In 1973 Erica Jong's novel "Fear of Flying" was published, and in many ways it was a seminal book for the relatively new women's movement. The book had a profound influence on both many of us who supported the Equal Rights Amendment and, I believe, on the subsequent opening up of opportunities to women despite the failure of the ERA to pass.
Now in 2010 I attended a meeting of a women's professional group and came away from it much discouraged. The irony is that the speaker gave an excellent brief history of women's rights and politicians from the ERA through today. And, yet, earlier in the meeting, many of the successful, intelligent women present appeared proud of the fact that they didn't even know how to fill out a simple bio on a social media site and they seemed disinclined to learn. Either they had assistants do it for them or they didn't do it at all.
What's the connection to Erica Jong's book and this meeting (besides how disappointed Erica Jong would be that almost 40 years later women are still willing to be behind-the-times)? Whether people like it or not, the Internet and social media sites such as Facebook are going to continue to play a bigger and bigger role in which opinions, which bills in Congress, which almost anything are going to be popular and which are not.
When a woman - or man - announces an inability to even post a bio online (and acts as if that is a badge of honor), that person is surrendering his/her life to having very little influence on the outcome of future events that may, in fact, be very important to him or her. Yes, people can always join these sites at a later date. But when you start getting active on social media sites only when there's something you really care about, you come from a position that is way behind where you could have been had you already been active on the major sites. In other words, if you haven't built up goodwill through having many friends on Facebook, fans on Twitter, connections on LinkedIn, etc., you are basically starting from scratch at what may be a pivotal moment for your cause.
I urge both women and men to learn as much as possible about participating on social media sites. There are helpful books on Amazon, free reports, all kinds of ways to do this. The important thing is to just do it!
Author: Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing. Her company has a monthly mentorship program that you can read about here.