How Social Media Enriches
It isn’t easy when you Google your name and find yourself on page nine of the search and wonder how many people (you feel none) are going to click through nine pages of Google entries to get to you and your books when they don’t even know to look for you and your books in the first place. I know that feeling. I’ve been there. At one point, the first reference to me might have been on page thirty or even beyond that. It hurts. It hurt for my marketing clients. It’s frustrating. It makes you wonder if anything you are doing is worth the effort if no one knows anything about what you are doing and, frankly, no one – it seems – cares, not on purpose, but simply because you (oh, it crushes me) don’t even seem to exist. That’s how it feels. That’s how it felt for my clients. I’ve felt that. They’ve felt that. I had to fix that if I wanted them to stay clients. I fixed that by connecting with people on social media.
One of the tools for getting known and raising your position in the search engines is social media, not so much so you can talk about yourself (please don’t), but that you can start a conversation or be a part of a conversation that does, in the end, introduce people to you and your work. Word of mouth. It’s the greatest free marketing on the planet. It beats all advertising hands down. I saved my clients so much money through social media. Social media is the ideal place for word of mouth to grow without you, in many ways, having to do anything except make new friends.
Social media is not about marketing. If utilized adequately and appropriately, it is about relationships. That’s how I’ve always viewed it. I liked what social media was called before it became known as social media. Back in the old days, it was called social networking. I love the word networking. It means meeting new people, coming together, growing together, and sharing together. That’s the part I love about social media. Think about it. Before social media became available, there was no way a guy in Tennessee could become fast friends with people in Australia, Germany, Sudan, Japan, Libya, Italy, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, France, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the list goes on. There would be no way for me to meet these people. And yet, through social media, I have connected with these people and, not only that, to get to know them and their stories. Social networking and the ability to do that has changed my life, not just my professional life, but the richness of my personal life. It’s changed my clients’ lives. Others’ word of mouth has also allowed me and my clients to move up on that Google search to where I usually appear on the first page. (Some of you are probably Googling right now to see. It makes me laugh. I’d do the same thing.)
Not only does social media allow you to meet so many people around the world (in a way, I think it is a uniter of the world), but it also allows others to see my dogs and what I eat and drink. And me? I get to see and know them. How crazy is that! It’s like we’re having a conversation in the same breakroom between our jobs at work, and they’re showing me pictures on their phone of their daffodils. Or, instead of a breakroom, maybe it’s like we’re at a coffee shop down the street from the Seine.
The point of all this is that it doesn't have to be that way if you’re on page nine – or thirty – at the first mention of you or your books on Google. You change it by consistently reaching out and offering something either entertaining, encouraging, informative, personal, or otherwise beneficial to another person through social networking, and, before you know it, no matter where someone is in the world, when they Google you, as a by-product of your friendship and sincerity, you’ll show up on that first page. Remember, social media is not about marketing. It is about networking. The second benefit is word of mouth. The first benefit is connecting online with another human you’d never have the chance to meet. They should have kept the old name. Social networking. It would have been a great reminder of what we must do online.
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