Stumbling Through Cyberspace Together

inspirational message necklace by CherishDesigns

When Etsy added the "bookmark and share" button to every shop and every item, it reminded me of my son as a two year old. His famous saying from those times is "Can I have some? What is it?" We all rejoiced over having the button but had no idea why it made us happy or how it was supposed to work. Then someone recommended bookmarking yourself, and chaos ensued. Something felt terribly wrong, so I headed over to Barry Hurd's blog to read about social media influencer marketing. Before you click on that link, let me tell you about Barry and why I went to his blog. Barry's company is called 123SocialMedia, navigating business in cyberspace is his specialty. I don't know his IQ, but I know his number is higher than mine, so if you think I am cerebral, you better swallow some ginkgo biloba before you click that link. He doesn't break up his thoughts with pretty pictures like I do simply because search engines don't look at pictures. He is all about content and optimization, if there is any entertainment factor it's all in the words. I thought of Barry because the last time I visited his blog for some heavy reading, I noticed that he had just about every social bookmark button invented, prominently placed with every article. postcard by yuuco
After reading the article, I decided that I better get serious about being an influencer, so I signed up with SumbleUpon to experience bookmarking for myself. The spirit of this process is honest recommendation, and you won't be taken seriously unless you take the process seriously. Call me an idealist, but I am going to recommend that you don't bookmark your friends products or articles out of friendship. Instead, have the integrity to recommend products and articles that have actually benefited you and these can certainly include products and articles produced by your friends. If everyone took it seriously, we could use services like sumbleupon to discover truly outstanding and helpful content and products on the internet.

fine art print by CitrusTree

The first thing I bookmarked on SumbleUpon was Barry's article that I linked to above. I was asked to write a recommendation - I think it only does this when an item is being submitted for the first time. This was easy to do because I can truly recommend the article and Barry in general. Now that I am a member of StumbleUpon, I have their toolbar on my browser, and whenever I want to recommend something, I can just click on the thumbs up symbol to submit it. If you want to connect with me on stumbleupon to show me your favorites, my username is studiocherie. If you want to recommend one of my blog articles, like Am I Worthy (the one about using poster sketch), sign up on SumbleUpon or Digg or one of the other bookmarking services, then give it the thumbs up. Remember, if you are first, you will have to write a short recommendation. The same goes for my customers, I really prefer that only people who have actually purchased my products recommend them. I am not going to submit stuff I like (with the exception of photography) unless I have actually purchased it or at least seen it live. I will continue to illustrate this blog with Etsy products that look interesting though. If you ever purchase something that you found through my featuring it here, please let me know, and if you really love it, I will submit those too. Let's stumble through this together. Hope that makes sense and wasn't too meaty for you: - )