Hey Reader!

Apologies for being a day late this week! If you follow my personal socials, you know things have been a bit hectic around here with Mr. Lisa's care and our interstate move. Next week is going to be even crazier but the issue should come out as normal. I'm going to write it ahead and everything!

On with the show!

Here's what's happening this week:

I spoke to the admin of a online writer's group I'm in this week and I'm going to do a free test run of my social media class, "Social Media on a Shoestring" (working title), in November with the group. She's pumped about this because not only is it free to the members, but she wants to bring classes like this to the group. I'm pumped because I can get feedback from (mostly) strangers on what works, what doesn't, am I too long? Too short? I'm aiming for 90 minutes with 30 minutes of Q&A. The test group will also get all the freebies I'm offering with the paid classes.

I'm already scheduled to teach the class, for a fee, in July of 2025 for a sub-chapter of Romance Writers of America. After I make the tweaks from November's class, I've got a list of other writers' groups I'm either in or aware of that I can pitch to present for a fee. I've presented to small and large groups, so I'm not worried about having stage fright or getting nervous.

The more I dig into my outline, the more I find I want to talk about. Sure, back in 2007 when Twitter became alive and people were hanging out on Facebook and MySpace, you just did your thing and posted. The idea of creating a best practices or posting policy as well as worrying about engagement and the like didn't really exist. And now, we need to think how to handle AI, which I have thoughts on! The outline is growing exponentially and I need to really start paring it down and maybe split the class to an introduction and intermediate class?

I have roughly 6 to 7 weeks to get it together for the test run. I can do this!

As I was digging through my harddrive for reference docs I created ages ago on social media, I found a list of all the decks I made for various conferences and presentations. Majority of the decks are on social media and website design.

If you want to go down memory lane, here is a deck I did in 2010 for the Michigan Libraries Association annual conference on social media in libraries and another deck I did on a similiar topic in 2011. In 2015, I did a deck for a job interview on why your* website sucks. Starting in January 2025, I'm going to do another deep dive research on the state of social media and Michigan libraries to present at MLA's 2025 conference. Kristin, a dear friend who worked with me on the previous decks, told me to go ahead with that. I laughed.

(Note: The deweydistrictlibrary.org and lisa.rabey.net no longer exist.)

Social Media Tip

Tip: Link to all your socials on your website, either in the header or footer or both (and not as a slide out).

Why: This one has several reasons. First, if a user is on your website via mobile, having your social media on a slide out means that they won't see it especially if you don't have it linked elsewhere on the page. Second, depending on the layout of your page, your social media could hide behind a hamburger menu when in mobile. Third, I spent six hours last week researching competitors for a client to put together my client's social media strategy and not a single one out of six competitors linked all their social media off their website. I knew, just knew, that they were on TikTok or Instagram or whatever so I would spend more time looking for them on the networks. It would have been significantly easier if the company linked directly to that network. Don't make your users work to find you!

Meme of the Week

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Have a good week!

Lisa and Thursday

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