Social Media has always been one of those things that I’ve been both intrigued by and ambivalent towards. I’ve always assumed that social media is a complete time waster and a mind numbing parade of cats, memes and people speaking before they think…..then again I could be wrong…..
Up until recently I’ve had the following attitude about social media. I don’t really care what you had for dinner last night. Yes, I’m sure that it was magnificent but unless I’m with you then you’re just telling me how much fun I’m not having. I’m sure Donald Trump is/is not a complete moron but why tell me that? The cats are cute (sigh…..I miss Pepper) and the dog singing a song was clever but I’d rather watch a movie.
I’m then on Facebook and discover that my personal friends are mixed up with my business friends and my wider family isn’t wide enough (just joking!). Everyone seems to have an incessant desire for likes and meaningful comments are like the holy grail of social currency.
In all this mish-mash, Facebook works out another clever way to use our personal information to get us to click on some advertising in the stream. It seems they are the smart ones earning a packet from our lives while we share our darkest innermost secrets.
In amongst all of this chaos about 18 months ago I decided to conduct some research…..
What I wanted to know was whether it was possible to move traffic away from the social networks and onto a domain. After a bit of work I now have a stack of friends in LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter…..I’ve only recently opened an Instagram account for “LifeExplorers.club” with my wife.
Whenever I posted in my blog I then posted the article to the different social networks. The software I’m using, EasyBlog, makes this, well, easy to do. Not surprisingly, this generated traffic to whizzbangsblog.
In the next part in this series I'll discuss some of the marketing traps I'd fallen into.....