Social Media Observations

Social media and the internet have impacted the world in surprising ways. As a local swim instructor, it’s amazing that some of the instructional videos that I’ve put on You Tube have been viewed across the world in places like India and South Korea.

However, social media can be frustrating. At times, my efforts to drive traffic to my videos have not generated the feedback that I had hoped. Nonetheless, my “swimming” channel has continued to grow, and I’ve surpassed 4 million views.

In the above video, we’ll look at several social media platforms and discuss how I’ve utilized them to drive traffic to my You Tube channel. What’s worked for me and what hasn’t.

YouTube itself helps promote content through their search function and through “Suggested Videos”. However, these functions seem to benefit more established channels. When you’re channel is “new”, you’ll need to rely more on external sources to drive traffic to the site.

In terms of “external sources”, Pinterest has been my most helpful tool. That’s due primarily to digital lifespan of a pin. I have pins that I created years ago that still get repined today. That doesn’t happen on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr. The lifespan of a post on those other forums is much shorter.

For me that’s okay, I could have taught swim lessons 20 years ago and still been effective, so a static pin works fine. If I come up with a new drill, I simply create a new pin. To reach users consistently on the other social media platforms, I have to keep re-posting.

While there are numerous external programs for “scheduling” posts, Tumblr has the best, free, scheduling functionality of the social media platforms that I’ve used. Plus, by linking my Facebook account to Tumblr, I can post an item once and distribute it to multiple platforms.

When linking accounts, it’s important to remember that a post that looks good on one platform might not look the same on another. A Tumblr post, looks one way on Twitter, and another way on Facebook. Whereas, my Facebook posts just show up as generic Facebook links on my linked Twitter account unless I add an additional comment to them when I share something.

As for Facebook and Twitter, I certainly use them, but my ability to consistently drive traffic to my channel via these forums has been erratic. It’s kind of like playing darts in the dark. I’m not always sure whether or not I hit anything.