Technical Difficulties: Building a Blogging Platform, one Story, Tweet, and Pin at a Time

I am not a tech savvy person.  Quite frankly, I feel like Wilma Flintstone when it comes to staying caught up in the information age. One might think that I’d be more like Jane Jetson.

After all, I am a cyber teacher, run this blog, teach at an iPad high school, can publish online school newspapers, and live with a techie husband and two teenagers whose thumbs can text a novel before I can get my iPhone friend Siri to define “streaking” on Snap Chat (FYI – does not involve opening up a trench coat to your birthday suit).

I am trying to build my blogging platform, but I get completely overwhelmed and distracted with all the social networks. Sometimes I want to give up, unplug, and build puzzles instead (with real cardboard pieces).

I read that to get more blogging “followers” I need to tap into social media beyond my WordPress Blog.  Here is what I know, which is minimal:

I’m pretty good at  Facebook and have been a FB Friend for years. Beyond my timeline, I started a Page. I’m still learning how to boost organic traffic to my Page.  I once paid five extra dollars to get more readers and it made me feel cheap and dirty (like opening up a trench coat to my birthday suit).  I refuse to try buying social media friends ever again. *There are better ways.  

As for Twitter, I have an account but barely know how to Twit. #whatisahashtag

I made one single Youtube video but forget how to access my account, so if you want to hear me playing the harmonica you will need to click here.

Pinterest truly is “the world’s catalog of ideas.” I have an old Pinterest account that I avoided using because I didn’t want to get addicted to pinning. After opening up the Pandora’s Box of everything that could potentially interest me, I am indeed hooked.  I just spent over an hour looking up sweaters for hairless hamsters.  Yes, there are some amazingly dressed hamsters out there.  After reading an article about making these little rodents cozy, I was asked to vote to promote the adorableness. Then I created this category on Pinterest.  Click the link for: Hairless Hamsters Need Clothes.  What in the hamster hell is going on here?  

Last Saturday, I spent most of my afternoon creating an Instagram account.  I thought I could get an App for it on my Mac, but there isn’t one.  I do not yet understand what a “story” is and how to stop “loving” my own pictures.  I asked my teenager for help, several times, and she frustratingly told me she was going to delete my account if I didn’t quit asking her so many questions.  I’m not sure how to promote my blog through Instagram anyhow so that medium might have to sit on the back burner.  You know what else has to sit on the back burner? A hairless hamster without his sweater, freezing his cheeks off.   

I have so much to learn!   From tweets, streaks, and pins to widgets, links, and  posts. The technological jargon alone is mind boggling.  Luckily, I stumbled across a course called “WordPress for Writers” that started yesterday.  I paid $49 and signed up for it hoping for some extra blogging guidance.  I’ll let you know how it goes.   

While I tune in with technology, I’ll keep writing my stories and sharing with all who hop on to my horizon.  It’s a little too late to start pounding out tales on a rock tablet, so I gotta just keep moving forward.  

If you haven’t followed yet, please enter your email (via WordPress), so you don’t miss out on the part-time sunshine I hope to deliver.    

*If you are my FB Friend and you enjoy this blog could you share it with your FB Friends, and then your friends can be my friends, and we can all sing about it?  Thanks in advance for SHARING my FB Page on your Timeline:  Tales from a Part-Time Sunshine Kindly ask your friends to LIKE the Page.  If you still haven’t responded to your Invite to “Like” that page, give a thumbs up and feel the warmth.

Shine on!