As solopreneurs, authors, bloggers, artists, designers and freelancers, we use Facebook because we are creators. With our whole bodies and minds, we have taken a stance of imagination. Making new things is embedded into our lives, it’s who we are. We eat, sleep and breathe our work.
To go on creating, we must earn bread from our work. To feed ourselves, we must sell our creations. That means promoting what we do.
We log on with gratitude to the free tools today’s world offers for anyone who has something to share. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Pinterest are a godsend.
We log on social media to market our work, to sell what we have created, to promote who we are and what we do.
Yet too often, logging into social networks, we become rabid marketers. We become hawkers of our wares, shouting about what we do to anyone who passes by. Instead of being creators, we become the online equivalent of telesales operatives.
The work is horrible, soul destroying, and our only morsels of hope come when occasionally, somebody (out of pity or loneliness) stops to listen.
How long can we continue like this? Burn out stalks behind us, threatening not only our marketing efforts, but our very creativity, the reason we logged onto Facebook in the first place.
What if I offered you a different way?
This way’s simple, and if you can’t do it right now, you can imagine it.
Watch a child at play with a box of Lego.
With Lego bricks and a healthy dose of imagination, anything is possible.
You have that healthy dose of imagination. You know what it means to take the raw materials of your craft – your pen and paper, your paints and canvas, your wet clay – with all the possibilities and limitations they offer, and turn them into something great.
If I handed you a box of Lego bricks right now, you’d create something wonderful.
Why do we drop our creativity when it comes to Facebook and think it’s all about following “the rules of social media marketing and engagement”, whatever they are?
Sure, there are things other people have found to work. But copycats seldom prosper. The more everyone does the same thing, the more bland and insipid it becomes.
Scrap the rulebook. Rip it to shreds.
Release your imagination onto Facebook. Facebook is like Lego. With all its inherent possibilities and limitations, it provides you with the opportunity to create something wonderful.
With Facebook and a healthy dose of imagination, anything is possible.
Facebook provides the raw materials – a Page, hundreds of apps, billions of potential fans. You provide the magic.
When Facebook becomes part of your art, it goes from being soul-destroying to soul-nurturing. You win.
When Facebook becomes part of your art, you create something your fans want to talk about and play with. They win.
Facebook is like Lego. Colorful. Painful if ignored and trodden on. Brimming with possibility if you’ll only give yourself the chance to play.
Go on. Go create something you’re proud of.
That’s what art, Lego and Facebook are all about.
All of us writers want our books to sell millions of copies.
You’ve heard how you can reach out to hundreds, thousands or millions of people on social media. And it’s free to use! What’s not to like? You sign up for a Twitter account, follow a few tweeple, and bingo, you’re ready to tweet.
Twitter is a conversation. Think of it like a cocktail party, or a networking event. If you want a good chat, and if you want people to think of you as interesting, the last thing you should do is go in and talk about yourself. No, no, no. Instead, you take an interest in other people.
Search is changing. Google is penalizing cheap SEO tricks and making search increasingly intelligent and relevant.
