I recently–okay, today–was asked to participate in an promotional campaign, but first I had to give them the numbers for my Impressions and Unique Visitors.
I can’t. This is a sorority I don’t belong to–the venerable Greek House of Sigma Tau Alpha TS. Once I did belong, but depledged when I started The Other Side of Sixty. I wanted to see what it felt like to only blog when i wanted to (or, yes, occasionally when someone was paying me a lot) without consideration for who, what, when, why and whether anyone was reading me.
I took myself off the boardwalk (catwalk? gangplank?) and it has indeed been liberating. But at the same time, lonely. Many of the people I used to call my friends (or at least friendly acquaintances) aren’t anymore. It’s that old thing of Friends of the Road versus Friends of the Heart.
Of course, now I have new friends of the road, and some of them are old friends too. I find I’m getting back into the social media game. What that means is, once again, my fascination with social media is rising to the fore. When I lived in NoCal, I was on the Board of the Social Media Club of Sacramento. Then I moved to L.A. Of course, before I moved to L.A., I had a set-to with the then-president of SMCSacto in which I asked him whether he was a natural asshole, or did he have to work at it.
Sometimes, I just can’t help myself. The truth will out itself no matter how hard I try. (Of course, there are people who love me for that very quality)
I marginally belong the the SMC of LA, or whatever it’s called, but I haven’t been active…or even present, really. Having dropped out of our fraternity, STA-TS, I don’t get invited to all the cool stuff or even, come to think of it, the not-cool stuff.
There are those who say that the fun days of social media are over. Maybe the easy days of social media are over, the ones where the few of us using it were the only game in town. Now, everyone and their uncle is a social media maven. Learn the ways of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and you’re good to go.
But really? I’m not so sure. To be good at social media is to understand the marketplace, the machinations of the brands, and the way people’s minds work. It’s an equation that defies Ten Easy Steps and moves somewhere into the fine art of social psychology. I love it.
There is a lot of chatter. It is work. Social media has helped my husband’s so much so that he has a media person. An author friend just told me she hired someone and she’s seeing life back into her sales. That said, it is hard to do your job and promote your product (or yourself) and be successful in both. Or without burning out. I guess there’s a psychology to burnout too. 😉
Helped my husband’s small business.
I’m looking at that whole social media for writers thing to add to my coaching packages. It’s definitely a different animal doing social media for a book than for a “regular” product. And age enters into it too–social media for the millennials is different from social media for those of us in midlife and beyond. And I do mean Beyond: I was in my local Apple store a couple of Saturdays ago and was shocked, pleasantly so, to see that the majority of customers buying and attending the classes were probably 60+.
That masters in psychology comes in handy once again. Bet you never realized how much you’d pull on it.
The Master’s is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. Except I paid mightily for it. But then, when it became clear to me that I wasn’t ever going to practice as an MFT, I thought–oh well, consider it therapy.