5 tips to working social media to your advantage--- or not

I updated my Facebook status the other day with the observation that I am more social online than I am in real life. To a certain extent this is true. When I try to wrangle that into creating traffic to TMCphoto or PeanutButterPie it's like stepping into a puddle of molasses. It feels forced and not authentic to who I am.

So I'm browsing around the blogosphere today and I come across this post, and I have to say that it hits the nail right on the head, and timely? I can't even tell you how timely it is(or maybe it's just one of those things that's bobbing around in my head and every once in a while it pops up right in front of my nose) examining my online persona. Mainly I'm just wondering if I'm offering something unique to the world at large and if not, what do I need to change? or should I worry at all?

Crafting my online persona needs to feel genuine to me. I know that I'm not alone in this either. I can't be someone I'm not, here, or anywhere for that matter. I could buff and polish who that is, tweak it until it's just right, squeaky clean; but if it doesn't feel real to me, the person who it's representing; then I'm not comfortable and it's not going to work.

How could it possibly? If you as a reader feel that all I'm after is for you to visit my shop, how can I ask you to stick around and find out what my weekend was like, what great thing I photographed for 1000 words, who I'm featuring for my monthly Q&A or what I'm currently working on?

Since I started doing this I've been so fortunate to find blogs and blog writers that I love to drop in on regularly, I have learned from, been inspired, cheered for and offered condolences and advice and received the same. For this alone I would keep things genuine.

I've been caught

by the productivity bug. I've been busy busy working on new things and posting new items, and getting down to home pre-schooling the Peanut. All of which has meant that the blog has been a little neglected.

It's a tough situation this blogging to support your online store and wanting to keep the online store fresh and interesting. Over the last six months PeanutButterPie has been a very neglected enterprise (mainly because I've been re-thinking the direction of the shop and also just as mainly I've been putting more focus on TMCPhoto). I know I'm not alone in the problem of having blogging time cut into creating time, trying to find a working balance between the two and keeping up with the Peanut is what I'm now working on. This could mean more sporadic posts or shorter posts or wordless posts or any number of post types until I've reached a working balance.

Personally I'm leaning towards mostly wordless posts. I've gotten back into shooting on a regular basis again and I'm creating a nice pool of photographs to pull from.

in the meantime I'm once again spending time over at Mrs. B's 31 Days of Halloween. She's got some pretty cool giveaways today:

Giveaway #1 is a copper wire embellished wand: perfect for the Peanut to use at night to magic away the scary night time monsters

Giveaway #2 is for a beautiful pair of Whisky Quartz earrings. I don't have a US mailing address so I'm out of the running for that prize :(

Giveaway #3 is for a bat covered handmade tarot bag with handcrafted spell candles and a bag of Witches britches all natural herbal divination incense.

there are also two guest bloggers today and of course another spooky stop on the haunted blog tour you can see all of it here

A little direction

I've been on hiatus from my weekly Q&A feature and I've been using the time to do a little shop tweaking and banner making for TMCPhoto and rethinking what I want this blog to be about and where I want to take it, not to mention working on ways to keep things fresh. I've been wondering if I've had enough focus here and whether I've veered off of the original track and onto another one running a little parallel but with a few more wide curves.

What got me thinking was the number of Mommy Bloggers I have been following. These women are smart funny and in some cases brutally honest about their lives. I've been known to laugh out loud at certain posts and to blow my nose and wipe dripping eyes after others. So I was wondering if I've started to slot myself into the Mommy-Blogger role.

Not that that's a bad thing, I am a Mommy, the Peanut is a pretty big part of my life and our days together make up quite a lot of blog fodder for me. When I started out, the purpose of writing was to let people get to know me, my art and hopefully lead them to my Etsy shops. So I've been thinking about how to balance out the art and the mommy stuff.

I'm hoping I've got it all worked out. In the meantime I'm gearing up for the return of the 5 question feature. I've got a list of shops and artists I want to feature and I'm truly excited about getting back into the swing of things.