I am not the most enthusiastic fan of social media. It was a huge time waster years ago and I often found myself not caring about what people I barely knew were doing today, yesterday, or a minute ago. But social media seems to be an important component to blogging. Sigh.
I’ve tried out Twitter. I have a private Facebook account. I’ve been working on demystifying Instagram and Pinterest. But, being as far from a social media whiz as I can get, I find it mostly humorous.
Care to know what I think?
Twitter: A practice in being succinct, or a bad speller.
I didn’t like the 3 ring circus that is Twitter. It annoyed me to no end. If I’m going to write about it, I’m going to write a lengthier blog post. I’m a writer. I like metaphors and similes and proper grammar and punctuation. Twitter makes me want to fly far, far, far away (over the hills and through the woods to Grandmother’s house in a land far, far away once upon a time).
Instagram: Every picture has a story.
Cute, and true. Every picture does come with a story. But cue the bad photographer in me. And two kids who either want the camera or won’t stop sticking body parts everywhere. Yeah, you’ll never see a good picture from me, which makes this one a poor choice for me, but maybe someone will get a kick out of that furry blur that I promise you is my cat running from her human siblings.
Facebook: A book of faces and their stories.
No joke, I ended up on Facebook the first time because I read about it in my college’s newspaper and thought it was a book of faces. The writer in me was interested. I was wrong, but people started finding me… But it really is a place for people to share their lives and their stories and the things that mean a lot to them, which is nice, but I’m not big on sharing. Anyone know what I look like? Anyone? Good. We’ll keep it that way.
Pinterest: The kitchen drawer full of random bits of paper.
Okay, I actually like Pinterest. I wanted it early on, but, at the time, could only sign in with Facebook, which I no longer had. Too bad. It’s a nice place to keep interesting ideas and fun things you find that you want to return to. But I can also see it becoming a jumbled mess in a kitchen drawer, just somewhat more organized. If you can remember which board you pinned it to.
I know that’s not all the social media platforms there are, but I’ve had enough trouble figuring these out, so am not inclined to check out any others. Though you can find The Lily Cafe on Pinterest, Instagram (especially if you’re interested in seeing more of my cat), and Facebook. I think this blog can be found under either The Lily Cafe or Kat from the Lily Cafe. Like I said, I’m bad when it comes to social media.
Hope you had fun! And maybe someone could give me some pointers???
The Lily Cafe 
I love your analogy for Pinterest because its so true!!! It’s a bunch of random mixed into a semi-ordered mess, which is great for the scattered brains like myself who just like to collect ideas and eventually sift through for the easy activities and recipes 😂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It so is! It’s fantastic that there’s one place to collect ideas and it’s possible to create so many individual boards, but the hard part comes in remembering where you put something! I do what you do: collect and then spend forever hunting down the easiest thing to do.
LikeLike
I believe you checked out my feelings about the same and similar media. I had nothing good to say not about Facebook, not Pinterest and Twitter. I have a business page on Fb, so, I really cannot stand how they try to cash in every time something is published or shared: https://inesepogalifeschool.com/2018/06/24/how-social-are-social-media-and-how-they-get-you/
It is good you have better experience, but I cannot share that since I use these media not only for personal reasons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As a millenial, I “should” be savvy with social media and be able to use it to socialize and promote my blog while also enjoying it. But many people call me old fashioned and I just can’t navigate social media. I miss the beginning years of Facebook, when I could just use it to keep up with friends I actually knew. Being fed certain ideas and posts and having to pay is absurd and one reason why I struggle so much with social media. I very much enjoyed your post, and it makes me shake my head at what the virtual world is becoming.
LikeLike
I think it was Michael Hyatt who called social media platforms embassies. They help you communicate what’s going on in your blog but they are not your home land. This helps me a lot because it reminds me not to spend too much time on those sites. The other thing that helped me was to start small. Pick one platform and play around with it until you’re comfortable. Only then move on to a second platform. =)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, that’s such a good way of looking at it! Right now I feel like I’m floundering with what I’m doing and what to do from here, but this really helps me calm down about it. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Kat!
It’s funny how you dislike the few social media giants. I liked your overview and honesty. What you said about Pinterest is so right. I didn’t get into Pinterest until a few days ago, but I was trying to figure it out even earlier. I have a few thoughts about the big four you’d put up here. Let me know what you think.
As an individual user, I’d use Facebook to keep up with friends who I do not see as often as I’d like simply because they are in another country and life gets in the way of travelling. I had been away from my home base for four years and naturally made lots of friends then. When I came back I realised I lost touch with so many people from my home base and it was through Facebook that I slowly regained those contacts and some of those relationships. So I appreciate that people primarily use Facebook to be in touch with their communities. Pinterest was just never for me because I didn’t bother to check it out. After Facebook and Twitter I was like up there with social media. I had an individual Twitter account that I used primarily for work and for catching up on news. Great thing about Twitter is you get news and events almost at real time. I liked that. Finally Instagram. I hate being in front of the camera and I’m not huge on photography. 99% of my photos are of my son and I didn’t want to parade him too much. So no Instagram.
Then I started this blog and i started to assess these social media by what they did for my blog.
Facebook did nothing for me because my target audience is not singapore. I’m a misfit and my parenting ideas definitely don’t fit with the prevalent ideas in singapore.
Twitter helped me gain 1, access to my target audience that are mommies and daddies. 2, access to fellow bloggers much more easily than if I were to search for them by myself. Twitter made me realise that people love funny and the evocative. Twitter helped me find out what parents in my niche talked about. So for my blog Twitter is absolutely invaluable.
I use Instagram to follow influencers in my niche. They’ll never respond unless I’d trollled them enough, but what I’m after are what they put out there day to day and their pictures.
I set up Pinterest a few days ago because I figured it’s where I need to park my content, to get the odd traffic but mostly to have a presence. I don’t see anything back from Pinterest understandably because I haven’t put in a whole lot of effort there. I genuinely believe people on Pinterest may pin your stuff to their boards if they find your graphics compelling but less likely to make a visit to your site to find out more.
Goodness I just wrote an essay. Sorry about that! Let me know how each social media has done for your blog.
Connie
http://www.sassy.mom
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Connie!
Thank you so much for your comment! I definitely feel the same way about it all. I love that Facebook is great for keeping up with friends, but I still haven’t figured out how to make it useful for my blog. I have a page set up, but absolutely zero idea on how to get people to look at it. It definitely feels like something best left for keeping up with friends. Honestly, I never used Twitter until recently as I hate the character restriction, though I can see it’s a great way to keep up with things in real time! Actually, a few months ago we set up an account for the blog, but my husband ran it and was somehow successful using it to drive traffic to the blog, but we became short on time and decided it wasn’t worth it. A few months later, we’re back on it, but this time I’m running it and have no idea what I’m doing. Actually, this is true for me of Instagram and Pinterest as well, though I’m managing to not post pictures of my family and have been getting a handful of so of views, but no concrete cos through to my blog. I usually make Pinterest graphics that I can use on both Pinterest and Instagram, but, like you, have almost no traffic back to the blog. It’s a little frustrating, but perhaps it just takes a ton of time. Though I do love how you said Twitter has been invaluable to you. It does seem like everyone is on Twitter, so I’m thinking I should invest more time in it! A good blogger friend gave me great advice: pick one platform as your home and use the others as embassies to drive traffic to your home. Also, mastering before adding another. Actually, her comment is on this post (Jennifer
M. Zeiger). Personally, I wish blogging didn’t need social media as much as it does, but hopefully in time we’ll see it pay off. Best of luck to you and your blog!
LikeLike