In Part 1, I've been writing about some of my frustrations as a "Low-Tech Girl, living in a High-Tech World." In Part 2, I've continued the theme of living with low-tech skills by sharing some notes that I've accumulated through the years while trying to learn more about Marketing and Search Engines and Data sharing and other elusive topics. Here's some diary excerpts from a low-tech girl:
Dear Diary: I learned a little bit more about link building
today. You are going to have to just suck up and look quite obvious and needy
as you are grasping at the straws of relevancy when you build your links.
Dear Diary: Metadata was a fun new word. It’s like a baby with one of those mobiles you attach…look at the pretty things spinning around! What are they?
Dear Diary: Back links are links that…what the hell? Who
cares what they are called!?
Dear Diary: Platform & Branding are two new words that I
have decided to ignore as a writer. They seem to be made up for those impotent
people (Remember the joke about the pimp who went to the doctor and came back
with new platform shoes and fancy clothes?
Joke:
Pimp: He said I was “Impotent”…..Lots of impotent people
will tell you about Platform & Branding.
Putty: (confesses with a laugh): “We don’t even know what it
is!”
·
Hyperlinks sounds like a made-up word from a
Star Trek geek.
·
Content Curation is manna from heaven for
writers. Because instead of coming up with ideas, you just scroll down and
troll through the archives to pull someone’s blog post and then just pretend
you are back in college writing a paper and it’s due tomorrow. You summarize
the work and change the title and submit it with fingers crossed, hoping for at
least a B Minus.
·
Google Penalites sounds like something from
Fantasy Football or the like.
·
Dear Diary: Marketing means just about anything
these days. Lots of jobs for kids fresh out of college revolve around some form
of Marketing…whatever.
·
Dear Diary: After going through my web design
course and my in-bound marketing course I have a new password:
Ihaveaheadache…oh yeah, I forgot. There has to be a number plus an extra
key…How about; Ihaveaheadache#1000!?
·
Dear Diary: Every day, tech gives me a headache.
People who wrote for a living used to simply sit and write with a pen and
paper. Then typewriters came along, and it’s been downhill from there. Changing
the ribbons and figuring out the margins and then the page setup on a
typewriter was bad enough.
Now we do nothing but worry about the process.
And the writing classes are hilarious, because people older than myself (I’m a
Baby Boomer) think that we are doomed as a society.
Young people don’t understand what the fuss is
about. And Baby Boomers are stuck somewhere in the middle. We Boomers are old
enough to remember life when computers filled a room and the blinking DOS
cursor was all that was known about computing.
Now, we have to know the “process” and writing
is secondary. There is data about the amount of time a person will actually
read the content on the page. We scan a page and leave after about eight
seconds. McCluhan was right-The Blurb is the word.
·
Dear Diary: Now all of our Titles are analyzed,
and you have to hook the audience right away! The speaker in our Marketing for
Writers Workshop says with a straight face,
“ Number 1 on the List to sell your
work is a Good Looking Cover." Then he
gets down to Number 5 or 6 on the list. That would be… "Good content! “
·
Right? I’m not kidding, this was part of a
workshop I attended, and I was the only one laughing. Jane Austen, where are
you when we need you?
Dear Diary: I am taking the day off and taking a lesson from
that sweet looking older lady who was caught in the photo of a crowd of phones,
with people around her taking selfies, while she simply watched and took it all
in as she just enjoyed the moment. I might just take a walk-and enjoy the day.
And leave the phone behind!
