I am really not a Luddite.

I tried using Facebook, but somehow it wouldn’t let me separate SolveEczema.org from my personal page, so forget that.  After making some monumental blunders — such as replying “yes” when it asked if I wanted to import my contacts from Yahoo, only to discover it had automatically spammed everyone who had ever written to me about the website with a Facebook request — I closed and deleted the account.

I know it’s possible to separate the personal and professional on Facebook — or maybe not, I’ve heard differing opinions —  I just haven’t had time to figure it out for myself.  As someone who truly grew up hand-in-hand with the age of technology, I no longer suffer arcana well.

My undergraduate advisor at MIT was a brilliant semiconductor device physicist, David Adler, who was very proud of the fact that he’d never used a computer.  “That’s what graduate students are for,” he would say.  His work enabled the building blocks of computers, but he had no time for them himself.  I have always envied him those graduate students!

Ape the book coverI am finally making progress on my book, so I purchased a copy of APE: How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki and attended a lecture by him at my local bookstore.  It’s brand spanking new advice about a rapidly changing field, and every bit as readable as his other books.  Since I have always intended to self-publish, Kawasaki’s APE was exactly the right book at the right time.

While I think he’s absolutely spot on with his advice — his advice is sound,  his advice is great!  — much depends on building a social media platform.  But how am I going to do this without a graduate student or two?

His suggestion to me at his lecture was to hire someone to help.  Yes!! That would absolutely solve the problem, it just can’t happen on my side of reality for now.  We live in different worlds, Guy.

My website stats tell me this year SolveEczema.org has already had over 40,000 unique users — as many as all of last year — and the vast majority arrived from bookmarks and links, not search engines, with multiple page views per user, meaning, people are sharing.  The blog gets between roughly 1,200 and 1,700 views per month (how many unique users that means, I don’t know.)

So how do I turn that into followers on twitter or Google+ (whatever that is!)?  (I am not a Luddite!  I am not a Luddite!)

That was a poor and backhanded way of apologizing for taking so long to finish this book.  I spent much of last year as the crazy parent trying to improve indoor air quality at our local school, where my son began experiencing some pretty significant allergy problems, and so did I and my husband, truth be told.  The school ended up doing a great deal, and the experience was not wasted and will become another chapter in the book, as allergy and eczema are so related.  I learned much in the process, as always.

This is also a backhanded way of explaining why Guy Kawasaki’s book is my first twitter post!  You can now follow SolveEczema.org on twitter!  (I think…)