97.

Use Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr

It's important that you be aware of the latest trends in our culture. Given that so much of our culture is driven by what's happening online, that means you need to be aware of what people are doing there. Where there are people, there is commerce, and where there is commerce, there is work for you.

Here are three of the coolest and most popular social media platforms. I've hopefully included enough information about each of them to entice you into further exploration. As each of these is an experience, the most I can do is, like a good waiter, to describe what's on the menu. You're going to have to order the meal yourself!

Note that your goals in researching and engaging with these three sites are twofold. First, you want to get comfortable using new social media platforms. Second, you want to connect with people and form friendships. This is a long-term play. It's strategic, not tactical. You will need both strategy and tactics in your lifelong effort to market and promote yourself!

• Pinterest (www.pinterest.com). Boasting almost 50 million users, about 60% of whom are female (half of those being mothers), Pinterest is a visual discovery tool. People use it to collect ideas for various projects, interests, and hobbies; to plan trips and projects; to organize events; to save articles and recipes; and more. It's like online scrapbooking—but so much more. People use Pinterest to identify and share what they love and what inspires them—things that represent who they are and who they aspire to be.
• Instagram (www.instagram.com). This online photo-sharing, video-sharing, and social-networking service enables its users to take pictures and videos (of up to 15 seconds), apply digital filters to them, and share them. In addition to sharing these items on Instagram itself, users can also post them on a variety of other social-networking platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr. Its 130 million active users upload some 40 million photos every day, which in turn generate a thousand comments every second! The content on Instagram skews artsy, so it provides an opportunity for users to show how creative they can be.
• Tumblr (www.tumblr.com). Tumblr is a two-fer—both a microblogging platform and a social networking site. This community of cool lets users post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, which other users can follow. Tumblr hosts more than 174 million blogs, has 132 million monthly unique users, and boasts 60 million new posts every day! Interestingly, it's the #1 ranked site for average minutes spent per visit (Facebook is #3). Tumblr's demographic is largely the 18–34 year old market so coveted by television networks. That group doesn't watch much television anymore, however—partly because they're on Tumblr! Think of Tumblr as an art gallery or exhibition space largely for musicians, photographers, and graphic artists, who are given artistic control of their work. The look is less text and more visual. It's eye candy, full of animated GIFs, often used as an art form. Tumblr is art on your phone. It's like watching a never-ending movie of beautiful images.