Pros and cons to Instagram and Pinterest

I just pinned the last post onto my board.   It looks like this: 

My blog pin board (c) 2015 Pinterest.com.
Photo by P.Lynne Designs

Simple, right?  No so fast, and there are pros and cons to Pinterest. Some facts about the two websites:

1.      Did you know that not everyone is a willing participate?  Shocking but true.  There is this annoying law throughout the land called a copyright law, but in some cases, it can be very helpful, especially if you do not want something to be shared.  It is now required that all sites like Pinterest to have a code, that the person can place on their page that prevents another person from sharing that site’s images. 

2.      This from the Digital Marketing:  There are 70 million users on Pinterest (including yours truly), 85% are female, and 42% are adult women.  So if you are wondering how and who to market to as well as where to market at on social media, there you go.   But not so fast.  The numbers for men are growing.  In addition to those stats, keep this in mind as well:  4.8% are Americans who use Pinterest during work. The average time spent on Pinterest:  14.2 minutes.  So for marketers looking to engage in this group (and a few bloggers), you have 14.2 minutes to impress someone to pin your photo and read your post or ad.  That is a monthly average of 98 minutes. 

3.      Pinterest is very easy to use.  You set up an account, set your boards, and start pinning.  You fill out an application with all your info (except your street address, which I do not recommend you do, unless you order something and have it delivered), and you ready to start pinning.

4.      Time waster.  I will save this for later when I conclude all of the social media platforms, but, yeah, Pinterest is up there with Facebook as one of the biggest time wasters.  You can sit there, pin one or two ideas, and 30 minutes have gone by.  If you are that person, who can sit for hours and pin, set a timer on phone.  When those minutes are over, please stop, and resume your scheduled activity.  If this becomes a problem, I suggest you take a time out from the social media.

5.      It's your style.  I do not have to say that you need to have your boards like mine, because if you do not like my tastes, that is OK. 

Instagram pros and cons

1.      Facts: it one of the favorite social media among millennials (18-30). There are 300 million monthly active users, amongst those numbers, there are daily users of 70 million.  Surprisingly, 9% of teen girls have said they have been cyber-bullied through Instagram.  26% in the US use Instagram.  Among adult males and females, only 15% (male) versus 20% (female) use Instagram.  So again, thinking about this as you write your posts, and there is a way to get readers through Instagram.

2.      It is the best social media platform for sharing photos, next to Pinterest.  You can share what you ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, a movie you just saw, a craft project you just made, your child’s reaction to the latest movie trailer, a sunset…anything.  BUT…there is also this thing called over sharing. Please, for all things good and just, as must as people love Instagram, enough with the food porn.  If it is a great recipe you have tried to make, fine.  If it a new restaurant that you want everyone to try, good.  BUT, if it is your normal everyday routine of cereal, toast, and coffee, and you shared it for the 9^th time in a row, please stop. Not everyone is that into your daily routine.

3.      Instagram is private.  Please when you sign up for your account, do not put your street address.  You are not ordering anything, so therefore, they do not need your street address.  If you must put an address, please use city and state (no zip).  Otherwise, they do have privacy settings.

4.      Instagram is a positive influence.  I can hear the grumbles, but hear me out.  When you post a picture on Instagram with a positive message, you can generally “likes”.  It can brighten someone's day or life.  It can make a person feel good about themselves.  I have a whole subject to talk about this, but this is the very reason why a person should not cyber-bully.  Now who wants to see a picture of a puppy?

5.      Tagging a location.  If this an account for a minor, and I do not believe in anyone under the age of 18 having one, because of child and teen predictors,  but that is my opinion, please do not put even the city and state on their account.  Please educate your child on what to do, and how to it, if someone approaches them.

Some may wonder why I did not include you tube.  These two Social Media platforms are different than YouTube, which is in a whole different platform, since it is a video sharing program.  I will have something to say on this one.

6.)  (Update:)  I found a major con with Instagram.  People can get to your photos, copy them, and use them as their own outside of Instagram's website without your permission.  This week, A so called photographer named Richard Price, takes other people's Instagram photos, and alters them so that he can call them his own personal masterpiece.   He posted some recently in a gallery in New York, and one of them was sold for $90,000.  He cannot be sued, and it is out of Instagram's hands, because he is doing it outside of the site.  My opinion to this is, if you are going to share photos that contains you or the people you know faces on Instagram, be very careful, because they could end up somewhere without your permission, and there isn't anything you can do about it yet.   I hope the government is working on it.  As for now, I deleted all family pictures on Instagram, and sticking to places I have been, what I eat or the projects I have created.
I am not saying to stop using Instagram or to or don't have an account, I am just saying, be careful about what photos you share to the world.  I still like Instagram, because they are not the problem.

The next post will focus on how I use these platforms to gain likes and traffic.(Update:  May 30, 2015...)  Since I first posted this, I have decided to add the gain likes and traffic to this post.

Being a follower is the best way to gain likes and traffic to your own feed.  One of the things I like about both Pinterest and Instagram is once you follow a person, chances are that they will follow you back, and their photos will be on your wall, and likewise your photos will be on their feed.  You may even gain a new follower from one of their friends.  When you get that request, check them out before excepting.   There isn't much work you can do on these two platforms, in order to gain followers, but keep posting.  Do not post just one time, and forget about it.   Posting is your friend.

That is it for this series.  I decided not to post anything about Facebook, because for one, it's complicated, but not so complicated that you cannot just jump right in.  Just complicated to explain in two posts.  On word of advise in case you want a Facebook account or do not know what to do with the one you have, Stay away from the games.