Dia Media

To Quit Social Media or To Fade Away?

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I bumped into a friend/colleague the other day on the street and had a great chat about public art and whatnot. Later, I received an email from him, but didn’t get it right away because my email forwarding wasn’t working. When I did finally open it, rather than reply right away, I had seen something on twitter  he might appreciate, so I immediately jumped on twitter to mention it to him.

And … crickets.

He wasn’t there.

I couldn’t quite grasp this, thinking he must have changed his profile or something. I have known him as an extremely prolific tweeter. So I emailed and he confirmed that he had left twitter. And, even more dramatic, deleted all his social media profiles. Gasp!

I confess, one of my first thoughts was, “Aaack — but you had so many followers (in the thousands) and “you only followed a few hundred” – your follower/followee ratio* was fantastic! “….

I admired his decisive move to cut the ties to the hive mind and lose the what he called “junk language” to focus on his own work and keep critical thinking free from the sometimes banal or trivial tone of these spaces.

He is not alone in his flight from social media. In the last couple of weeks, 2 other people that I know have also dropped off the airwaves. I also deleted that you-know-who app from my phone, and after a few days of withdrawal noticed I hardly ever go there anymore. And generally get a bit of the doldrums when I do. I  wrote about social media fatigue  in the spring.

delete delete

 

What To Do When You Leave The Shoe

So if you’re considering leaving the hive mind, here are some tips for off-roading:

  1. If you’re using social media for professional purposes, it’s a good idea to keep the profile live. You could tweet something simple “Not currently keeping this account active” and change your bio line to emphasize where to reach you (like your website (which should already be there of course) – or linkedin …)
  2. Announce or have a status report on your departure. Although there’s no need to announce if you’re only taking a short break— like a few days, or hours;). Consider if this is a temporary (like 1-3 months ) absence or a longer term. Your profiles should reflect that.
  3. Unless you’re taking the Kurt Vonnegut approach. Then by all means delete and be done with it.
  4. The return. When you come back, you don’t need to say “blowing the dust off this account”. Just start tweeting, posting etc. No one cares about the dust. Unless they are an archivist. Or you’re famous, in which case you have a handler, and probably aren’t even allowed to tweet by yourself.
  5. The return if you went AWOL by a total delete: If you want to start completely fresh, with new friends, new followers then you might want to consider more carefully how many accounts you keep live, how many people you follow / friend etc. It was the overwhelming noise that drove you away in the first place, no? Why go all hustle and bustle right away?

 

If you want to disappear completely, well good luck with that. It’s a challenge to wipe away all traces, but I’m sure it can be done.

Email overlays how do I loathe thee…

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Let me count the ways.

Daylight  Savings Time has rolled around again, and I’m feeling ranty.

Okay – so I gather some studies suggest that email overlays (a pop-up box that takes over the content, which darkens to help focus on pop up area) are effective in generating more leads.

I’m not a statistician, though I love statistics, so I don’t know how accurate said studies are. What I do know, is what Mark Twain said “Lies, damned lies, and statistics”…

It would seem that pop-up overlays have become a go-to marketing feature on numerous websites, where you want users to subscribe to your newsletter, gather emails, give them a “Free Gift” and so on.

Top irritating factors with pop-up overlays.

  1. Le pop-up itself.

    Thought these died off years ago.

  2. Timing.

    If you must use them, are you seriously thinking 1.5 seconds is enough time to “engage” me as a viewer and thus want to subscribe to your newsletter/offer? At least let me read a few sentences, if not a few paragraphs—then you might, perhaps—just perhaps,  infer I’m interested and then you can let your pop-up hi-jack my screen.

  3. Re-asking for what you already have.

    If I’ve clicked on a link from within your e-blast, (which is tracked up the yin-yang by whatever opt-in software you use), why, oh why, must you insist on asking me for my email address again? I’ve seen this way too often. Just stop. It has a repellent effect, not an attracting one.

  4. Mobile First!

     Non mobile-friendly overlays are a sure sign that not only will I go running in the opposite direction, but I will think of you with daggers in my eyes, especially if you are witholding content until I click that “x” in the corner, which if it isn’t mobile friendly, I can’t. So I leave your site, and if you’re lucky I don’t say anything bad about you on ye old social media.

    Note, you might think your pop-up is mobile friendly because the fonts shrink down and all seems to behave nicely, but if you leave only the teeniest margin between the overlay and the frame of the smartphone, that little close “x” in the corner is exceedingly difficult to click, and my even with long, slender fingers (ahem) I’m still suffering from fat finger syndrome when it comes to clicking.

  5. Lose the Attitude.

     If I decide I don’t want to give you my email address (either for the first or the 20th time) or that I’m not interested in your “Free gift” that will magically explode my business, my career, or make my hair really shiny, please don’t insult me with some cutesy, kooky askance negative comment like “No, I really don’t want to grow by business” or “No I really don’t want to succeed” etc. Keep it in your pants.

Email Overlay Annoyances

 

If I Could Save Time in A Bottle…

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One of the biggest obstacles I face with blogging is wrestling with time. Perhaps quantum physicists or master yogis have figured out that time is an illusion, and even have wonderful equations or quotes to relay this concept, but for the rest of us mere mortals, time pretty much goes by the clock, and lately, it seems like it zips by at the speed of light.

Getting around to blogging, as important as everyone knows it is – to growing your website presence, conveying your expertise and values…:) – can be tough in that it’s hard to carve out the time.

Scene from X-Men Time

In X-Men Days of Future Past, in arguably the best scene of the film, Quicksilver is shown running through the kitchen of the Pentagon in uber slow-mo motion. Jim Croce’s “If I Could Save Time in Bottle” song plays at normal speed as Quicksilver dashes about. It was brilliant, funny and sad at the same time.

It inspired me to re-consider time and some techniques for putting it in a bottle.

  1. Relax. Take Some Time. Have Fun.

    Even though the heat is on, bullets are firing, Quicksilver is taking time to do kooky, goofy things, like taste a spoon of sauce.Instead of thinking of blogging as a must-do, high-pressure, homework kind of task, start re-framing it as time to brainstorm a few ideas, be a little goofy, have a little fun.

  2. Put on the Big Girl Goggles.

    Peter (Quicksilver) wears (swimming?) goggles as he prances around the kitchen to protect his eyes from debris. I like the the gesture. Donning these goggles signfies he’s about to take action. Lesson – put on the goggles, keep yourself protected from distractions and get going.

  3. Once in the rhythm, pay attention to the details.

    The details are important – Peter makes sure to cross the arms of the security guards in just the right way so that the bullets fall away harmlessly.

  4. Set a Time Limit.

    I agree and must write for 30/45/60minutes, or 3 minutes, if you’re Quicksilver and can get the job done—micro-blogging anyone?  Then I can go do all that other “important stuff.”

Scene from X-Men

5. Publish or Perish and Don’t Forget to Smile.

​I love  the last bit is him picking the bullets out of the air and moving them methodically to the right or left,  and then he grins.
This task is blogging, I’m sitting in a chair (oh – Terra standing desk, wherefore art thou?), my feet planted on the ground, I’m not in a high-adrenaline, sci-fi scene, so if Peter can smile, I can smile too.

 

OTHER

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​Anchor

​I was feeling the (self-imposed) pressure to blog and rather than choose from a list of “7 Tips for ……” subjects, I thought about what had recently left an impression on me. Netflix (Canada’s) release of the X-Men film and that scene had done just that. I decided to use that scene to frame or anchor this post.

What inspires you?

Set goals and deadlines

Be ambitious but realistic.
eg: 2 x / month  – not 2 x week. My last post was in March 2015, so twice a month is already double the volume. Once every 2 weeks is a stretch goal. Once I get there, I can revisit the goal.

Bullet Points

Begin with draft posts that lay out ideas in bullet points. This is less overwhelming than having to flush out a full idea in whole sentences and long paragraphs.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others. —Orson Welles

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