It Is Time For Me To Be Social Again

The other week I went to Blog On and besides the fabulous goodie bag, I actually came home with a whole lot more. Of all the talks, it was one about social media that left a lasting impression. In a nutshell Peter (an SEO exec) told us to stop posting. Can you imagine? Bloggers not posting? No, we all sat there gobsmacked too. However, by the end of his presentation I was right there with him, I didn’t want to talk any more.

Blogging is a funny thing, well at least the blogging world that it is now, what it has become. We are all so busy posting that we have forgotten how to communicate, we aren’t being social anymore. I am terrible for it, I have been so busy writing post after post that I have no time left to comment on other blogs, to write a 140 status on Twitter or interact with the lovely blogging friends I have made along the way. Peter’s talk made me sit up and take notice, it made me take a long hard look at my habits- it is time to change.

Over the last few months I have felt increasingly isolated in the blogging world and I have only myself to blame. I want to feel part of that amazing community again and so to do that I need to stop posting and start listening, start communicating with the community!

So what does this mean?

♦ Well, first of all I have reduced the amount of scheduled tweets that go out. Nobody wants to go to my profile only to be greeted by a barrage of spam do they?

♦ I am using Twitter for talking, I am manually tweeting (I know, you can actually do that!) and scrolling through my feed to interact with others. And you know what? I am loving it!

♦ I am taking more of a personal approach on FB. I have read so many posts about how to grow your FB but over the last week or so I have been using it like a personal account- after all I AM a person. I am enjoying using it and my following is growing organically! Win!!

♦ I am reducing the number of linkies I run. Something has to give and unfortunately running two linkies is beyond my capabilities. So as of this week there will be no more #KidsCorner. Thank you to everyone who joined in over the last few months, you have all been amazing!

♦ I am going to join in with other linkies again. I love linkies, I get to visit new blogs and catch posts I may have otherwise missed. I want to be a part of the community and this is a great place to start.

So there we have it, a few steps I am taking to become more social. Social media is a wonderful thing but so many people forget to get involved and so in the end their voice just becomes lost in the sea of noise that surrounds us. I didn’t start my blog to get lost in the noise- I want to be heard. So if you are out there, I want to hear your voice too and hopefully you will stick around to hear mine.