Social Media Marketing ...

Hi there daughters, mums, uncles, dads, aunties, grandmas, sons, brothers, sisters, grandads, friends ...

I suppose I'm now considered one of the 'olds' and expected to have non-existent technical skills of any sort. My sons won't help with pdf formatting, iTunes or acronyms ... 'You'll just have to learn it for yourself Mum' is what they say, throwing the front door into its casing. 'Thanks a lot', I grunt, slamming the kitchen door and stamping upstairs as I wedge the second earphone into place before leaping onto my bed to check my text messages ... Oh was that me? No, of course not, I have been glued to my lap top for 12 months now, writing, designing a series of interactive books - and networking - yes, at my age. And it's been quite fun. A massive learning arrow rather than curve. I have formed friends, been to meetings and a number of SEO presentations which were brilliant!

So Mums, Dads, Aunties, Uncles, Grandmas and Grandads and Great relatives, I urge you to move with the times [even ahead of them] - get yourself on the net; blog, look for new interests, find old friends, socially interact, find like minded hobby pals, find local courses and activities to join ... and most of all ... look up all acronyms if you're very time wealthy and make a full and comprehensive list of them. Learn off my heart. Eat the paper. [Apologies - your list will be on screen no doubt]. Put the pathetic three lettered acronym into practise. Most of the 'youngs' don't know what many of the acronyms stand for anyway. Drop them into conversations. Ask them in front of their friends what HTTP, PDF, RSS, IMAP, URL, SEO really stand for ...

That's when they'll tell you ... 'You'll have to just learn it for yourself Mum'

So here's a short list to get you going [if you've absolutely nothing else to do]

URL     Universal Resource Locator

RSS      Really Simple Syndication

PDF      Portable Document Format

Jpeg      Joint Photographics Experts Group

WIFI     Wireless Fidelity

TIFF     Tagged Image File Format

HTTP    Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

IMAP    Internet Message Access Protocol

SEO  -  Search Engine Optimisation

So, my note to everyone ... SEO is really what we need to be thinking about. We all have favourites and opinions of facebook, twitter, linkedin, google etc. but to be honest the recent Social Media Presentations I've attended have been the most motivational prompts I've come across for some time [other than realising my cholesterol contained too many bad fats].

Choose the right social group for your work - your book - your business - for instance, on Linkedin, its a great place to promote yourself and your product or your skills - find employment, freelance writing opportunities, research your possible audience, meet colleagues, clients, business links, people in the publishing industry, join like-minded groups, forums ... make contacts for your genre, link to your website or blog. This is quite a grown-up place, so text speak is pretty much frowned on - save that for your phone or twitter. [Oops - is texting out of date now ??] No-one wants to know if you've been to a party - so post that to your Facebook friends. Linkedin is a place to meet business contacts, promote business and check out your competition.

My advice - get on a social media marketing course if you can ... Try local or county councils, community centres, libraries, search the internet for business re-generation projects and you'll probably find the 'beyond websites' type social media presentations.

The courses are usually funded and therefore Free to attend.

[often including breakfast, lunch or snacks ! - such a bonus]

Enjoy, I did, Gillian