As predicted, our Pinterest content peaked during December (thanks, gingerbread house enthusiasts!) while our other socials felt a bit of a chill. So while the retailers of the world navigated year-end sales and endless customer service DMs, we took this time to roll out a few minor updates in how we share content between platforms.
It’s no secret that December is a big month for consumer goods, which may have affected the algorithm across the platform. For the first time in months, despite our posts individually performing well, our Instagram account as a whole saw declines. Our page reach topped off at 6.5K, with impressions totaling 24K.
Yet our highest performing post of the month was Venice, Calif.-based Saam Gabbay‘s 10-image carousel, which amassed 240 likes across 2.3K impressions:
The second-highest performing post belonged to Atlanta-based photographer Madelynne Ross, whose delightful food and drink imagery gained 2.2K impressions and 206 likes:
And our #1 story this month was a share of the CIP: Metropolis feed post, which featured 9 different photographers. Since Creative in Place includes so many photographers, the related stories and posts usually see more shares and other engagement. This story, in particular, had a reach of 239:
Despite our numbers taking slight dips this month, Instagram is still where we see the most engagement. Because of that, we’ve decided to share more of the love with Facebook. Now, most of our feed posts and all of our photographer spotlight stories are being shared on Facebook as well — which has already seen some positive results. More below.
December certainly proved the most fruitful month of the year for Pinterest, with an astounding 562K impressions, 22.7K engagements, and over 1,000 outbound clicks! While “fresh” pins (new images not pre-existing on the platform) are increasingly valuable, these numbers are largely thanks to perennial content that adds to the hype of the holiday season.
In terms of fresh pins, however, Syracuse, Utah-based photographer Braxton Wilhelmsen secured 92 impressions with this lifestyle image:
Once again, our top board was Home & Garden with 26.4K impressions and 1.1K engagements.
Facebook actually saw slight growth this month, with a reach of 1.7K — a 9% increase.
This uptick in reach may be due to the recent sharing of image carousels from Instagram. After all, the furthest reaching post belonged to Atlanta-based Madelynne Ross. Her playful food photography had a reach of 522:
Yet San Francisco-based Winni Wintermeyer captured more attention with the sharing of his spotlight article, wherein he worked with famous American novelist and essayist Jonathan Franzen. It appears we may have some Franzen fans in our audience, as the post had the most engagement, with 11 likes and 1 share:
Our Instagram stories shared to Facebook seem to be averaging 30+ views each so far, which is admittedly low, but better than before (nothing) with nowhere to go but up.
While our LinkedIn page gained 23 new followers in December, we only saw 192 page views, a pretty noticeable dip compared to last month.
Mirroring the success on Facebook, our Franzen fans showed up! San Francisco-based Winni Wintermeyer and his spotlight article once again performed the highest, with 225 impressions and 9 clicks:
Our Twitter account has begun picking up a little more momentum, with 864 profile visits and 876 impressions this past month.
Our top Tweet was a timely holiday greeting, with 190 impressions:
From fruit cake to tired toddlers, have a safe and happy holiday🎄 #MerryChristmas #HappyHolidays pic.twitter.com/baVXfbf4lN
— Wonderful Machine (@wonderflmachine) December 24, 2021
And crowd-favorite Winni Wintermeyer is back! This time as our top Twitter mention, with 15 engagements from his tweet promoting our article:
A feature on the @wonderflmachine blog about a recent shoot with Jonathan Franzen for @GdnSaturday magazine — https://t.co/oo4iZ1oqmw
— Winni Wintermeyer (@winni3am) December 22, 2021
Despite not posting any fresh content to our YouTube channel in December, our numbers are higher than last month, with 375 views, 5.2K impressions, and 15.8 hours of watch time.
It is well known that older content is what brings in the consistent views on YouTube, but with the new content we’re planning on posting in the new year, it’ll be interesting to see where our numbers go.