And then they introduced the “Facebook feed” and initially people HATED it, but we grew to love it, didn’t we? We heard witty thoughts from our friends, posted about family gatherings, and dutifully read every.single.item.in.our.feed.every.day. When was the last time you did that? We became fans of fun & silly pages like bacon and “I hate this song, so why do I know all the words?” and helped dogs wearing tinfoil hats get more fans than Glenn Beck.

 

Well, it didn’t take bloggers long to realize that their friends were posting links all the time…….and what better way to get in front of a bunch of people, than to put your blog feed in front of hundreds if not thousands of fans. And our page views soared. Businesses quickly followed suit and built pages faster than you could say “social media.” Best of all, it’s free!

 

Then came along Twitter, and if you’ve been on Twitter from some time……..again I’ll ask you to think back to when it was just you & your fun followers. It was a good time. The honeymoon with Twitter was much shorter, as bloggers and businesses already savvy to Facebook, were much quicker to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. Now you can’t banter back & forth with friends and followers without constant interruptions from big brands asking you what you’re cooking for your holiday meal or what are you ‘must have’ items to pack for vacation. A one-hour Twitter “party” is hardly a party to those not participating, and frankly, makes Twitter a lot less fun at times. (There are ways to block #hashtags by the way, so if you find your stream hijacked by a Twitter party, block the hashtag they’re using.)

 

For the record, I am on both Facebook and Twitter with at least two blogs. In some ways I enjoy it and  in some ways I view it as a blogging chore that I must do if I want people to read my blog.

 

And now comes along Pinterest. Forget all the chatter about Facebook being drowned out by Google+, if anything it will be Pinterest first. I initially declined all offers for invites to Pinterest, mainly because I thought it was all about doing crafts. Crafts that I don’t have either the desire nor the time to do. So I passed. Then I learned two things:

 

One is that it’s being used for recipes and other items of interest to me, like frugal living and special needs parenting.

 

And then someone said (typed, actually) the magic words:  “It’s increasing my page views and it’s my number one source of traffic right now.” Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

 

With the recent Facebook changes and how Facebook is changing what shows up in your feed, many bloggers saw their traffic from Facebook fall off the planet. Big, huge dips in our stats. And as most bloggers will tell you, even if your Twitter followers aren’t annoyed with the Twitter parties, the overall click-through rate on Twitter is painfully low. We had to check Pinterest out!

 

So I did. And before I even poked around much, I started pinning like crazy. See, it’s a virtual bulletin board, for those of you not familiar. And you “pin” photos that interest you in different categories. And these photos are linked to a site, some place. In most cases, blogs. So if you see a photo of mine that you like, you view it and you can see the source and then click-through to my site. And, you can repin it, thus perhaps getting me even more page views. So I pinned a few dozen posts of mine, from both blogs. I dug up frugal and fun recipes that were two or three years old, dusted them off, added a “Pin This” icon, and reposted and pinned. And I did see an increase in traffic on both of my sites.

 

And then something else happened. I took a step back, started looking around, viewing what my friends were pinning, following more people……..and basically, I like it. Like, really like it. I’m cooking some of the recipes, making plans to put some of the frugal living ideas into place. It’s fun. If you’re a visual person, you’ll love it. It’s peaceful, there are no words unless you want to read words.

 

And here’s the thing. I’m so exhausted with all the “noise” on Facebook, I’m afraid the same thing is going to happen to Pinterest. And that makes me sad. Because now bloggers are doing tutorials for other bloggers, on how to make your posts and photos more “pinnable.” In several blogging groups I’m in, I’ve heard (read) bloggers say that they are changing the focus of their blogs’ content, just to make it more appealing to Pinterest fans.  How long will it be before big corporations have their PR and Social Media people setting up accounts, to pin their stuff? I know for a fact it’s already happening. So instead of the fun photo you see with an organizational method from a crafty blogger, it will be from P&G Everyday Solutions. Recipes? Forget the moms and foodie blogs, it will be all the food brands.

 

Can we do anything about this? I don’t know. I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see what develops. I know that I am approaching it pretty cautiously, and only following people and boards that I have an interest in. I’m not doing automatic follow-backs to people who follow me–I check out their stuff first. And I unfollow specific boards that are of no interest to me. I don’t want Pinterest to turn into all the “noise” I get on Facebook. Because right now, it’s my escape. Because it’s beautifully quiet over there, and I hope it stays that way.