The Power of Social Networks

Warning: What I'm going to write is probably quite random to an extend that the title may turn out irrelevant.

Last week I was attending the Stage 2 of the Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy diploma course. Then we sort of discussed the opportunity of practicing as a hypnotherapist in the future, and Donald shared his experience, tips and advice of setting up one, including a website as a start-off point. He then also mentioned twitter. And with this I have something to say, I realized there have been a lot of random people following me on my personal account, just, for example, for me saying the word "dissertation", there was a proof reading company following me, then I mentioned "hypnosis", and there I attracted another 3-4 people following me. Other than that there is also a pet food company (I think it's because I said I'm going to "walk a banana like how people walk their pet dog")... Really?!?! So you think I'd need to buy food from you for my pet banana? And there were some photographer, random whatever commercial stuff. 

So I sort of tested this, for the following days I tweeted a bit more about hypnosis, and really, there are then people who offer hypnotherapy in the area coming to follow me. (Sorry if you are one of my followers and were wondering why I've been talking so much about hypnosis - especially if it didn't interest you). 

This is kind of powerful, just to make yourself having more followers, although I'm not sure about when it really comes to offering your service (or selling your products), eh but, there is no harm of doing it, really. Don also mentioned some people use blog, write about controversial issues in the field. I suddenly remember one of my posts that received quite a lot attention - at that point I thought about this one - "Swollen Fingers due to Excessive Writing" (wow huibee you're random). And honestly, this completely random post (even the pictures went missing due to my setting after I joined Google+) is still receiving attentions! Now I remember the top post of my blog, which is "A Letter by a Malaysian living in the USA", ironically though (well done if you realized before I said it) - I live in the UK, not the USA, so that wasn't written by me (acknowledged in the comments... a few times)... But I'm not sure why it appeared to be the first source people come across if they google it. Now this is a very good example of controversy. (Just if you're interested, this post in 2009 received on average 2+ view each day now). 

So I guess one important thing now is to do more reading, to assure the quality of my post/tweet (unlike most of my personal posts hahahaha). Though, to call myself a blogger I think I need to start writing a bit more regularly, and I do hope to share more about my reading and experience on hypnosis and my work in NLFS, while protecting my patients' confidentiality!