I wouldn’t want to go all the way back to drums and smoke signals or pony express. I like the ability we have now to spread information instantly, especially when it is at least accurate and at best worth spreading. What I have had to do to wade into social media, however, has given me a bad case of account overload.
Committed as I am to disseminating the ideas in S.P.E.A.R. Solves the World, I have taken on the responsibility of putting myself on every social there is. Except the Dark Web; that’s a site too far.
So now I have pages and pages of new usernames, accounts, and passwords. I have feeds and subscriptions. I follow. I like.
I am amazed that any of the random stuff Big Social sends my way is actually interesting, or even useful. And, truthfully, not that much is, percentage-wise. After I have found what I searched for, or checked on people I actually know, the ensuing parade devolves rapidly into the ridiculous. It is a dead give-away of how little Google really knows me. They apparently think I care about dog make-up. They think I want to know how to cook desserts that throw caution and nutrition to the winds. Is it really news that you can make something taste yummier by piling on more chocolate, marshmallows, and butter?
I happen to know how to make sweet potatoes taste like a dessert-worthy pudding without adding a thing. But… should I post that?
Probably not. The rest of my culinary repertoire is mainly setting the timer on the microwave or toaster oven. So I don’t think that’s going to be my channel.
What I can cook up much better is opinions, on institutions and on leaders. Also plausible, well-crafted ways to do better than they are doing. I can get mad as hell and still find the funny. If the talk shows ever find out about me I will make them laugh their asses off about stuff that is serious as hell.
None of which gave me a clue about how to do social media. So after two months of crying and cussing my way through abysmal DIY efforts, and working unsuccessfully with the publisher’s web designer just to try to set up my email box, I enlisted the aid of a dear friend, Heather. She has been pounding the socials for several years, for her very successful home business.
Her main task as my Social Media Manager is keeping my hyperventilation under control. After she got me to post my photo on TikTok, and while we were figuring out how to post the book, 800 people saw my face. 800! And 3 people went to Amazon and downloaded the eBook of S.P.E.A.R. Solves the World. So those viewers couldn’t ALL have been bots. The next day, just thinking about looking at my TikTok page threw me into a full blown panic attack. I had no idea why. I felt like such a wimp, I didn’t want to say anything.
But when I did, Heather was in total recognition of the syndrome. It’s the updated version of the old “worst nightmare,” where you found yourself naked in a public place. Pretty much describes posting your face on TikTok, doesn’t it?
The two of us have divided the social work into mine, which is writing and recording content, easy-peasy, and hers, which is everything else: the signing up, the posting, the SEO analyzing, the replying, the monitoring, and the whole subscribe and follow mating dance.
For my medical practice, and for the gym that I built and ran in Sparks, NV, I made print ads and TV spots and hosted various PR events. They worked great.
For the first two months after S.P.E.A.R. Solves the World was published, I wrote my own emails on Constant Contact, and they worked great, too. I got “above industry rates” of opens and clicks.
But social media? That is a whole other universe. Writing is only a teensy part of it.
How’s it going now, you may ask? Let me go with what the man who jumped off a ten story building was heard to say as he passed the third floor:
“So far, so good!”
Great post as always!