My Week In Social Media!

Well, I did the whole SEO thing for about three hours last night. For those not in the know about the inner workings of that wonderful thing called the Interweb, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. It's a fairly difficult thing to master unless you first understand how powerhouse search engines such as Google work.

I must admit that even though I have been involved with the Internet since the 90's, sometimes it leaves even me perplexed. Facebook for example, I don't think I will ever figure it out. They have an algorithm that decides what people see on their timelines, and here's the problem.

Facebook is actually way too big to show everything posted by everyone to everyone. Unless your Facebook page is liked by many people, it takes some serious amount of work to organically boost your post so that more people see it.

What do I mean by organically you ask? Well, basically it means that you are not paying to promote your post. I ran a few days of ads on Facebook, it cost me a ton of money and I ended up with thirty or so new page likes after the ads were finished. Now, if you have a big advertising budget, I can see how it works. If like me you are a mere mortal trying to boost traffic, well the odds are stacked well and truly against you. Unless of course your page is full of funny cat memes or you post some really interesting but not quite true celebrity gossip.

So, Facebook is perhaps one of the hardest social media platforms to break through when you are just starting out. Don't get me wrong, you kind of need a Facebook page so that ol lowers can connect more easily with you. That's the bit that's called relationship building, and it's important. You need to put some human communication in your online presence.

That brings me on to Twitter. I opened a Twitter account (you can follow me @beechhouseart) just under a week ago. I hadn't even made a second post when I noticed my follower count had gone into double figures. Less than a week later I've broken through the 100 followers barrier, and I'm starting to see some real engagement such as retweets, favourites, and great interaction in my direct messages.

I also have a Pinterest account. You can follow me @beechhousemedia and again, the number of followers over the last week has increased my count to over 250. How is this so? I decided that I would interact more with other pinners by repinning their pins and making sure that I have only great quality content.

It's not difficult, but I know Pinners who are struggling to get into double digits in terms of followers. The reason is that the content they pin isn't always that great. They sometimes pin something that results in the viewer receiving a 404 File Not Found code on the website. Consequently, that content never really gets repinned, and the content that they post rarely ends up in their followers feeds.

The other method I have noticed that helps to increase followers is to pin what is currently trending. Only the trick is to find something on the web that no one has yet pinned. I also follow some pinners who have clearly got Pinterest down to scientific precision. They usually have 7k+ followers, they're always active, and they are generally the key pinners who can actually decide what is going to be the next trending topic.

I guess they started off somewhere around the zero follower mark at some point, and what I take from this is that you really need to be patient with social media. You also need great content, and you also need to do some research into what's hot, and what's not. Then you need to go with the hot.

As for my Google Plus page, it's another social media platform I can't really work out. I've have had over 9000 page views this week, and I have only posted two items from my Zazzle and Fine Art America artist stores.

So is it difficult as an artist to break into social media and be successful? Yes, is the answer for me, but I would love to hear about your experiences. Please leave a comment and let's start the discussion to see if we can collectively fathom the whole social media thing out!

And this is this weeks preview from an abstract piece I am working on. It's taking me forever to assemble it all! This section alone took me the best part of three hours! Hope you like where I'm going with it!

 

Copyright M.A - Beechhouse Media