The Secret of Social Media and the Octopus’s Garden

A post about how new people find you using social media by Rebecca Coleman, forced me to get some thoughts down on paper about how social media and the internet work.

Imagine for a moment that you’re a giant orange octopus. Under the sea. In your little garden. In the shade.

You’re just hanging out near a cave with your eight sticky arms ready to grab some lunch.

Unsuspecting little fishies swim by as you pluck them from their travels. You pull them toward your giant orange body and enjoy a lovely snack. Yum!

Now imagine the internet is the octopus’s garden

And your sticky little arms arm are made up all the new media tools available to you. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, other people’s blogs, etc.

Notice that these tools are just the arms of your octopus. Alone they’re not as strong as they could be. But when attached to a body they become a very powerful way to grab hold of your audience.

Your website is the Octopus’s body

If you’re relying on Facebook or one of the other tools as the body of your octopus, you’re missing the value granted by the great big sea of the internet.

Over time as you attract more people, your own octopus grows stronger and stronger. But you have to be feeding it. If your arms are not attached, you’re only feeding the tools like Facebook.

Facebook loves you for it

They love you because Facebook gets all the traffic and all the people hanging out on their site. But they have their own agenda. And their owns rules.

But guess what? If I’m clicking on your links and want to know more about you. I want to hang out at your place. Not Facebook.

Get your own octopus

Stop relying on Facebook when you have stuff to share with your audience. Get your own octopus as soon as possible so you can start linking to it.

That’s the secret. You have to take advantage of the power the internet gives you.

Then you can start growing into the the biggest orange octopus around.

And then…

“We would be so happy you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I’d like to be under the sea
In an octopus’ garden with you.”

Make sense?