And reinventing myself again...
I’ve spent the better part of the last 6 months working almost solely on my book. I haven’t really been drawing or painting since I started. Between that and being in summer mode since May, I've been missing the process of creating handmade art. Now that the book’s finished and I’ve promoted the hell out of it to the best of my ability, I’m happy to let the universe take over, move away from the computer and get my hands dirty again. Researching, writing cover letters, putting together mailings and being on top of social media for the purpose of the book’s awareness and sales were not much fun for me.
So what am I going to do now? I have so many projects and ideas saved in Pinterest that I want to try and experiment with using different techniques and mediums. I also have a bunch of bookmarked YouTube video tutorials on everything from acrylic paint pouring to unusual watercolor techniques that I want to watch. (That’s binge watching for the creative.)
Reinvent, reinvent, reinvent yourself. That statement has been my motto since I left the graphic design field. I am so ADD when it comes to my art. I get bored with what I’m doing after a while and need to start something new and different. I always seem to make my way back to creating mandalas, sometimes in a different form and I never stop taking photographs for inspiration and the pure love of looking through the camera lens. So next week it's back to work in the studio; I wonder where my next idea will take me...
Posting is my Pastime these days...
You would think posting on social media on a regular basis would be an easy task, but it's not. Not when you’re planning it as opposed to posting a spontaneous picture for fun. Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, Linked In, Pinterest and so on, is a lot to keep up with. Along this learning adventure I have been on, I have discovered great tools to help me achieve this with much less stress and I would like to share what I have found. (I'm smirking as I write about making posting less stressful, a millennial would be laughing at me right now.)
Let me preface this by saying, to do what I wanted I needed to switch my Instagram and Pinterest accounts to business profiles, which was not a big deal. Another thing I need to mention is that some of these apps and programs are free and some have free-basic and paid-pro versions. I chose to upgrade a few of them to pro because they better suited my social media needs. (I'm smirking again as I write this, because, really, do I need to have social media needs? Life was much simpler before technology.)
The first tool I love is Buffer. It is the program I am using for scheduling my posts across all my social media platforms. (I pay for a subscription, the free plan didn’t do everything I wanted it to.) There are other websites and apps that do this, but this one seemed easy enough to use. What I like about Buffer is its ability to directly post to a business Instagram account. Most just send you a reminder to manually post your content. Buffer has literally changed my whole outlook on posting daily, to be able to plan a week in advance and put posting on auto pilot is amazing.
Two other great tools are LinkTree and Planoly, both for Instagram. You are allowed one link in your Instagram bio and if you use LinkTree, it brings you to a series of buttons you set up like a landing page that then link to everything you want it to, your other social media links, your website, portfolios, articles, whatever. Planoly helps you set up and visually plan and preview your next 9-10 Instagram posts. By doing this you can make sure you have a beautiful feed and the images flow well together. For example, you don't want to post two similar images or quotes next to each other. (Since writing this I discovered another app called “Unum” that helps plan your feed also, I’m going to try that out as well.)
Bit.ly is another great tool. It lets you shorten URL links for Twitter and other platforms where you are constrained by a small number of characters. This is a must if you want to add a url to your captions and posts.
Animoto is a wonderful platform that allows you to create marketing videos easily. I decided to pay for a subscription to be able to get the most out of them. They have an amazing online community. I belong to their Facebook group and have found great tips on making videos and can see examples of what others have created for their own businesses.
There’s still so much to learn and understand. I am still trying to figure out how to make hashtags and keywords work to my advantage, how to time my posts across all my platforms to get the most out of them. I am also debating between buying Facebook and Instagram ads or just keep doing what I’m doing and hope for an organic following. Planning, creating, posting, engaging... social media can be a full time business. I’m hoping it will be come more natural for me as time goes on and not feel like work!
Eat, Sleep, Pin, Repeat!
I don’t know if you are like me, but I save snippets of everything from magazines mostly, or at least I used to do that. I would collect recipes, beauty tips, fitness routines, decorating ideas etc. I had file cabinets and folders full of ideas. The only problem was that after they got filed away, they were never seen again. I had good intentions of making that sugar scrub or refinishing that piece of furniture, but I never did them. Mainly because the folders and files were always a mess. I loved saving the stuff but I never wanted to sort and organize it better, that took too much time.
And then came Pinterest. My world didn’t change right away, it took a couple of years to really understand the power of it. Over the last few years I have created an online visual database for myself consisting of everything I dreamed of doing for my files full of printed “snippets”, but a thousand times better. And now with the category and organization features Pinterest has, I have organized every single thing I have ever pinned.
The best part is that I actually use it. I look up what I need within my boards and do many of the things I save. It’s where I go for inspiration, education or just fun. I have pretty much discontinued all my print magazines. I now subscribe to an app called "Texture" that allows me to read a large array of magazines each month, digitally, which is fine, since I don’t need to cut them up anymore.
Last month I switched my personal account to a business account and hope to use it to promote my business in the future, we’ll see how that goes, (I was a little reluctant). But as far as using Pinterest as a digital scrapbook or filing cabinet for everything I need and everything I never knew I needed, it’s absolutely awesome. Here’s a link to my Pinterest account where you can see how I’ve set it all up...
https://www.pinterest.com/ileneprice/
