These days I am fascinated with Facebook, learning to love LinkedIn, becoming passionate about Pinterest, excited about email and typing out my Twitter tweets with great enthusiasm! I am also finding my blogging experiences to be both beautiful and beneficial and as a result I am going wild about WordPress!

The reason I have taken such a great interest in all this is that the marketing experts at my publishing company have really encouraged me to promote my upcoming weight-loss book, No Salads Required! on social media, so I have been learning all I can during the last few weeks on how to use the above Web sites to their fullest advantage. It has been an intense and entertaining process, which I know will only get more exciting the more I learn and the more social media sites I add to my marketing plan.

Of course, I do know that all the Web sites I have mentioned in the opening paragraph have been around for a long time and that some of my readers may be wondering why a person my age, who likes using computers isn’t already an expert each of those social media hot spots.

Well, to be honest, I did know quite a bit about Facebook and Yahoo e-mail, because I had been using them both for years, but purely in a social manner. I went online when I felt like it, sent messages, posted a few photos, played some games, chatted with friends who lived far away and basically just enjoyed the entertaining side of social media. As for Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest, I did have accounts on those sites, which I had signed up for at the invitation of friends, but I couldn’t remember any of the passwords I had set up for them. Also, I hadn’t even completed filling out my online profiles on each one, let alone exploring what these various sites had to offer. I guess I just had never gotten around to them. As for blogging, that was completely uncharted territory, but once I started it I wondered why it had taken me so long to do so.

Actually, once I got my business accounts up and running on all these Web sites I immediately understood why social media has become such an extremely popular way to advertise. It allows me to promote my book to potential readers all over the world and to work anytime and anywhere I like as long as I have a computer device and access to the internet. Not bad! Currently, I am using free methods to promote my book online, because I am still a “starving writer”, but as the release date for No Salads Required! gets closer, I may take advantage of some of the more modestly priced social media advertising options just to be sure that I get the word out to everyone I can.

Another thing my internet marketing program has done is give me the joy of reconnecting with old friends and sharing the news about both my 159 pound weight-loss and my new career as an author to people who have not heard the news until now. The best part is that not only are they happy for me, but they can’t wait to buy a copy of my book!

I am also finding out that there is a tremendous amount of helpful information available online for business people and that if I take the time to read most of it I will probably learn just as much for free as I would if I went back to college for a few classes in business.

I think the Web site that has surprised me the most in this regard is LinkedIn. Until a couple weeks ago, I really knew nothing about this site, other than it had “something to do will business”. Of course, now that I have explored LinkedIn a lot more, I realize that saying this website has “something to do with business is like saying the ocean has “something to do with water”! LinkedIn offers helpful information and discussion groups on a huge variety of business topics and also the opportunity for users to put together an online profile that showcases their professional skills, but that’s not all! Linked in is also fun! You can join a discussion groups for humor writers, cat lovers, people interested in the movie industry and groups for almost any other topic you can name. Also, anyone on LinkedIn is welcome to start discussion groups of their own. Not only do these groups give participants the opportunity to have lively discussions on subjects of mutual interest, they also help likeminded people find one another.

Recently, I had the privilege of participating in an amusing online discussion in the humor writers group about forgetting things. I read what the other participants had posted, chuckled and then posted a quote from my paternal grandfather, who said he “didn’t know if his memory was getting worse or his forgetter was getting better!” This post received some very positive feedback from two people I had never met before. They are strangers right now, but someday we may become friends.

I have also had positive experiences with the other social media sites I am using and perhaps I will discuss them in future posts. For now, I will just say that social media has given me a whole world of opportunities that I did not realize were open to me until now and I am very thankful indeed!

Book Update: My upcoming book, No Salads Required! How I Lost I59 pounds without Salads, Celery, Sit-Ups or Surgery and How You Can Too!” will be available to order from Amazon.com and other stores at the end of August or the beginning of September of 2015.