Week #9: Are you engaged?

I have to admit I was a little late in joining Facebook. I remember freshmen year at Mason, everyone going nuts over it, asking people to “friend” them. This was around the time that Myspace was still cool. I finally gave in my junior year and have been hooked ever since. It’s a super force of it’s own as it’s transformed from a network of college students to a worldwide phenomenon. Everyone is on FB.

When I think of FB, a couple words come to mind. Share, connect, networks, Mark Zuckerberg. But, going back to the idea sharing, the reason why FB is my favorite social network is because it’s the easiest and fastest way for me to keep in touch with my family and friends. I love being able to share photos of my adventures and post updates on my daily happenings (only if exciting) to people I may not have a chance to see and interact with everyday. I’m a firm believer in things being more fun when you can share them!

I also love being able to reach a large number of people in an instant. What used to take light years can now be done in a click of a button. Clay Shirky touches on this notion in “Here Comes Everybody” as he discusses how difficult it used to be to publish something and then have it reach various populations outside of your geographic area. He says, “Now, once a user connects to the Internet, he has access to a platform that is at once global and free. It isn’t just that our communications tools are cheaper; they are better.” So now that we are able to share more efficiently, we have to take it a step further and engage.

One of my favorite bloggers, Emily from Cupcakes and Cashmere does this very well and has created a strong following on her blog. She uses FB and Twitter as a supplement to her blog and shares photos of her outfits, travels, interior design and food. Emily has the ability to make everyday ordinary and otherwise mundane objects look like art. 

Photo from C&C  

When I first created the Gold Rushed page on FB, my intention initially was to build my presence by posting statuses of new posts and urging my family and friends to “like” the page. Now, my goal is to dive deeper and make it more interactive and focus on engaging, instead of just announcing. I could treat the Gold Rushed page as a semi-personal FB account, allowing followers to get to know me (if they don’t already). Here a couple things I have considered doing that may attract new followers and drive like-minded people to my blog.

1. Posting some of my personal photos to Gold Rushed
2. Posting inspirational quotes  (I’ve started to but need to more often, perhaps as a “Monday motivation” or “Mid week motivation”)
3. Posting random YouTube findings or new songs I’m into
4. Posting video blogs
5. Posting relevant and current news and happenings

The only minor problem I see in this approach is the slight redundancy of posting to my personal page and then to Gold Rushed, as a good number of my friends are followers on my blog. But, maybe the double exposure isn’t so much a bad thing—maybe, the more the better especially since it’s so easy to get lost in the sea of updates.

I’ll leave you with a song that’s been stuck in my head for the past week.