Social Media

I sent out a dozen job applications this past week with cover letters in which I revealed my dream job as becoming the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Don’t know about you, but it seems like a pretty cool job to me and from a blogging standpoint it works in all sorts of ways. How many jobs provide more opportunities for adventures that lend themselves to being memorialized in story.

You might wonder if I am trying to be funny in this post or if I am going to shift gears. You might wonder about many things and that is ok. I spend more time wondering and wandering than I care to think about.

Maybe that is why I contacted Miracle Max and asked for some help. When I pressed him to move faster I received the standard response about not rushing a miracle man for fear of getting rotten miracles.

Princess Bride Quotes Are Social Media Gold

Princess Bride quotes are social media gold. I have never found a time when a quote didn’t generate a response of some sort and that is a positive thing. Social media is about people and people are about engagement.

Speaking of engagement I joined a few more tribes in Triberr and now I have an enormous…reach.

We’re going to see if it proves to be useful or not. If it doesn’t generate more engagement than the benefit is quite limited. The “ideal” situation is for it to generate a significant increase in the number of subscribers and a book deal.

That Princess Bride headline you read above is intentional. I am trying to pull more people in, but once I get them here I have to figure out how to retain them. So maybe I ought to provide some links to posts they should read:

1. A Father Describes Parenting
2. An Uncertain Certainty
3. 1 Foolproof Way To Become a Better Writer
4. The Story Of A House- The Final Days
5. He Died A Hero
6. Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger

My Social Media Experiment

Sometimes I stare at the ceiling and wonder how I can use social media to raise a million dollars. I close my eyes and think about writing a post where I tell people it is an experiment and I am curious to see how long it would take to raise a million dollars.

The money would go towards a bunch of things, basic living expenses, the books I want to write, a vacation, kick around cash and who knows what else.

I wouldn’t promise to do anything with it. Would I donate some to charity? Sure, I would but not because I had a million bucks but because I try to give back. But I am not going to try to convince anyone to give because I would give some to charity. I won’t guarantee a percentage or anything like that.

In this experiment all I am going to do is say that I will donate something. If I ever do it I will probably blog about it, assuming someone doesn’t steal my idea.

The Mutiny of My Legs

I played two hours of basketball last night and was disappointed to find learn my legs are on strike. Damn things mutinied again. Do you know how frustrating it is to drive to the basket and find the left you always had has left.

It pissed me off so I went to bathroom and threatened them with harm, but they just laughed at me. I blame my metabolism for this. I never should have let it run away because once it did chaos erupted.

These mystery aches and pains show up unannounced and stay for as long as they want. I keep threatening those damn squatters, but they just laugh at me.

Children and Star Wars

My almost 12 year-old son and his friends have this funny idea about their generation and Star Wars. Those little buggers seem to think they own the movies and have some sort of knowledge the older, wiser generation doesn’t.

I need to write George Lucas and thank him for raping my childhood by producing some prequels that weren’t as good as the originals and for turning Darth Vader into a character you feel sad for. That dude used to be bad. He was evil. He was mean.

Back in the day if you told someone you wanted to go Vader on them they knew you were serious and not a joke.

It is late and bed calls, but I think we are about due for another post about aggressive promotion and blogs. Before I go here is an invitation to join TheJackB facebook fan page.

Don’t miss out on all the cool things that happen there and don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter. Use the form at the top right of this page.

Good night from Los Angeles.

No more rhymes and I mean it!

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
that you have but slumber’d here,
While these visions disappear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream”
Puck’s Epilogue
A Midsummer Night’s Dream- Shakespeare

 Your old friend Jack is a simple dad blogger who doesn’t understand the ways of the world. He knows not what he speaks of in business or social media. This is proven to be true by the lack of comments and followers who frequent these parts.

That is two parts sarcasm and three parts rhubarb boiled in rum and sweetened with some sort of sugary something or other. Or maybe it is proof that I suck at math, beats me. I don’t care to think too hard about it.

I still don’t take myself or life too seriously. I still blog first for me and then for you without much thought about whether I post too frequently for some to keep up or if my content is too broad or too narrow.

Here is some of what I know about myself:

1. I am forty-three and a father.
2. Sometimes I still feel like I am on the outside looking in.
3. I am intense. There is a fire that burns in my belly that has never gone out and probably won’t until I die.
4. Some people like me and some hate me. There doesn’t tend to be much in the way of ambivalence about how people feel about me.
5. I would prefer that people like me but I don’t care if they don’t. Not enough time in the day to worry about that.
6. I am a contradiction and sometimes more self conscious than I would like to be.

1. Social media is about people, not platforms or tools.
2. Not everyone reads what we write/tweet/blog/share.
3. Some people don’t understand what we write/tweet/blog/share.
4. People remember how you make them feel more than they remember what we write/tweet/blog/share.
5. Some people tell you what to do because they only know one way to do it and are afraid to admit it.

That photo makes me think of some of the blog communities that I have visited. One person speaks and everyone listens but almost no one says anything. At least that is one way of looking at it.

Another way is to say that the community can’t believe the crap this person is shoveling and they are preparing to respond to it.

My preference is to be a part of communities where people feel comfortable to disagree. I am not a sheep and am guilty of sometimes looking down at sheeple.

I will tell you if I disagree. I will try to be polite about it. Sometimes I will fail. I don’t like failing, especially when we are trying to have a discussion. People don’t like it when you make them feel stupid.

If you and your community fling crap at me I might take two handfuls and throw it back at you. If you are really nasty I might even try to rub it in your hair. Blame that on the Jack Reacher gene. 😉

It is not a particularly good trait, but age has helped to eliminate much of it.

How Do You Know?

When my children tell me something is a fact I ask them “How Do You Know?” It is not because I want to be adversarial but because in the Internet age it is critical to ask questions about what we are told is real.

Many people have a bad tendency to believe whatever they read. It is easy to construct a professional looking site and to populate it with content that sounds important.

But that doesn’t mean that it is real, truthful or accurate.

I want my children to take time to think about what they are being told and to figure out what is real. I don’t want them to be suckered intentionally or otherwise.

Some of the “big shots” are fighting to stay on top or trying like crazy to get there. They are throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. Not a very smart way to go about things, but when people feel insecure they do things.

But what do I know about any of this. I am just a dad blogger who slings words for a living.

Let’s cut to the chase immediately: I am not going to provide you with 69 reasons why social media platforms don’t matter. That is not because I can’t come up with 69 reasons because I can, but it is unnecessary.

What is necessary is gaining your attention and now that I have it here is what you need to know and remember.

The most important part of social media isn’t the platform but the people.

It is not complicated but some people need to read/hear messages several times before they sink in so I am going to repeat it.

The most important part of social media isn’t the platform but the people.

I love blogging and I love Twitter but neither one of them is worth a damn without people. If people didn’t matter Facebook wouldn’t use a body part  as part of its name. Pinterest is exciting to its users because of people.

The reason I mention this is because we are inundated with posts that provide guides for how to be successful in social media. Most of those guides offer a tiny section where they say that content is king and that you should provide value to your readers, but that is not enough for me.

The most important part of social media isn’t the platform but the people.

People remember how you make them feel. If you make them feel valued and special they will spend time with you. They will form communities and help support you and the others in the community.

I am not a saint. I won’t try to portray myself as one. This isn’t an attempt at self deprecation or me saying “aw shucks, I am just a dad.” I am a man who has lots of good qualities and plenty of bad ones.

Some of the negative ones are things that you love and some are things you hate. That is really neither here nor there. What matters though is that I recognize that people make social media run.

What matters is that I am teaching my children to look at the world around them and give back. I want them to know that they live magical lives where they might not have as much as others but a hell of a lot more than many.

They never go hungry or worry about where they are going to sleep. Their clothes are clean, they aren’t thirsty and they get dirty by choice.

One of my responsibilities as their father and a dad blogger is to teach them to give back. I do that in person and I remark about it here so that in the future they remember.

The most important part of social media isn’t the platform but the people.

This blog isn’t solely about trying to build a platform for work or to secure an agent for books. It is not solely about chronicling the lives of my children or sharing my thoughts.

It is about doing the right thing in a general sense and today it is a reminder that social media is about people and so is life.

When you give back good things happen. Every now and then we need to go out and help people. I don’t care if you volunteer or give money solely because you think it gives you good karma because if do it you might help improve a life and that is worth doing.

This isn’t me trying to be profound or insightful. It is just my attempt to weave together two things under one roof. Social media isn’t about the platforms, it is about the people and so is life.