Using Tailwind to Organically Grow Traffic and Sales with Danny Maloney
Episode 436: Show Notes
Today on the show our guest is Danny Maloney, CEO of Tailwind, and we are so excited to have him here to talk about what his company has done for online business and how you can utilize it to drive more traffic and sales on your own! It’s important that you know before we even started using Tailwind we were using Pinterest. We had been on Pinterest for five years and had created a ton of content at that time.
Listen on your favorite podcast player
Back in the day we hacked it so we could explode on that platform and we had a strategy we shared all over the internet. We wrote a blog post about it, but then, we found Tailwind and were like, “What is this? This is a lifesaver!” So, we are really looking forward to chatting to Danny about the changing landscape of content ranking algorithms and how to increase traffic while driving sales on Instagram and Pinterest using Tailwind!
How Platforms Rank Their Best Content
Before we get into the topic of how Tailwind is adapting to Pinterest’s changing algorithms, Danny shares his thoughts about changing trends on the content platforms we use to drive attention and traffic for business more broadly. There is a meta trend currently happening where more content than ever is being published. For many years, consumer eyeballs on content were growing too, but now, in general, that consumer growth is slowing down. People spend so much time on platforms now that there is less of that analog/digital shift that was driving hyper-growth previously. This means there is more competition for attention than ever before because content keeps scaling disproportionately to attention. So, while this creates a problem for creators, it does for the platforms too, because they are wondering how to show the best of their growing databases of content. Danny lays out the criteria for highly-ranking content on most platforms, talking about how they are prioritizing richer content, images and videos over text, and fresher content. Even if your post is rich and engaging, if something with equal quality pops up after yours, chances are it will get shown instead because it is fresher. So, the characteristics of richness, visuality, and freshness are being used as a benchmark for quality, and we are starting to see this on Pinterest as well.
Two Strategies for Keeping Your Post High-Ranking
Even while the algorithms that determine quality, top-ranking content are changing, we still encounter situations where old blog posts are appearing on page one of Google. So it goes to show that the freshness category isn't that all-powerful yet. However, Danny believes that to still rank highly in this way, one needs to have a very clear idea of who their post will reach. Increasingly on Pinterest we are seeing that users don’t want to see the same thing twice over. So, there are two strategies here – either know your audience well and make a post that serves them enough that it stays high ranking, or you can update the image or title of the same post to give it a fresh face. On Pinterest, you will often find two images lead to the same link, so this second strategy definitely gets used and works. The act of changing titles and images in a post can also be really good market research, almost like an A/B test, where one gets insights into their audiences' preferences by watching how engagement changes based on which images or titles are being inserted into a post. This feeds into Danny’s ideas about the two sides of marketing, where learning from the needs of your market is often neglected in favor of the distribution, reach, and content side. He reminds us of the value of these A/B tests for learning from your audience.
Best Practices for Posting on Pinterest and Instagram, and Tools Offered by Tailwind
It’s time to pick Danny’s brain about what Tailwind users are doing that is not just increasing traffic but ultimately driving sales too. Tailwind primarily serves Instagram and Pinterest users so Danny talks about the services they offer for these platforms. Before this, he gives some trends about strategies that tend to perform better across all platforms. People who post consistently and according to a plan perform better. Once you have gained a loyal audience, they expect to hear from you often. For Instagram, Tailwind offers a Hashtag Finder tool that locates the most trending hashtags that pertain to your niche. They also offer a tool called Smart.bio that allows you to add links to each post, each of which can be accessed via your main bio. There is also a new tool they released that helps suggest strategies for how to structure posts including a Mad Libs-based title suggestion tool! On the Pinterest side, targeting is still critical but comes in the form of using keywords, phrases, and appealing to niches. Danny suggests a Pinterest creator should imagine the journey of a user, and provide content on the other side of a click that matches expectations. He suggests creators pay attention to trends and seasonality too. Since COVID-19, more people are searching on Pinterest but the way they are searching old topics has changed too! Finally, on the Pinterest side, he recommends posting content regularly. Fresh content on an older topic will still receive hits!
The Relationship Between Your Business Model and Content Strategy
Getting clear on what your business model is is an important question that relates to what type of content you post. We consider the tradeoff that gets made between creating broad appeal versus niche content, where once competition goes down, so does audience size. We are also starting to see business models that used to be separate are beginning to blend. Danny brings up the product versus content models and talks about how each is beginning to incorporate tactics typically associated with the other. Product companies are needing to create content to help with advertising and the monetization methods used by content creators such as ads and affiliates are creating less revenue, causing them to start selling merchandise associated with their content. Having your own monetization engine is always a good idea. We get into another associated topic next which is about how to think about repurposing content and the use of cross-platform strategies and Danny weighs in on the idea that it is very business-specific. People who want to start a side hustle will have different approaches to those looking to create long term sustainable businesses. Businesses have grown using only one platform but then they run the risk of plateauing. Diversification is great and repurposing can be very effective if handled correctly, but sometimes it can be a lot more work than it’s worth. For example, podcasts that get streamed on video can work so well if the content is rich enough. However, the other side of this is whether an audience member really cares about watching a talking head for an hour when they can rather listen to it while doing something else. We also consider short form approaches that are used for TikTok and how this strategy is very specific to a particular business model!
Quote This
As you generate a real audience that loves you, they expect to hear from you regularly, and if you’re not fulfilling that part of the expectation, you can lose them just as quickly as you gained them.
—Danny Maloney
Highlights
How Platforms Rank Their Best Content. [0:03:18.4]
Two Strategies for Keeping Your Post High-Ranking. [0:07:13.7]
Best Practices for Posting on Pinterest/Instagram, and Tools Offered by Tailwind. [0:12:40.2]
The Relationship Between Your Business Model and Content Strategy. [0:27:37.8]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:39:55.2]
Create content regularly using Smart Schedule.
For Instagram, experiment with Hashtag Finder and Smart.bio.
For Pinterest, set up board lists, and generate multiple images per post.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Danny Maloney
Tailwind
Danny Maloney is an entrepreneur who loves to help improve lives and careers with technology. He’s CEO & Co-founder of Tailwind and has the pleasure of working with an amazing team to help over 400,000 brands, marketers, and influencers grow their businesses. Danny has been a successful executive at both AOL and Google but he left the corporate world to become an entrepreneur, creating BridesView, a wedding-related website where people could save their favorite items found online that they might want to use for their wedding. He soon found that Pinterest had users engaging with BridesView. Seeing a bigger opportunity, he got the idea to build a platform that could help small-to-large businesses attract and engage customers from Pinterest, and Tailwind was born.
KEY TOPICS
Content strategies, Ranking, Reach, Increasing traffic, Driving sales, Pinterest strategies, Instagram strategies, A/B testing, Business models
