WROTE BUT NEVER POSTED, 2nd EDITION

This post was originally titled The (Lady) Problem with Social Media. 

Batman circa 2011

Late last night, I was watching E News when a not-unpredictable ad for a feminine hygiene product came onto the screen.

My husband always jokes that I watch networks that carry ads for zit creams and hair dye, and he watches television channels that hock collectible coins and scooters for the mobility challenged. But, I digress.

The ad in question was actually kind of funny. Above average for its topic. But at the end of the ad, it was suggested to me that I like the product on Facebook because that would make me look super-cool, right? Or help me in any way, huh?

After giggling in mortification at the thought of actually LIKING said page, I thought a minute about my own liking habits.  What's in it for the like-ER and like-EE? Liking other author pages is nice because I want to support colleagues, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't do anything to drive anyone's book sales. Liking television shows or music groups gives me a few seconds of fun but failing to update these likes more-or-less creates a trend-expiry date for your page, not unlike the open-by stamp on milk. Besides, I am pretty sure I have never found new "friends" or readers because we both like Smash. And so on. You get it.

What's more, many of the pages I "like" are updated with an infrequency that, combined with my kind of "meh" relationship with Facebook results in my almost never seeing a posting from them again. I mean, it's probably close to a full-time job to FB enough to keep a page in its "likers" feed enough to make the whole effort worthwhile.

This post was originally written a couple of years ago. What's REALLY FUNNY is that, since I wrote it, SMASH has been cancelled, TWITTER and other sites have emerged, and SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER has actually BECOME a full-time job at publishing houses.