When social media was just getting attention, I experimented. in 2007, I joined Linkedin and began connecting with other professionals. About a year later I joined Facebook, reconnected with old friends. And in January 2009, I jumped into Twitter with both feet (first as @Wingspouse and then later as @CleverKibitzer).
I started a blog to get back into the swing of writing, and used it as part of my social media experimentation. I couldn’t believe how directly blog traffic responded to my tweets and posts. Before I knew it, people were contacting me about my wingspouse concept and I was thrilled. They frequently asked how I got started, and when I explained how it began as a social media experiment, people wanted to tap into my knowledge.
I began speaking about social media, wrote my first book in 2010, and offered training and consulting services to small businesses as BrowneKnows Social Media. I loved sharing knowledge, but something was missing. I wanted to share my knowledge with the healthcare community where I had lived and breathed as a physician leader’s spouse. My heart felt it, my blog posts reflected it, and my networks were built to do it. I also wanted to tap into my ability to connect people and ideas, to use social tools to do more than market and sell, and to really channel my people skills.
In 2012, I cut loose. I started holding Health Care Hangouts to facilitate discussions about social media in healthcare and I formed a Google+ community Healthcare Talk to help others exchange information better. I have given countless Google+ tours to curious physicians and pointed hospital CEOs and CMOs to examples of successful uses of social technology.
Social Media Maven — that’s what I am. I spot connections between people, projects, technologies, and opportunities. I’m a networker who knows how to leverage social tools. Wish you could find a person with a particular set of skills? Challenge me! Looking for innovative ways to reach an audience? Ask me! Searching for technology to improve your product? Look through me! Give me a problem to solve and see what happens.
