social media – Anita Rodgers Mystery Writer

I am. Are you? Are you like me when you log onto Twitter – a little dizzy, confused about where to go, what to do? Does it all just move a little too fast?

Facebook at least I can kind of sort of navigate. But then again…am I the only one who feels like they are screaming into a bowling alley on Friday night where everybody already has their buzz on and thinking about pizza toppings?

Pinterest? Fugetaboutit… I love pretty pictures and graphics, should be a perfect fit. But…to be honest, I’m just not one of those people who zooms around the Internet checking out all my thousands of interests and bookmarking pages and pictures and then organizing where all those things should go. So, yeah, hit and miss. But mostly miss.

I’ve read all the posts, I subscribe to the social media gurus. Schedule posts, tweets, twitters, make picture boards, take my webinar, I will teach you how to do it. Increase your followers, it matters. Author platform. Still, there I am on shore, waving to all my savvy friends blissfully sailing on their social media cruises – having missed the boat.

Maybe it’s because deep down inside I am just a social misfit. Always have been. Probably always will be. I was born shy and at heart I still am. I can force myself to be outgoing and social but inside I suspect people know. They know that I am clueless. That I worry they are noticing my thunder thighs and crooked teeth, wondering about my nervous laugh – wondering ‘why doesn’t she smile more?’

So now, I’ve just accepted the truth. I am hopelessly social media inadequate. If you follow me, I will probably just wonder why. (Thanks to Twitter’s new set up, I probably won’t even be able to tell that you followed me, but that’s on them, right?) If you subscribe to my blog I will worry I have nothing of value (you must give them value, value, value!!!!!!! that’s what the experts say, you know. but are they the only ones who actually know what they mean? I suspect they are) to offer you.

Look, I guess I’m just saying – I’m just a writer. I write books. I think they’re pretty good. I’d be thrilled if you read one of them. I’d be even more thrilled if you liked it after you read it. Maybe if you are socially inept like me, you will.

But at the very least, maybe we can be socially inept together? Nerds unite. We must stick together so the cheerleaders don’t take over. Am I right?

awkwardly yours,

Annie

Yep, I said that out loud. I can hear all the twitterers and social media gurus gasping now. Too bad.

Social media is freeking everywhere these days. You can’t read an article, watch a television show or go to a gas station without seeing those cute little icons plastered all over the place.

Chances are if you’ve ever spoken to any marketing person about promoting your business, one of the first things out of their mouth was, “You simply must be doing social media. You have to be on Face Book and Twitter.”

Is it true? I don’t know

Is social media even right for you?

In this digital world it’s easy to believe that we all have to jump in and do what everybody else is doing and so we do.

I have a Twitter account. I have a Face book page. I have a blog. So, why am I down on social media? Well, in my case social media hasn’t really done much for me lately. Frankly, I’m not even sure how to use it. Or more to the point I am completely mystified as to how others use it so well.

For many of us, the idea of gleefully conversing with people we don’t know about things we aren’t interested in makes us break into a cold sweat.

Here are my problems with Twitter:

I can’t figure out the language. I’ve read countless articles, gone to webinars, had conversations about Twitter. But for the life of me RT @ # look like gobbledygook on my Twitter feed.
People follow me for no reason. Nearly every day I get a notification from Twitter that some fellow tweeter is following me. I look at their profile and shrug. Why me? I wonder. No answer as far as I can tell.
It seems like a numbers game. Apparently the social proof is in who follows you and how many of those who’s follow you. For some reason it makes me feel like I’m back in high school heading the geeky girl club again.
It takes too much time. Ironic right? Since the tweets are a max of 140 characters you’d think I could swoop in and out of my Twitter account. And some clearly can. Not me. I get so hung up trying to figure out what everybody is talking about and why people I don’t follow are in my feed that I can lose an hour just like that.

Here are my problems with Face Book:

They are totally OCD. Face book just is incapable of leaving well enough alone. They are constantly changing things whether you like it or not and you never have the choice to opt out. Take the timeline thing. I hate it. But I’m stuck with it. Why does face book think they know how to represent me better than I do?
Sponsored ads and paid posts. It’s not bad enough that they are always trying to get you to give them access to your email contacts and running non-stop ads on the sidebar til you want to puke – but now you’ll see ads in your own feed. What the hell? Hate that.
Notifications gone wild. It got to the point that I was getting so many notifications in the email box that I had to turn them off completely. Which is too bad because there are some things I’d like to get a notification on. But after a hundred, ‘your friend Burt farted yesterday’ type notifications I had to put my foot down.
It’s so saturated with marketeering that I can’t find or see the people I signed up for Facebook to see and find. My reason for jumping into Facebook was really to stay in touch with friends and family. But my feed is so jammed with everything else, it’s hard to even see anybody in the mess.
It makes it too easy for people to spy on and stalk you. You may not know this but lawyers are regularly checking out Facebook pages. Yep, if you are going through a divorce, then limit your page to close friends and don’t talk about anything that could hurt you or help your spouse. Also, talking about when you won’t be home or places you are going will only make it easier for your stalker to track you.

I don’t hate social media – but I don’t love it either

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate social media but to be honest it’s not really all that for me. I think that social media does have great potential for the right kind of people. And social media will probably work great for you if:

You are a social animal and love talking to strangers about anything and everything.
Sharing your every thought about every topic under the sun gets your engine roaring.
Glad handing is your natural style.
You have your smart phone, and i Pad glued to your hip at all times.
You’d rather text, tweet, report your status or otherwise chat it up than anything else.

The social retard revolution

Only you know if social media works well for you, whether you use it for promoting your business or hanging out with your buddies. However, I think that we who aren’t comfortable with it, not good at it and don’t understand it, should just admit it. Maybe we should have a social retard revolution and just say no. I mean, aren’t we all individuals? Do we have to always run with the crowd? Or could we maybe just maybe dance to the beat of our own dysfunctional drums?

What do you think about social media? Is it all that for you? Tell me how?