Social Media Nail Art: Utilizing Social Media as a Blogger

As most of you know, I’m kind of ~~obsessed~~ addicted to social media. I blame blogging, because prior to blogging I didn’t go on social media as much. I never used hashtags, I hated Twitter (and still am not a huge fan), and I would have never used Facebook as much. Needless to say you NEED social media as a blogger. If you don’t have social media, that needs to change, um, yesterday. I don’t pay attention to likes or followers because I used to and I used to get really down on myself when I wouldn’t get enough likes on an outfit picture. I learned to utilize social media for blogging purposes. I mean, let’s be honest, you’ve seen all of those videos go viral, some even make the news. They also make apps to show you which followers are more active on your Instagram, for example who likes the most or who comments the most. These apps also show you who has unfollowed. This is one thing that drives me crazy when people follow me and I follow them back just to be polite and then they unfollow. With all of that being said for today’s post I wanted to go into the pros and cons of each social media below. The one thing y’all need to realize is once something is on the internet, it stays forever even if you delete it. Someone out there may have screen shot it or shared it so many people could have seen it. If you are trying to make your blog more of a professional job rather than just for fun try not to mix your personal with your blogging. I do a lot of lifestyle posting so I post a little bit of everything, and I’ve also gone and talked about personal things here so for me it’s more for fun. Ok, enough rambling, let’s move onto the discussion about social media.

Instagram @JerseyGirlTexanHeart

Now, Instagram is my favorite. I’ve been using Instagram the most over all social media, even before my blogging was part of my every day life. I used to love filters before I discovered all of the apps that help you edit, or even Instagram finally uploaded their app to have their own editing AND my favorite as of recently was when they finally decided on allowing bigger pictures. Yea, no more Squareready haha! Ok, so let’s get into some pros and cons.

Pros

Visual Audience

If you are a blogger that loves pictures this is perfect for you because it let’s you connect with your readers/followers on a visual level.

Privacy

You can chose on whether or not to make your Instagram, however if you are going to be blogging keep that public because your hashtags won’t work. I didn’t know this in the beginning, oops. Also, if you don’t want people knowing about your blog you can chose not to connect it to Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr and you don’t have to put in your name.

Connecting to other Social media

Now, on the contrary to what I just said under Privacy, if you don’t mind people knowing your biznassss, you can connect Instagram to Facebook, Twiter, and Tumblr. Even though I share all of my posts and links to other platforms I do like that I can instantly at least share something, and the hashtags show up on the other platforms as well!

Cons

No Links

So you can’t add links that are clickable underneath your pictures. Instagram please work on this because that’s the only thing missing for us bloggers because I don’t want to change my profile every day with a specific link to my

Hashtag Limit

There is a hashtag limit. From what I’ve been told you aren’t allowed more than 30 hashtags I believe? Now some people somehow get away with a massive amount of hashtags but I’m not sure how since there’s a limit. Who knows. Also, sometimes Instagram gets a little spastic and hashtags don’t work, so people don’t see your pictures.

Video Limit

I personally don’t mind this because I don’t upload many videos but I know some people have had complaints about the timing.

Twitter @JerseyGTexanH

Personally I don’t like Twitter. I know that as a blogger this should be my lifeline and I should utilize this morning so I probably shouldn’t be giving any advice on this but I’ve gotten better. I’ve started interacting with random people which is pretty cool but I’m still not as active as I should be. I will say that whenever I’m working on campaigns the most traffic I get is from Twitter.

Pros

Large Community

The amount of people on twitter is ridiculous. I get the most random people talking to me through Twitter.

It’s Twitter

I mean, as much as I don’t like it, I know A LOT of people on Twitter. There’s people even having political debates through Twitter. I love when brands favorite or retweet my stuff. Everyone is on twitter, I think that’s the only social media that is the go to for businesses and brands.

Cons

Limited Text

You can only have a certain amount of characters, this drives me up a wall. It’s so hard to connect with people if you’re limited to wording.

When it comes to cons on Twitter I’m going to stop because I really don’t like this social media platform that much so I try not to pay attention to the pros and cons on this one haha.

Pinterest @JerseyGTexanH

Oh Pinterest, how I love you and spend countless hours on your app. I don’t have many followers because to be honest I don’t really follow many people, I really just pin and screen shot if it’s something that I want to do.

Pros

DIY’s

This is perfect for DIY’s. If you are a blogger who loves DIY projects and wants to share them with the world, USE PINTEREST!! It’s perfect for this.

Visual Audience

Just like Instagram this is perfect for a visual audience. I’m not going to lie I look up a lot of things on Pinterest.

Contributing

You can contribute to boards. I haven’t tried this yet, but from what I hear this is perfect for bloggers who utilize social media.

Cons

Sharing

Sharing and hashtagging is still a mystery to me. I feel like tumbleweeds go over my Pinterest posts from my blog except for one pin. My mason jar set of Minions on my Etsy Shop.

Interaction

You can’t really interact as well as other social media. You can send messages, but who wants to be redirected to messages? Ain’t nobody got time fo dat!

Tumblr Jersey Girl, Texan Heart

Oh Tumblr. The most confusing social media platform to me. I’m not sure why this is such a big deal because I almost never go on it. I don’t dislike it like Twitter, but I get bored on it. Maybe it’s just me? That’s why for this one I’m not going to add Pros and Cons because I don’t really use it much.

YouTube Moda by Monika

Ok, so the reason why it’s my old blog name is because I’m a noob and NOT technically savvy so if anyone knows how to change my username to Jersey Girl Texan Heart please leave it in the comments below! I started my YouTube channel last year with my makeup tutorial as my first blogging/vlogging post.

Pros

Vlogging is the New Thing

This is the new trend. There are so many tutorials out on YouTube and I honestly watch them. I watch a lot of them, it’s kind of bad haha. It takes a lot of time to create these videos, I’ve done it and trust me, to edit these videos actually just to shoot them takes a whole day. Ok, maybe not a whole day but my first video took me like 15 tries before I got it down pat.

Interaction

You can interact on YouTube! You can leave comments and reply, it’s great.

Sharing

You can share so easily to any networks. It’s pretty awesome. I share a lot of things to Facebook, and a lot of YouTube videos can go viral. Pretty cool if you ask me!

I honestly don’t have any cons to YouTube except for it just takes forever to edit, but that’s my own problem not YouTube’s. I’m very happy with YouTube and how everything works. It’s very straight forward as well.

Ok, now that I’ve typed ALL of that (haha) I must say that as great as all of these platforms are, you have to remember that they are also negative. You need to understand that there are always going to be something called a troll. Now these people literally just want to make people miserable and they complain about EVERYTHING. You can like ice cream one day and they’ll say it’s disgusting but the next day you’ll say you got sick and now you think it’s gross and they’ll say how can you say that it’s so great. Now, do not let these people get you down. I’ve had some pretty nasty comments made and I’ve deleted them because I can take constructive criticism but cyber bullying no matter how big or small it is will not be tolerated anywhere on my space in cyber world. YouTube provides the thumbs down button and I actually got one on one of my videos and I actually took it personally, but then I thought, ok so lots of people have seen this, I’m sure someone watched it not knowing it was for my blog and they gave a thumbs down because it wasn’t what they were looking for. And honestly it’s ok if someone disagrees with you on something. We don’t always have the same views and we need to understand that it’s ok, it shouldn’t affect you. You have to take the good with the bad and take things with a grain of salt. Other than that part of it, social media is perfect for us bloggers.