Starting today, I’m going to start taking the opportunity to discuss what I’m reading. This is a daunting proposal; while it’s theoretically easier to find blog topics if they have a theme, something like “what I’m reading” necessitates that I find the time to read — and that’s no easy task, given how many other things I have on my plate. But, you can’t be a writer unless you love to read, and it’s tragic how much my reading has fallen by the wayside over the past few months. Hopefully this will encourage me to keep up.
One of the books I’ve been reading off and on over the past few days is SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: AN HOUR A DAY. As a by-product of Silicon Valley, it’s little wonder that I’m attracted to new technologies; beyond that, I actually studied social and group psychology in college, and I’m intrigued by how groups come together, bond, and ultimately succeed or fall apart. Social marketing is a cool blend of these two areas of interest, and is something that I could see myself getting into even if my writing career fails to take off.
My challenge is figuring out how to build my presence online without losing all of my time to the madness of the Internet. I already spend way too much time online, whether it’s reading the “real” news, checking the one celebrity gossip blog that I allow myself to read, or staying up to date on the dozens of publishing blogs that I’ve subscribed to on Google Reader. Then there’s Twitter, Facebook, email loops, etc. — until I could spend all day just staying current on other peoples’ content without ever writing another book again.
This is where SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING is supposed to help. Theoretically you’re supposed to be able to put together a full-fledged social marketing plan for yourself in an hour a day, and then keep it up in the future. The challenge will be whether I actually have the discipline necessary to a) follow the plan and b) cut myself off after an hour so that I can focus on my real writing. I’ll keep you updated on my progress — although if I’m successful, you’ll hopefully notice when I start getting more comments and followers and all those other accoutrements of a bona fide social network in the next few months. I don’t mean for it to sound as mercenary as all that — the main benefit is obviously sharing information and learning from others, even if the hope is that you may eventually sell some books too. It’s just a matter of getting started, and having some sort of tether around myself so that I don’t fall all the way down the rabbit hole of the Internet…
Posted on 6 July 2009 *
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