Social Media Tips and Tricks

I am far from an expert when it comes to social media, but I can get usually find my way around the sites. I am posting this today because I hope your schedule today and tomorrow will allow you to participate in the Close To My Heart Broadcast on CreativeLive! I posted about on Wednesday. In the Eastern Time Zone the broadcast begins at noon. On one of the posts I read on the Facebook Event page I learned that questions from social media with the hashtag #ctmhcreativelive could be answered live and that every comment using that hashtag is entered to win prizes. On another post I read that Twitter was the site to use. That means there is no better time to join Twitter to ask questions to enter to win.

In late July I posted all of the social media sites that Close To My Heart posts to. I also included information about my accounts - not that I am as active as CTMH.

Hashtags can be a great way to keep up with something that is currently trending or to look back at a trend, but only if the tag is unique. The tags used during the CTMH North American Convention were #ctmhconv2015 and #makeitfromyourheart, the tag used during the CTMH Australasia convention was #ctmhconv2015aunz and the tag to use during the CreativeLive broadcast is #ctmhcreativelive.

I often have to refresh my memory how to find things on Pinterest, Instagram and other social media sites. I thought I would find it easier to remember if I wrote it down. I have this information in a text document on one of the computers I use, but I never remember to copy the file to somewhere I can access it anytime and from almost anywhere. It also occurred to me that some readers might be either unfamiliar with searching social media or also have trouble remembering how to find posts again and you might like to have the information bookmarked.

I would like to take a moment to remind you that some sites allow you to search for and look at posts without having an account, but Pinterest and Facebook are more limiting. Without being signed into Facebook I am able to view most Facebook pages that companies maintain, but often cannot see Facebook profiles, i.g., people's pages. The Facebook page of Close To My Heart can be viewed by anyone, even without a FB account. When posts are in groups and the group is set to public, you have to be logged on with a Facebook account to view them. For example there is a Public Group CTMH SOTM Blog Hop; I am not able to view the posts or like posts without being logged onto my FB account. When a group is Closed or Secret you have to be a member of the group before seeing posts in the group.

Pinterest

If you are searching for a pin from a particular blog, put this in your browser address bar:

https://www.pinterest.com/source/blog-address/

substituting the blog URL for blog-address. For example, if you wanted to search pins from the Close To My Heart Make It From Your Heart blog, you would put this in your browser address bar:

https://www.pinterest.com/source/blog.closetomyheart.com/

If you are searching for a pin with a certain descriptive word, open Pinterest and search using the the bar near the top of the page. e.g., ctmhnevermore.


Instagram

If you want to follow a particular tag, put this in your browser address bar:

https://instagram.com/explore/tags/hashtag/

For example, during the Close To My Heart convention in July 2015, people were encouraged to use #ctmhconv2015 and #makeitfromyourheart when they posted. For the Hello, Life! promotion we are encouraged to use #CTMHHelloLife. This is what you would put in your browser address bar if you wanted to find posts with these hashtags:

https://instagram.com/explore/tags/ctmhconv2015/
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/makeitfromyourheart/
https://instagram.com/explore/tags/ctmhconv2015aunz/


Facebook

There is a search bar at the top of the page where you can search for business and people with Facebook pages or you can search for FB groups. If a group is marked secret, you will not find the group though. The best way to get added to a secret group is to ask someone in the group to invite you, but the group's administrator will still have to approve the request.

When you are on a Facebook Group page, just under the Facebook cover (photo) toward the right side of your screen there is a box to search the group. That is a great way to re-find a person, project or product you saw posted.


Twitter

You need an account to post, but you do not need one to search. If you know the hashtag you would like to find, put something like this in the browser address bar:

https://twitter.com/search?q=ctmhconv2015


YouTube

Maybe I am doing something wrong or maybe people do not tag videos they upload to YouTube. When I tried to search for one of the hashtags above I was not able to find anything. I have been successful searching for items on YouTube similar to how I would search for something using popular search engines like Google and Bing.


Blogs

When trying to find something that might be posted on a blog, I use popular search engines like Google and Bing. Sometime a blogger will place a search box on their blog so you can search just their blog. If they use labels, you can often click on the label at the bottom of a post to find similar posts. Some bloggers use a tool to show three similar posts at the bottom of a post.


I am sure there are other means of searching that I either did not think to include or are new to me. If you have suggestions for searching social media sites for inspiring projects or techniques, please leave a comment telling us how or with a link to a site that will tell us how.

Be sure to use the hashtag #ctmhcreativelive when posting on social media during Close To My Heart Broadcast on CreativeLive! Who knows, you might be selected to win a prize. Good luck!

Thanks for visiting today.