I thought some of you might be interested in how I am running my sewing business behind the scenes.  Someone who write about this quite a bit is Abby from While She Naps  if you want to really learn some good info and detail- like in depth extensive detail, you can go check out her blog.

I find myself easily overwhelmed by too much info on how to run my business.  I am keeping my head afloat by using simple strategies and trying to be consistent.  One foot in front of the the other and keeping myself focused on doing thing I love!  Two things are really exciting and helpful for me right now- Canva and Tailwind.   Both charge a monthly fee but I think they are well worth it!

Tailwind in a scheduling app that I find really helpful.  I originally used it just for Pinterest but now they have an instagram scheduling too.  That is been so awesome!   Here is how tailwind looks when you have the schedule going.

I took an online video class from Simple Pin Media to learn how to use Tailwind to schedule my pinterest strategy.  It is a good course and I may revisit it again.  I think you could learn quite a bit from tailwind’s own video tutorials also.

What I like most about tailwind is planning pinterest out for a month in advance.  I like promoting old and new content from my blog AND promoting other people’s good content and tips about sewing, travel, cooking and parenting.  I do about 50% my stuff and 50% other people’s stuff.  Once a month, I spend a couple hours pinning and going through my own blog and website content and loading up my schedule.  Then I don’t think about pinterest again for a whole month! I think that saves me some serious time.  And, I have grown my pinterest followers and repins by about 25% since I began doing this 3 months ago.

Tailwind is getting involved in instagram scheduling too.  I love IG but find many days I have nothing to new to share.  The weather is terrible (so no pretty sunny light), and I am not sewing anything special, etc.  It’s no secret that to grow your IG, you need to be engaged with not only liking and commenting on other people, but also posting your own.  I don’t mind looking and commenting (people are making such beautiful things all the time!) but it’s the sharing myself that sometimes gets me in trouble.

Below is from my dashboard on the tailwind website and shows what I have been posting on IG lately.  Tailwind allowed me to upload a bunch of photos (about 60 so far) from my computer from my days before IG and from my nice camera.  Photos that I spent a lot of time composing, editing and make just perfect.  In the last month, these “old” photos have made up about 50% of my IG account and really helped me to keep up.  I load them into my “schedule of drafts” but then just use them when I want post but have nothing new to share.

The other website I want to share about (again!) is the Canva website.  It has made my graphics and social media so much easier.  The next few photos are graphics I recently made specifically for pinterest using canva.  Canva gives you blank templates that are perfectly sized to get the most out of your pinterest, facebook, twitter (which I barely do) media campaigns.

A pinterest graphic should be a little longer since- a portrait format.  This makes them viewed more easily on the pinterest platform.  Here is one I just made for the Day Off Backpack using Canva’s easy graphics~

The one below is for my Katie Bird pattern.  This pattern has always been hard for me to make graphics for since it’s shape is long.  Using canva made this much easier!

This one below for the 3 layer clutch was made super easy since I was able to use canva’s easy formats to make my original graphic longer with the wording.  So easy and I think it will be seen more easily on Pinterest this way which will hopefully convince more people to purchase the pattern.

So, why am I telling you all this?  So many people come to my website from reading my book, Sewing to Sell.  I am so grateful that the book has helped so many people.  Starting your own sewing business is fun and exciting challenge.  But keeping it going and spreading the word about what you are creating is the next challenging level and it is a struggle for all of us.  I hope you find these tips helpful in that it might make that challenge easier in some way!