Oh Jesus, I’m so tired of myself right now. I came home from work and went straight to bed. Poor Ben had to walk the dog by himself in the rain. I just woke up and I still don’t feel right, but at least I’m not in danger of nodding off mid-sentence, although my fingers are stiff and typing is sort of an uphill battle at the moment. There’s so much about my life that I just want to shake myself over. Yeah, I’m tired and yeah, I’m kind of bored, but there’s no reason to be this much of a pussy about it. I feel tired, like, ALL THE TIME. I think I get enough sleep, but there’s just nothing going on that I’m excited to wake up for. I need to re-engage in my life in a major way. I need to stop girling around and get on top of the social media training plan I had at the beginning of the summer.
My hope is that I can turn training into freelance management, and start to earn a reputation for results in the community, not just at the company I work for or the couple other companies we work with. I need to get moving on this because my company’s social media plan has become really conservative recently, and I don’t get to engage like I used to. In fact, I don’t get to engage at all anymore, my job duties have changed. At first, I was thinking that I would just let it go, and embrace my new position, which I’ve done, but there is something really missing in my days, and that’s the feedback and the excitement I had for social media. Being able to feel the shape of a community, to map exactly what they are looking for, and to try and give that to them, to interact with them and help people, to make people into followers, and fans really made my day happen for me in a way that the solitary work I’m doing now doesn’t.
Everyone who provides a service, or a product is connected to a community. Social media gives those providers an opportunity to finally be a dynamic, vital member of that community. Customers used to have to come to the company if they wanted service, now the company can come to them. Customers and companies can have a dialogue like they’ve never been able to have before, for the benefit of all involved. But good social media management is more than just quick, accurate responses. It’s being able to know the feel of a community, to identify it’s major actors, the people who will not just work with you in the best way, but who will take your message to their friends, who will reinforce community identity and loyalty. I used to be on twitter and facebook night and day, checking on our community, following our prominent members, thinking of things they might like, trying out different ideas, seeing what would get the most response, or the best quality response. I miss it. And there’s a simple way to get it back. I just have to get some backbone, and take this thing out into the world.
It won’t be the first time I’m working for myself, selling my own product, or providing my own service. I worked this way when I cleaned houses, when I tutored students, and when I was making clothes and selling them. I know how to be this person. Most of my business for those ventures came from word of mouth, which is actually how I think I want to do it this time too. All I need is to set up the first class, after that the next step will show itself to me. It’s simply a matter of getting off my ass and taking action.
So if you know anybody who wants some social media training…
Ugh. I wanted to find an animated gif for this post, so I typed the word ‘motivation’ into tumblr, and all I got was an avalanche of really terrible thinspiration images. I want to gag. It’s 20 God damned 12 and the only thing the girls of the Internet can think to be, out of the millions of professions and personalities available to them is THIN?!
