#249: Managing Social Media with Tailwind with Melissa Megginson Community Manager at Tailwind

Hey, guys, it's time for episode number 249. As we talk about all things social.

Media and Tailwind, Let's talk about your.

Business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. One of my favorite tools that I.

Talk about so often inside of Retail.

Bootcamp and inside of our trainings at the Boutique Hub is how to maximize your social media and get more done in less time. And honestly, part of that is using our content sanity method and being able to pre plan and maximize and reuse content. But it's also about having a great scheduling tool. And one of the tools that we use so often at the hub is called Tail. We use Tailwind at the Boutique Hub to manage all of our Pinterest accounts. We have three of them that we manage, and then we also manage part of our Instagram accounts on Tailwind as well.

So today I'm really excited, you guys.

Because I invited Melissa Magson, who's the community manager at Tailwind, to talk all about the platform, if you're not yet familiar with it, how to use it, how to maximize it, and really what it takes to get ahead today on social media. Melissa understands deeply retail and how to get your products in front of your ideal consumer. Having lots of experience with brands like Adobe and JCPenney using Tailwind, but she's also really passionate about small businesses as well. So we'll talk about how to get more done, how to reach more people on Pinterest, on Instagram, and how to have more time throughout the week so that you can spend time engaging on social media and not just worrying about what you're going to pin or what you're going to post next. Enjoy the episode, guys.

All right, you guys, welcome to the podcast this week. If you guys are a fan of working smarter and not harder, I'm pretty sure you're going to love this episode for a while. Now, I know you guys have heard me talk about some of the scheduling tools that we use at the Boutique Hub, and I'm so excited to have a guest from one of those platforms on the show today to talk all about Tailwind. So please help me welcome Melissa Megginson, who is A community manager at Tailwind. How you doing?

I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I'm so excited that you're here. Like, we were talking before we started to record, we've used Tailwind for a while now, and we know lots of our community members are using it as well. So we've got lots to cover, lots of tips and strategy and all kinds of things.

Perfect. I'm ready.

All right, well, let's start here. First of all, I always love to know more about the guest as we dive deeper into the topic. So we're going to get into what Tailwind is in just a second. But you're the resident cat lady at Tailwind, as your bio says, which I think is awesome. So you just have to give us a little bit of backstory about how long you've been at Tailwind and how you landed there.

Sure. Yeah. So I've actually been at Tailwind for my entire professional career, which is a little crazy. I graduated in 2012 with an advertising degree. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. And so just looking online at different positions available and came across this company called Pinleague. Back in the day, that's what our name was. And honestly, I thought I was applying to Pinterest. I was like, obviously, this is the marketing arm of Pinterest and I'll get in and be able to make pins and have a bunch of be in this tech startup. But that was not exactly what it was. I ended up talking to our CEO Danny, and learning that, no, it was a marketing platform that was using Pinterest to help grow their members on the platform. So learned that I wasn't applying to Pinterest, but also felt really bought in and excited after talking to him. I actually joined the team in sales. Awful at sales. But Danny was kind enough and saw, you know, enough excitement in me that he allowed me to switch to marketing, which I have done at Tailwind for the past seven and a half years. So it's been a pretty crazy ride going from, you know, two co founders and two employees when I started to. We have more than 50 employees and coming up on a million members around the world. So I've had quite the wild ride these past almost eight years. But I wouldn't trade my experience with Tailwind for the world. And I think I'm the luckiest person getting to have this job, work with my amazing co workers, and getting to go out in the community and talk to Our wonderful members out there. I love that.

I love those startup stories. I totally get what it's what you're saying when you start so small. Right? I, I always laugh. Beth on our team, she is like our go to gal for everything. And I always tell people, like, I remember the day when we started the boutique hub and we used to have to tell Beth, like, hey, don't cash your paycheck yet because we can't actually afford to pay you. But now it all comes full circle and there's more than one Beth to go around. So I'm sure you can relate.

Yes. I even used to get personal checks from Danny in the beginning. The first six months I was just getting a check written by him from his bank account. So definitely feel that poll in the beginning with startups. It's kind of fun though.

That's so awesome. So you're definitely on the pulse of what your community needs, the moment they need it, which is a really cool thing to experience. So for anyone who's not yet familiar with Tailwind, give us kind of the high level overview and then we'll get more detailed about the platform and how it works.

Sure. Yeah. So we are a scheduling and analytics tool and we are focused on Pinterest and Instagram. Specifically, we're partnered with both platforms, so that means we're providing you with best practices tools that will never get you in trouble. We're trying to really help our members make the most of their marketing and we're working with our partners on the network side to make sure that we're providing tools that will follow the rules, make sure that our members get great engagement and great growth. And, you know, we're listening to what you guys have to say and trying to build bigger, better tools all the time.

Awesome. Awesome. So, Aewind, I know I always hear this. Most of our members start with Tailwind for Pinterest, but it's Instagram and Pinterest. Talk to me about the number of different ways you can use Tailwind and let's kind of dig deep into some of the features because there's so many of the features that I love. But talk to me kind of high level about the different types of analytics and tools that come with the platform.

Sure, yeah. So on the Pinterest side, I will say that we have more. That's where we started. And so it's a little bit more robust on that side for now, so I'll start there. And with Pinterest, the core of the product is our scheduling tool, which allows you to set up how many pins you want to go out each day. You can even schedule pins from around the web. So we have a browser extension that you can use on your website, on your friend's website, even on Pinterest to reshare those pins. From Pinterest, you can upload pins as well. So we definitely recommend creating multiple images, which we can talk about in a little bit. But that's one thing that we definitely recommend is now you have your one URL, go ahead and create a few images, you can upload that and schedule those out to publish to your relevant boards.

So is there one of those strategies that you recommend over the other, or does it just kind of depend on the type of content that you're sharing? For example, we use the browser extension option quite a bit. We find that really easy. We just download it to Google Chrome and then we can pin everything from our site or anywhere else around the web. And I know a lot of our boutiques have that option as well. Does it really matter where it's coming from or just get it into the scheduling tool?

I will say that if you are the one producing the content, if the URL on Pinterest is linking back to you, your URL. So, for example, with Tailwind, on Tailwind's Pinterest account, when we're scheduling, when we're creating content, as soon as we have a new piece of content, we want to be the first ones to add that piece of content to Pinterest. It's really important that you are the first one to get it out there and send the signals to Pinterest that you're the content owner, that you're sharing it to the boards that are most relevant to send those signals to their algorithm so that you can surface your content and be seen as that amazing content creator that you are with other people's content, it matters less. You know, they've even say, said, if you have enough new amazing content to share regularly and consistently, you can go ahead and just never share anyone's content. But that's very rare, very rare that people have that much in production. I'm thinking sites like Epicurious and buzzfeed, they technically never have to reshare someone's pen. Most of us are not as prolific as, you know, buzzfeed, so it's good to supplement with content from other sources, but really focusing in on your content, optimizing it with the pin description, with the pin title, with the boards that you're sharing it to, and being the first one to Pin that piece of content is super, super important.

All right, so with the scheduling tool, is there a number of pins that you recommend a day that are being pushed out with the scheduling tool? I mean, you could go in and you could load the scheduling tool on one day a week if you were batching your time. But then how many should be pinning every single day?

I would love to be able to give a specific number. You know, you need to be doing this many. But, you know, we've worked directly with Pinterest. We're very close with them, and they won't even give us a specific number because they don't want that out there. So people who are having nefarious ideas about Pinterest are going out there and scheduling exactly that amount of content. We do have a new tool built into the system called Smart Guide that will help you make sure that you're following the best practices and are pinning a good amount of content that's not duplicate content that's not going to be breaking those rules from Pinterest. And we're going to be updating those with those best practices and with the data that we get from Pinterest interest from now until forever, as far as we know. So you can use that tool and be sure that you'll be. You can pin enough content that you're making great strides, but not doing anything that will be seen as overpinning or spammy by Pinterest.

Okay, that's super helpful. Super helpful. I think that's the thing. You know, like any social media platform, our users or our community, they get so overwhelmed with the idea of what to do and how to do it and time every day to do it. So I love that you can just sit down and batch that and have some smart science behind what you're doing.

Right? Yeah. And we're. We're lucky enough to be a Pinterest partner, so our members don't have to worry about accidentally pinning too much. We have them covered.

Awesome. Now, I know you have another really cool tool with your scheduling tool called the Smart Loop. Can you tell me more about that?

Yeah. It's a great way to understand where your best content is coming from and make sure that it's getting seen at regular intervals around the year. We will be implementing that with the Smart Guide so that you don't have to worry about recycling your content in a way that's viewed as unnatural from Pinterest, but you can still get that traffic that's relevant and seasonal. And, you know, we provide analytics behind that. So you can say, oh, this pin from 2018 has been performing super well. My boutique's getting a ton of traffic from it. Okay. This is one that I need to create five more images for. I'm going to write new captions to try and capture new keywords with a new audience, and you can add those into the smart loop. And we'll make sure that they're going out at the best times for engagement without breaking any of the best practices and not being seen as oversharing or seen as spammy.

That's really helpful. Now, I have a question, and this. I don't know if this is a good question or not. Good question, but I know our boutiques are probably wondering this. You know, they have a product that has a very short life cycle, and so a lot of times they've got pins that the products are sold out, and then those product pages can redirect to a category page or some other product page. Is there any loss of, like, the pin's good juices, let's say, if they were to go into a pin and change the URL that it's pinned to, does that impact the performance of that pin or does it really matter?

That is actually one I'm not sure about. That's a really good question. I know that Redirecting to a 404 is really best practice. That's what Pinterest has said for a long time. And they don't want pins to be deleted. Specifically going in and changing the URL, I'm not positive about.

No worries. That's.

I get that question a lot of.

Like, what do I do when my products are sold out? So I've heard a lot about just, like, redirecting, like, on your site, those product pages. So this is helpful to know. But I like the idea that you mentioned about going in and updating the keywords and the hashtags to try to get that pin to have a little bit more life.

Yep. Creating those new images and, you know, just juicing that a little bit more is really good.

Awesome. Talk to me more about some of the other tools that are related to Pinterest. Specifically inside of Tailwind.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the big ones, and actually a good gateway that a lot of people come to Tailwind through, is called Tribes. And it's just a really amazing way to discover other pinners that are in a similar niche to you, that you can come together, share each other's content, and really grow by supporting your fellow pinner. I know some people that have physical Products can be a little tentative about going into a tribe with other people selling products like theirs. But the idea of having a community and not seeing those people as competition is really baked into tribes. Another great thing about that is you can get that content that you're really excited about, stick it into a tribe and have extra distribution go out from your tribe. So sharing it to relevant boards, sending more signals to Pinterest and really helping you while you are finding amazing things that your audience would be interested in as well. So it's just a great community to come in and help you build your presence while helping your fellow pinner.

I love that we have a couple tribes at the Boutique Hub. I'll make sure if you guys are listening, that you have the links to join our tribe and I know we're a member of another other or several other tribes as well. When you look at like overall pin performance and I know you guys are, you're focused on building tools that really support Pinterest growth. Talk to me about some of the most important parts of working with the Pinterest algorithm. Let's say so, for example, your images and your captions and pinning content from other boards and other pinners and using tribes to continue to reach more people. What other like strategies you feel are really important to grow on Pinterest.

One of the biggest things that we've learned from Pinterest and working with them is that they don't want people coming to Pinterest to see the same image over and over and over again. That's not a good user experience. It's not a natural way that people use Pinterest. And so when you're creating the strategy in thinking about your schedule that you're building, really think about how it would look if someone came to your page. If you're just sharing the exact same URL over and over and over again, that's not going to be seen as natural pinning, even if the images are different. But again, if you're sharing the same three images over and over and over again, that's not a natural form of pinning and it's not going to translate. So think about that end user experience and build something that you would want to see as a pinner. We have our schedule in a way that you can actually see what's going out. We have a way to shuffle your pins so you can make sure that the same pins aren't going out repeatedly. It's more of a random assortment. And we also have interval pins so you can make sure that the same Pin going to different boards has enough breathing room in between those pins that it doesn't look unnatural. So just that that word natural is really important right now. And maintaining a natural sense of pinning even while you're building up your marketing muscle is super important going forward with Pinterest. Perfect.

That's really helpful. What other tools specific to Pinterest does Tailwind have?

We have some pretty incredible analytics. And you know, being a SaaS marketing person, I am an analytics junkie and so I'm really, really excited about all of the analytics that we have within Tailwind. The one that I am most excited about and I think is actually underutilized is our Board Insights report. It allows you to go in and what I recommend doing is actually sorting by the boards with the most recent repins within the last seven days. This is going to give you a great view of your boards that are still getting repins or reshares. And then if you flip it, the ones that are so it's sorted the other way, then you can see the ones that you know maybe aren't getting those repins and those reshares and you can start to take some of those out. You can understand which ones are working and maybe create more boards related to that and just get a better idea of what boards are still driving traffic for you. I love, love, love that report. And then we also have our pin Inspector 1 which will allow you to see the pins that are performing based on individual repin count. That's something that's a little bit harder to see in Pinterest. I know if you've been on the platform for years, you remember the little pin with the numbers beside it to see how many repins it got. We still have that information in Tailwind. So you can see per board which pins are performing really well. You can search for URLs, you can search for keywords, you can set time ranges. It's just a really great way to dig in on individual pins. And finally, another analytics tool that we have that I love is our domain Insights. One of the really cool things there is the images that are performing within the last week that'll show you which pins are getting repinned from your website, not just from your Pinterest account. So you can see likely it'll be some of the more recent things that you put up. But for us, it's always surprising to see which older posts are resurfacing. And seeing those older posts that are resurfacing from your domain can help you understand what kinds of pins you should create and what URLs you should start reviving and maybe creating those new images and putting those onto new boards with new descriptions and just sort of helping juice that momentum that's already started naturally.

Super helpful. I am with you. The analytics tell us so much, and I think sometimes we get so caught up in the creative side of the business and just like crossing things off of our list that we don't spend enough time using the data to our advantage. So that is really helpful.

Yeah.

One of the tools I know that you guys have that I also really love for Pinterest specifically is we have our Instagram feeds integrated with Tailwind as well. And so we can go in there and repin all of our Instagram posts to Pinterest. Can you tell the listeners more about that feature as well?

Yeah. And when you sync your Instagram account with Tailwind, you have the ability, as you're creating your Instagram account or your Instagram image on the Instagram side to say, promote this with Pinterest. And so you can cross promote your Instagram images to your Pinterest account and build up that really wonderful cross promotion that way and, you know, not really waste any time in doing it because it's just right there. It's part of your flow and it really helps you connect the two brands and build up that presence on both Pinterest and Instagram. Awesome.

Are there any other Instagram specific, I'm sorry, Pinterest specific tools that you want to cover on Tailwind?

I think that's it, at least for now. We have things coming out and planned for 2020 that I'm really excited about, but I can't talk about yet. So keep an eye out, make sure you're subscribed to our email list. We'll definitely be talking about some upcoming changes that are going to be very exciting. Awesome.

All right, let's switch gears. Let's talk about the gram and the tools, because I know Instagram's newer to Tailwind. Correct. And I think we've got some beta tools that we're testing in our account in Tailwind that I've been telling people about that they're awesome. So talk to me about your favorite tools for the grammar.

Okay. So right now I think it's split between our Smart Bio tool and our Hashtag Finder tool. Those are my 2 favorite with our Hashtag Finder tool. Start with that. It's so cool. I don't know how our developers came up with this. They are absolute wizards. But when you're typing in your caption, you know you've loaded in your photo, you tagged whoever you want in the post, you've tagged the location and now you're working on your caption as your type. We will recommend keyword or hashtags based on the context of what you're actually typing. So you don't have to do long winded keyword research on which hashtags to use. You don't have to go in and create notes that make you look like a crazy person in your phone. We take care of all of that for you. So as you are typing, you just click on those hashtags that are related to what you're saying. If there are any that quite fit, you can X out of them. If you want to click through and see, I don't know if this is relevant. Let me see what's what kind of poster shared. You can do that and we'll give you an idea of how popular it is. So we have four different color coding within the hashtag finder and the dark green ones are the ones that we consider the best. They're the ones that are used pretty often but aren't overrun. So, you know, not like hashtag love. And then there's the orange ones that are hashtag love. And they're very popular, they're used a lot, they're very competitive and it's good to have a mix of those in there in case you can rank with them but you know, lean more for those ones that are in the the best, which are the dark green and then the better which are the light green that we have. We also have the niche hashtags. So for us we have a few. There's Tailwind Family and Team Tailwind Diary. Those are niche hashtags. Only a few people are using them. But it's great for creating community. We'll remember those and we'll tag those as gray. Once you have a an amazing list that you want to use again and again, you can save them as a hashtag list and just easily click on them whenever you're scheduling out your post.

That is super helpful to know. Do you happen to, as you were talking, do you happen to have any like red hashtags that are the ones that you should avoid? Like some of them where you know it'll make your posts disappear or flag your account, that sort of thing. Do you kind of have any warnings for those hashtags?

Any that are deemed inappropriate or banned by Instagram? We just don't include at all okay, that is helpful.

That's really helpful. So the smart hashtag tool. Now talk to me about the smart bio tool. That's something that we use on our account.

Yes, it's amazing. And it's free, which is a huge deal. Not very often that you get a free Instagram link tool. So what it is is taking what we decided after talking to our members is kind of the best of both worlds. So some Instagram linking tools, you can have buttons that drive evergreen traffic or you have to turn each of your posts images into a link. Ours will do both. So you can have the button links up at the top that can drive traffic to those links that are always important to you. So your website, your newsletter, any kind of link that you want to continually drive traffic to, you can use as a button link. And then below that, you can also have your images from Instagram actually be links. And so that makes it super contextual. When someone's scrolling through your Instagram, sees an amazing outfit that they're interested in buying, they just have to go to the link in your profile, find that exact image and click on it to be taken to the place where they can actually purchase that outfit. You can also track all of those link clicks within our analytics platform. Super easy to use. And you know, you have. Our scheduling tool is a paid tool, but smart bio you can use totally for free. Awesome.

I love smart bio. We utilize that every single day. Talk to me more about the other tools that you have for Instagram.

Yeah, so a big one. I think that the main entry point for people is our scheduling tool and we are a partner, which means that we can use auto posting. It's a great way to make sure that you are maintaining consistency with your feedback while not having to spend your life on Instagram. That's one of the things that we hear a lot is, you know, I'm constantly scrolling, I'm wanting to be on Instagram and engaging and posting all the time. And if you're intentional with your time going in. And I have a co worker who's grown her Sustainable fashion account from zero to more than 30,000 followers in the past year. And she's really hammered home the be intentional use schedule. Make sure that when you're on Instagram you have a goal. Our scheduling tool really helps you maintain that consistency because you don't have to constantly be going on there and making sure your posts are published. We'll take care of that for you. So when you're on Instagram, you can create the stories, you can Engage with your audience, you can find new people to follow, but you don't have to be worried about posting those actual feed posts.

So that's. I'm so glad that you brought this up because I've always wondered this. You know, you hear so many rumors online about can, you know, is it legal to auto post or how does that all work. But you said because you're an approved partner. Is that the term that you use that it's okay to use? Auto post?

Correct? Yeah. So you log in directly through Facebook and Instagram. Because we're a partner, you can use our auto posting tool and you can post still images and videos without having to do anything.

Awesome. Awesome. Other Instagram tools that you guys have.

Our analytics, again, it's pretty similar to what you see on Pinterest with the pin inspector in particular. It looks very similar and you can see individual post analytics. So if you want to sort by your most liked posts your most commented posts, the date it was posted. One thing that I know some of our influencers that use our platform do is they'll type in ad in the search bar and see all of their paid advertisements so that they can come up with really simple way to see how their paid promotions work and then include that in their media kit. If you have a timeframe where you're running a promotion, you can see how that's performed and it just really lets you dig in and understand your posts and how they're performing.

Awesome. Perfect. Well, is there anything else you want to mention? Just about what's included anywhere in Tailwind that we haven't already covered. I know it's been a gazillion questions about what the actual product is, but there's so much when you get in there that it's kind of overwhelming. So I'm glad we were able to talk about all of it.

Yeah, that's what we a lot of what we have right now, and there's a lot coming in the new year that I'm very excited about and we'll be having launches and really pushing forward on marketing. Our mission is to make world class marketing easy for everyone. And this year we're really focusing on making that mission a reality. So right now, you know, we've covered a lot of what we have out there. It's an amazing product and I don't just say that because they pay me twice a month. That's, you know, that's a good perk. But I actually do believe in the product and I believe in the team behind it and I'm very excited for what's to come. And I think that one of the great things about Tiowind is that we listen to our customers. So if you have feedback for us, please tell us. If you have ideas, please tell us anything like that. We are here for you. We're here to listen. We want to hear from you.

I love that I've had that exact experience myself just in talking to you, Melissa. I know in some of the emails that we've had back and forth, you've been so receptive to things and shared ideas. So thank you for that. Before we. Absolutely. Before we wrap up our time together today, I just a couple more questions. Not even just specific to Tailwind, but I know because you have your hands in marketing so much. I'd love to hear like, as you think about all of your clients across Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, all over, do you think that there's things that your most successful community members and clients have in common in terms of how they approach Instagram and Pinterest interest?

They're super consistent and they're always checking their analytics. That's such a huge thing. You don't need to be afraid of analytics. I know for creative people it can seem intimidating, but yeah, Tailwind's tried to make it super accessible. Instagram's made it really accessible. Pinterest has made it accessible. Seeing what works for you and those things that fall flat, not everything is going to be great. But understanding what's working and consistently putting out information and pins and posts and Facebook images, whatever it may be, that is consistent with what your audience is really interested in seeing and learning is super important. And that's really what we see from our most successful members. Perfect.

Is there any strategies or new things that you feel like are going to come down the pike in 2020 in terms marketing that you're most excited about, not just with your product, but just kind of where marketing is moving as a whole.

You know, it's kind of funny. I've been seeing augmented reality AR becoming so popular and getting into every corner of the social media platforms. And I could see it being really interesting for boutique owners. Maybe not in 2020, but in the coming years. So I would keep an eye out for that. Now. Pinterest has the try it on feature for makeup. Who knows, they may have a try it on feature for clothing coming soon and just getting using our phones to see what a reality can be like with these products that we could purchase. I know. I've even read articles about designers creating Outfits that don't actually exist in real life, but they're designer pieces of couture that are just available online, just in images. So that's, that's a really interesting part of, I think in particular fashion that's starting to really take hold. You know, maybe not immediately actionable, but something to keep an eye on.

I love that. You know, we've seen so much change in our industry in the last five years as a whole. And I mean, like rapid change. Right. That's just completely industry shifting. And I can't imagine in the next five years even how much faster industries is going to continue to evolve and change with the things exactly like you mentioned. So I think that's super spot on.

Yeah, it's crazy to see, but it's exciting.

Absolutely. Is there one last piece of advice that you would say for everyone listening you wish they would take action on having heard this podcast? Like, if you could just say, hey, go do this today, what would it be?

I would say invest in your visuals. If that's coming up with a look on your feed in a story strategy that really feels like you on Instagram, start focusing in on that on Pinterest, you know, creating new pins and making sure that you're not putting out the same images over and over and over again. Invest in that. There's great photography that's totally free to use from places like Unsplash and Pexels if you're not a photographer. Our phones are getting so good at taking photos now that, you know, you can take a simple iPhone photography course and no one will know the difference. So invest in those visuals wherever you can.

Super helpful.

Melissa.

Thank you so much for your time today and for sharing Tailwind with us. I know this is probably just the beginning of our relationship. We have so many more tips and tricks and strategy that we could continue to share inside of the boutique home. So thank you again for your time and we really look forward to the new features and continuing to work with you.

Well, thank you so much. I'm excited to be beginning this journey with you guys.

Awesome. Hey guys, thank you so much for.

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Sam.