Tag: Likes and Dislikes

What I Love… and What Frustrates Me… About Pinterest

wordynerdbird3 Comments

Pinterest is great for inspiration, curating themed collections and procrastinating by getting distracted with eye candy. 

It is a platform on which the users create collections of images called boards. These are usually themed, although how organised and themed they are is entirely up to each individual user.

I love being able to put together a collection of images on any theme I wish. The evidence of this is the fact that I have a bazillion Pinterest boards for everything from books worth reading, my book reviews and blog posts and social media for Indie authors to costume and set ideas for musical theatre productions and swoonworthy libraries. I’ve collected hundreds of great looking recipes that I might never make, and probably twenty that I have. I can be as nerdy about things as I like- in fact, that is positively encouraged! It really is all very enjoyable. 

Just a few of my bookish and Indie author boards.

Pinterest is a great way to highlight my own content and link it back to my blogs or website. When I write a blog post relevant to Indie authors in one way or another, I can add it to one of my boards on Pinterest where it is easily found and accessed by others. The link back to my blog post is an integral part of the pinned image, so that a click on that image takes a viewer straight to my blog. This link is easily achieved by sharing to Pinterest directly from each WordPress blogpost, or by adding the link manually to a custom image. 

It is a wonderful thing to be inspired by others, whether it’s by “how to do something” posts, images of places you’d like to travel to,  or ideas about how to take better photos of different things. This is something that Pinterest and Instagram have in common because they’re both highly visual in nature. 

I also like the fact that you can have secret boards. This means that you can save collections of things like Christmas or birthday gift ideas or whatever else you want to keep private, and nobody else can see them. 

One very practical, personal use for Pinterest is creating a Wish List. My best friend, my sister and I all have a Wish List board, where we place images of things we’d like to have as birthday or Christmas gifts. It makes shopping for one another so much easier, and enables us to buy the perfect gift every time. They don’t have to be expensive things – one of my friends used that board to find the pattern for a pair of knitted gloves I liked, and presented me with those very gloves in my favourite colour: black! If there is a particular book I want, or a particular bear I want to add to my collection, I can add it to that list and use it as a shopping list for myself, too! 

What frustrates me, though, is that Pinterest is really not all that social.

You used to be able to like someone’s post, but you can’t do that anymore. You can save it to your own collection. You can leave a comment, but not many people do. You can send someone a pin via direct message, assuming they’re on Pinterest too. But none of it feels much like an immediate connection like it does on Facebook or Instagram. I may have 735 followers, but I never actually know if they’re there. 

I suppose that’s because Pinterest is focused more on curating content than on creating connections between people. I understand the different emphasis, but I really don’t think being able to like someone’s image distracted from that. 

The Verdict: Pinterest is a helpful and enjoyable media platform, but not exactly social in nature. It is best used for collecting and sharing content, not connections. 

Having said that, if you’d like to follow me on Pinterest, you are more than welcome to do so. You won’t be able to ‘like’ my posts, but you may find one or three – or thirty – boards that inspire or help you somehow. 

What I Love… And What Frustrates Me… About Blogging On WordPress

wordynerdbird15 Comments

There are many features of WordPress that I love. In terms of social media platforms, though, the advantages are clear.

It’s more meaningful than Facebook.
The content on WordPress – and I assume on other blogging platforms – is as varied and interesting as you’ll ever find. Books, history, poetry, literature, Indie authors, self publishing, photography, travel, food, music… you name it, there are multiple blogs right there waiting to be discovered and read.  There is no end to the talent in this place. 

There’s no clickbait, drivel or game requests.
Enough said.

You can engage exactly as one does on Facebook.
You can like a post, you can leave a comment. You can even like as many posts as you want to, and WordPress won’t stop you from doing so. How’s that for a positive, helpful algorithm?

Sharing posts is easy.
What’s on WordPress doesn’t have to stay on WordPress.
With one click, you can share posts on WordPress using the reblog function, or directly onto any of the other social media platforms.

Going ad-free with a custom domain is cheap and easy. 
It doesn’t cost much to have your own domain name that adds to your personal branding, and eliminate all advertising from your blog altogether. It works out even cheaper if you pay for two or three years instead of one, and as a business expense, you can claim it as a tax deduction. This can be done from the WordPress menu, so you don’t even have to Google how to do it. 

Sorry, though – wordynerdbird.com and mrbooksquirrel.blog are already taken. Have fun thinking up something cooler! 

There is no instant messenger, nor is there an inbox. 
There are benefits to not being quite so available all the time. 
I know. It’s a shocking thought, but I’m brave enough to say it. 

Many bloggers do have links to their other social media accounts on their blog, so you can still send a personal message or have a conversation there if you wish to. 

There’s no drama. 
Well… there might be on some political blogs, or perhaps some celebrity ones, I suppose. I don’t follow or read those, so I wouldn’t know.

Generally, though, you follow and read what you want to, and the rest sail blissfully past without even making a blip on your radar. 

Block style formatting. 
I found using the new “blocks” editor intimidating for about half a day, and have absolutely loved it ever since. It makes designing a great-looking post super easy. If you don’t like where an image or some other content is, you can move it around without fuss. Need a sub-heading? No problem. Formatting a list? Easy as. You can even save a particular block as a reusable one, so you can add it to subsequent posts with one click. This is great for themes and otherwise related posts. 

The Reader page on WordPress is brilliant. 
It lists all the posts from the blogs you follow, so that you can scroll through and see what’s on offer. It means that people who follow your blog will actually be able to see when you make a new post, and click through to read it with ease. 
If you want to find something new, you can search for a topic or click on the “Discover” tab.

There are, however, just a couple of things that frustrate me.

As I commented yesterday, I wish it were easier to get people to engage and respond. Perhaps they don’t perceive the value of that like they do on other social media platforms. Perhaps it’s a different type of audience. I just don’t know what the answer is there. 

The WordPress app. 
While the website uses “blocks” for content, the app is a dinosaur. Editing a post using the app is a nightmare because of the different formatting – you have to convert it from blocks to “classic” and it all just ends up looking wrong. 

It’s disappointing, because an outfit as big and professional as WordPress should be able to furnish their users with an app that is easy to use and which fully complements the website editor. 

Consequently, I do all my posting via the website, even on my iPad or phone. It’s far easier and the results are better. 

The Verdict:
WordPress wins, hands down. With just a little more audience interaction, it would be darn near perfect. 

What I Love… And What Frustrates Me… About Snapchat

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I’m proud to say that this was one of my first-ever Snapchats.

Snapchat has been the subject of much controversy in the past – mostly from people who have never used it. I know a lot of people have been vocal in their criticism of the ease with which teens could use it to send pictures of their naughty bits to one another. To be honest, they haven’t ever needed SnapChat to do that.  And, in a further moment of not-so-surprising honesty, I’ve never used Snapchat for that either. 

It’s like anything: you can use it sensibly, and be careful who you add to your contacts, or you can be an idiot and endanger any bit of credibility you ever had. Snapchat is definitely not alone in that regard. 

Contrary to all the negative press it has had, Snapchat is actually pretty cool. 

The process is simple:

  • Take a snap, choose who you want to send it to, and send it. 
  • If you want everyone to be able to see it, you add it to your “story”.
  • If you don’t, people will only see your snap if you actually send it to them individually. 
  • You can choose how long you want the photo or video to last. Once the time you set expires, it’s gone. 

It’s important to remember that people can take a screenshot, and people can be offended, so common sense and decency are still required. 

I have great fun using Snapchat for quick, easy contact with my family and friends.  It’s also a great way to quickly and easily share a moment in your day in ways that are hard to otherwise express. 

In that respect. It’s super duper effective. 

It’s actually great for introverts because we can communicate meaningfully without actually having to make, or answer, a phone call. I have found that if you send enough Snapchats, they know you’re okay and what you’re doing, and don’t actually try to call anywhere near as often. That may sound awful, but if you ask any introvert you know, they’ll tell you it’s a fact of life: talking on the phone for any length of time is hard, especially if you’re tired or unwell.

I also use it to share my comedic genius with the world. You’ve got to take your opportunities where you can get them, after all. 

  • When you can’t put into words how bad your hospital food is…
  • When you want to show kids these days what life without a phone was like…

My absolute favourite use of Snapchat, though, is when my family use it to send me baby spam. I’m one of those aunties who can never get enough pics of my babies so Snapchat offers a great way for them to send me pictures without all the cranky “we don’t want baby spam” whiners on Facebook and Instagram getting their noses out of joint. Snapchat makes it easy to be a lot more direct and “one on one” with your pictures. 

You don’t even have to take a photo every time. You can just use the instant message function if that’s all you want to do.  But then… why wouldn’t you take a photo every time when you’ve got those filters to play with? 

Seriously, the Snapchat  filters are fantastic. One minute I’m a washed out, permanently exhausted 50-something English teacher, and the next, I’m a cat… or an emu… or a pirate… or whatever the filters of the day offer. Sometimes, I have instant makeup and smoother, younger skin. Sometimes I can add a piercing or a tattoo. Finding out what the filters are each day is as much fun as using them. 

Its easy to edit a picture using the menu at the top right of whatever picture you take This allows you to:

  • add text, labels, and/or stickers
  • crop your photo
  • doodle or write on your picture
  • attach a URL or website to your image
  • cut out part of your picture to create a sticker

You can also easily save any picture you like to your phone’s camera roll, using the little down arrow icon at the bottom left of the image.


There isn’t really a lot that annoys me about Snapchat, but I probably should mention:

  • The silly, click-bait stuff they post on the “discover” page. Ugh.  Once I’ve looked at my friends’ stories, I swipe away from the page. 
  • On specific dates – Christmas, New Year, that kind of thing – the ’Snapchat Team’ send pictures or videos that you have to watch to get rid of them. Some of them are clever. Others… not so much. 
  • Occasionally, there will be a filter that makes me look uncannily like my brother. I’m really not so keen on those, but it is kind of fun freaking out his daughters and our sisters with the pictures. And no… I’m not going to show you what I mean! 

For me, the frustrations are very minor compared to the fun I have with the app. It’s a keeper. 

What I Like… And What Frustrates Me… About Twitter

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It seems to me that people either love Twitter or can’t stand it. I am definitely in the former category, for several reasons:

  • It’s direct. You follow someone? You see their tweets. You don’t follow someone? You live in blissful ignorance.  My feed is full of creative, positive people and exactly zero politicians. It’s a great way to filter reality. 

    Everyone who follows me can see my posts in real time, without any interference from the platform itself. Twitter sends every tweet into the world without trying to make a buck out of me to do it. That in itself is a refreshing change among social media platforms. 
  • Retweets are brilliant for extending your reach easily and painlessly.. With one click, someone else can share your post with all their followers, too. Not only does this take your content further, it can also result in new followers and interactions.
  • It’s brief.  Say what you want to say in 280 characters, preferably less. And that includes your hashtags. 
  • Hashtagging is easy.  Start typing a hashtag, and Twitter will actually suggest the most popular tags for you that start with those letters. It doesn’t get easier than that. 
  • Connecting with others who have the same interests is easy. Once again, hashtags ply a key role here. Searching for a tag you are interested in is a simple way to find people using that tag in their posts. I have found great people, interesting content, and some excellent books doing exactly that. 
  • I also like just scrolling through my feed and seeing what pops up. There is invariably something I want to respond to with a like or a bookish or bloggish post that I want to check out. I can spend as much or as little time as I have, put it down, and come back later. In that sense, it’s pretty cruisy. 
  • Lists. You can create lists of accounts you want to group together. I have lists for authors in different genres. I also have a list for my favourite accounts called “Don’t Miss a Tweet”.

    By going to a particular list in my profile, I can see only the tweets from the accounts in that list. It is a great way to cut through the voluminous white noise of the Twittersphere, and saves heaps of time when I am busy, because I see exactly what I want to and nothing else.

    Lists can be made public or kept private. While I keep my “Don’t Miss a Tweet” list to myself, I make my genre lists public so that if someone is looking for Fantasy Authors or Poets, they can find a ready-made collection in no time flat. I may not have every author of a particular genre in my list, but you may be sure that the ones on my lists are worth checking out.   

That all sounds pretty great, doesn’t it?

However, no social media platform is without its pitfalls. 

My dislikes include, in no particular order:

  • Trolls and fake accounts.  It’s easy for people to hide behind a social media account with a fake name and create mayhem. Whether it’s bullying or bullshit they are into, there’s not really a lot to stop them. 

    I overcome this by being very choosy about who I follow, and by making extensive use of the “unfollow” and “block” functions the minute my spidey senses start tingling. 
  • Direct messages.  Some people appreciate direct messages, but I am not one of them. It seems to me they are all either spamming a product or creepers trying to seduce me into giving them money or naughty photographs. 

    I overcome this by never looking at my inbox. 
  • Tweeting can be hot-and-miss. The life cycle of a tweet is short, and I f followers aren’t online when you tweet, they can miss your content. 

    I overcome this by recycling my content, using different tweets on non-consecutive days so it doesn’t get repetitive or boring. 
  • Clickbait. This is the term for anything exaggerated or sensationalised to make you click on a link to read the story. Ugh. 

    Once again, the blocking function has proven to be really effective in getting rid of these accounts from my feed. 

Overall, I find Twitter much more user-friendly than Facebook, but I doubt that I would if I hadn’t taken the time to learn how to keep my Twitfeed positive and focused, and free of politics, gossip and drama. 

What I Like … and What I Don’t… About Instagram

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I really like Instagram. 

It’s easy. A nice picture, a few well-chosen hashtags, and you’re done.  Scrolling through your feed and liking posts is easy too. 

Of course, there are ways you can make things more sophisticated. Adding your post to your story is relatively straightforward. You can add posts to highlights that show up in nicely organised groups on your profile. You can save posts into collections. You can follow favourite hashtags as well as individuals. 

There’s no obligation to do any of those things, so you can really keep it as simple or make it as fancy as you like. 

I really enjoy looking at other people’s creativity in pictures, so I’m right at home on Insta. I’m happy to look at their books, their cats or dogs, their holiday snaps, whatever. I love baby pictures. I enjoy memes. Some people want to post about their books all the time. Some people hardly ever post about their books. Either way, I’m cool with that. I like the fact that we all have freedom to post as we please, and we’re all able to get on and play nicely in the Insta playground. 

I like the simplicity of responding to other people’s posts. Liking is easy. Commenting is easy. 
I do occasionally think it would be nice if there were a choice of reactions like there is on Facebook. Other days, though, I consider it in terms of “a heart is a heart is a heart” and am grateful that there isn’t more value given to one response over another. 

It has been really encouraging and motivating to connect with other people with similar interests through the use of particular hashtags and “follow loops”, which are basically posts where authors or other people with common interests respond and then follow one another. I’ve found so much inspiration, and received so much encouragement and feedback, from other authors and Indie creatives on Instagram. It’s a great way to become part of a very positive and proactive creative community. 

The challenge of developing my own creative identity on Instagram has been beneficial in terms of incorporating my own style and branding so that my Instagram profile is consistently “me”. I want people to be able to look at my profile and understand something of my personality and commitment to what I do. There’s a lot more to that than “buy my book” posts. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, but well worth it in terms of consistency and style, and as a means of establishing some credibility.  

And, of course, there are things that frustrate me.
These fall into two groups: less pleasant aspects of the app itself, and my own personal peeves. 

First up: the less “user friendly” elements.  

  • Using the wrong hashtags – or more correctly, hashtags that have been abused by others, can cause your posts using those tags to be shadow banned. That’s a nerdy way of saying fewer people will see them. Don’t panic, though – there are ways to find out which tags are  thus afflicted, and so avoid using them. 
  • Scammers that look like legitimate shopfronts frequent Instagram. They’re as capable of using a pretty picture as anyone else, it seems. It pays to check out any business or site before clicking through from an Insta ad – and that’s the voice of experience talking. I got caught out once, and learned my lesson very promptly. 
  • The challenge of gaining visibility for posts. It seems that no matter how many followers I have, there’s a natural cap on how many “likes” or views my posts seem to get.  Just like Facebook – which owns Instagram – there’s an algorithm running that appears to how many of my followers see my posts. The more likes a post gets, the more visible it is to more people.  Of course, they’re quite happy to encourage me to boost my posts and pay for them to show my posts to more people. Forgive my cynicism about that, won’t you?


Secondly, my “pet peeves”:

  • Bookshelves arranged into rainbows.  I just don’t understand. I get that it’s pretty, and I like rainbows as much as anyone… but it really gives the book nerd in me enormous anxiety. Wouldn’t that mean a series of books is separated on the shelves? And how does one find anything if different genres and categories are all mixed up on the basis of the colour of their covers?  This is clearly a hard no from me. 
  • People who appear to be commenting in response to something I post, but they’re really spamming me with their own content. Ugh. That’s just rude.
  • People who follow in the hope that you’ll follow them back, and then unfollow you. Especially those who don’t just do it once. There are a couple of accounts with a really distinctive  and instantly recognisable handle that keeps on following me, then unfollowing and following again a couple of weeks later. Frankly, I wonder why they bother, but it is amusing. Do they think people aren’t going to notice that? 

The verdict: Instagram is generally a very positive and enjoyable place for me. The things I don’t like are opportunities for me to practise being a grown up and just keep scrolling past them.
It’s an Insta-heart from me.