Me and My Mojo

Warning: profound insight ahead.  I have figured out the reason why so many people get addicted to social networking and on-line engagement.  It's about mojo.  

As every Austin Powers fan knows, mojo is about personal power and potency.  Building an on-line image through social networking gives us a sense of personal power in a world where we are otherwise impersonal, invisible and powerless.

There is a weird kind of empowerment that happens when you build yourself an on-line presence using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, ZoomInfo and others. When you actively engage on Twitter, build your Facebook page, or create a profile on LinkedIn or ZoomInfo, you are seizing the power to define yourself, instead of letting others define you. For control freaks like me, this is a major mojo-booster.

Here's one great example.  When I Googled my name, I saw several different entries on a site called ZoomInfo, a "people and company" finder.  Each entry showed a different name for my company--on one, it was "Kelly Media Consulting," on another "Kelly Media Relations."  

I went to the ZoomInfo site and found that there are at least two dozen Marsha Kellys listed, and about six of them were me (I??), each with a different company name or connection. Zoom allows you to "claim" all the entries that are yours, so you can consolidate them into one profile with current and corrected information that actually might be helpful to someone trying to find you or your business.  

When I finished cleaning up my ZoomInfo profile, and Googled again, the corrected entry appeared in the first five or six search results, along with my LinkedIn profile, my Facebook page, and my Twitter account--all my own sites, containing information that I know is right because I wrote it myself.

At that moment, I realized that social networking isn't just about technology.  It's about being visible instead of invisible.  It's about personal empowerment.

Austin Powers got it right.  It's about mojo.