Here's a confession - I'm really quite shy - and because of this I've always buried my head in the sand and completely avoided anything at all to do with social media. When I started my business, my lovely and generous friend Katie Whitehouse - super star of all things 'internetty' - regularly told me that now I had something to say and something to show, I should be 'out there', but still I resisted. Then one day, a couple of months ago, I took a deep breath and together Katie and I made a Facebook page. I spent most of the following week almost hyperventilating and completely avoiding the new 'f' icon on my iPad and iPhone in case anyone had looked at my page or, even worse, commented! I was barely over the shock of that first enormous step before I got my next instructions, "Now you're going to write a blog for your website" she said, "it's time to tell your stories, and by the next time we meet I want you to have written three." THREE? I wasn't even sure I could write ONE. But I was beginning to realise there was no escape from this social media guru so I gave it a go and very soon I remembered that as well as being a potter, I was once a writer too, and I really enjoyed it. "Well done" she said, the next time we met ... but before I could relax she was off again; "Now we're going to share your first blog on Facebook." "We are?" I squirmed, "Yes, we are" she said. So we did and then people began to like it and comment on it and share it and I couldn't believe it. A couple of weeks later we met again; "I think I quite like this Facebook thing" I told her. "That's good" she laughed, "because now it's time for Instagram." And so it was. And of course there was absolutely no point in coming up with excuses anymore, about being shy or anything else, because even though social media is another world with another language, I get the point of it now. And you don't say no to someone who is so incredibly patient, knowledgable, encouraging and clever at it, that they can even teach ostriches how to do it; you lift your head out of the sand, and bow to them instead.