My husband complained to me the other day, “I’m a blogging widow.”

He’s not far off. Every free second I get anymore I’ve got my laptop fired up and I’m in front of it. When he asks what I’m doing I chortle, “Blogging.”

“How can you be blogging? You always say that, but with all the banging you’ve been doing on those keys I’d have expected 50 posts by now.”

At this point I always sigh with exasperation.

“I’m doing blogging stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” he asks haughtily. (Because he caught on to my insinuating tone that it’s far too advanced for him and his fancy CPA mind to comprehend so I have to put it as simply as possible. Doesn’t get much simpler than “stuff.”)

So I sigh again. (After all, he’s taking away from my blogging time!)

“Blogging is more than just writing posts. I’ve got to visit all the blogs I follow and leave comments. I’ve got to scan my Google alerts and Tweet the links. Oh, and speaking of Twitter, I have to scan all my lists there and see what’s going on and RT or ‘at’ followers in my responses to their Tweets. That can take up a lot of time. Then I have to stop by the Haunt Jaunts Facebook fan page and…”

“Stop right there. I’ve heard enough. That doesn’t sound like ‘blogging’ to me. That sounds like you’re goofing off.”

I release a full on “I’m very annoyed with you now” huff.

“See? That’s why I just say ’stuff.’ You don’t understand that blogging is more than just writing a post. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work.”

“Goofing off.”

This is usually when I’ve had enough. I turn back to my computer and go back to my blogging, wishing he had something to blog about. Then he’d understand.

I know I use other Tweeters Friday Follow (#FF) shout outs to find new Tweeters to follow. I think it must have helped me the times people added me on their lists to grow like I’ve been doing.

I get maybe four or five #FF shout outs each week. (If I’m lucky. Sometimes less.) I think the most I ever got was six in one Friday. But SHAZAM! Today I got the most EVER!

15!!!!!

I’m still in shock. I had to go back and recount and double-check the dates to make sure it was really for this Friday.

Sure enough. It was.

That’s a big deal to me. I don’t think people pay me much mind half the time, but at least for today…BOOYA! I’ll take it!

Can you tell I have issues? Good Lord what school did to me that all these years later being “popular” matters.

Although, these days it matters because of clicks, not cliques. I need as many people clicking their way over to Haunt Jaunts as I can get. Because now it’s all about the ad revenue…

Sheesh. What did I do before HJ, Twitter, Facebook and all the rest of it? And why wasn’t I pouring my energy then into my books? I should’ve had 10 done by now if I put the time and energy I spend these days on social networking into writing.

Oh well. I’m having fun and meeting lots of neat new people. That’s a lot right there!

I went to post something to Haunt Jaunts Facebook page last night and happened to notice the fans had increased to 39. And best of all it wasn’t even people I knew!

My dear friends didn’t leave me out there hanging with no fans in the beginning. Tracie and her mom and aunt, then Brenda, Kim Smith, and even Wayne signed up.

Then I ran the Halloween Blog Contest and got more fans that way. (FB has since revised their policies on such practices, so I won’t be doing that again!)

However, I think I got up to 17 then.

I’ve been growing slowly ever since. Which is pretty cool. (And I didn’t even know it! I think I was at 20 something, like 22, last I knew.)

Twitter took off all of a sudden in December. I went from 400 to 500, 600, 700 to 850 followers in a month! But Facebook was just sort of stagnate.

Until recently. 39 fans? Okay, so it’s no 850, but it might as well be. People actually took the time to check me out. (At least long enough to hit the fan button.) Sweet!

Slowly, slowly, I’m growing more visitors. It’s all very exciting. And fun. I love living in the Internet Era! What a blast!