Social media objectives... a review of 2014 and new goals for 2015!

I wrote a blog post on my social media objectives for 2014 back in January 2014, and posted a 'halfway through the year' progress checker last July. Now that 2015 has arrived and it's already February (how did that happen?), I thought I'd take a final look at last year's objectives and set some new ones for the year ahead.

It might seem a bit OTT to set myself objectives for my personal social media presence... I really am that organised and like a challenge!


Blog objectives - 2014

• To revamp and rename my blog by April 2014. Done!
• To set up a Google Analytics account for my blog by April 2014. Done!
• To reach 100 followers on Bloglovin by the end of the year. I have 35, so not even halfway there!
• To ensure that I read other blogs and comment on them for at least half an hour every week throughout the year. I think I managed this most weeks. 
• To take part in at least two blogger chats per month throughout the year. I've given up on blogger chats if I'm honest... I find that they're very cliquey and quite critical, and not always in a constructive way. 
• To attend at least one blogger meet-up before the end of the year. Still no progress here!

Blog objectives - 2015

I do get quite demoralised with my blog at times as I put a lot of time into writing my posts and my follower base isn't really growing. However, if I enjoy writing (which I do), does it really matter if I haven't got hundreds of followers? My friends and family enjoy reading my blog, and I've made some great friends on Twitter who are also regular readers. I don't interact with other bloggers as much as I could as the blogging world can be so cliquey at times (see above). However, on the other hand, I think my blog would be slightly more successful if it was more professionally designed. Bearing all this in mind, I've only made a few objectives this year and I believe that they're achievable:

• To reach 50 followers on Bloglovin by the end of the year. 
• To post twice a week.
• To get my blog professionally designed by the end of the year... need to do some Twitter research for this one.  

Follow me on Bloglovin

Twitter objectives - 2014

• To reach 350 Twitter followers by the end of the year. I have 342... so close! However, I do have 624 followers on my professional account. 
• To ensure that I engage with at least 5 new people on Twitter every week throughout the year. I've managed this most weeks, between my personal account and my professional one. 
• To ensure that at least 40% of traffic to my blog is driven there from Twitter. The figure is actually 12% but I'm quite pleased with this as I'm also having a decent amount of traffic to my blog from Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. 

Twitter objectives - 2015

I really love Twitter and use it extensively in a professional and a personal context. When it comes to the apparent battle between Twitter and Facebook, Twitter is king!

• To reach 400 followers by the end of the year. 
• To increase my blog traffic from Twitter to 25%.

Follow me on Twitter 

Pinterest objectives - 2014

• To reach 100 followers by the end of the year. I have 53... I didn't spend enough time on Pinterest last year!
• To follow at least 100 new people/boards by the end of the year. I'm following 55, so again this was over ambitious. 
• To have at least one Pinterest 'binge' per week! I've had quite a few binges recently... hopefully this will continue. 
• To comment on at least 5 pins per week as well as re-pin. I haven't done much commenting, just re-pinning!

Pinterest objectives - 2015

Pinterest is my 'go to' place when I'm planning a holiday, looking for a new hairstyle, looking for colour inspiration and so on. It's not a site I use daily so it's unrealistic to expect big numbers from this one.

• To reach 100 followers by the end of the year. 
• To follow 100 boards by the end of the year.
• To continue to pin every image from my blog on a relevant Pinterest board.

Follow me on Pinterest

Instagram objectives - 2014

• To reach 150 followers by the end of the year. Done, I have 244! 
• To follow 100 new people by the end of the year. Done, I'm following 392...
• To make better links between Instagram and my blog by promoting at least one photo from my blog on Instagram every week. I do this for every blog post which contains photos. 
• To have an Instagram 'binge' at least once per week where I like and comment on other people's photos. This is a daily thing... I love Instagram!

Instagram objectives - 2015

It's safe to say that Instagram is my fastest growing social network, and it's quickly becoming my favourite. It's such a simple concept but I absolutely love it. Consequently, this is one social network where I think it's safe for me to set ambitious objectives!

• To reach 400 followers by the end of the year.
• To ensure that 5% of traffic to my blog is driven there from Instagram (currently 2%). 

Follow me on Instagram

LinkedIn objectives - 2014

• To reach 300 connections by the end of the year. Done, I have 346!
• To follow 10 new company pages before the end of the year. Done!
• To join 5 new LinkedIn groups before the end of the year, and to engage with these groups as and when interesting topics arise. Haven't had time for this one!

LinkedIn objectives - 2015

LinkedIn definitely isn't anywhere near my list of top five social networking sites, but it does serve a purpose so it's useful to have a presence on there.

• To reach 450 connections by the end of the year

I know some people think setting objectives for personal social media sites is silly and a bit overly meticulous, but I like having something to aim for and to benchmark myself against. 

Here's to more social media obsession in 2015! 

Famous tweets!

You probably already know that I'm a massive fan of Twitter. Do you know what I'm an even bigger fan of? Getting tweets from famous people!

I've been tweeted twice by famous people in the last few weeks so I thought I'd share these momentous occasions on my blog so that you can all partake in my excitement. You probably won't be as excited as I was (and still am), but you can humour me and pretend.

So on to momentous occasion number one... I had my second hen night a few weeks ago with my work colleagues. My lengthy obsessions with certain celebrities (mostly Welsh rugby players) are quite legendary so the girls had prepared masks of some of my crushes over the years which they wore during a game of 'Guess Beth's crush'. This game involved Rhian reading out obscure facts to see if I could guess who the facts were about... needless to say, I guessed them all correctly. I'm a mine of information when it comes to certain baby faced individuals! I loved this idea, and I especially loved the Rhys Williams masks as he's probably my favourite celebrity of all time. We decided to get all the Rhys masks together so that we could tweet a photo to Rhys as he's quite prolific on Twitter.

Look at that beautiful face! (His, not mine)

Much to our (my) excitement, he promptly tweeted back telling us we were awesome and asking what the occasion was. When he was told that it was my hen night, he tweeted: 'Please tell her congratulations and I wish her and her husband all the best for the future.' Waaahhh! What a lovely man, and I'm not even biased. Well, maybe a tiny bit. 

The second famous tweet came from David Mitchell of Peep Show fame. I'm reading his hilarious autobiography at the moment and love the fact that he, just like me, looks like he's trying to break back in to his house once he's locked his front door as he's so security conscious. I therefore decided to tweet about this similarity: 'Reading @RealDMitchell's autobiography... I'm not the only person who looks as if I'm trying to break back in once I've locked my front door!' He then replied a few hours later and said 'It's reassuring to hear I'm not alone.' Again, waaaahhhh! I would have thought that David Mitchell gets tweeted quite a lot so it's great that he made the effort to reply. He's now gone up even more in my estimation. 

Has anyone famous ever tweeted you? Did you also get super excited and write a blog post on it...?

My social media objectives for 2014 - a mid year update!

You might remember that I wrote a blog post on my social media objectives for 2014 back in January. I thought I'd revisit these objectives six months on to see how I'm progressing and to make sure I'm on track. I love a bit of measuring and evaluating!


Blog objectives

• To revamp and rename my blog by April 2014. Done!
• To set up a Google Analytics account for my blog by April 2014. Done!
• To reach 100 followers on Bloglovin by the end of the year. Still a lot of work to do on this... I'm only on 28. 
• To ensure that I read other blogs and comment on them for at least half an hour every week throughout the year. I've managed to achieve this most weeks, but some weeks are too busy to fit in even half an hour!
• To take part in at least two blogger chats per month throughout the year. I started well at the beginning of the year, but haven't had time to take part in any chats for the last few months. 
• To attend at least one blogger meet-up before the end of the year. No progress on this one!

Follow me on Bloglovin

Twitter objectives

• To reach 350 Twitter followers by the end of the year. I'm on 314... not bad!
• To ensure that I engage with at least 5 new people on Twitter every week throughout the year. I'm doing pretty well with this one. 
• To ensure that at least 40% of traffic to my blog is driven there from Twitter. I'll have more definite statistics when my Google Analytics account has been up and running for a longer period of time, but initial impressions suggest that around a third of my blog traffic comes from Twitter. 

Follow me on Twitter 

Pinterest objectives

• To reach 100 followers by the end of the year. I currently have 44... I must admit, I've neglected Pinterest this year! 
• To follow at least 100 new people/boards by the end of the year. I'm following 47, so still some work to do here. 
• To have at least one Pinterest 'binge' per week! I definitely haven't had time to do this very often. 
• To comment on at least 5 pins per week as well as re-pin. No time to do this either!

Follow me on Pinterest

Instagram objectives

• To reach 150 followers by the end of the year. I currently have 132, so doing pretty well on this one. 
• To follow 100 new people by the end of the year. I'm following 388, so I've smashed this objective!
• To make better links between Instagram and my blog by promoting at least one photo from my blog on Instagram every week. I've been doing this for every blog post which contains photos. 
• To have an Instagram 'binge' at least once per week where I like and comment on other people's photos. I'm a bit obsessed with Instagram so have been doing this much more often than once per week!

Follow me on Instagram

LinkedIn objectives

• To reach 300 connections by the end of the year. At the time of writing, I'm on 299!
• To follow 10 new company pages before the end of the year. I've followed 4 company pages so far this year.  
• To join 5 new LinkedIn groups before the end of the year, and to engage with these groups as and when interesting topics arise. I haven't started on this one yet. 

Considering how busy this year has been so far, I'm pretty pleased with my progress. My Pinterest presence needs a lot of work, but I'm hoping I'll have more time to have guilt-free Pinterest binges after the wedding. Although planning a wedding should encourage a lot of Pinterest binges, I've got to the stage where looking at people's perfect weddings is stressing me out! I did enjoy looking on there for ideas right at the beginning of the planning process as I was still deciding on colours and so on, but it doesn't appeal to me at the moment. 

I'm very pleased with my progress on Instagram and it's quickly joining Twitter as my favourite social networking site. I love sharing my own photos as well as nosing at other people's. Don't we all?

Does anyone else set themselves objectives for their personal social media presence? Is it just me...?

My social media objectives for 2014

I love a good SMART objective. All objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound. If they're not SMART, they're not objectives!

I've decided to set myself a few objectives for my social networking sites this year as it's useful to have some goals to measure yourself against to make sure you're making progress and achieving everything you set out to achieve. I work in communications so I've been busy setting objectives and writing a strategy for my professional social media sites, so I thought it would be beneficial to set some for my personal sites too. I'm a self confessed social media addict and I'm keen to achieve more on my social networking sites this year than I ever have before.

So here are my personal social media objectives for 2014!

My blog 

• To revamp and rename my blog by April 2014. Although I like the way blog looks at the moment, it could look a lot more professional. I also really like the name of my blog, but unfortunately the littlemissbusy.blogspot.co.uk URL isn't available and I want the name to match the URL. 
• To set up a Google Analytics account for my blog by April 2014. I use Google Analytics for work and absolutely love it, but it's always been set up for me by web developers so I need to figure out how to set an account up myself for my own blog. Can anyone link me to any blog posts on how to do this?
• To reach 100 followers on Bloglovin by the end of the year. I will (hopefully) achieve this by publicising my Bloglovin presence a lot more and taking part in more blogger chats. 
• To ensure that I read other blogs and comment on them for at least half an hour every week throughout the year. I'm very busy at the moment with wedding planning so I think this is a realistic time commitment to set for this objective. Achieving this objective will also help me to achieve the second objective!
• To take part in at least two blogger chats per month throughout the year. Blogger chats are a great way to engage with other bloggers and to find new blogs to read. They're also very helpful as you often find out that other bloggers have exactly the same insecurities about their blog as you have. 
• To attend at least one blogger meet-up before the end of the year. I'm very scared about this one, but I'm determined to step out of my comfort zone and just do it!

Follow me on Bloglovin

Twitter

• To reach 350 Twitter followers by the end of the year. I currently have 255 so this is a realistic objective. I will achieve this milestone by taking part in more blogger chats as I've mentioned above and tweeting more about current affairs which are of interest to me, using the relevant hashtags for increased exposure.
• To ensure that I engage with at least 5 new people on Twitter every week throughout the year. These could be fellow bloggers, authors, retailers and so on. 
• To ensure that at least 40% of traffic to my blog is driven there from Twitter. Twitter is the biggest promotional tool I have for my blog at the moment and I'm hoping this will continue throughout 2014.
   

Follow me on Twitter

Pinterest

• To reach 100 followers by the end of the year. Achieving the set objectives below will help me to achieve this milestone. 
• To follow at least 100 new people/boards by the end of the year.
• To have at least one Pinterest 'binge' per week! I absolutely adore Pinterest but I do sometimes forget to visit the site for weeks at a time if I'm particularly busy. 
• To comment on at least 5 pins per week as well as re-pin. I re-pin loads of pins on Pinterest but never take the time to comment, which means I'm not making the most of my engagement opportunities.
   

Follow me on Pinterest

Instagram

• To reach 150 followers by the end of the year. I currently only have 30 followers as I've only had an Instagram account for two months, but I think it has huge potential for me so I think this is a realistic objective. 
• To follow 100 new people by the end of the year. I currently follow 115 people, most of which are bloggers or Disney people.
• To make better links between Instagram and my blog by promoting at least one photo from my blog on Instagram every week. I love a bit of social media integration. 
• To have an Instagram 'binge' at least once per week where I like and comment on other people's photos. Again, I can't expect people to engage with my photos if I'm not reciprocating. It's all about two-way communication. I do have difficulty with Instagram as I have a Blackberry which means that I don't have the official Instagram app. The Blackberry version is called 'Blackgram' (I know, awful name) and is very glitchy, to put it nicely!

Follow me on Instagram 

LinkedIn

• To reach 300 connections by the end of the year. I currently have 240 connections and this number tends to creep up quite slowly, so this is a realistic objective. 
• To follow 10 new company pages before the end of the year. There are lots of relevant company pages on LinkedIn with interesting content, both from a professional and a personal perspective. 
• To join 5 new LinkedIn groups before the end of the year, and to engage with these groups as and when interesting topics arise. This will be a great way of engaging with like-minded people and picking up tips on various topics which interest me. 

I'll write a 'Halfway through the year' post in June to let you know how I'm getting on these objectives. I'm now off to read and comment on some blogs... I'm going to start as I mean to go on! 

Life without a smartphone

If you're following me on Twitter, you'll already know that my beautiful brand new BlackBerry Q10 conked out last weekend after trying to install a software update and has been sent off to be repaired. As a result, T-Mobile have given me an awful loan phone until I get my BlackBerry back. This could take up to 3 weeks. It's the most basic phone I've ever had, and literally just facilitates calls and texts. No camera, no internet, and the smallest screen I've ever seen.

The loan phone has one positive... I only have to charge it every 4 days whereas I had to charge my BlackBerry every night. This is most definitely the only positive, and is probably only saving me about 20p off my electric bill.

I'd seriously forgotten what it was like to live without a smartphone, so I'm missing my BlackBerry a lot and can't wait to get it back. I am aware that this post is very #firstworldproblems, but I'm sure most of you would feel the same if you found yourselves without a smartphone for a few weeks. Please correct me if I'm wrong!


Here are the ten things I miss most about my BlackBerry:

1. I can't just Google something whenever I feel like it. For someone who Googles everything under the sun (and I do mean EVERYTHING), this is sheer torture.

2. I can't take photographs of random views, food, shopping and so on. I love taking photographs and have made an extra special effort to take lots of photos this year so I'm really missing my phone camera, especially as the BlackBerry Q10 camera is of a very high quality.

3. I can't tweet when I'm out and about. I keep thinking of things I want to tweet, then remembering that I can't until I get home and go on my laptop. By the time I get to my laptop, I've forgotten what I wanted to tweet in the first place. As an avid tweeter who also likes to twitpic frequently, this is very difficult!

4. On a similar note, I can't check my personal emails until I get home and go on my laptop. On my BlackBerry, they'd be delivered straight to my phone like text messages. This usually means I have about 40 emails waiting for me by the time I get home and sometimes miss important messages.

5. I can't promote my blog as much as usual as I haven't got constant access to the internet or to Twitter, my main promotional tool. My blog views are suffering as a result!

6. This stupid basic phone doesn't automatically put apostrophes in for me, and it takes ages to put them in manually. For a grammar geek, this is no fun as I can't bear to leave them out! It also doesn't capitalise 'I' automatically. So irritating.

7. This basic phone arranges my text messages into 'inbox' and 'outbox', rather than displaying the text messages as conversations. So if someone sends me three questions in a text message, I can't just keep scrolling up to check what they were while I reply. How did I ever cope with this before?!

8. I have to use the standard ringtones that came with the phone... there aren't many of these and they're all rubbish and annoying. I miss having McFly as my ringtone! The same applies to the alarm tone... I can no longer wake up to Hakuna Matata.

9. I never go on my laptop over the weekend as I'm always out and about, so this means I'm left without internet access for an entire weekend. How am I supposed to catch up on anything? And no Twitter for a whole weekend? Seriously? The internet is like my oxygen...!

10. I miss my Twinkle countdown app. Now I have to manually count how many days are left until I go on holiday...


I can think of many more reasons why I miss my Blackberry and why this basic phone is so awful, but I think I should probably stop now before I bore you. Has anyone else been separated from their smartphone lately? Did you miss these ten things too? Share your pain!

Bloglovin'...

I'm pretty sure you'll all have read countless posts about Bloglovin' lately due to the Google Reader fiasco, so I'll keep this one short. I'm gutted about the demise of Google Reader because the name is much more grammatically correct than Bloglovin', which is quite frankly an awful name for a website on so many levels. However, I do find it a lot easier to navigate than Google Reader. It's also much easier to keep track of which posts you've read or haven't read, so it's not all bad. I also enjoy the fact that you can 'like' blog posts, which is actually a good way of bookmarking the ones you want to read again.

You can follow me on Bloglovin' here: http://www.bloglovin.com/en/blog/4542633

You can also follow me on Twitter here (I'm all for a bit of self promotion): http://www.twitter.com/pinkbeth86 

Does anyone else cringe whenever they have to say or type Bloglovin'? There must be other pedants out there!

Facebook v Twitter

I'm a bit of a social media geek, and would love to have more time to explore the vast range of social networking sites which are springing up all over the place. These are the sites I'm most familiar with and use most often:

- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Blogger
- LinkedIn
- Flickr
- YouTube

I use some of these in a personal capacity, some for work purposes, and some for both.

Twitter has to be my favourite, closely followed by Pinterest. Facebook is definitely lingering at the bottom of the list, whereas in 2007/08 I was totally obsessed with it. It actually took me a long time to get used to Twitter, whereas I became obsessed with Facebook straight away. However, once I got the hang of it and realised its appeal, I began to use Facebook less and less. So why is Twitter so much further up my list of social networking sites? In some ways it isn't a fair comparison as the two sites are largely used for different purposes, but I found that I lost interest in Facebook when I started using Twitter more. Most of my close friends are on Twitter too, and it's actually easier to communicate with them on there most of the time than it is on Facebook. Here are my reasons for preferring Twitter, please feel free to comment and disagree!

1. I consider Twitter to be much less intrusive than Facebook
My Facebook profile is totally private, to the point where you can't even find me in search results. However, I still feel very wary about sharing my information on there because Facebook keep changing their privacy settings and are increasingly becoming more commercialised and (probably) selling people's data. My Twitter profile is public so anyone can find me and follow me, and yet I embrace this openness. I obviously don't publish any of my personal information on there (such as date of birth, phone number, address) so I'm perfectly happy to share my tweets with the world, if people want to read them! Although I don't publish that information on Facebook either, I'm much more wary about who has access to my profile and my photos.

2. No petty arguments!
You don't tend to get the same level of arguments on Twitter as you do on Facebook, as the dynamics are totally different. If people do want to argue on Twitter, you can only see the tweets if you're following both profiles. Even then, the annoying tweets tend to get lost on your news feed as other people are tweeting at the same time. On Facebook, the arguments are there plainly for everyone to see, whether you're 'friends' with the other people involved in the argument or not. Why do people feel the need to argue on a social networking site? Sometimes these people actually live in the same house and are probably sitting in the same room! Talk to each other, people.

3. Twitter is a constant source of news and information
Major news stories are quite often broken on Twitter these days before they hit the news websites. People tweet live updates, tweet photos from the scene, and a lot of journalists also give their accounts via Twitter in the first instance. I never actually watch the news and rarely visit news websites. I don't need to, Twitter tells me everything I need to know! I've even passed a crime scene in the past, searched for the street name on Twitter, and found out exactly what's happened. I definitely never find out any real news from Facebook, apart from who got evicted from the Big Brother house or what the weather is like in Carmarthenshire. Obviously people tweet about these things too, but you still get some real news thrown in too as long as you're following the right people!

4. Hashtags!
Hashtags are a brilliant Twitter invention, and something Facebook will never be able to rival. You can find out who else is tweeting about a particular topic at any time, however random it might be. During big events such as the Six Nations, elections, awards and so on, you can follow the official event hashtag to find out what's going on. I quite often follow the hashtags for events without actually watching them on TV, it's just as informative and means I don't have to fiddle around with my TV aerial for hours. I can't see how this would ever work on Facebook, as it's more of a closed community in my opinion. Your content (in my case, anyway) is restricted to those who you choose to add as friends, so it doesn't give the same scope for discussion.

5. Connect with 'celebrities'
I put celebrities in inverted commas because I don't follow big celebrities such as Britney Spears or various Premier League footballers. However, I do like knowing what the Welsh rugby team are up to, so I follow a few of those. I also like following my favourite authors to get an insight into their daily lives and also to get updates on when their next books will be released. My favourite celebrity on Twitter is Tom from McFly, as you get a real insight into his personality from his tweets and he doesn't put on any airs or graces. You should definitely all follow him.

6. Sense of community 
Even though there are millions upon millions of Twitter users and tweets which can make it feel very vast, I still feel a sense of community when using Twitter. I follow a lot of people who I've never met in real life, yet I feel as if I know them and would probably get on with them straight away if we were ever to meet because we'd have some common ground. I don't get this sense of community from Facebook as it seems to be more self involved in some ways, rather than encouraging communication and discussion.

What do other people think? Which do you prefer?