A little while ago I came to the realisation that I wanted to branch out on social media – to find somewhere I could share my images from the blog and my life as someone with photography experience, while also curating helpful content and promoting other amazing blogs and resources.
Pinterest seemed like a natural fit. So on I hopped, with childlike hopes of like-minded skin care addicts hiding in the woodwork, ready to share articles, research and beautiful images.
Unfortunately – that’s not what I found.
Upon opening Pinterest, I was faced with what I can only describe as a skin care enthusiast’s nightmare. Picture page after page of frankly useless and harmful advice.
Lemon sugar scrubs. Isopropyl alcohol toners. Hilariously photoshopped before-and-afters.
Guides that range from ridiculous to the suspiciously scientific: like face maps, which upon closer inspection are no more than a virality-grab.
Forgive me for not including any images – there are two reasons for this. First, because you yourself can go over to Pinterest right now, search ‘skin care’ and you’ll be faced with your own, unique eyeful of scourge (also recommended: ‘sagging’, ‘wrinkles’, and ‘remedy’). Secondly – and much more selfishly – I don’t want to interact with any of this content lest the algorithms that be start to think that I like that kind of stuff.
It seems then that the name of the game on the platform is to one-up each other in how eye-grabbingly you can design a tangentially-related stock image on Canva and how boldly you can bend the truth to get that precious referral traffic.
Still, I’ve powered through with my initial intentions to curate a feed of real, helpful tips and things I love. I try to have my space be inspirational, motivating, helpful, but also to strike a balance with realism. So far I think I’ve managed not to fall prey to the incessant need people seem to feel, of pushing out content at the expense of quality, and sometimes outright lie for the sake of views.
And it’s going quite well for me – I’ve recently hit 100k viewers per month and climbing. And I know that there are others out there too, a small number who are fighting the good fight, working through the mediocre and producing polished, professional and genuinely helpful material.
The moral of this story is: don’t lower your standards just because it seems like the fastest way to success. You’ll find far more peace and long term benefits in sticking to doing what makes you feel good when you go to bed at night. There’s enough garbage and noise out there – don’t contribute to it. Your work may never win over the drowning sea of half-assed posts and clickbait – and that’s ok.
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