Stop the Web! I want to Catch Up!

[Pepper P Oldziey]

Have you ever felt like it was all going way too fast?

There are so many social media platforms to be on. And you should be posting here, there, and everywhere else. And when you are not doing that, you should be checking into Facebook™, Foursquare™, and Twitter™ to tell everyone where you are at that moment, then again in ten minutes, in case you moved.

Are we afraid, as small business people, that we will lose our customers if we are not everywhere?

I was at a great presentation, the "Inside919 Final Friday Event", a couple days ago. Martin Brossman, the LinkedIn™ king, showed us all the easy way to flow from Inside919™ to LinkedIn along with our blogs and articles and posts. He explained how to post that you just posted an article on Inside919 pertinent to LinkedIn, and then showed us how to ping it, or maybe that was where Pat Howlett the “Come on Inside” mastermind popped in. It was great.

With almost no effort or time, I can write a post on my page on Inside919 and it will go post in InZine Magazine™ online and then I can go to the Inside919 group on LinkedIn and post about the post I just wrote. Then I can ping it all and see it on Google in mere minutes. It is miraculous. I think it is great, really, and I can’t wait to do it, so I am going to try it with this post, ha ha. I will report back when I see it on these various media. I don’t doubt it works.

I also don’t doubt that several of these posts will create great backlinks online to my website and the SEO will soar, and I’m not sure who will read it, but the robot spiders love this food. Oh my, I am already dizzy from talking this fast. How do we keep it all up?

Last year, while I was rolling along quite well, ready to speed up my game with placement on all social media, piled high with new clients, my Step dad suddenly took ill and I had to stop everything for four months and care for him around the clock. Then he died. Then I had to care for all the family things. And here I am, that was last September and now it is September again. Wow.

I have been overwhelmed and unable to catch up now for a year, so where do I start? Have you ever been in this situation? You may have all kinds of reasons, but suddenly the months have gone by and you are saying, “How do I stop the carousel long enough to get on the horse?”

When I was a child in Manhattan, New York City, I went to Central Park and there was a marvelous carousel. The horses were "ginormous" and I loved climbing up on them and rolling up and down to the music. Let’s face it, in New York back then in the early fifties, that was the best thing a kid could do, and was one of the “fastest” rides in town. Carousel in Central Park Photo is from "MamaNYC"

Now the web is our carousel, and the devices are the horses spinning around on it and we need to decide which ones to use, how fast our speed can go, no longer slow. Slow is bad. And if the spinning stops for a few moments, we can glimpse a horse and climb on. It is just exhausting, how do the teenagers do it? They have posted six tweets before I think of posting.

So I’m deciding, do I really need my Facebook business page, and my Twitter account, and my LinkedIn groups and my Inside919 Partner account, and my WomensPowerNetworking.com new Ning site I just designed? Do I need all of them and a Pinterest™ page? I like the idea of a Pinterest page. I like pictures; after all I’m a photographer. Where do I start? Oh yes, Google+™, which is absolutely essential for SEO! Don’t let me forget that page I have too. Okay count em . . . 7 so far.

I was reading a book on happiness today. I am very happy actually, but I would be happier if I was coming home from work, after a short time at the gym, picking up my laptop and driving to a great place to sit and eat and write. I could pick one of these and just write, then post about my post on all the others. That sounds relaxing actually. That’s happiness to me.

For this New York gal, the web is spinning much too fast, and though I can tell all my clients exactly what I think they should do to reach their customer segments effectively, I can’t get quiet long enough to do anything myself. Last year life slowed down to a crawl, and I really enjoyed it.

The question is, how to keep that fragile peace, in a spinning web world?
I’ll come back and tell you what I did next. And let me know if you felt like this too and which "horse" you got back on successfully!

Written by Pepper Peterson Oldziey, a web designer who designs websites for search engine success. Visit my portfolio website, Peppergraphics.com, or check out my recent designs on the Web Design Portfolio page.

[Gaynor Fries, 919 Director]

Great article Pepper - I think a lot of people will identify with the feeling of web overwhelm.

[Martin Brossman]

Nice job.

[Pepper P Oldziey]

HI Gaynor and Martin, thanks so much for your support and kind words. I just tried out the information Martin gave us on Friday and it was a breeze to go to the Local Micro Business Group on LinkedIn and post my new article above. I found it with no trouble on InZineArticles.com. Wonderful system you folks have set up. I'm really impressed . . . and flooded with fabulous SEO backlinks too!

[Stacey Shanahan ~ Community Mgr.]

Fantastic article Pepper! You are certainly not alone with social media overwhelm. I hate that I could not attend Martin's Final Friday segment regarding LinkedIn. Looks like I missed a good one. Hopefully, Martin will redo the class again soon. Or perhaps, I can learn from others what I missed. PS: I LOVE PINTEREST! I find it relaxing and theraputic. Here's a link to my page if interested :) http://pinterest.com/sshanahan1/ - I loved your article, thanks for sharing.

[Julie Randle, Business Coach]

Well done Pepper! It does get overwhelming. Let's us know if the "ping" "ping" concept works. I have to try the write once and ping, ping, ping... Luv it.
My Best, Julie

[Nancy Williams]

Excellent post Pepper!
The sales manager side of me wants to make mention of one thing for those who's businesses are not strictly web-based. The internet does not say "no" to you so it can be very easy to spend a lot of time on the internet and feel like you are growing your business, when the opposite might be true.
Something I learned a long time ago is to ask myself on a regular basis: Is what I'm doing right now the highest and best use of my time. If the answer is yes, keep going. If the answer is no, start doing what IS. A good excercise for some might be to take a look at your last 20 customers. Where did they come from? If they came from the internet and more specifically Facebook, or Linked In etc, then that's where you need to be. Did they come from referrals? Start working on getting more referrals. Did they come from leads groups? Be more active in leads groups. Telemarketing? Call more people. You get the idea.

[Robin Thomas]

Great article, Pepper. Even with all my experience with social media, I feel the same way. I've watched my influence spread as my insider articles are distributed, like you said, automatically. So much that I've been invited to write on a couple of different platforms as well. I haven't entered Pinterest yet, except to make my profile, as I have this fear I'll get sucked in and never want to leave :).

Thank you again, Martin and Pat, for all you do to keep us on track with these business tools. And thank you, Pepper, for spreading the word with this article.

[Pepper P Oldziey]

Hi Nancy and Robin, thanks for great comments. I agree Nancy that one must match the interests of one's customers and knowing exactly what customer sergments and which goals and strategies you are using will guide you. Streamline your time and pick your battles with wisdom. My own take on it is to make it joyful. Why play on a platform that bores you. Maybe you are more interested in serving clients that play on media you enjoy as well?

I was writing the next post on that topic . . . more to come. Meanwhile I set up Hootsuite to play to them all at once and also a second portfolio site on pinterest. That was terrific fun. I'll be back with the latest on both of those.

[Pepper P Oldziey]

and on Pinterest . . . oh Stacey what designer wouldn't. You have spent a while on yours. We like some of the same TV shows :)

I made one last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. I look forward to going back and building it up. First of course I put my portfolio on it. That was easy. Filling out each board will take a bit, but worth it. I so look forward to doing that. Its all about the pictures.
http://pinterest.com/peppergraphics/