Alright, I'm crying Uncle! I never thought I'd see the day when Iwould wave the white flag and completely surrender to the fact that I am a Social Media Flunkie (SMF)! Of course, there's always the chance that adult-onset ADD could play a part in this, but we'll leave that discussion for another day and just cover the fact that I'm a huge SMF!
You can't have a pulse in the blogging community and not be overwhelmed on a daily basis by all the blogs, sites, conferences and people telling you how you should be utilizing every aspect of social medial available to you, to grow your blog/business. I'm not gonna lie, I want people to read my blog. But more than that, I want more than just other bloggers (and this is where I'm probably going to be flayed alive, or crucified, or ostracized from the blogging community as a whole! Or hell, maybe all THREE!), to read my blog. I want to build my audience!
I want an audience of people who care about what I have to say, are entertained, maybe educated (or in turn, can educate me from the feedback in the comments or email), and want to follow the story of how I am changing my life in order to save it...as well as the occasional fluffy cat posts, raging rants, and the sporadic photo-bomb post filled with pictures of my gorgeous children. So now that we have that straight, I guess I can just come right out and say that I want to conquer the world! Well, alright, that's sort of being a smart-ass about things, but I really would love to have a network of readers who I know appreciate, are entertained, moved, or inspired by my words. If that makes me a complete narcissist, so be it.
Here's the thing I absolutely abhor about this whole blogging thing though...it's all the bits and pieces that are so interconnected with it. It's driving me nuts. It's assumed out here that you have the same goals as every other woman (or in more and more cases, man) who sits down at her computer and decides she wants to be the next Heather Armstrong (Dooce) or Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman), and come hell or high water, you're going to do it! So, accordingly there are a million sites out there that are going to tell you how to attain blogging Nirvana. They're going to suggest you become a corporate whore and shill your words for free products, or paid posts or trips to DisneyWorld/Land, or even blogging conferences...but you have to follow the "plan" and know your "brand" which, oddly enough tries to mimic all the successful blogs out there. In doing so, these organizations/people/companies want you to pimp them via Twitter, Facebook and your blogs. I'm really no one to talk, because hey, look to your right and you'll see that I'm part of BlogHer's advertising network...The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of these sites want you to think there's some sort of cookie cutter recipe you can follow in order to get to the top of the dog pile and by spending an inordinate amount of time on Twitter or Facebook, you'll get there even faster.
Whatever happened to being unique and original and telling your own story? Believe me, your words, told in your own voice have a power that can't be copied.
The thing about those successful blogs...the women behind them are, for the most part, talented writers, or there has been something that's happened in their lives to bring them attention or even in some cases, success. It's their words, or their circumstances that keep people coming back. Each blogger is unique and the honest-to-God truth is that you can't replicate that. You have to get by out here on your own merits and not by copying what you think is going to drive traffic to your site, and sometimes that includes pimping yourself out on all these other social media sites!
I've used Twitter, well probably over-used it to promote blog posts. I try and not pimp posts more than twice, but sometimes I get a little attention-whore'ish and want the traffic, so I'll toss the link up there one more time. With Facebook I post the link to new posts once, and the Networked Blogs posts it again. I do actually get a lot of traffic from Facebook, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I've got a lot of friends and family that use Facebook as a "feed" or "reader" of sorts...they aren't bloggers and don't know anything about feed-readers/RSS feeds and rely on me slapping that link up there. So I'm not likely to stop using it anytime soon. However, I need to get my ass off of Facebook in general, and stop lollygagging out there. There are those who would disagree with me though.
Certain marketing gurus think that in order to have a successful blog, you need to be networking every available minute of the day on Facebook or Twitter and I just don't have the patience for that kind of thing, especially not when I can use that time to insert both feet into my mouth by posting dumbass things on my husband's Facebook wall like, "Please bring me some wood tonight!" I'm sure you can imagine the comments that earned me. What I meant to say was, "Sweetie, I am freezing my rather large posterior off, and seeing as how we haven't chopped that wood outside the deck, can you stop and pick up a bundle of firewood on your way home from work?" Instead, I ended up with a huge group of people thinking I wanted him to bring home the kind of wood you burn in bed, rather than in the fireplace. Sorry mom, for the mental image.
Then there's Twitter. I have a serious love-hate relationship with Twitter. I've asked countless people who are marketing managers and social media directors for their organizations if Twitter really is important, for someone like me - if it's important that I maintain a presence out there? The answer was a resounding YES! However, this is me we're talking about... The Queen of Verbosity. Having micro-conversations (140 characters or less), out there is not something I'm good at. Occasionally I strike up the rare conversations with some incredibly beautiful, talented and intelligent women, but those are few and far between. Plus, I am not part of the ongoing conversation between the Twitterati - also known as the "A-listers" in the blogosphere. And if you haven't already gotten the memo, if you don't have their attention, you don't have anyone's attention!
Seriously though, I'm OK with not having their attention. I can't keep up out there anyhow. Hell, half the time I forget to check my "@" replies until a month later. Then there's the issue of not following back everyone who follows me and Oh-my-freaking-God...there's no way I can do that! I can't keep up with the 700+ people I follow anyhow. I feel bad enough as it is that I get out there and don't thank those that do follow me, with a personal DM. Then there's the guilt that I'm not holding up my end of the mommy-blogging credo by not tweeting every frigging thing that goes on around here during the day.
For instance, I was wiping Gaby's bum yesterday and she asks me, "Mommy, how much longer do you think you'll be wiping my bottom?"
I looked at her and said, "Are you telling me you're finally ready to start wiping it yourself?"
Gaby thought about it for a minute and then pulled her panties up, flushed the toilet and said, "Well, I'm not even 5 yet, do you think we could maybe wait till my birthday before I try this on my own?"
Do you know what the very first thought in my head was, after this exchange? "OMG should I tweet this, or put our conversation as my new Facebook status message?" Of course I didn't, but all those "in the know" would probably have suggested that I should have. Hell, I don't even like texting, because HELLO...160 characters just pisses me off! I can't be that concise and I refuse to sink to the level of every 15 year old out there and resort to "text talk." Not only that, but not everyone out there needs to know that there may be a chance that I'll be cracking open a bottle of bubbly to celebrate my emancipation from wiping my daughter's bum! By all accounts, my failure to alert the Twittersphere and Facebook crowd about this exchange between Gaby and me has deemed me an SMF!
The fact of the matter is, I don't feel like slapping my "brand" all over God's green (or is it Al Gore's) universe/internet. I don't even know what my brand is. This blog is me. I'm not a brand...or maybe I am. I don't know. What you see is what you get. I'm too lazy and just too apathetic to maintain the dialogue out there, that those, "in the know" say would make me a success. I want my words to carry my weight...my words out here. I can't convey, in 140 words or less, my story and frankly, I'm pretty tired of having every Tom, Dick, and Harry out there who have self-published a book on SEO, telling me I need to Tweet this or that, or annoy my friends and family on Facebook with my networking attempts.
This is my blog, my space out here to reach out, to vent, to just be. I'm not some MLM hack trying to build my pyramid. There's no sin in wanting to try and earn a little bit of a living from my words, and if this gives me the boost to do that, so be it. But I'm not going to follow the recipe of someone who's never been there and only thinks they know how I could become the next Dooce, or Pioneer Woman. I don't want to be them.
I don't want to be anyone but who I am.
I write because my soul feels better when I do...not because I want WalMart, Nestle, or McDonald's (I'm NOT dissing the wonderful women and writers who are part of their collectives!), to add me to their select groups. I write because I think I'm good at it. I write because I have a story to tell and I'm entirely positive that I am not coordinated enough to do that and write about my experiences with X.Y. or Z. That's not to say I haven't tried, but it's not really what I like, or what I'm good at. I'm simply calling a spade a spade.
At the end of the day, I can't keep up with all this social media. I hate feeling guilty for not responding to each and every status update of the 1500 people on my Facebook friend's list, or replying to everyone I follow on Twitter. I'd rather spend that time reading your words, and building the conversation that way, rather than trying to squish all of that into 140 characters or less.
Maybe I have this all wrong. Perhaps I spend a little more time networking in order to build my blog. But I just wonder if by doing that, I'm "preaching to the choir" so to speak? How do our conversations grow any louder, or reach a bigger audience if we're just networking to one another?
With my luck, I've probably just burned every bridge I've built, out here.

