The curse and the charm of the digital age

Oh my,

This blog post was supposed to be a gorgeously created you tube tutorial about how to add social media profile tabs to your Facebook business page.

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In fact, I’ve spent all afternoon creating this for you, not without many frustrations I might add and I’m not quite there yet…which led me to the thought of how wonderful and downright frustrating the internet and computers can be!

Now don’t get me wrong, I love computers and the internet.  I sagely nod my head while waiting for things to load up, telling myself, ‘it’s amazing, all this information is readily available and it’s only taking a minute’.  Every time I print something I remember the amazed faces on Mad Men when their very first copier arrived, and thought how much we take copying papers for granted these days. 

I am also very aware that without the internet and more specifically the explosion of social media, that I would not have this career.  And neither would most of the clients I work with.

Social media has seen an explosion in freelancers, travelling the world, or doing the school run, creating jobs from literal thin air, running with it and making a good living.  The internet and computers have meant that we can reach far greater numbers than our feet ever possibly could.  It’s given us access to more learning and knowledge than we could ever hope to consume in a lifetime.

Social media advertising has given us the ability to cheaply advertise our wares and services to a defined subset of people we believe need us.  And has given consumers ever widening options of products to choose from.

But sometimes, sometimes it is downright frustrating!

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Things aren’t always as intuitive as they should be, programmes half load, emails with product codes don’t arrive when we’ve paid, we download one product only to find out it doesn’t really do what we expected it to do, another platform only does half the job, that button that should be doing something seems broken, a strange message pops up and before you know it you’ve spent 3 hours working at something that when you view it is all messed up and far too fast and you can see your arms waving in the air like a mad thing!

That is what happened with me this afternoon.  And I would like it on the record, that we are all learning all the time!

Learning new software and products can be intensely frustrating! More so as a freelancer, because generally we are doing everything for our business and must be mini experts at many things!

I always smile when my clients feel ashamed for not knowing something, as if I know everything.  We all start somewhere and if we can hire someone to help us along the way, and share skills then all the better for it. 

There is no embarrassment in not knowing, it is not wanting to know and being afraid to ask the questions which is a shame.

And so, for my amazing video, I will persevere, I will get help and knowledge from people who know more than me and it will be coming very soon.  And once I’ve mastered the art of video editing software and the like there will be no stopping me!!

And if you have some skills you need to brush up on to help you master social media and online marketing, you know where I am, I might even be able to tell you how to edit video too!