In the beginning of 2020 I went on a social media crusade (blog update here) and decided to promote my blog a bit more. Since there are so many types of social media out there and I’ve only ever used Facebook before I decided to start an Instagram account and later this blog, I figured it would be interesting to see what the fuss is about. Well, here’s how it went:

• Pinterest: I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Pinterest. On a personal level, I’ve found some interesting recipes for cooking inspiration, as well as some plant growing tips, but it’s almost impossible to judge the quality of the source and weed out the bullshit tips from useful content. In terms of blog promotion, Pinterest is hailed as the ultimate platform, but to be honest, unless you’re blogging about blogging, mom life or sharing “10 tips to take better Instagram travel photos” or “20 ways to be more mindful”, there’s really not much use. It’s oversaturated with travel guides, how to tips, quasi-motivational quotes and 100 versions of the same pin. I did take a course on how to use it for promotion out of interest and I actually learned and was doing quite well. However, to get anywhere you’re supposed to be creating and pinning 20+ new images daily and they’ve recently had a very annoying update, so unless you’re really committed, the outcome is not worth the time investment, particularly not if your blog is not aimed at a generic audience. I’ll still be pinning my posts up and occasionally looking through the feed, but I won’t dedicate much time to it.
• Twitter: Another time consuming social media and a veritable cesspit of the Internet. In order to get anywhere on Twitter, it’s extremely important to engage with all these people ALL the time, so I can honestly say I don’t have the time or the motivation to do that. On a personal level, I’ve written about how Twitter makes me feel like I should word vomit out every single thought in my head, and this is exactly what people do. At first it was interesting to keep track of certain accounts and Slovenian politics, which revealed a whole new, unsanitary layer of our population (think Donald Trump’s Twitter), but it was always rage inducing and frustrating. So, I ended up deleting my account and I think that was a healthy choice.
• Mix.com: This was an experiment, because it’s a relatively unknown platform, which replaced the ex-Stumble Upon. The keyword here is unknown, because there’s almost no one on it and it functions about the same as Pinterest. After the featured posts didn’t change for more than a few months, I just assumed it’s dead and deleted my account there too.
• YouTube: Now this one picked up surprisingly well! Although I usually share incredibly shitty 10 second videos, because video is not a media I’m keen to express myself in, my channel somehow has 260+ subscribers and one of the videos even went viral with almost 2k views. Who knew? I’ve also started posting my podcast ‘making of’ videos on it, so I guess it can only go upwards from here.
• Facebook and Instagram are business as usual, bad engagement, because I don’t spend a lot of time on there, but actually generate blog views, so that’s fine by me.

My SEO (search engine optimisation) attempts paid off too, so this blog is slowly growing like a very persistent weed. As I’ve said before, I’m planning to start my Patreon space too, but that’s coming in October. 🙂

However, I have found a social media network that a lot of you will probably appreciate:

• Medium: So far Medium appears to be what intelligent people would want in a social network. It’s meant to be an online space where people can post their articles, stories, art and poetry without having their own website. Sort of like having a blog without a blog. It’s specifically geared towards sharing longer, quality writings, and doesn’t have or allow ads. It’s algorithm is also reasonably humane, because you can actually see things from people you’re not following even if they don’t have thousands of likes based on the topics you select. I’ve been reading some stuff over the past couple of days and I can say I’m fairly impressed. Also, most of the content can be read for free, although some articles are behind a paywall, which you can access for 5$ per month.

You can find me on Medium here – I’ve imported some of my blog essays and I’ve also started a publication for my impressionist writings. Speaking of, I’m planning to do Inktober (the yearly drawing challenge with a prompt for every day in October), but with short poems or whatever my writings are. I’ll be posting one per day on Medium and when I’m done, I’ll also post them here in a blog post.

Matt from Cowboys from Space and I also created a publication on Medium, where we’ll be sharing our work and stuff from other people who will participate in Inktober 2020. Don’t worry, even if you don’t have a Medium account, we can still add your work there if you’d like to join. You’re welcome to join me here, on your blog/social media or on Medium if you’d like to participate and we can share some creative October spirit every day. 🙂 Just reach out in the comments and we’ll figure something out!