Monday, September 26, 2011

Blogs, Social Venues ... Do the Twain Meet?




I read an article this morning on blogs and social media venues.The gist of it was that your blog needs to be your hub, and that social media sites serve as spokes coming off of that hub. The general tone of the article was that too much time is being spent on Face Book, Google + and Twitter, and that they should serve to promote the blog, and not take on an entity of their own.

Struggling to deal with time issues myself (I work a 9-5, as well as writing and reviewing), I can see the need to prioritize. We can all see that. I have two blogs and a professional site. One blog is (supposed to be) an author's blog, while the other blog site has to do with Tarot, flash fiction, review, interviews, and a music site that I work with. I say blog site, because on that site I maintain separate blogs for the music site, my Tarot work, and my flash fiction. My professional site serves both my writing and my Tarot interests. Content is always being added to my blogs, then shared on Twitter, Face Book, and Google +. (At time, if appropriate, I will share a music blog on my My Space page, because for me that site is all music and musicians, not personal friends.) Lately I have been getting a fair amount of LinkedIn requests, and Branched Out is starting to have a life of its own.

My feeling is this - decide what is important to you personally, and to your work. On all of the social media venues (Twitter, Face Book, and Google +) I chat. I share what is going on in my life, and comment on others posts. To me, this is the best part of networking - getting to know people. Then when I post a request for help, that help appears. There are people that I network with that know more than I do about almost everything. If we know a bit about each other, and have interacted before, they will be there to head me over to the information that I need to have.

While our blogs (and our sites) arfe where our content goes, and that is where we want to drive traffic to, I think we need to take the time to socialize a bit ... at least, I do!

(c) September 2011 Bonnie Cehovet

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