Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook, Oh My!

I finally started in on the social media game!

I've been overwhelmed with the idea of using social media for my websites but I didn't want to miss out on a great source of traffic. So I started a Pinterest account and an Instagram account for one of my websites this week.

I also accidentally made a Facebook page through the instagram account. Hahaha! But I will hold off on doing anything with it until next month.

Here are my first impressions/thoughts:

Pinterest is great and I forgot how much I loved it. I stopped using it personally years ago and I guess I assumed everyone else did the same. But not so! It is booming. I was really surprised to learn how many online business use it to significantly increase their traffic.

I like that Pins can be scheduled as this will help me in the future with automating my posts and not needing to be updating manually. Though I tried to use a "defunct link" with a scheduled pin (the link that would appear once my scheduled post was published) so I will have to stay at least a post behind, making sure that the link is in working order before I can schedule my pins. Which means I really can't work that far ahead and will have to either fall behind in my pins-posts to use scheduling effectively, or continue updating it regularly.

You have one link on instagram an it's in your bio. So I made a landing page on my website that looks like my instagram feed. That way, if people see a post they want to read on my insta, they can easily find it through the landing page, rather than being taken to my full website.

It's going to be some learning. You also can't preschedule with Instagram yet. There are apps that let you scehdule it, but you still have to manually post it. The apps just let you plan out the posts and remind you when it's time to publish.

I think if Instagram added a scheduling feature, it would improve things a lot.

The other thing with social media is that to grow your following, you really do have to interact with others. So I need to set aside some time each week to follow, like, and comment on people's posts on Instagram, and pin people's pins on Pinterest.

I'm keeping busy! But excited to reap the benefits in the future!

Do you have any Pinterest or Instagram tips? Let me know!