automatically posts your best performing images whenever there's an empty spot in your schedule. There's also an explore section that shows you content shared by other Viraltag users.
Viraltag provides some interesting analytics, but they're not as detailed as those available in Tailwind.
If you're looking for a complete visual social media scheduling tool, Viraltag is a good option, but you'll probably need to complement it with an extra tool like Hootsuite or Buffer which enable you to schedule links and text updates (without images) also.
Pricing options:
Free Trial available: Yes.
Basic plan cost: $29/month or $24/month when paid for the entire year.
Most advanced plan cost: $249+/month
3. Hootsuite
Hootsuite doesn't let you directly schedule posts to Pinterest, but it integrates with Tailwind. You can take advantage of their streams feature and neatly organize your Tailwind account on Hootsuite.
As you can see from the above screenshot, in the first stream you have the 'Pin Calendar', where you can see all the pins you've got scheduled. You can add or remove pin times here, or move your scheduled pins around so that they go out at different times. The 'Scheduled Pins' stream offers more insight on your upcoming updates.
Under 'Latest Pins' you can see the pins you've published and the amount of repins and likes each received. You can also share these pins onto your other social media accounts through Hootsuite.
One of the great things about this stream - and Tailwind analytics in general - is that you can see the number of pins that each individual pin receieved, whether you shared it through Tailwind or any other tool, or even directly via Pinterest itself. This is really important as Pinterest only displays the number of likes and repins the image has gotten in its lifetime, and Buffer and Viraltag only show the number of repins and likes the pin got if you pinned the image with their tool.
You also have a 'Content Suggestions' and a 'Drafts' stream here. I frequently use Tailwind on Hootsuite as I use Hootsuite to manage my social media and clients social media. It's very convenient and easy.
Pricing options:
Free Trial available: Yes, free plan available.
Basic plan cost: $14.99/month or $9.99 per month when paid for the entire year plus the cost of Tailwind.
Most advanced plan cost: Custom pricing
4. Buffer
I also use Buffer as I love their interface - it makes it very easy for me to schedule updates on networks like Twitter and Linkedin. They also let you post to Pinterest, but I don't use it very often as it hasn't got Pinterest specific features that make it easy to use.
For example, while using Pinterest scheduling tools like Tailwind and Viraltag, you can schedule the pin to multiple boards. You can't do this with Buffer.
Also when you pin images that are more than 600 X 900 pixels, only part of the image appears if you try to use the browser extension. To pin bigger images, like infographics, you need to right click on the image you want to pin and then schedule it. This can be more time consuming.
Also, Buffer only provides detailed analytics within their business plan, the pricing for which starts at $99 per month.
If you're looking for a basic Pinterest scheduling tool, Buffer is still a valid option, but if you're serious about Pinterest marketing it would be better to invest in a Pinterest-specific marketing tool like the ones mentioned above.
Pricing options:
Free Trial available: Yes.
Basic plan cost: $10 month or $102 for the entire year.
Most advanced plan cost: $399/month
The Pinterest scheduling tool which will suit you best will depend on your businesses needs and budget. I started with Viraltag, but I switched to Tailwind as I like their suggested pins and analytics features a lot. I occasionally use Buffer to manage other pages, like my personal account, as it does the job, but it's not a specialized Pinterest tool.
To find the perfect Pinterest scheduling tool for you, you need to go through the above tools and pick the one with features and pricing options that suit you. But you should probably start with Tailwind, because for my money it's the best Pinterest scheduling tool available, and it's affordable too.
This post originally appeared on socialmarketingwriting.com