TMI

Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn Oh My! With Pintrest and Tumbler and Google+1. There’s Behance and MySpace and blogger too, Flickr and YouTube, what’s a girl to do?

I am being swallowed by the world of social media!! Not to mention my Etsy shop that has been neglected for at least 2 months now and my personal web site that is in need of an update.  I have always been a social butterfly but this is just getting a bit out of hand!

In a world of social media the only way to stay on top of things is to connect your self to at least on of these sites. But if your trying to run a business, the more the better. Sometimes I know about events that are taking place in my family before my mother does and I live 5,000 miles away! I am able to get information from my siblings through facebook before she is by calling them on the telephone.  And while, yes, its wonderful to feel so connected, especially to my family while living so far away, the difficulty with all of this begins in trying to be an artist, property manager and wife at the same time.  In all of the reading that I have done about promoting your work and/or product and getting the word out about it is the importance of an Internet presence.  Fair enough. 

I have created accounts on almost all of the above-mentioned sites, but now who has the time to keep them all updated while making sure that my art is being updated?  What am I supposed to talk about if there is no new work to show? Now don’t get me wrong, I love to work and I love what I do, but I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed here. Even if I do find the time to create new pieces, in order to get them seen, I need to photograph each piece and then upload and edit said photos and then write a description of each piece to make it all sound appealing to the public.  I then find myself social networking obsessed.   Do I have any comments? Any new followers? Any message in my inbox from people wanting to know how to purchase/carry/represent my work? Usually not.

Just a few days ago I read an article saying that the best thing that you can to do promote yourself is to write a really great blog with interesting information that people want to read. Great! But how do you compete with all of the other great blogs out there with thousands of followers?

Now don’t get me wrong, I think its all great and wonderful that we are able to reach a wider audience and connect with people we would have never met otherwise but many times I honestly don’t know where to begin.  
 

Even our language has changed and one must understand the decoding of Internet speak in order to keep up. TMI, BTW, OMG, LOL, LMFAO, see my automatic spell check isn’t even underlining these anagrams in red, as they now seem to be an integral part of the English language, in fact there is an entire web site called urban dictionary dedicated to deciphering then. And then if you happen to be bi-lingual like me, you have to decode that Internet language as well. Where does it end?!?!? But more importantly where should one begin in this ADD mixed with OCD inducing world of social media?

Well, I have come up with what I hope will be a solution or at least a relief.  Since I am truly trying to start a small business and promote myself as a professional designer, I have decided to take on an intern.  There are thousands of students out there that are looking for experience. Studying mass media communications and need to fill up their resume with real world experience. How great would it look during their first interview for them to have written on that CV that they created a mass media advertising campaign for so and so and increased their sales from a said (very low) amount per year and increased it by such and such percent. Everybody wins! And as I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I am trying to enlist the help of others to share expertise and experience. I hope it works.

However, I’m sure there are many different solutions or ideas as to how to tackle and manage your social media. So tell me, what’s your take on it all? Do you feel it benefits you or hinders you? What are your creative ideas and solutions for dealing with it?  Any advice you’d like to share?  Let me know by leaving a comment below. If no comment box appears below this post try clicking on the word ‘comments’ (see this is another thing, you have to understand how each site works and be tech savvy or your going to waste a lot of precious time trying to figure it all out leaving you tired and frustrated!  I can’t tell you how many times I have tried to get that dang comment box to appear!)