Unfollow
Here's what I mean by 'don't be a brand', or rather 'don't use social media to bash our head in with your product'. I just unfollowed somone on Twitter. Here's why - this individual's only tweets were of a 'this or this' nature. No updates on life, nothing witty or philosophical. Just 'chocolate or vanilla', 'Batman or Superman?' Yeah, days of these things. In between, the only other thing he tweeted was ads for his book, or his short stories, with links. That's it. And I gotta tell ya, it was downright annoying.
If I talk about writing a lot, at least I talk about the process, the ups, the downs, the joys, and of course the inevitable pitfalls. It's not just 'here's my book, buy it.' I am a real person and I like to tweet stuff I think is interesting or funny.
And now, having said that, I will announce that I just completely redid my website! I moved it to Google sites, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the annoying allowance of people on webs to become 'members' of my site. I don't want their pictures or book covers or whatever on my site! I also dumped the guestbook. Google site's editor is much easier to deal with.
The new one is still a template, but I think I like it better. I rather enjoy being my own webmaster - this way if the site isn't updated, I have no one to blame but myself. I first used Google Sites when I started making my Grad School portfolio, and found it simple and fun to use and easy to make look good. I also like Google's ability to change the layout, instead of just up and down I can lay things out side to side in columns. For free, it ain't bad. I also stuck the free Google analytics in there, so I can track it. (not that any of you care, I just thought it was cool)
Anyway, the link to the site is exactly the same: www.christine-norris.com , which was a job and a half to get done all by itself, but again, I like doing things myself, and learning them if I need to. Check it out, tell me what you think.