Melanie you know I think Instagram certainly fills an artists need to be seen and give us the ego buzz we all crave, but it’s owned by Facebook and there’s limited hyperlinks to redirect traffic to your website / email ordering system. Most people are lazy and will not go to your profile to find your direct link – let alone trying to cut and paste from Instagram comments. I think it’s still an add on to more customer oriented platform’s like websites / blogs directly linked to a google+ business page.
If it’s customer’s you want – they need to be able to search you in google to be able to find you to order. The best way to be found on google is the local business pages and connecting with many different types of people on g+ that live in your service area.
Why is that important? Well say if you follow a local non related business e.g Joes Swimming pools and they follow you back. When Joe decides to google a cake maker in his area guess who shows up on the first page? Yep you do because you are connected on g+ (you don’t even have to have great SEO for this to happen)
I personally think webpages/blogs and a Google plus Business page should be your core focus. Then all the other platforms are to be used to supplement directing traffic to your webpage.
The highest traffic I have to my blog is in order from G+, Google search, Pinterest and then the others in much smaller numbers.
Opening a Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest etc business profile (again directly linked to your domain name) improves your webpage/blogs ranking – again pushing your chances up to be found on Google search.
(Melanie you know personally how much my webpage rankings have improved since I changed my thinking)
I guess the long story short is I am personally going to redirect all the wasted energy I have previously invested in Facebook to focus on writing a better blog, and improving my circles and communities on g+
Naomi AKA Cairns Cake Lady, Australia www.cakedecorcairns.com or www.google.com/+CakeDecorCairns or www.facebook.com/cakedecorcairns
