I really dig skulls. Not sure why… I’m just into them. I like them in art, in clothes, in jewelry, in home decor… wherever. If you were to read this entire blog before today, would you know that? Nope. Why?… Because there is not one damn skull anywhere on these pages…. well, OK.. there’s the one sitting on my Halloween Porch… but even Miss Midwest Susie Homemaker busts out a skull or two at Halloween, so that one doesn’t count!
Why does all of this matter? I’ve been a fraud. OK.. that’s an over-exaggeration... but somewhere on this blogging journey I completely lost myself, and some of the content I was posting was just simply not me. I’m holding social media responsible for my demise!
I am a rock n roll chic. Rocker… Goth Girl… Gypsy….Victorian… Whatever you want to call it. The shape or extent of my “Dark Vibe” may have varied over the course of time.. but it’s always been there, for as long as I can remember. I also like to bake, and do crafts, and throw parties. Yep… I’m a dichotomy. I’ve always been proud of that. I was Mother Fucking Gothic Martha Stewart.
When I first tossed around the idea of starting a blog, I imagined a lifestyle blog…. where I could talk about style and home decor, and share family recipes and DIY tutorials… but I had one major glaring concern: Will that Scrapbooking-Scarf Knitting-Church Going-PTA mom who just loves my Pecan Butter Balls really want to see pictures of my latest Platform Demonia Boots or that amazing Black Widow necklace? I was doubtful. Enter my adoring husband… who convinced me that there were plenty of women out there who wanted to bake and be a badass. I bought what he was selling, and roughly six months ago, I launched the website.
I started simple with a few recipes.. nothing exciting or badass. I was only planning to post something once a week until I got the hang of it. For traffic… I figured I would throw a picture of each post up on Pinterest and the traffic would come. That was the extent of my plan. Fuck.. did I have a bad plan!!
I’m a competitive person… extremely competitive. When you launch a blog, WordPress provides statistics… how many people clicked on your site today? How many unique visitors visited your site this week? What’s your most popular post this week? Which day had the most clicks? Holy shit!! The statistics began making me crazy. Everyday I became worried about how many clicks and how to get more clicks and more traffic… I began researching like crazy. There were a few answers, but the one that came up the most – Social Media!
I am a Social Media dinosaur. I did not know what Twitter or Instagram were.. and I barely used Facebook… But I jumped right in to Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram. Here’s the thing about Social Media…. I thought I was crazy about stats before…. that was nothing compared to how I felt once I had the social media accounts in place. Your success is measured by followers and likes and comments…. and I became addicted. I was glued to my phone, agonizing over my “stats”… and without even realizing it, the real me began to slip away…
Looking back now, it’s clear how it happened…. I was getting extremely low involvement on Pinterest and Facebook, so I decided to turn my attention to Instagram. I was given the advice that I needed to improve my hashtags if I wanted more people to find and subsequently like my content. I started researching, and came across an entire community who “hosts” hashtags on a specific day or week, and in order to play along, you simply have to follow all of the host accounts and post a picture that fits with the hashtag. I thought that seemed like a great way for people to discover me.
Here is what I did not consider…. 1) the “hosts” of all of these hashtags were not necessarily the kind of accounts that I would otherwise want to follow, so even though I was getting a few extra likes and a few extra follows, my feed was becoming riddled with those god-awful Rae Dunn mugs… and cheesy birthday parties… and farmhouse this and that…. and white on white on white home decor. What the hell is going on with all of the all-white home decor?!?!?! This barrage of content fucked with my head, and I began to have the impression that this is what the world wanted to see…. 2) by playing along with these hashtags, I was no longer posting the kind of content I wanted, but the kind of content they wanted. Only three short months into my Social Media exposure, and I no longer recognized myself.
Let me be a cautionary tale for you all!!
Here’s what I have learned….
- Be selective about who you follow on Instagram. Follow as many as you want, but just remember that their profiles become your feed.
- Don’t follow the crowd. Be you. Be awesome authentic you. There are more than 500 million Instagram members. There will be people out there interested in your content… regardless of what you’re seeing in your feed.
- Improve your hashtags. This was actually great advice.. I just handled it incorrectly. Research some other posts that are similar to yours, and start making note of the hashtags they use.
- When getting started, use all 30 hashtags if you can. The more you have, the better chance you have of someone finding your post. I like to have a mix of well-used tags as well as some lesser used ones.. you never know when one might catch on. I also like to test out new ones every once in a while to see what kind of response I get.
- Involve yourself in the community of Instagrammers similar to you: like their posts… write comments. It all comes full circle!
- Don’t live or die over the followers and likes and comments. If you stay true to yourself, and follow the above steps… the stats will come.
Lucky for me… I realized my mistakes….. and it’s never too late to turn things around and get back to being me… Based on some advice to focus my energies on my blog and only 2 social media outlets… I am happy to be parting ways with Facebook. I’ll continue to have patience with Pinterest, and stand behind the fact that if I am truly being myself… the followers and traffic will come! As for Instagram… little by little I am unfollowing all of those accounts that got me off of my game. My profile has already begun it’s transformation…. and I couldn’t be happier to be showing the world the real me… the badass me! As for this blog… I am considering this day 1. Rebranding is in the works… and from now on… there will be skulls.
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