Noodling on social media and blogging

Let it be entered into the permanent record that I’m actually managing to take it relatively easy this week. I’m slowing down a bit, relaxing a bit. Petting the cats more and using my hands a bit less.

This was a good week to upgrade my computer, since I’m feeling a bit less pressure to Do All the Things. I can’t remember the last time we replaced my CPU — probably six or seven years ago. The old one still chugs along for simple stuff, but chokes and dies regularly when I need to use Lightroom (as I do pretty much every day), so it’s being moved downstairs for use as a gaming machine.

(The old one is Tidus, and the new one is Yuna. Our NAS is named Lulu, and our wifi is Spira. I’ve got a bit of a theme going.)

(Also, Raymond planned, ordered and put together this computer as my Christmas present and I love him a whole bunch.)

I find computer transfers really stressful — so many logins, and downloads, and files and settings to rescue — so I’ve been taking lots of breaks to work on the guestroom, and read the Dresden books, and wrap Christmas presents, and do some deep thinking about my priorities for next year.

I was just reading an article that says you should tackle one social media channel (FB, or Twitter, etc.) and really dig into it and grow it before focusing on another. That makes sense to me.

I had intended for that channel to be Instagram, so I’ve been working hard to post to it every day (for two businesses!) for years now, but I find the format really difficult: it’s so hard on my hands to read or type my phone for any length of time, and it’s so phone-focused that Facebook’s tools for managing it on the desktop are rudimentary at best.

Twitter isn’t a natural fit for me — I’m too wordy.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook anyway, so that’s a possibility. I could focus a lot more on my Facebook group.

I get a ton of views on Pinterest already (I was an early adopter and grew a pretty big following back in the day, though I haven’t been active much lately), so that’s also a possibility.

Either way, I’m going to cut back on or outsource some of the hand-hurty things I’ve been doing, and probably cut way back on Instagram too. I hate to do the latter, since I’ve finally broken 1,000 followers on both the SA and RM accounts and that’s when I should really start to see growth. But until Facebook creates real management tools for it or my hands get better, it’s not a great option for me to spend time on.

This photo happened to be up on my old computer’s desktop when I shut it down and Raymond lugged it downstairs, and I’m finding it very soothing to focus on today. It’s from Mount Erie (yes, really) near Deception Pass (yes, really) in Washington state a couple of years ago, on a really foggy winter day.

Noodling: As I think about priorities for the next year, I really want to get back to blogging. Writing is in my bones, and it deserves more time and love than I’ve given it in the last two years.

The challenge: Where? How? With three businesses plus personal interests that don’t fit anywhere (gardening and nature photography, mostly), there are so many platforms and topics that it makes it harder to figure out the strategy than to do the actual writing.

Blogs that exist: Sweet Amaranth

Blogs that should probably exist: Sweet Amaranth, Representation Matters, Body Love Box

Each of those has its own website, of course, and could have a blog grafted onto it. There’s also Patreon and Medium, both of which are perfectly good blogging platforms (but aren’t good lead capture methods).

There’s also the long-neglected bodyliberationphotos.com.

In a perfect world, I could just blog in one place, on whatever topic I desired, and just add a button at the bottom of the page leading to whichever business it’s relevant to. That’s not really how the internet or SEO or business works, though.

*Could* I be that rebel that just blogs everything at bodyliberationphotos.com and puts links leading out to the actual businesses? Or would I be shooting myself in the foot?

All thoughts are welcome here, if you’ve got input. <3