I felt like the vertical stripes used in the layout help in drawing the eye to the content of the blog while not taking away from it. The reduced opacity in the overlayed background image allows for a lot of customization in regards to color options for this theme with minimal effort.
Overall I chose this design due to the ease of use and customization aligned with the color choices and feeling that I wanted in my blog at the moment. The soft pinks bring a breath of ease and relaxation to me and help me to focus on what needs to be done.
For my social media use, I find that there are many pros and cons associated with the various sites and they vary greatly in usefulness depending on what you are looking to get out of them. One of the biggest things that you need to consider when looking to utilize social media is what kind of content are you looking to put out and/or consume.
With regards to my personal use of social media I tend to stick with ones that are easier to use and are more widespread in their use, namely Facebook and Twitter -- although I do have a few other sites that I am no longer active on. I use them to keep in touch with family and friends who I live far from as it is a good way to keep those you love close.
However, with my business use of social media, I tend to try to branch out to new sites as I can and heavily rely on Facebook and Twitter to get my information out. I occasionally utilize Instagram as I have an art business as well but I find Instagram a bit bulky and difficult to use at times compared to using Hootsuite to post across my Facebook and Twitter accounts seamlessly.
