Mind Your Language!
A journey of selfie discovery.

I’m a newbie to Social Media. I’m taking my seat on a virtual platform with a ticket to an unknown destination. My luggage is a dictionary of words that I hope will engage, entertain and develop an audience. So, here goes………..!
Where to I start? First time blogger, first time blogging. These words feel unfamiliar to me. Until now, I’d never used them in my everyday vocabulary. With a little Google search I discovered the word blog came into our vocab 20 years ago.
The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999.
Thanks Wiki!
And thank God it’s not an acronym! There are so many with Social Media, I’m learning, KPI’s, ROI, LOL which becomes a crying smiley face (go figure!) also known as an Emoji. For the uninitiated Social Media acronyms are a memory minefield!
But why am I here? What am I doing? With such questions, suddenly I hear Monty Python’s ‘The Meaning of Life’ song pop into my head. Now, here’s a GIF, yet another acronym, from said movie.
Jumping off a cliff edge is exactly how I feel with Social Media. And NAKED is the best way to describe it. That sensation of being totally vulnerable, of putting yourSELF out there, warts and all.
On ‘Selfie Day’ the world and her mother will take snaps of themselves and post them on every platform available for everyone to see, comment, like, love and, if your anything like me — a social media manager in training — beg for people to follow you. In the dark days, before I found the light that is Social Media, a platform meant a place to catch a train!
But bathing in the glow of Social Media spotlights, here’s my addition to the estimated 2.34 billion users of Social Media. In true Social style, I’ve grabbed someone else’s creation, put my own spin on it and resent it to my followers! Credit to LOL, Instagrammer, Euzcil Castaneto. Note the number of likes!!!!!

Social Media — let’s give it the acronym treatment, SM (add an ‘&’ in there and we’d be on a totally different angle. #winky face).
SM, why am I here and what am I doing?
I’m a mum. A working mum. A single mum — juggling parenting and earning a crust.
I’ve been fortunate to have lived and worked abroad and had a very sparkly career as a TV producer. TV and child rearing are a tricky mix. The opportunities to progress your career in part time roles that fit around school are rare, if they exist at all.
I know I’m not alone. This juggling act is one that a majority of mums perform.
Then, there was the light bulb moment. Here’s the Hallelujah chorus. Yet another GIF for your pleasure!
A cold drizzly winter evening, trawling through Face Book, coveting happy families and beautiful lives of all that inhabit this virtual world, and up pops an advert. Not unusual but it had resonance to my situation.
Digital Mums. (DM)
Here’s a company that actually celebrates being a mum. A company that is promoting mums in the work place and offering training to help them gain a job in Social Media. With the selling line, #workthatworks, I signed up.

The Digital Mums SM management course is teaching me all about the behind the scenes work that’s required to create and manage successful SM campaigns. Great content, careful curation, clever post timings and of course the analytics, studying the numbers. Reflect and refine. Basically being ‘on it’ all the time.
The most surprising element for me has been the joy of engaging with the world around me. The clue is in the title. SOCIAL Media. Delving into other people’s loves, hates, passions, gripes, and connecting with them. Starting conversations, joining conversations, changing perspectives, creating perspective. The world of SM is a wonderful window into how we as humans operate and how we connect and disconnect with one another.
With a cohort of 6 inspirational mums on the DM course we are supporting each other through the process of creating and running our own SM campaigns. None of us have met in person, we’re all ‘virtual’ friends. Spending our days What’s Apping furiously about the frustrations of connecting Instagram to Facebook and Twitter accounts. Disconnecting our personal accounts from our business pages only to reconnect them again. That caused a lot of #WTF texts to fly between us!!! Laughing madly, on our weekly G+ hangouts, about the success of ‘cats in jumpers’ and how we could possible weave that into a SM campaign about picnics?

So here I am, writing my first blog; head spinning with how to find my voice, how to stand out in the crowd. As a 6ft woman in the real world, this has not been an issue. Here, in the virtual world, its all about followers. And each platform is a stage for self promotion to engage people.
It’s all about the Selfie.
So, this is me, myself and I - trying to reignite my career and be there for my daughter. I’m learning how to be social, with Social Media, for a living and I actually love it!
One of myriad ways to establish oneself in the Social world is campaigning. And as a reflection of myself, I’ve chosen to create a campaign that focuses on promoting smart working for mums to develop or maintain careers.
The research is fascinating. And the demand is there. My cohort on the course are all working towards the same goal, a good work / life balance. This is not just about flexibility. It’s smart working, intelligent working.
The concept of flexible working is no new phenomenon, it’s been around since 2011 when the government proposed this opportunity to all employees in an effort to promote growth.
In the UK, 50% of businesses have now introduced flexible working practise options for employees. A fantastic achievement in 6 years!
And the stats keep getting better. According to the Work and Women’s commission in 2013:
Unleashing women’s full potential could be worth £23 billion a year to the Exchequer.
Here’s the staggering context, in the same year, the central government budget for Education was £28.6 billion.
And it’s the unleashing of women’s full potential that my campaign is based.
In the world of SM, timing is all. 2017 is tipped to be the time when over half the organisations in the UK are likely to adopt flexible working, with the aim of having 70% of UK based companies offering this option.
So, strike while the iron is hot. Out with the 9 to 5 mentality. In with smart working.

This is not just about flexibility, it’s not yoga! I’m campaigning for a flexible way of working that offers more than hours to suit.
It’s time to up the anti and establish vialbe career options for mums to grow and develop within a chosen career.
So, big brave breath, I’ve initiated a conversation to reinvigorate flexible working to breed opportunity. And I’m starting with two words.
Smart.
Intelligent.
Flexible working is now an accepted phrase in the office. By adding these two words, Smart working. Intelligent working, the connotaion is immediately positive. The language offers bold confident affirmation. And it’s from this postion I’m laying out my campaign.
As SM is all about the chat, languge is key to spreading the word. The name of the campaign is slightly sassy, slightly cheeky and includes the words work and baby. Until recently the B word has been perceived as an anathema to developing a career.
Today, now, there is no one or the other. They are words to be celebrated when they are together.

If you add, work, baby, smart, intelligent together in one sentance — hey presto, positive connections occur. And this is the essence of the ‘Work It Baby’ campaign.
If this has resonance with you, follow me as I mind my language, and chat for change.

https://www.facebook.com/iworkitbaby/
Originally published at medium.com.