I think in 2013, a sense of alienation from other people is real. I can only speak for myself but every day I get more disenfranchised with Facebook and social media. It’s not that there aren’t cool tools for uploading photos and statuses. Rather, Facebook friends rarely comment on the great stuff (great in my opinion anyway) I put up. I post under the assumption that many more will read it than will comment on it. That leaves me in a bit of an alienated state where I can only guess who’s reading. If you are reading this, do comment it will be much appreciated. After an hour of posting to social media, I use Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and a few others, I often find myself forlorn for people like myself. I do have a few die-hard followers and commenters but for the most part, I end up with very few comments and that makes me feel defeated, I am ashamed to admit.
I often think about where “my peeps” might be in this big old world of social media. Everyone probably does. I remember reading a novel in 4th grade that stated each person has a twin somewhere in the world. If that were true it would be so cool to find mine. We could chat and laugh about how people used to tease us for being skinny. We could relate with the teasing of having the name “Damien.” In the same vein we could laugh about how we never found a personalized sign at a gas station with out name on it. Perhaps cloning could create this scenario? Or maybe not. Whether found or cloned, this would be an amazing experience. It seems like it shouldn’t be so hard to find connections on social media.
You might say I seek this experience on social media. So far I have connected with hundreds of people, some who have long since unfriended me, that have stuff in common with me. I maintain about 100 Facebook friends which is a cool number. In truth however, I only get comments from and I only interact with about 15 on a regular basis. Many will claim that is a small number but I think most people can only handle about 15 in their daily interactions. I have 3 blogs I also maintain for longer, more thought out ideas.
My action plan for social media is this:
- Post interesting and noteworthy content. Just like a blog, you should make your content worth reading. Stuff like, “Just got to the bank.” is boring and should be spruced up maybe with a photo, quote, or factoid. Get a reputation for posting cool stuff and people will read and comment.
- Cross post to other networks. I use Hootsuite to do this with a couple. The more networks that read you, the more likely you are to get comments.
- Have a source(s) for media. Tumblr is my favorite source for reposting photos and quotes. Unless you are a celebrity, people don’t care so much bout text statuses alone.
- Reblog/share good posts. You can overdo this on Facebook and Twitter. Tumblr is the place to do this as much as you like.
- Make a time spaced posting limit. Mine is 30 minutes. Don’t burn people out. At the same time, if your stuff is good, people probably won’t mind.
I really enjoy sharing on social media and I put a lot of thought into everything I post. Care to follow me? You can find my feeds here and other places:
@rileycentral on Twitter. Anyone can follow my tweets.
cre8nnov8 on Tumblr. Anyone can follow my Tumblr photos and text.
rileycentral.net – Aggregate site of all my blogs and online writing, as published in real time. Public blog, can follow by RSS feed.
Non-public. Must request to be my mutual friend. Reserved for people I know well online or in real life.