Automatically schedule your Pinterest pins with these 5 tools

If you’re running a business, a shop or a blog, Pinterest is a big win. It not only drives traffic (#1 referral in Google Analytics), you can now offer your products via the ‘Shop’ button and make money using affiliate links. Time to schedule Pinterest for a more strategic attack! 

But there’s one down side to Pinterest; it’s highly addictive. All the beautiful pins give me endless inspiration. So to make this social media website a little bit more productive, I schedule my Pins automatically. Yep, you read that right. You can Pin pins yourself, or you have them automatically searched and pinned by a scheduler. How awesome?! This means, being active on Pinterest every hour of the day, even when you’re totally enjoying your REAL life, you know, outside the office, on the beach for example.

@nnonimay

Why you should schedule your Pinterest pins

I earn a big part of my income via Pinterest these days. It is also my biggest traffic referral. First, I was thinking of handing over my Pinterest to a Virtual Assistant, but I must admit I have quite a few personal hidden boards that I’d rather not show my VA. So I did my research and apparently, there are Apps/Tools that schedule your Pins automatically. There’s one amazing tool specially designed to Schedule Pinterest: Tailwind. And on top of that you can use Hootsuite and Buffer these days for Pin scheduling too, but they’re not completely automatic. So fast forward to this year, I’ve been using these automatic schedulers for a few months now and I love them! Time for a comparison.

I tried both Tailwind and Boardbooster and I stuck with one. Are you curious which one and how it works? And which other schedule tools there are for Pinterest? Please continue… 

Tailwind (Official Pinterest Partner)

I also tried Tailwind, but I must admit upfront that I didn’t stick with them, because I’m so into the looping pins and Tailwind doesn’t offer something like that as far as I know. Tailwinds design reminds me a little bit about Hootsuite and is okay, but not as pretty as Buffer.

[Update: Recently Tailwind rolled out a whole new game-changing feature, that’s still in beta, but please check it out here.]

If you do some Googling, you might read about Pinterest announcing strategic partnerships with a few companies. Boardbooster was not among them, and some people believe it’s a negative influence for their Pinterest account. The reason why Boardbooster was not among them, is probably the reason why I like it so much: you can use it and be active without actually using it – it’s fully automatic. Pinterest wants engagement, and therefore tweaked their search algorithm to favor those who use their partner sites (and good old-fashioned personal pinning). Okay, so that’s a big reason to join Tailwind right? So I did!

Tailwind is a little bit more expensive and start at $15 a month for 400 pins. I really like the guided tour you have to follow before you can use Tailwind if you sign up (even with the trial), but I never have the patience to really follow it so I just click things away to only discover I don’t understand the Tailwind dashboard later on haha. To use Tailwind you have to install the Chrome extension (I use Chrome, maybe they also have extensions for other internet browsers like Firefox or Safari). I think that extension works just like the Buffer plugin, you surf around and when you want something to schedule click and it schedules.

Your Dashboard gives you amazing strategy tips and that’s one of the things I really like about Tailwind. If you’ve enough time to really make the most out of your Pinterest and want to create a strategy, you have to sign up to Tailwind! It gives you performances for your own website, your boards, your pins, and gives great advice how to optimize your strategy. How optimized is your profile for example? Tailwind has the answer! When I made these screenshots, I wasn’t long enough a member of Tailwind with this account so I only have sample data, but it gives a good impression how you should use Tailwind.

The Pin Inspector lets you export your data (!) and shows you everything you have EVER pinned with a detailed filter if necessary.

Tailwind is amazing if you want more in-depth stats and analytics and if you have the actual time to put these in a strategy. So this is probably for you if you run a bigger business and have a few employees or assistants to do your social media. You can hire someone else to create a massive Pinterest strategy or do it yourself. If you’re at this stadium, I’d definitely recommend Tailwind!!

If you’re just starting out with social media, a blog, a business or Pinterest, Tailwind isn’t for you just yet. It’s a small investment, but it IS an investment, and I’m not sure if you should make an investment in something if you can’t properly use all its functions (no you shouldn’t).

Conclusion

Features: scheduling, insights, monitoring, analytics
Favorite feature: the in-depth analytics + strategy suggestions
Price: Starts at $15 for 400pins/month (cancel anytime, upgrade/downgrade each month)
Start your 100 free pins trial here.

Boardbooster [UPDATE: Boardbooster no longer exists]

I love Boardbooster! It’s still in Beta, which gives me the feeling it’s not a big company yet, but really a startup run by one or two people. They always helped my very kindly with my questions, so their customer service is top notch (they answer most emails within 1 hour and guarantee a within 24 hours response, even on weekends).

I started with the $5 plan (their lowest) and moved up to the $10 plan and I sometimes lower my plan to the $5 again, you can easily downgrade or upgrade your plan, something I really like, because some months are slower than others and it’s nice if you can change your business expenses month by month.

When you sign up to Boardbooster, you’ll get 100 pins for free, try it out. So, let’s get busy I’d say! Sign up here for free (you don’t need a credit card, and pick your plan later). All plans come with the same features and same support and range from $5 for 500 pins/month to all the way up to 5000 pins/month for $50.

So how does Boardbooster work? They have a ton of features like ‘looping’ pins, ‘pin doctor’ and ‘scheduling’. And they are divided into two categories at the moment: Maintenence tools and Pinning Tools. I haven’t used the maintenance tools yet because I’m really good at organizing myself, but I heard good stories about the Pin doctor function.

I like the looping feature because of it ‘loops’ pins you already pinned before which will give you a ton of new notifications, repinners and followers.

With Pin Doctor you can clean up boards, with the reports you can see and plan your strategy because it’s an in-depth report of when to pin for the best results and with 3rd party viral pins you can see which of your pins went viral via someone else. Whohoo!

A Scheduled Campaign takes pins from one secret board and repins them to multiple boards according to your schedule. But this seems like a ton of work still, because you do have to pin to your secret boards right? NOPE! With the Pin Scheduler you can give up keywords and Boardbooster will automatically pin pins with those keywords to a specified board. This is a bit risky and I’m too addicted myself to use this, but I did try it and it does work! It’s just not as aesthetically beautiful as I want my board because it’s a big risk, adding pins without a filter. I do recommend setting your keywords up and only activate them when you’re traveling for a long time or doing a hike without wifi, so you’re still visible and active 🙂

With Random Campaigns you can pull random pins from the source defined by you (a board) and repin them to any number of group boards. You can designate one or more of your boards as the source of pins or provide a list of pins that you hand picked for this campaign. Unlike Scheduled Campaigns, you don’t have to decide on the timing of each repin. All you need to do is specify the number of repins per day for each group board, and BoardBooster will automatically repin the right number of pins from your source while minimizing repetitiveness. I think this is a relatively new feature, because I just discovered it by writing this article haha. So let’s grow, because pinning more often to group boards with thousands of followers will land you more traffic – no doubt!

I’m pretty sure I’m not using Boardbooster to the max, but that’s because I don’t really get how some of the features work, or because I’m too lazy to set them up, because with my current features my results are already so mind blowing. I still use Pinterest every day myself, but due to the scheduling my pins are more divided over the whole day, so people don’t notice I’m having an obsessive 15 minutes of Pinterest haha.

Boardbooster is one of those tools you use and that gives you so much back, that I’d definitely get the bigger plan once I earn waaay more each month. Working on it 😉

I seriously believe that the only way Boardbooster could improve would be adding a guided tour and revamp their design. I think that says enough right? Sign up right here for your free month!

@nnonimay

Conclusion

Features: looping, scheduling, maintenance tools.
Favorite feature: the 100% passive looping and schedule feature. Install once and stay active on Pinterest forever.
Price: Starts at $5 for 500pins/month (cancel anytime, upgrade/downgrade each month)
Start your 100 free pins trial here.

Viral Tag (Official Pinterest Partner)

Viral Tag is the option if you’re new to social media or you haven’t found your scheduler match yet (Or you just want everything in 1 place).

Viral Tag isn’t only a Scheduler for Pinterest, you can also schedule your Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages, Twitter, Linkedin Profiles and Linkedin Pages. You can sign up and try Viral Tag free for 14-days (no credit card required) and big bonus: they have a blogger plan (please note: I haven’t tried this and this post isn’t part of this plan). All you have to do is write an honest review of Viraltag and they’ll give you 6 months free and a discount on your monthly price after that at $9/month. Nice right!? Plans start at $29 a month up to $999 a month. Because Viral Tag is not just Pinterest focused, it’s just included in your plan regardless, and there’s no pin limit.

I’m fairly new to Viral Tag, but it looks soooo good! This is definitely a design that makes me happy. It’s focused on visuals, and it shows.

The number #1 feature of Viral Tag? The drag & drop for images! I’m always busy (at work.., not in life!) so when I’m uploading I want to drag from my computer and import, not select all images one by one. VT let you do this, which is an amazing plus. Next, you select the networks you want to share your images and done. Definitely amazing if you’re a creative entrepreneur or photographer..!!

@nnonimay

Conclusion

Features: drag & drop bulk images, scheduling, analytics, multiple social media networks
Favorite feature: bulk upload images
Price: Starts at $29 per month (cancel anytime, upgrade/downgrade each month) // check their blogger plan here.
Start your 14-day trial here.

Other ways to Schedule Pinterest 

Besides Viral Tag, Boardbooster and Tailwind you can also use Buffer or ViralWoot to schedule Pinterest pins. For looping use Boardbooster, for in-depth strategy analytics, use Tailwind.

So where to begin to Schedule Pinterest?

Start by signing up for the free trials of the tools but don’t sign up to all at once. Get your 14-days of free Tailwind first, then your 400 pins at Boardbooster, your free months of Buffer and then get your blogger plan over at Viral Tag!

I’d love to connect, follow me on Pinterest here!
@nnonimay

You might also like to read:

• Blogger’s News: Pinterest made some HUGE changes for bloggers… RIP Boardbooster + Convertkit has a new name
• Pinterest strategy with secret success tips for more traffic, email subscribers and sales
• Pinterest business: the secret to reaching more people on Pinterest as a (blog) business
• You’re a traveller now, so why not look like one?
• Pinteresting! Affiliate links are now allowed on Pinterest