Creeping back from death’s door via the internet
March 10th, 2010 • Social media, Uncategorized
I’ve had a bad cold this week. It’s been so bad that I’ve confined myself to the house for two days. I had intended to do all the admin jobs that I pretend don’t exist when I’m healthy and busy busy busy. However, feeling crap turned out to be an equally good excuse to pretend they don’t exist.
Instead, I’ve turned my sedentary week into a research week. Trawling the internet for all the business gurus, marketing experts and social media ‘executives’ who might help me to do what I do better, which in turn will help my clients do what they do better.
That’s the theory at least. So in the name of business research I’ve been caught in a whirlwind of social media antics, including twittering (see Tweet to whoo to find out how twittery I’ve been – on reflection that should read ‘woo’, I’m not as clever as I thought) and much blog reading of a great deal of ‘experts’ who’ve written books and such like that you don’t need to bother to read now because their soundbites and blogbytes are probably just as informative, more interesting and don’t take up so much time.
Do I sound cynical? I don’t mean to, much.
There really is a wealth of useful stuff available out there. Go look at my blog roll to follow some awesome, intelligent social creatures who seem to have great insight into the workings of the human brain as well as tremendous command of the internet. These guys have thousands of twitter followers [not as many as Stephen Fry though] and if you don’t know the importance of that you definitely need to read their blogs.
It’s just that I’m left feeling a little empty by this gig, probably because it’s just you and a computer and suddenly your partner’s hard day teaching children to engage with the world isn’t all that interesting…and that’s WRONG.
So what have I learned this week while lurking around death’s door? Let’s have a think:
- That understanding the presence of social media marketing is essential in today’s business world; if you don’t want to participate, that’s fine, but not knowing about it is very uncool. To know about it and give it the two fingers (if you can afford to) is, on the other hand, pretty damn cool.
- That you must select with great care the blogs and twitters you follow. Find some valuable ones and stick to them for a while. Don’t follow too many. Make sure they’re not all saying the same thing – it saps your energy and feels like watching every soap opera in the TV listings. Throw some totally unrelated ones in there to help broaden your perspective. If you find a healthy selection of intelligent blogs covering a few areas of your business interest, you’re in business…so to speak.
- That maintaining a blog is generally a Good Idea but only if you have something interesting to say (subjective) and if you can construct a reasonable sentence. It’s an opportunity to be a real person and to put personality into your business without doing that icky promotional thing in person (i.e. being a real person at the same time as not being a real person).
- That Facebook is insidious and addictive. It makes you vulnerable, is less useful than twitter (gasp) and you can’t quite put it down.
- That LinkedIn is still a mystery. Working on it (thanks Social Media Examiner, I’ll be checking out your tutorial shortly).
I conclude my simplistic summation of social media madness by sending you to read Amy Mengel’s musings on the subject.
Ok, I’m off to re-examine my blogroll…