I continue to take baby steps into the world of social media. Twitter is very useful for current info from the publishing world, but wading through all those tweets can be time-consuming. LinkedIn initially made me feel like a loser for a myriad of reasons — not least of which is the fact that I’m the most unconnected person in the world. Introversion and child rearing will do that to ya.
But today I finally found time to check out the discussions started by EAC members on LinkedIn, and hoo boy is there a wealth of info there. I was furiously making notes on everything from marketing myself to where to print cheap business cards.
The real fun, however, is found in the debates. A bit of dirt got kicked up about how fastidious we editors should be when writing informally on discussion boards and such. Lots of great comments on that. Personally, I don’t hold mistakes against anyone in informal writing — unless they cross the line into “painful-for-the-reader” territory with all caps or some such turnoff. Suffice to say that not everyone is as lackadaisical as I on this matter.
It’s reassuring to find so many actively employed editors doing so many different kinds of work — some in-house, some freelance. Speaking of which, I’ve signed up for some local seminars for small business owners. Baby steps, baby steps.
Today the sun is shining, I’ve learned some things, and those baby steps are taking me somewhere: a good day on the job front.