0 Comments

“You’ve found yourself a new hobby, haven’t you?” my wife commented the other night as I was checking the latest stats on my blog www.BillGregoryOptician.com. I thought about it for a moment. “Actually, it’s morphed into something else …”

If you’ve visited SightNation before, it would be almost impossible for you to not be aware of Social Media Marketing (SMM) and its impact on Eye Care Professionals. For many of us, Dr. Alan Glazier’s blog SM & Your Eyecare Business provided an easy, step-by-step entry into this new world reality. I tried really hard to interest my employer in engaging in SMM, but to no avail – so, I just took off on my own.

It has been a really interesting experience, and has introduced me not only to new social patterns, computer programs and terminology, but also to new people. Several other ECP bloggers and SMM experts have been very kind to me along the way, answering questions and helping me “get a leg up” as I learn how to navigate these hitherto uncharted (for me) waters.

My goals to start were pretty simple – learn as much as I could; try and drive some business into my workplace, and engage in a little “self-branding.” That all began to change when I found the STATS link on my blog, and was able to watch how many hits my postings would get. I figured out some unique ways to drive a bit of extra traffic to the site, and was rewarded with an ever-increasing amount of hits.

Once I got the basics of blogging and my Facebook professional page down, I started getting interested in Twitter. One day I tweeted a link to one of my original blog posts, and low and behold, it got nearly as many hits as my most recent post in the same time frame! Aha – another cool little way to drive some traffic!

If that wasn’t bad enough, Dr. Glazier blogged about a new site called Klout that purports to measure your social media influence clout. I checked it out, and I had a score I could compare with others like me! Alrighty, Game On! The point was really driven home when I took a few days off to go hiking with a friend, checked my Klout score on my iPhone, and saw that – after steadily increasing for days – it went DOWN by two points! What? How? Did I lose a follower on Twitter? Am I not getting enough retweets? Not participating on LinkedIn enough? And then I started laughing – really, this is not much more than a game for me, and here I’m getting all caught up in it! But it’s a really cool, reality-based game with lots of other players to compete against. And someday, somehow, maybe it will all pay off. My guess is I will have better odds on that than the Lotto game. How about you? How’s YOUR game going?

Bill Gregory
Licensed Dispensing Optician

www.BillGregoryOptician.com
Facebook: Bill Gregory Optician
Follow me on Twitter: @BillGregoryLDO