I'll be the first to admit that I'm NOT technologically savvy. Up until now, I've done pretty well at learning the basics. But what I've learned as I navigate my publishing journey is that "pretty well" and "basics" don't cut it when it comes to marketing. I find myself drowning in terminology I don't understand.
Take "links" for instance. As I write my blogposts, I'm told I should link it to other titles on my website. Or I should link it to Facebook or Instagram. Or when I offer a promotion on a landing page (there's another term that gets me), I should link it to this or that or ...
I don't know. You get the picture. Do you? I don't!
Or, at least I didn't until yesterday. Yesterday, my publisher explained in words I could understand what a link is. It's like my mailing address--only it's out there in the cyberspace world rather than the physical world. Immediately, my sci-fi brain kicked in. Finally a link made sense to me--I had something I could hook it onto in my brain. The lightbulb came on!
A few years ago I took a Cognitive Psychology course. Anything that has to do with the brain is fascinating to me. I remembered studying about how the brain takes in new information, using neurons and dendrites and neural synapses to connect new brain cells of information (definitely a layman's definition here). When I get new technological terms thrown at me, this is what happens to it in my brain:
Nothing! It remains a single (illusive word/term) cell that continues to just float around, bouncing into all my neural networks and dendrites but never landing anywhere, because it has no connections--no relationships. It's hopelessly lost.
The Enterprise drifting through space without any bearings.
But not just that. Each and every time I hear the word/term, whether it's "links" or "landing pages" or SEOs," that floating intensifies to become crashing as the cell seeks to find a "home." And all that crashing begins to sap my energy. It's exhausting!
Can you relate?
Now you know of my ongoing struggle with marketing.
But I was so happy yesterday when the word "links" finally found a home in my brain. I now had one less homeless cell, one less marketing term, to understand, and one more cyber family of connections. And those connections: Whoa!
I am in awe of how God made our brains (and the fact that they're irreproducible).
So, where does the word "lynx" fit into all of this (from my title)? This morning, I was explaining to my hubby my epiphany with the word "links" and we talked about how our brains made connections.
After our conversation, he headed to his office, but not before turning to me and saying, "I think lynx is my favourite of the cat family." I laughed (always the response he's going for). He laughed. The play on words found an instant home in my brain and my neural networks were off and running! Again.