Stupid Social Media Tricks & Tips

Kids are fighting about kid stuff, dog is barking about dog stuff and the neighbors are mowing the lawn and revving car engines so I am putting on the handy dandy noise reduction headphones.

Sometimes being a parent means letting your kids settle their differences without your playing referee and this is one of those moments. Time has come to try to build the readership up again here, got to go out and earn some more sponsorships and that comes by building a bigger platform.

So it is time to use a few social media tricks, do some things that lend themselves to sharing and that is why I am trying to use Canva to create more images that people want to pin on Pinterest and to produce content that people want to share on Google Plus.

Do You Believe in Serendipity?

Yeah, I believe in Serendipity, didn’t for a long time or maybe it is more accurate to say I really hadn’t thought about it much. But when I look back and think about the conversation with The Shmata Queen and look at how far I have come in this blogging gig it is clear to me it exists.

My first real troll helped introduce me to the inner workings of analytics and got me thinking about different ways we could use eyeballs and the role content played in making people feel.

Because the secret of blogging is to make people feel something. Ideally your words make them feel good and they keep reading because you lift them up but you can get their attention by attacking their beliefs too.

Write about politics. Write about religion.

Write about both or just one and you are guaranteed to uplift and offend. People won’t let you straddle the fence but if you really want to have fun tell Christians they whine too much about being oppressed, suggest all Muslims are terrorists and tell moms that breastfeed in public that unless they are going to serve as a mobile drink station for adults who need cream in their coffee to put those things away.

Let’s see, who didn’t we offend. Oh yes, gay people you need to stop pushing your agenda on us. Anti vaccination people need to be rounded up and sent to leper colonies because we won’t let you kill our children with your middle age medical philosophies and anyone who is anti-circumcision is welcome to come see me privately so that I can prove everything works just fine.

Satire and Traffic

If you are not a long time reader you might not know what to make of what I wrote above. Some people will tell you it is satire and suggest you shouldn’t be offended but I’ll own what I believe and what I wrote to help illustrate an example.

I don’t believe Christians are oppressed, at least not in the U.S. I don’t believe all Muslims are terrorists.

You won’t find me supporting the anti-vaccination crowd. I won’t really advocate they be rounded up and moved into leper colonies but I will tell you it is selfish and ignorant. Some people have tried to convince me otherwise by telling me they have read enormous amounts of material on the topic.

There is merit in reading but by the same token I can tell you I have read quite a bit about flying planes and brain surgery. Might even have read cutting edge material that a pilot/surgeon with 20 years experience hasn’t read, but would that really make me more qualified to make a decision.

Would you feel comfortable letting me fly your plane or cut your head open based upon my assurances.

I believe in gay marriage. I believe in circumcision and I don’t usually care about breastfeeding in public.

That is the short version, but I’ll bet some of you are still fuming.

Confession, I have a romantic bone in my body and that quote works for me, just makes sense. Might have to write a story around it. You do know I write fiction? Right?

You can find it here.

Write From The Heart

If you don’t write with passion your readers are less likely to relate. I don’t know why, but it is really easy for me to remember things that hurt me as well as things that made me feel good.

I tap into those feelings when I write and when I do it well you can see the picture I painted and you relate.

Maybe it is when I share a story about my children or talk about the crazy stuff we did in college. Maybe it is when I write about that one person who made your heart pound and who never stopped or maybe it is the story about the concussion.

Whatever it is if passion is a part good things tend to come with it, at least as far as social media goes.

Maybe those tips aren’t so stupid after all.

• Saved: Writing