I’ll be honest: if I had a lot more time in the day to share my work online, I’d prefer to share it here on the blog. I prefer the longer format, and I like being able to share more than a few sentences about the ideas or process behind my work. When I share on my blog, I hope to give you all a sense of the work that goes into building Cotton & Flax, and person behind it all (hello, that’s me!) I think the work I’m making deserves more than 140 characters!
However, I’ve been enjoying sharing little snippets of my day to day on instagram, facebook, and twitter. I have a love/hate relationship with social media, particularly because I don’t like feeling distracted. Too often, I log on to Twitter to share something I’m working on, and then fall down the rabbit hole of endless scrolling. But I do love being able to snap a photo with my phone, and share it immediately, though; it’s nice to get instant feedback. I was thinking about my instagram followers this morning, and how much encouragement I’ve received after posting in-progress photos there… it really does help to keep me on the right track.
I’m curious, for those of you who are on lots of social media platforms: how do you strike a balance between socializing online, and getting completely distracted? Any tips for this social media newbie?
I’m sorry; I’m too distracted by your cat! Beautiful!
Haha, Frida is quite lovely, isn’t she? She’s always a hit when I share photos of her on Instagram.
what i try and do is allocate a timeframe. for example, 10 mins each on twitter and facebook. that way you can look at whatever you want, but you have a bit of discipline too.
That’s a good idea, Laura! I have a friend who has gone on a Twitter break this week, and I am looking forward to hearing how it went… part of me thinks I need to hit the “Reset” button in some way, and then come back to social media with a more reasonable approach.
When we were still living in Vancouver and I was mostly working from home, I really appreciated the company I found on Twitter. Especially other freelancers or people with little home businesses as it made me feel heaps less isolated and I’ve loved the relationships I built using that platform particularly. I totally know what you mean though, about wanting to share your work in a more in depth way that on Twitter or Instagram and sometimes I worry that the quick share for feedback on Instagram then negates a longer blog post with more extensive photos. It seems like the idea has become that we need to be quick and fast and first with getting our stuff out there and generating interest, but actually from a consumer point of view I also really love seeing the full process in a blog style post so I’m trying not to worry too much about ‘having’ to put stuff on Instagram all the time but more snippets now and then. Like Twitter, I do love the community and conversational feel of it, though!