Howdy adventurers! This will be my last post for the time being, as my class nears to an end. In this post I will discuss my experience branding myself with social media, and using WordPress. I will also be sharing my stats from WordPress and what I believe made some posts popular, and others not so much. Overall, I am very proud of my work, and I will be continuing my blog in the future.
I am a very quiet person, and I seldom post on social media in general because I am afraid to come off as annoying. I really had to get over that fear this semester and push myself to be a personality my readers could connect to, even if it meant stepping way out of my comfort zone. I made a new Twitter account for my posts, so I wouldn’t spam my friends on my personal account with blog updates. My first post was one of my most liked posts. I remember shortly after posting it, seeing my phone light up with notifications and it was terrifying. If I am going to be honest, I think what really attracted people to that post was the featured picture of me where I am obviously nude. It is one of my favorite modelling pictures in my portfolio. It is cropped in a way where it doesn’t need to be censored, but I have a feeling that picture might’ve stolen the show more than the topic of my blog.
I believe connecting my blog to Twitter was really effective. I think if I utilized hash-tags better, my posts could’ve been more popular, but again, I get nervous that if I use too many, they’ll bury the authentic voice I am trying to promote. The post I did featuring Laci got me the most Twitter traffic of all of my tweets. I was genuinely surprised when she responded to my blog. I think in the future, building connections in a way where the foundation of the connection is based on support and inspiration, that will be much more effective than an unenthusiastic shout-out. In so many of my classes and in my walk of life in general, I have been raised to be a competitor. I think after taking this class, I’ve decided that a truly successful entrepreneur is not someone who operates by backstabbing, but one who operates by utilizing the aspect of humanity that connects us all: communication.
Creating a new Twitter account put me at a small disadvantage, because I had absolutely no following to share with. I think in the last four weeks I gained two followers (thank you both for the support)! I think hash-tags can only be so effective because if you have no following, they’re most likely going to be buried among the other billions of unpopular tweets that have been made. I actually did get most of the traffic on my blog from my Twitter posts as can be seen in the stats below.
Although I am not a huge hash-tag user, I think the more vague they are, the more effective they can be. As my posts got less and less traffic, I also noticed that I wasn’t using as many hash-tags in my Twitter promotions. I wouldn’t say that the key is cramming in as many as you can, but instead using more vague, popular tags, and only a couple of specific ones, to learn more about effectively using hash-tags, check out this article here! I was very surprised by the support I gained from this blog over the last four weeks, and I thank each and every one of you for your support. In this final stat below, I’ve shown how my traffic started strong and slowly began to taper. In the future, as I continue this blog, I will work on building credibility for myself to further build up my audience.
Thank you so much for all the support! This is not good-bye, I will just be taking a small break from social media as the school year draws closer. I am looking forward to the fall when the temperatures are not so hot and I can actually go hiking. More posts coming soon…
Hidden Texas 