Whining About Social Media...Again

Facebook Idea???

Last weekend I got so tired of spending my Sundays working on social media that I did absolutely nothing. It is time to rethink my social media plan.

Pinterest

After a few week of tracking, I can see that time spent on Pinterest seems to pay off the best.  I'm slowly managing to pick up followers, and I could actually stand to put in a little more effort to accelerate that process. It's kind of like instant gratification since everything I do seems to work in terms of bringing more people to my shops or following new people to get them to follow me - I just need to do a little more of it. No complaints there...

Facebook

So from the best to the worst - Facebook is definitely my worst. Granted a lot of that is my fault since I don't particularly like the idea that people are "notified" every time I add an update. Sure it would be easy enough to add product information, but I know I wouldn't want to see continual advertising popping up on my feed, so I don't want to go there except for to call attention to occasional new items that I think people would find interesting. Etsy has lots of advice in that area, and they agree that the "sell, sell, sell" approach is annoying. They suggest posting more informational types of content to break up the advertising. I could post photos of shoelaces-in-progress or the crazy piles of orders I have to get out the door each  morning. I've got nowhere to go but up with Facebook, and I seem to be getting enough views now that it would be worth getting that one figured out.

A.L. Theboupro Blog

This blog was setup to be more of an as-needed way to organize my thoughts with everything I've got going on (like I'm doing now!), so my attempt to turn it into a scheduled weekly process doesn't make sense.  That's an easy one to fix.

Lost in Lace Blog

This one is a serious PITA, and I don't know where I got it in my head that I needed to add a post every week. It's not really the kind of blog that a person would follow, and the only real followers I'm after with this blog are Googlebots. It's a good way to point folks to my shoelace shops when they do internet searches for information. Maybe someone searching will find a particular article helpful, but I doubt many people would be interested in every article out there. I know if I'm reading a one-off blog article, I  just prefer to see that articles have been written in the last few weeks to know the blog is being maintained. When the last article was written in 2007, I have to wonder if there is better information to be had. It's certainly not a problem to add a post every few weeks - I can handle that.

Gawking Not Shopping Blog

I completely got myself off track with this one. I'm supposed to be updating this one as I do research on Etsy, and now I find myself saving links as I do research, so I can post everything on Sundays. How stupid is that?  I added dates to the tops of the pages, so I can change them each time I edit them. Again, as long as I'm updating them regularly, it doesn't need to be a scheduled process. One way or the other I'll do research on Etsy, so I know the pages will always get updated if I just do it the way I planned to do it (i.e. the way I used to do it before I got carried away with scheduling things).

Tumblr

Tumblr is a little difficult since it isn't setup for adding lots of content. I'm seeing almost no hits on my sites from my Tumblr account. The more I think about Tumblr, the more I'm inclined to just post best-selling items or anything I expect will get a lot of interest. I'll keep playing with that one here and there to see if I can pick up on any trends to accentuate, but I've got nothing to work with so far.

At the moment these are the only social mediums that are taking up my time. Hopefully a less scheduled approach to the blogs will keep me out of this time-consuming Sunday rut. I can't be spending so much time on blogs! It looks like Pinterest will get a little more time, and Facebook just needs to get some time...anything at all would be good there -ha! Alright, so here we go with the "new" social media plan.

Managing the Pace

When I would take an occasional week of vacation from my day job, I'd spend the entire week frantically trying to accomplish some things for my side businesses. It was usually a bit of a relief to get back to work to switch to a more normal pace after those kinds of "vacations". With my day job only being officially gone for a week now, I went into vacation mode without even realizing it, and I'm pretty much exhausted today. I'll need to consciously set a reasonable pace next week before I make myself sick. I can only laugh since planning how to do that took me awhile.

One thing I can do is stop myself and go for a walk, and that would be a good habit to get back into...I keep saying that, but I'm not doing a great job of doing it. I took the picture above on my walking path today, and it will be beautiful in a few more weeks. It's always fun to walk with leaves bouncing off of my head, so hopefully that will help encourage me. I think they say it takes 29 days to form a habit, so I've got a few more days to go on that one.

I'm also thinking I need to schedule in a few things around the house that will get me out of the frantic work mode. Next week the plan is to get my indoor plants cleaned up and ready for winter (I literally have 100+ plants in the house, so that's a major project), then I need to go all out on the Halloween decorations this year, and it wouldn't hurt to tackle a cleaning project or two. It also dawns on me that I could make some bath bombs (I make the world's best bath bombs if I do say so myself) and take a bath or two during the week. I've got large windows surrounding my tub, so I'll bet I won't have any trouble convincing myself to do that as the leaves start to turn.

Well, I  guess that wasn't so hard after all. Now I just have to make myself stick to the plan. We'll see how I do. :)

Quit Your Day Job

For those of us who shop or have shops on Etsy, we've all seen Etsy's aspirational "Quit Your Day Job" slogan from their blog. As of this week, I have officially done just that and can focus solely on my shops and my new social media sites. I have the plan outlined for the next couple of years, and during that time I hope to add more of my designs (particularly jewelry!) that I've never had time to bring to my shops as well as to share more and better information on my sites and blogs. I can't wait to get started, so I won't! Of course the Novapsis shop is still the primary focus for the moment to get plenty of products ready for the holidays. As far as social media goes, I think the best part will be having all week to work on posts/pins/updates rather than trying to cram everything into Sundays. It will be interesting to see how much I'll really stick to my outlined plan, but I have to start somewhere even if I wind up making drastic changes as I go.

The weird part now is going to be missing my old job. Since my vacations have always been devoted to working on my businesses rather than actually taking a break, I'm hoping that this coming week feels like a vacation, and I'm not missing my job. Last week was so awful saying goodbye to people I've known for nearly 17 years, and I'm the worst at keeping in touch with people. It's just an overwhelming feeling of loss at the moment.

What I didn't expect was to be so comfortable and confident with the go-forward plan. I figured I'd be trying to fight back some fear about now, but it seems like I've got plenty of time to accomplish everything. It didn't hurt that I've been inundated with orders all week either -ha! It's pretty much just as I'd hoped it would feel; I'm in charge, and who better than me to make it happen? There's going to be a lot of work and of lot of excitement ahead, but I'm more than ready!