Today, I’m going to talk about my own thoughts on social media and what it means to me. Hello, class 🙂 Social Media to me means – well, to be frank, an awful lot of my free time. I enjoy it greatly. I love my twitter, my tumblr – I tolerate my Facebook. I enjoy interacting with people from all over the world in various different ways. So to define it simply and personally – social media is a tool for me to meet new friends, and connect with current ones.
Obviously I am pretty familiar with the blogging concept. I run a blog on tumblr, I use twitter – two different accounts! – I use livejournal and facebook and dreamwidth and various other sites. I’ve been blogging since – well since we first purchased our own computer in 2003, and I discovered that hey – the internet was full of communities of people like me who like this, this and this thing! Obviously the interests have changed since then, but what has never changed is the fact that I am never alone in whatever I am interested in on the internet.
So clearly I blog and tweet for personal reasons mostly, but I am completely aware of how much impact it can have on businesses. It’s the new frontier – the fastest way to reach millions of people. I’d even (completely without any statistics to back it up – hey it’s a blog. Cut me some slack!) go as far to say that the internet is a more powerful advertising tool than television commercials. I mean think about it. A ridiculous amount of people watch their television not on television anymore. They watch it online.
Back to the personal and not business aspect though, I adore social networking. I have made friends all over the world through it. Real friends – because they count. I don’t only communicate with them through twitter or tumblr or facebook – we text. We skype. We call. I know these people – who they are, where they live, what they do, what they look like. They’re some of my closest friends. So obviously I have strong feelings about the medium that brought us all together.
Plus, my familiarity with all of these sites can only help me in the job market. I know how to do this – frankly, being paid to facebook and twitter and blog would be a dream job. I do it now for free. Moreover, it is an in demand skill. Businesses need to be online. They need to have a presence here, because it hurts them in the long run if they do not. It just makes good sense. It is a free, formidable, powerful advertising tool just waiting to be taken advantage of.
I feel like I’m going to love this class, because it’s teaching me about something I truly love and enjoy. I’m sure there will be moments when I am being taught something I already know, but it is a fun something, and the class size is so large, it’ll be fantastic to just interact with and watch people learn to love this thing I already love. It’s sort of like sharing a really good book, movie or television show with someone. You enjoy it more, knowing that they are learning to love it as well. The anticipation of their reaction. So I’m immensely looking forward to that. And I’m sure I’ll learn a thing or fifteen myself. Because the day I know everything is just never going to happen, especially in a field that moves as quickly as this one. You have to run full tilt just to keep up.
I look forward to the exercise.
Look at her blog. It's just so big. And out there. 