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A little over a decade ago, I finally succumbed to peer pressure and created a Myspace page. My friends had been on my ass for quite a while. They said things like “you live to far away now”, and “we never see you anymore”. So I did. And I regretted every minute of it. I no longer had any peace. Every time I booted up my computer, it was like they were watching, waiting. Immediately IM’s started popping up, I just wanted to get on Steam, maybe play a game for a while before bed. Now I was stuck in 30 conversations at once about God knows what with God knows who. People I hadn’t seen or spoken to in over a decade were suddenly popping up out of nowhere, and claiming to be some of my closest friends. Invites to stupid games (I spent way too much time on Mob Wars), were coming in hand over fist. The drama that unfolded all over my page was mind numbing. This person was cheating on that person, this person stole this from that other person. I’m over here not giving a shit about any of it.

“Social Media”, Ha, I was barely social when you were standing right in front of my face, unless of course I had a few beers in me. I also wasn’t very computer savvy. The idea of getting online to be “social”, was my worst nightmare. I used to drink to talk to people online. That’s how pathetically awkward I was. To be honest I drank way too much in those days, but that’s an entirely different story and I’m not sure how personal we are going to get….yet.

 

 

Then…..It happened. Only a few months into all of this and I start getting emails, and messages, “You should join Facebook with us, Myspace sucks now.” OH, Hell No! I’m not doing this all over again. Agonizing over what image I wanted to portray. Deciding which “Me” I was going to put out there. That shit was not happening. Slowly fewer and fewer of my friends showed up online, and I went back to spending my time playing online poker, and on Steam. Then that was just that, a few months spent torturing myself then everything just went back to the way it was. Looking back, Myspace wasn’t the problem, neither were my friends. The problem was the way I looked at life, my own issues and depressions, the way that I treated people, and myself as disposable.

Maybe this Blog is going to turn out cathartic for me. You might get to watch me heal old hurts as well as learn about starting a Copywriting Blog and Advertising business.
I know, I can see it again. “What the hell is the point of all of this?” “Why are we being dragged down depressing journey?” Well, the point is, it’s now 2018, and I want to start a Blog and Copywriting business, and I have no social media presence. I mean none. I let the years pass me by without ever walking that path. Not only do I have no presence, I am completely out of touch. I don’t know which sites are reputable for advertising your business, and which ones are for sending nudes. I am starting from scratch, and it turns out, social media can be a fickle bitch if you don’t know all the nuances. Well, not completely from scratch I did start a LinkedIn page a few months ago when I started job hunting.

So I started a Facebook page, I signed up at work, I don’t know if this has anything to do with the upcoming problems, but it was a pain in the ass right from the get. I signed up, then work called me away from my desk, I went out onto the floor for a while and when I came back my page was locked for suspicious activity. I guess being alive this long without having a Facebook page is suspicious. I tried to log in again, and ended up on a page that said to upload a picture of myself and they would compare it to my pictures to make sure I was who I said I was. However, there were no other pictures. I haven’t loaded any yet, and when I was younger I was pretty strict about not letting people take pictures of me, so I was pretty sure there weren’t any out there floating around the net anywhere. So I did what any tech savvy, social media expert would do. I wrote that one off, and immediately signed up again from the same email address and using the same phone number. Yeah….I can hear you snickering from here. The second one was immediately locked. I kept hitting buttons until the option to send them a picture came up again. This time I sent a picture of my license. I figured that would have to do it. They would have to believe me now. I mean who else would have my license, right? Jesus, I can be so dumb sometimes.

So I gave up on Facebook for awhile and moved on to Twitter. I had no problems setting up an account, and the first thing I tweeted about was what a pain in the ass Facebook is. Actually my first 5-10 tweets were @ or about Facebook. I think I just pissed them off, because they did eventually unlock my account. Then locked it again within 20 minutes. And this went on for weeks. My account would get unlocked, I would send 1 friend invite, and then account was locked for suspicious activity. I would then send them a picture of me holding my license, then tweet about Facebook thinking that me having friends is suspicious. And round and round we go. And every time I thought “Why is it so unbelievable that I have friends?”

I only banged my head against the bricks for about a month before I got the bright idea to just text the person I was sending the invite to and told him to send me an invite. I don’t know why that worked I really don’t. It probably had something to do with him being an established and vetted user, but in my frustrated mind, I was convinced this was the best way to prove to Facebook that I really knew who I said I knew. I didn’t accept the invite for about 15 minutes, I just stared at it and talked to my computer as though Facebook could hear me. “I told you. I told you I knew people. I have friends. People like me.” The irony of talking to my computer about how many friends I have is not lost on me.

It turns out I have more than I thought. Way more than I thought. At least in some fashion. Throughout The next 3 months I built up a whopping 38 Twitter followers, and a little over a 100 Facebook friends, most of which are people I have actually known in person.

 

 

I had let the internet convince me that social media will be my greatest resource. That you post your website and all of your friends will share it, and all of their friends will do the same, and so on. That’s not even close to the truth. For people to share in and help you with your dream, they have to have a vested interest in you. For that to happen they have to see that you have a vested interest in them. You can’t just show up out of the blue, and expect people you may not have truly spoken to in years to invest in you. It’s harder still if your list is built from internet strangers. No relationship can be a one way street. Not romantic, friendships, or relationships between businesses and consumers. You must make deposits in their emotional banks before you can request withdraws. Meaning both parties must benefit from the relationship, and the harder you try to make the relationship advantageous for the other party, the better your R.O.I. (return on investment). This philosophy applies to everything you do.

As you read in the beginning, I wasn’t always the best friend, so I do not have these relationships to bank on, but I’m trying to rebuild. However social media did pay off in another manner. I joined Facebook groups for copywriters and authors. I followed copywriters and marketers on Twitter. The wealth of knowledge I tapped into is literally unending. Every 15-20 minutes someone posts an article, or a question that teaches me something or asks for help. And within those questions I found my first real project, which we will discuss later. I had to start just saving the links because I don’t have the time to read them as they’re posted. With all of that free info came the second lesson.

Look out for sharks. This lesson deserves its own post, so we will talk about that later also. This post is already getting a little wordy.