Social Media Networking

It's all anyone ever talks about nowadays. And it's all a bit overwhelming. Don't know if it's worse because I went on a sort of a course (it really wasn't that bad!) covering the myriad ways in which one can engage in SMN. And this was just from a business perspective. Do this, you mustn't do that, you should be doing this and this and this. It all made sense, at the time, but in the cold light of the (several) days after it's made me think long and hard and, if I am honest, become slightly (no, I don't do slightly anything) anxious. Think about it. You're 'supposed' to have x no of followers on Twitter, so many that you start moaning about the number of people who are following you (he-llo!) and if you haven't got anyone - or a modest number of people as in my case, it's quite easy to sit there feeling anxious that you're not being taken any notice of. Then you see the tweets from the people that you're following, thinking that they'll notice that YOU'RE following them and follow you right back. But they don't, and what the hell are they tweeting about going for a kebab for? The little noise from TweetDeck that occurs every nanosecond telling me that someone I'm following has just tweeted is the sound of anxiety. They aren't mentioning me, and I must look like Johnny no-mates cos no one IS following me. I respond or retweet too quickly because I'm permanently on my PC working out how I can improve my SMM. I mean, I know I'm a web based business, but I don't work ON the web, I just sit there waiting for people to see the light and buy my books.

But Twitter is just the beginning of the evil. You apparently must have a Facebook page for your 'self' and one for your business persona. Then you need a 'fan' page for your business, then you need a link to YouTube where your videos are stored for cos that'll improve your Google search results. And you need to be on Google this and LinkedIn that and you need to juggle all these balls in the air all of the time to show that you're truly connected to the social media circus. But but but but but. That's a lot of very big buts (how rude!) it's all very well, and most people want to keep up with the times,

but HOW DO YOU ACTUALLY FIND THE TIME TO DO ANY REAL WORK?

I'm a one person band, I make great books, I want people to find me, find them, love them and yes, being blunt, buy them. But I can't be selling things I haven't got the time to make. And my anxiety levels about THAT are enough to deal with thanks, without having to think up a social media networking / marketing strategy. I just want to do my thing, politely and profitably over here in this corner of the world. Shucks, even my website doesn't work properly, let alone my SMN. If people can't find my business when they type in On The Rebound in Google, they ain't going to find a 40 something bookbinder living in the boonies and connect with me via any of the above. The world's gone mad.