They call it pimping in the world of social media and marketing—this thing of promoting your blog or website in order to get more readers. Share it on Facebook, tweet it on Twitter, stumble it on Stumbleupon, dig it on Digg—the list of social networks seems endless. Especially to me, because frankly, I‘m no good at it. It comes as a shock to me how loathe I am to put myself “out there” and self-promote. Anyone who knows me will tell you that in similar situations, I’m pretty much fearless. I love being on a stage, I’m the first one to ask a question in a lecture, and I have no problem talking to strangers wherever whenever about whatever. But ask me to pimp my site, MidLifeBloggers, or even my posts on More.com and I get all shy and backward. I shuffle my feet, say “ahem!” a lot, and smile wistfully as I fade into the corner.
This is not a good thing. The success of blogs and websites depends on the number of readers you get. Traffic, they call it in the world of social media and marketing—it’s the bottom line that determines your material and your social worth. It would behoove me to get out there and send emails to everyone in my address book (which includes my dentist and that professor I never could stand) announcing, “Go to my site. Tell me how much you love me. Comment on what a fantastic person I am. And vote for me on Stumble…Technorati, BuzzUp! FriendFeed.” People actually do this. I actually do this. But it makes me queasy, and I resist giving it my best shot. I don’t want to think of a clever way to headline my posts. I don’t want to make the rounds myself of the social networks to promote
Because this is really a case of standing in my own way, I’ve tried to figure out what my problem is. What comes to me are two figures from my past. The first is Virginia Woolf, who wrote with wisdom about the special trials that women writers create for themselves. Woolf called it, as I recall, the Angel In the House, that spectre who was always telling you what you should and should not say, who would and would not like what you’ve written, and that includes, for me at least, admissions of pride in self. Unseemly that, Jane. Be not proud; be a lady. The other figure is a girlhood friend of mine, Linda B., who for whatever reason would always challenge my “I” statements. “I got a new outfit for the party and it looks great,” I’d say to Linda, and she’d shoot back, “Oh really, what makes you think so?” She’s still in my head, Linda B is, and she can still make me shrivel in shame that I’ve promoted myself as…well, as anything.
It seems to me that I have two choices here: to just give up on pimping my posts and my site. Or find some way of fighting through, of slaying the Angel in My House and Linda B. The former is the more comfortable; the latter is scarier than anything. The former guarantees mediocrity; the latter guarantees—nothing. But then I hear echoes of all the successful people I've listened to who say that at some point in their careers, they have had to scare themselves, and that the scaring is what they credit with their success. I've often wondered what they meant, but maybe now I have an inkling.