Reflections on August and Social Media Tools For The Blog

Cherralle

8 years ago

I am three months into my blogging journey. Yay! Still going strong and still wondering why I picked this as a hobby *tongue in cheek*. Last month I blogged why I want to write for working mothers, you may check out this post here.

This update will consist of:

What I learnt in August
Social Media and Its Tools – how it is going so far
Top 5 articles for the month of August

What I learnt in August

Life stuff

Young people have wisdom too. I was blown away by a group of young women who shared their story at Womens’ Day Event at work. Two of whom were in their twenties and they were mining engineers (yes miners who went underground!). They each shared their teachable point of view and a life lesson. These young women were strong enough to break into a male dominated industry, but also learned how to thrive and maintain their own identity as women.
I cannot manage time. I have given up on managing time. The hours are the hours. As life gets more intense with work and personal demands increasing, its what I choose to do with my time. Prioritization is important.
Motherhood is not always joyous. I don’t need any person to agree or disagree. I own it. Its tiring, exhausting, and sometimes I want to do other stuff. But I trek home and do my part for my kids. I wrote about the part of the motherhood we do not Instagram about here.

Blog stuff

I optimized my blog for mobile. Very critical as 80 – 90% of people reading, do so on their phones. I was stuck on how it looked on desk top, I neglected the mobile piece. Well that is fixed now!
Bloggers are the friendliest bunch of people you will ever meet! I attended my first blogger meet up though SA Mom Blogs!
I guest posted on Nicole Subben’s blog Peanut Gallery 24/7 about top three books for women; and one my articles was posted on Parent 24, You Online and Women 24, check it out here.
I learnt about Social media! See next section!

How Social Media is Working Out For Me

Facebook

I launched my Facebook page in Early August. Yay! Using facebook from the perspective of a ‘blog’ is very different. Facebook is a channel for me to get my posts out to my target audience.

Facebook remains my main source of traffic (90%).
Organic reach on facebook remains very low and it is predicted to become lower, and so ‘boosting’ is required. Only 16% of your page fans on Facebook will see your post.
Your Facebook page is a heaven for marketing , if you do targeted boosting.
Boosting an actual post, even for $2 for a day or two may be needed in order to get it in front of the right eyes
A combination of timing (Thurs/ Friday is better); an engaging caption and ‘clickable’ blog post title grabs attention!

[bctt tweet=”Facebook drives 90% of my blog traffic. But Low Organic reach is a reality (more boosting)” username=”cherralle_”]

Instagram

http://www.instagram.com/cherralle

I have a love hate relationship with Instagram.

I find it fun and beautiful.
The fact that someone can use one picture and tell a short story around it, is amazing.
Engagement, is short and sweet
Instagram has expanded its offerings with stories, live streaming and multi picture posts! Its definitely a platform I will continue to spend time on.
What annoys me is people who follow you, wait for you to follow them then unfollow you! Its exhausting. Can people just follow who they want to follow? Stop being dodgy.

Twitter

@cherralle_

I am loving twitter.

I have been using Hootsuite to proactively schedule out tweets. Which is helpful as I do not have much opportunity to tweet during the day.
Hootsuite is one of my ultimate favourite tools right now plus they have an awesome blog for of useful content!
I definitely find myself using Twitter a lot. I am reading articles and blogs from twitter mostly. Personally it’s my ‘go to’ platform for reading and education at this stage.

I am experimenting with the free versions of Tailwind and Boardbooster to schedule daily pins. Pinterest is not a social media platform but a visual search engine. And so, the idea is to generate traffic from Pinterest through creating visually appealing pins linked to my blog. In this way I could get into the news feed of my audience or in search results. I will see how that goes! Pinterest now matches Instagram in terms of website traffic. No, don’t get excited, its miniscule! Oh, and I changed my profile to a business account, which has more features.