I am by no means a social media expert. Frankly, my 14-year-old teaches me something new almost every day. I don’t Snapchat. I don’t understand Google+ (and I thought it was going away anyway???). I don’t even like Periscope. I only halfass Twitter. But… I have made huge strides in the few outlets I’ve tried to focus on. Okay, maybe huge is a stretch. But pretty damn big anyway.
Tip: Use the same name under all of your social media accounts so it is easy for your readers to find you.
That is one thing I did do right was secure and use the same handle on all my social media accounts. You can find me under Smart Girls DIY at each of these places:
- Pinterest.com/smartgirlsdiy
- Instagram.com/smartgirlsdiy
- Facebook.com/smartgirldiy
- Twitter.com/smartgirldiy
- Youtube.com/smartgirlsdiy
For even more tips, you can checking out my blogging friends who posted on this same topic today as part of our Behind the Blog Series. (There links are at the bottom of this post)
I know. Facebook sucks. It sucks your time as a reader and it sucks even bigger as a referral source for bloggers. But I still do it. A lot of “my people” aren’t on any other social media sites. And I’m not even that old! So I find FB is a good place to actually keep in touch with my readers, you know, as opposed to other bloggers or businesses.
Note to self: Update the flipping header on your Facebook page. It’s super dated!!
When I attended the Haven Conference last July (read my recap posts HERE and HERE) I had almost 3,000 FB followers. Not too shabby! It was by far better than the 100 I had on Instagram. Lol. One of the sessions I went to was about Facebook and I must say a learned a lot. For instance, you have to post on FB like 10x/day every day or you will make FB mad. And when FB gets mad at you it doesn’t show anyone your feed. So I started posting more. I scheduled posts ahead of time so it wouldn’t be such a time suck. And it seemed to work. But it’s hard to keep up with, and eventually I went back to posting whenever I had something interesting to share.
Tip: If you really want to make the FB gods happy, you have to share posts that are already kind of popular. You will get lots of clicks and it will be good for your FB karma.
Against the advisement of the presenters at the conference, I also started running an ad on Facebook. I figured… there must be people out there who would like my blog, and my FB page, if only they knew about it. But I’m cheap. So I decided to spend $5 a day and see how it went. Facebook estimated I’d get something like 15 LIKES a day for my $5, which would be $.33 per like. Well as it turns out I started pulling in over 200 likes per day! Which meant I was paying about 2 cents per like! So I kept the ad going. I figured I’d stop when I hit 6,000. But that came super fast, so I decided to wait until 10,000. I forget (and FB doesn’t save the info) how many likes I was at when I stopped the add, but I ran it all summer and today I have 19,321 followers on Facebook
Awesome right??? Not really. Facebook only shows my posts to about 500 – 1,200 people. And that’s only when a post is getting likes and comments. If nobody likes something I post, Facebook will only show it to about 50 people. Out of nearly 20,000 followers!!! Sigh.
What I mean about the referrals is that, on a normal day, I get anywhere from 0-20 people visit my blog from Facebook. That stinks! But it probably has a lot to do with the fact that I haven’t been posting on the blog much at all. But still. And then there was the time that Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons shared my Nisse post and that thing went viral. 
This is the only screenshot I have, but no joke that one Facebook got shared and shared and shared and I had over 35,000 visitors to my blog the next day!!! C.R.A.Z.Y. So the point is that Facebook can be awesome if you have over 3 million followers like Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons does, and everything you post has tons of influence. But for the rest of us, Facebook is just a necessary evil.
Instagram is really where it’s at for bloggers. I don’t do it really well. At all. But that’s okay I went from 100 followers last June to 701 today, just being me. Of course you should go follow me. Oh wait, you’re over 30 and you don’t have an Instagram account. Well you should! Damn it. Especially if your name is Shari and you live for interior design stuff. Instagram is for you. Go do it!
Tip For Old People: Instagram is an app thing. Not a website thing. So use your phone and download the app. You can do it!
Don’t get me started on Instagram’s new logo. It was once awesome and is now heinous. Enough said.
Tip: Hashtags are not dead! Even though my 14-year-old wouldn’t be caught dead using them.
Hashtags are a fun way to search and organize your pictures. You can search for my personal hashtags like #smartgirlskitchenreno, #pottybymonday, #luandmoe and #smartgirlsbathremodel
Oh how I love Pinterest. But honestly, I use it for me. I don’t try to post stuff I think will be popular. I post stuff that I genuinely want to save for myself. And my followers have still been growing. You should go follow me on Pinterest right now (Dude, click HERE) because I am sooooo close to 4,000 followers. I’ve more than doubled my followers since last summer, by doing nothing but pinning when I feel like it. The formulas for getting good exposure on Pinterest change almost as often as the ones for Facebook, so I don’t even pay attention to them.
I only have the Smart Girls DIY account, I gave up my personal one long ago, although I did have a lot of early follower momentum going on on personal account. Oh well.
Tip: You can check what’s been pinned from your website (or one you’re stalking) by adding /source/thewebsite.com after pinterst.com
While I rarely check, it’s nice to know I can see what people are pinning (organically) from my blog, as opposed to repinning from Pinterest. To check, I go to… https://www.pinterest.com/source/smartgirlsdiy.com/
YouTube
OMG YouTube. I never meant to set up a channel. I only started posting videos to YouTube so I could add them to my WordPress blog without the videos slowing down my website. But people started subscribing. Before I even realized I had a channel! 
So now I have one. With a nice header. And 464 subscribers. I never check it though. You have to have very thick skin for YouTube. It usually ruins my day to see the comments. And, yes, I know I can turn them off, but in the end I think it’s hysterical that people waste their time being so negative about someone’s videos. My brother nearly peed his pants the first time he read the comments on my most popular video: My Experience with Self Leveling Underlayment. (Over 143,000 views!)
This video is over 12 minutes long, which is NOT the recommended length. And I never claim to be an expert at anything, but still haters gonna hate. And lovers gonna love. I guess… “good work and nice butt too!”
Tip: People don’t like to watch YouTube videos that are longer than 3 minutes.
Be sure to check out more social media tips from my blogging friends. They’re obviously going to know more than I do!!!
Social Media Marketing for Bloggers | The Natural Homeschool
Behind the Blog: Social Media Tips | The Speckled Palate
Behind the Blog: Social Media Tips & Tricks | Twin Stripe
Instagram Tips (from an Instagram Addict) | Arts & Crackers
Well, I’m still doing everything wrong on social media, Haven or no Haven. I feel like I’d be badgering people on Facebook by posting all of the time even though I know that they won’t see all of them. My Pinterest is terrible but I only started worrying about it 2 weeks ago. I’m bad about pinning my own content and just use it to save pretty stuff for me, but I’m trying to make my boards more useful so people will follow. No videos, now or ever. I love Instagram but only post my own photos, which is hard to keep up with. I’d have more followers if I posted every day, but who has that many pretty photo ops in their home? And I know it’s weird, but I don’t feel like it’s right to grow an IG following off the backs of other people’s pictures. I know I’m in the minority on this, but I won’t like a photo if it doesn’t belong to the person’s account. I like taking a hard line on pointless issues. 😉
Great tips here! And I love that you’ve offered them. I’ve wanted to try out video, so maybe it’s time I gave YouTube a try. Maybe some cooking tutorials that are short and sweet? Hmm.
That’s amazing about your FB growth, too! Keep it up, lady! I love how we’ve all brought different social media experiences to the table and shared ’em. So helpful since we all know a little something different.