Web 2.0 is big right now. REALLY big. There is a lot of pressure to join sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Seems like everyone who's anyone among freelancers are setting up professional profiles. I recently caved in and got myself a Facebook account after attending a small business teleseminar singing its praises. The woman hosting the seminar stated Facebook is the number one social networking site (I thought it was MySpace). I can see how it might work out really well for some businesses, but I must admit that I still don't quite get how it could be a good networking tool for freelance writers. She also insisted that she has successfully used it to find her current virtual assistant and other contractors for her coaching business.
My fear is getting all caught up on these sites and pushing off the work, administrative tasks and marketing that need to be done on a continuous basis. I already had to force myself to scale back on visiting some of the writer's forums I frequent. I hear about writers who love Twitter so, but have a hard time staying away when they need to get to work. I could very easily fall into that trap myself.
I have had my Facebook account for two weeks now, and there is nothing on it. I guess I will work on it a little at a time during the week to make it presentable. We'll see how it goes.
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Kimberly, I'm also pretty nervous about having a social networking presence just to have it. In fact, the mere inclusion of the word "social" bothers me. Too often, these sites become a "pick me! pick me!" kind of networking (Ryze, from my experience) or a confusing stream-of-consciousness sound bite designed to make you look cool but that comes off confusing and convoluted (Twitter), or worse, a page that does nothing but waste your free time (My MySpace page, for instance).
We definitely need to choose our networks carefully and ask ourselves just how thin we can spread it before we lose sight of the goal.
Well, Lori, you're in god company. I still haven't worked on my Facebook page because of a mixture of being too busy and plain old procrastination. *sigh*
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