Social Media Dependency...#hashtaghashtag

On Saturday night I dropped my phone in my old office, the bathtub. As it slid under my tired mass I admit retrieval was not as swift or as graceful as it should have been. Alas, by the time I airlifted it from the depths of epsom salts and frantic ripples...it was too late. The words of Monty Python legend John Cleese seeped into my frustrated head "It's passed on...It is no more...It has ceased to be...". Never mind, It was going to happen at some stage. Since then I have rekindled a relationship with my old phone which is absolutely useless so I am spending a lot less time on social media than I normally do. I'll admit it's been tough but i'm coping OK. I'm definitely doing better than I was at the end of last week...

I love my Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp etc etc...With a husband away a lot and family and friends across the globe, it makes staying in touch easy and fun! I realise that I have become a bit of a social media "whore" for want of a better word. Staying connected is a part of my life and actually fills my evenings with company, albeit digitally. This week, practically phoneless, I have realised how my life involves a lot of storytelling. I love to tell stories and to engage people in them, making people smile and ultimately making them laugh. AND yeah...OK, i'll put it out there, it makes me feel good when I get a healthy response from something I've posted! I feel like a numpty admitting that, but I do! I am not one of those that uses social media to offload how I am feeling, I don't seek attention through people feeling sorry for me. If i've had a crappy day or if someone has upset me I wont turn to Facebook to be a shoulder to cry on. That's not how I tick... There are people who treat social media as a means to express their Eastender'esque life dramas by revealing fairly personal content about themselves and situations that are occuring, in their lives. That's fine, knock yourself out! Personally I tend to back away from that...However, I do like to entertain. Or at least try to entertain and create small, positive and when possible, meaningful narratives...

This is Social Media GOLD...It's a baby...on a Skateboard! People go mad for this kind of material! Ultimate 'like' magnet!

Over the past few weeks I have been talking to a lot of people about how my new company eHive is about helping businesses to tell stories online about their product or service which will engage with the public. Stories which entice, interact and ultimately sell! That's business! But it's about me helping people to build their work into online communities that stand out within a much larger online community being the t'internet! It's no easy thing. There is no avoiding the fact that life, for so many of us,  is jam packed, it's against the clock and it's online. Whether on our phones, our smart TV's, iPads or computers...The world has become, and continues to become even more so...DIGITAL! We have become a culture in which we can't go to the loo without glancing at our phones to see if we have missed anything despite the fact that we checked it 30 seconds before. Sitting down and watching a film from start to finish without glancing at our mobile devices 100 times is a thing of the past! Because we have forgotten the fact that it is OK to not 'like' or reply immediately! Our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter and short...INSTANT INSTANT INSTANT...EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DONE INSTANTLY AND SPEED IS GOOD!!!FASTER INTERNET, FASTER DOWNLOADS, FASTER BATTERY CHARGING...I wonder if to save time we will evolve to start talking in hashtags. #goodtoseeyou #mustdash #PMme...But seriously, what are we afraid might happen if we turn our phones off for a couple of hours... DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN... Will we miss the latest trend? Will we become social outcasts!!! #OMG #itsnotevenworththinkingabout!!!...I digress...my sincere apologies...

SO, for business, engaging with people with short, snappy posts using lots of imagery is a really effective way to interact and advertise your product or service. The fact that we are using the digital world to advertise our lives as well...a social fusion of likes, shares, hashtags, selfies, dating... BLOGGING and all the rest of it is something which, when you think about it is really quite odd but ever so addictive. I would even go as far as saying that we are becoming dependent on it. The irony of it being called 'Social Media' when actually it is probably taking us further and further away from being social. I choose whatsapp/snapchat to communicate with my friends and family over picking up the phone to call them 90% of the time. I actually hate speaking on the phone...is that because I have evolved this way? I was 14 years old when I got my first mobile phone...16 years of text communication must have impacted on me somehow. I wonder what is next...transportation from one device to another...how cool would that be...

JIMINY CRICKET!!! I am not saying that any of this is bad. Heck! I am in the midst of setting up a digital marketing business! This post is more of a self observation, I am in the web of social media in a very BIG way just as millions and millions of others are. Social Media is life as we know it and there is a very fine line between online advertising (business) and social media. No wait, let me rephrase that, Social Media is business!...To some of you, you will find that comment quite depressing, to others you will probably just think..."Yeah? And?".

An example of the classic Selfie! I was sat in the car waiting for my husband and for some reason felt it was a good opportunity to take a photo of myself...waiting for my husband...in the car...???