Facebook Privacy Dependent on Facebook Friends

Freelance writers who use Facebook and other social media to promote themselves and their work usually have a lot of friends whom they've never met except online. We indiscriminately seek out and accept new friends who may read our work, confident that because we've educated ourselves on internet privacy, any information we've allowed on our Facebook pages is safe. We often post pictures of our cars, home exteriors and children to share with friends and to promote our work, never thinking about how much information we're sharing that someone can put together if they want to find us or  even get back at us because of our opinions.

According to a recent article I read, we may have a problem. Read More

All written content ©2010 Patrice Campbell unless otherwise noted.

Facebook Crisis Proves Importance of Social Media Support

It was a crisis. A CRISIS.


I clicked on my Facebook tab to check in with friends and my Facebook page was gone. I reloaded, and the page stayed the same. What in the world was going on? I needed proof that my circle of Facebook writing friends were still chained to their computers, churning out information and willing to offer advice and support to their fellow freelance writers.


I have to admit I panicked.


Many freelance writers don't realize how much of their social life they have given up in order to build their freelance careers. Deadlines, and sometimes sheer exhaustion have slowly reduced face to face time with real friends in the real world to practically nothing.


We've slowly replaced our social life with cyber life. Facebook offers a wonderful platform to fill the void. We can use the private messaging system to communicate those thoughts and ideas we don't want to share with the world in a status update. We can use the chat feature for a more detailed communication that need real time responses. We can share links to our work in status updates. The status updates also allow us to see what our friends and colleagues are accomplishing.


Most of us are logged on to both Facebook and Twitter continuously during our working hours. A quick glance at the browser tab alerts us to the number of updates while we've been busy in another browser window or working in another computer application.


I've known for a long time that I depend on social media as I work, but never did I realize that I was emotionally dependent on it.


When I took a break from the article I was struggling with to check in with my Facebook friends and let my jaw muscles have a moment to recover from the stress of grinding my teeth, it was gone....all gone.


No friends, no support, no Facebook.


In denial I reloaded and reloaded. I pulled up a previous Facebook from cache and tried to reload and log in to no avail. I was all alone in the world.


Fellow freelancers, remember the good old days when we actually took the time to make a phone call? Sometimes we'd get voice mail, but that was no problem. We left a message and went back to work as we waited for the person to call us back. I never panicked when no one picked up, did you? In fact, I usually expected my friend to be busy and was always prepared to leave a message on voice mail.


So why did I feel so disoriented when I lost my Facebook?


I clicked the Twitter tab and sent out my SOS to all my Facebook friends. Amazingly, my tweet was able to post to my Facebook account, even though I couldn't access it from my computer. I got a few replies from friends who were on Twitter at the same time, giving me reassurance that no catastrophe had happened and I wasn't the only survivor of a global catastrophe. 


Reassured, I went to my favorite news website and saw that a glitch was causing Facebook problems all over the world. I was finally able to breath.


We justify our time spent on Facebook and Twitter as using social media to promote ourselves and our work, but in truth, a lot of us find it's more than that. We have found friends that we will probably never meet face to face. We have found support from strangers. We have filled the holes in our life that our commitment to our work has left with people who are just like us. We don't meet up for lunch or drinks. But we've grown to depend on each other being available during working hours when we just need a bit of encouragement, or a good laugh.


I'll never feel like I have to make an excuse for being on Facebook again. Thanks for being there, FB friends and Twitter followers.


All written content ©2010 Patrice Campbell unless otherwise noted.

Self Promotion for the Freelance Writer

Freelance writers soon learn that self promotion is the only way they’ll turn their writing into money. You can write 30 articles a day and publish them on popular sites, but if no one is aware that you’ve written them, no one is going to read them unless you’re lucky enough to gain rank on the search engine result page.

The most popular social media sites for self promotion are Facebook and Twitter. Both of these sites offer seemingly limitless opportunities to meet and communicate with strangers who share common interests.

The need for Facebook friends and Twitter followers is obvious. You’re looking for people who are interested in you and the work you do. These are the people who may just click on your link and read your article. If they like what they read, they might start following your work. They may even recommend your article to their friends.

If you’re lucky, you may even discover people who’ll become your mentors. I’ve found many fellow writers on Facebook who have not only clicked on my links and commented, but shared my articles with their friends.

The same is true with Twitter. As followers learn to recognize the value of your Tweets and links, they will retweet your tweets to their followers, greatly increasing the chances that someone will click.

When looking for Facebook friends and Twitter followers, be careful that you don’t limit your possibilities. You may have already identified friends and followers in the writing site forums where you publish. These contacts are very valuable as business contacts, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually interested in your subject matter.

You want to add Twitter followers and Facebook friends who are interested in the article that you write. If you write about history, you want to identify people who read about history. Check out history groups on Facebook and join them. Friend other group members. These are the people who are your intended audience, after all.

The same is true with Twitter. Use the hashtag (#) and run a search of history topics. Follow the Tweeters who tweet on the subject. They might just follow you back and each time you post a link, they will have the opportunity to follow it.

Grow your online social community, continue to write valuable content, self promote at every opportunity, and you may just be lucky enough to become one of the successful freelance writers on the internet.

Promote Yourself with Twitter Hashtags

Twitter is an important part of any social media promotion campaign and there are a variety of methods to get yourself and your articles out there. One of the best is the use of hashtags.

The Twitter hashtag, "#" is used like a keyword. The hashtag is a convenient way for users to categorize their tweets so that the tweet reaches a broader community.

If your Twitter account is public and someone who is not one of your followers does a search on the word you have preceded with a hashtag, your tweet will come up in the search results.

As an example, once I publish this article, I'm going to promote it on Twitter. The name of the article and the url will be shown in the tweet. Depending on the number of characters I still have available, I will add #freelance, #writer tips, #socmedia, #income or perhaps one of the writers groups I belong to. That way, if someone is searching twitterland for information on any of those topics, my tweet will show up with the link to the article.

Use of the valuable search and hashtag ability of Twitter is also a valuable tool in research. If you're working on a series of articles on growing trends, like living on a reduced income, search #frugal. This will bring up tweets of complete strangers who have tweeted about the subject. If you can identify a credible tweeter, you can follow the person (who will then probably follow you back) and often find valuable information to use in your article.

Don't use too many hashtags in your tweets, and don't use hashtags that don't pertain to your tweets. For instance, if I tried to lure sports fans to click my link by using the term #football, I stand to lose any credibility with my established followers. If there is room at the end of the tweet for several hashtags, focus on who you're targeting your article to, and what terms they may be searching for.