Categories
Blogging

Socializing

Guess what? I finally opened up a Twitter account last weekend for my blog! I’m going to experiment with it a bit, but I’m not sure if it will stick. We’ll see how it goes! What is sure is that I’ll be focusing most of my online energy here on my blog, this is still my main channel.

If you’re on Twitter, connect with me! @SnowMeltsSW

Pensive penguin in Patagonia (2014) – loving the alliteration – maybe (s)he needs to network more!

I also re-signed up for Bloglovin’, which I actually tried out once before but didn’t really get into it. (In case you didn’t know, Bloglovin’ is another site for following blogs and reading their latest posts. You could of course also simply subscribe to follow me by email or RSS feeds.)

I’d love to hear about other bloggers’ experiences with social media – has it increased your blog traffic or is it just an additional channel to manage? Do you know of any other popular blog lists or blog reading sites besides Bloglovin’ which might be worth trying?

I’m still thinking about Instagram… maybe that will be next. (Facebook is pretty much out of the question – I just don’t want to go there)

I have to tell you though, Twitter has gotten me a bit excited already. It’s interesting seeing what kind of things people are doing over there. It’s a whole new world for me.

Find me on Twitter: @SnowMeltsSW

Edit: updated Twitter handle

55 replies on “Socializing”

Oooh, look at you, pensive penguin tentatively socialising! 😀 Wishing you all that you wish from this experience, and more.

As for me, I’m promoting my blog only on fb. Surely it gets me traffic, mostly from my original country, but as people tend to be rather lazy, not many follow the link posted there to actually visit my blog. I have yet to try twitter, more visitors would always be nice, but the last thing I need is more great blogs to visit. I’m VERY behind on all my favourite blogs as it is, and could really not add any more, no matter how wonderful they might be. And we know there are always more that we would enjoy, alas time is limited.

Well, I hear tweets are limited in size – so you should be done with them more quickly. 😀 Enjoy!

Liked by 1 person

Thanks, MM! I still haven’t figured out the point in having limited-sized tweets but maybe I’ll get it eventually if I stay around long enough? I’m concerned about time, too. I really WOULD like to do other stuff with my spare time than always be on a computer. But then again, where I live the weather’s often bad so it’s not like I’m missing much by staying inside… 😀 Hmm, we’ll see how it goes!

Liked by 1 person

Following you on Twitter 😉
I think Twitter is the most challenging for me, because I’m such a visual person I like to share photos more than really tweet small sentences (I never know what to say! ahahah!). So I share some of my photography and I retweet photos from other accounts that I like.

I’m on Bloglovin too but I use it only to follow blogs that are not on WordPress. That way I can follow all WP blogs through my WP reader, and the rest on Bloglovin.

I really like Instagram, but again because I’m so visual and my main goal is to share my photography (not my blog) I feel it really works for me.

Above all what I like the most is to be able to connect with people. I don’t “follow for follow” or worry too much about how many followers I have. I think if you don’t connect with people it doesn’t really make sense… at least for me it doesn’t! 🙂

Liked by 1 person

I know what you mean about connecting – I feel that way about my blog! If I didn’t get all these lovely comments from other bloggers, I don’t know why I would keep on blogging. So, I’m looking forward to connecting with you on Twitter! 😉 I’m a bit unused to the idea of retweeting, haven’t reblogged anything either, there’s going to be lots to learn on Twitter. As for the visual side, that bothers me a bit, too. I did one tweet without a photo, just to try it out, and it felt so WRONG!! ;D hahaha

Liked by 1 person

I never reblogged either, since my blog is so personal I feel I should only post my own posts. But on Twitter for some reason it feels right, to retweet and share. You share other people’s stuff and they share yours 🙂 I guess each social media channel has its own dynamic and you just need to adapt to it. See you there too then!

Liked by 1 person

Congrats. My blog has led me to open a Twitter account too last year and recently opened an Instagram account which I had always vowed never to do…but it is kinda nice (and it is very new, just yesterday I was stumped about how to add a photo…). I look at it as support for my blog, and hopefully they will not take up too much energy. Twitter, by the way, seems a bit overwhelming for me (too much going on…) 🙂

Like

The pace on Twitter seems to be super fast! Many people use it professionally but how do all those professionals ever get any work done when the norm is to do several tweets a day?! Hmmmmm… Good luck with your new Instagram account – hope you don’t become too addicted 😉

Like

Sorry to jump in the conversation, but there are third-party websites that let you schedule your tweets. So for example you could sit down in front of your computer on Monday for 1 hour and schedule all your tweets for the entire week. That’s how professionals tweet several times a day while working on their business 😉 One of these websites is called Buffer if you want to check it out.

Liked by 1 person

Oh, okay! 🙂 Here on WP the scheduled posts never seem to work for me (some kind of bug) so I’d kind of dismissed that as an option. I’ve also read somewhere that many people retweet their own tweets several times to gain even more exposure for them, which seems weird from a blogger’s perspective 😉

Liked by 1 person

My thoughts exactly…social media can be crazy. Lost my phone in Munich last month, and a week without it was pretty liberating ~ loved it (still had my ipad and computer though for email!).

Like

I have a Facebook page (mainly for friends to follow and to keep things separate from my personal FB site), Twitter and Google+. I also recently joined Pinterest and like you, tried Bloglovin’ but couldn’t get into it.
The biggest traffic I get outside of WP is from Twitter – using the hashtags well, especially those specifically for sharing blog posts (SundayBlogShare, MondayBlogs etc) really help. People rave about all the other platforms but I’ve not seen the benefits – that said, I put more work into Twitter than any of the others which likely explains it. It all becomes a little time consuming to manage when you have several though!

Liked by 1 person

I tried Pinterest a while ago, too, but then stopped. Maybe I’ll go back someday. Thanks for telling me about those blog share hashtags – I had no idea! Where did you find about them – where can I find more? I’ve googled popular hashtags, looked at the trending lists etc but I’m still very confused as to how people know which hashtags to use when they’re not obvious one-word ones?

Liked by 1 person

You’re welcome! A lot of it was trial and error with me – people make hashtags of anything now! But this blog post really helped (Suzie is the one who started Sunday Blog Share)

How To Use Twitter Hashtags to Increase Your Traffic

Beyond that I just type in a hashtag and see if Twitter suggests anything – if it comes up in a list then it means it’s already being used. Just click on it to see if people are using it for the reasons you want and if tweets are recent. Hope that helps! 🙂

Liked by 1 person

Go with Twitter – you can connect it to WP so that each new post automatically goes on, and then people who follow you will often retweet. You will slowly build up a following, and also follow people you are interested in, as well as newspapers etc. some cool stuff out there. I’m not into Facebook either. The only problem with all of these networks is, you seem to spend a lot of time on them instead of writing, or reading a book for example…

Liked by 1 person

The time thing has been my main concern. Sometimes I’d like to just relax on my time off, like you said, read a book. But it seems that my to-do list is endless and I have a hard time closing my laptop and just being in the moment. So now I’ve just added to my to-do list, yikes! Happy to hear from the comments here that Twitter was a good choice. Anyway, it seems these days tweeting is a “skill” that you should know, even at work…

Liked by 1 person

I’d be interested to hear what your experience is with Twitter. I’ve considered starting an account but a little bit of looking around on there tells me that people often don’t get much interaction on it – e.g. emerging authors and even some best-selling ones. I deleted my Google+ account for that reason, but have a slightly better response posting photos on Instagram.

It appears Facebook has some mechanisms that can limit how visible posts are, depending what’s posted, if it links offsite, the more likes you get the more visible you are etc.

WordPress seems to work best for me, so this is where I’m focussing my efforts for now.

Liked by 1 person

I’ve been very happy with WordPress, too. And I don’t even know if my goal is to grow my blog – I mean, this is just a hobby for me so what does it matter in the end if I have 600 followers or 6000? There are so many blogs out there with huge followings, even the numbers aren’t enough to make it into a business, and like I said, that’s not even my goal. I love how bloggers interact here on WP and the Reader is just so easy to use. So for a long time I though, why make things complicated. (I still don’t know why I did it, finally joined Twitter! I guess the thought just hung in the back of my mind for a long time and then I finally acted on it…) By the way, I think Twitter has the same mechanism of selectively choosing which posts to make visible… Luckily the Reader on WP doesn’t do that!

Like

Update on progress, since you said you’d like to know how it went… So far, I’ve gained 100 followers on Twitter, though I’ve been there less than a week!!! Most are bloggers. But less than 10 clicks to my blog, according to WP stats – which is my goal, after all

Liked by 1 person

That’s what I’ve been thinking, too. I feel like people probably won’t click their way to my blog because that would be too time consuming, since the amount of tweets and blogs and pretty pictures out there is so endless and who has the time? But at least I’ll get a look into what’s going through the minds of all those tweet-aholics… 😉

Liked by 1 person

I use Instagram; it’s pretty good and easy to use. Once in a while I do get clicks from Instagram. Tumblr is another option you can try. I mostly use Tumblr and FB. Plus, having a good title helps SEO.

Liked by 1 person

I think the problem comes when you have to many blogs to follow! I concentrate on email subscriptions. But my inbox fills up so quickly over 2-3 days it’s like a mountain to climb! Bloglovin is an interesting creature. Still not really sure how to use it!

Liked by 1 person

Grrr… I just wrote a long comment and pressed the wrong button 😛
In 3 sentences, then: Happy to follow you on Twitter too 🙂
Twitter: promo of my posts and retweets. SHould do more but it is sooo time consuming that if you want to see people in 3D too, you can not really maximise your use of twitter..
Instagram: yes! yes! yes! I love it, so simple, easy and nice. Your pic are great, you should give it a try. See you here and there 😉

Liked by 1 person

Happy to see you on Twitter! Twitter is such a strange new world to me that I’ll take my time to get to know it, among all the other 3D things life consists of 🙂 Like you suggested, I honestly don’t know how some people find time for all this, though sure, you can automise some functions, but still… See you soon on Twitter, where I’m headed now!

Liked by 1 person

Yes, you’re becoming a real social animal. I hope you do much better than me with all those things. I signed up for Twitter a year ago, but left it sitting there until very recently. I also signed up for LinkedIn at the same time (on someone’s invite) – and have, as yet, done nothing with that. To be honest, I’m not sure what to do with it. But that’s me all over. I also have a FB account – yes, you guessed it … hardly anything on it. Having enough time for these and still write seems impossible to me. I love my blog and don’t want to give that up. I can’t keep away from it no, and I’m supposed to be having a ‘blogging break’.
Thank you again for connecting with me on Twitter and for adding me to your list. You seem to be doing well on Twitter.
Long comment – apologies. I got a bit carried away. 🙂

Like

Don’t apologize! I’ve missed your long comments! 🙂 I completely understand the need for a blogging break though, if you need to get some writing done. I’m concerned with time management now that I went on Twitter. If I need to cut something out, then everything else can go except this blog 🙂 I love blogging, too. I’ve already noticed how much more superficial and commercial Twitter is. But I guess that’s how I’m using it, too: just to promote my blog. Well, people say they use it to connect but I don’t see a lot of discussion going on in the non-celebrity accounts. I personally feel like WordPress is much better for really connection with interesting, like-minded people. With no limit of how many characters you can use, haha 🙂 As for Twitter, I have only received a few clicks to WordPress, some of which were probably by me! So I’m not sure if it’ll help grow my blog in any other way than inflating my blog’s follower number since using Publicize adds Twitter followers to my blog follower count (which is cheating, in my opinion)… Well, I do get some exposure and maybe it’s good for consistent branding… but other than that… I don’t know. Many people schedule their tweets and I’ve done that now, too (on Tweetdeck) but if everyone schedules their tweets than doesn’t it mean that no one is actually on Twitter reading the tweets?? Hmm. Funny world.

Like

I think time management is o problem for many people, no matter what they do in lifelife. I talk too much, I know. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed teaching so much. It’s the interactions with people I like. And you’re right, you don’t get that on Twitter. Like you, I’ll see how it goes for a while. 😀

Liked by 1 person

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.