<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/comic_wtf.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-511" title="comic_wtf" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/comic_wtf-538x403.jpg" alt="" width="538" height="403" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 360px;">Illustration by Jason Berg</h5>
Perhaps you've long suspected it, or maybe I've had you fooled. Either way, here's the truth: <strong>I have almost no idea what I'm doing when it comes to social media.</strong>

Sure, I'm tweeting away on Twitter each day, I publish a blog and comment on other blogs, and I participate in the tertiary networks, like Facebook and LinkedIn. But I can assure you, <strong>there is no master plan or strategy here—unless you call trial and error and "making it up as you go" a plan.</strong>

I'm the person who ended up on Twitter because a friend told me I should have an account. (My first tweet was something like "Trying out Twitter. Not sure how this is supposed to work.") I'm also the person who knows what SEO stands for, but has no idea how to leverage it to optimize anything when it comes to my blog.

I regularly second-guess myself, too. <em>Is this blog headline really more enticing that the one I thought of 15 minutes ago? Should I tweet the link to my blog again, for the people who missed it, or will that be annoying?</em>
<h4>The Facebook fan page conundrum</h4>
One of the things I've been hemming and hawing about for a few months now is whether to create a Facebook page for my blog. The whole issue came up when a stranger sent me an email asking if I had a fan page for the blog; I thought "why not?" and started to set one up. But two main issues kept me from publishing it: One was that I couldn't really figure out the point of fan pages, and the other was that I just felt funny asking people to become a fan of my blog. It feels too much like asking them to be a fan of <em>me</em>.

A couple of months went by, and the page sat there unfinished and unpublished. Then I went to Portland, Chicago and New York to participate in readings for the book I'm a part of (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Me-About-My-Divorce/dp/1580052762">Ask Me About My Divorce</a>). At the readings, I met people who were interested in my blog and wanted to connect in some way, but they aren't on Twitter and I've made a personal decision to not friend people on Facebook I don't actually know (in a real-life way).

Finally, I decided to set aside my tendency to over-think things, and just get the page up there. I would have to figure out how to use it as I went. When the page was live I shared <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Halfway-to-Normal/92902118213?ref=ts">the link</a>, and wouldn't you know someone had to comment: "I don't understand fan pages. You already have a page and post links to your blog from FB, why have a fan page?"

My real response was maybe slightly defensive. What I should have simply said was "I DON'T KNOW!" <strong>I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where this blog is heading—I'm just experimenting and learning, and trying to figure out what works for me as I go. </strong>After all, there's plenty of advice out there about these sorts of things and no shortage of opinions, but there are no rules. I get to decide what feels right for me and my readers.
<h4>I'm a fan of taking concrete steps</h4>
Less than a week later, some of the benefits of having a <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Halfway-to-Normal/92902118213?ref=ts">Facebook fan page for Halfway to Normal</a> are beginning to take shape. Over a third of the people who have become fans of the blog are not friends of mine on Facebook—this is a way to reach out to those people, who don't know me but are genuinely interested in what's happening here. (And now I can reserve my personal Facebook profile for my own status updates, and use the Halfway to Normal page to let people know about new posts.)

Becoming a fan also gives people an easy way to share the blog with others who might enjoy what I'm writing about, or who need to know they're not alone.

<strong>So that's what I'm a fan of: Trying things out and seeing what works. Taking concrete steps even when you don't know exactly where you're going. Recognizing that there is no "one way" to do things when it comes to social media.</strong>

My next task? Figuring out how to spread the word that our #lovelist hashtag on Twitter has been co-opted by a rapper with more than a million followers. Overnight, it went from a tight community of people sharing what they love and want more of in their lives, to pages and pages of people I've never heard of sharing...well, I'm not quite sure what. Anyway, our new hashtag is #thelovelist. I suspect I'll muddle my way through this little conundrum, too.