Community Building via Social Media

 Montana State University Library (MSU) worked to find a way to build community via social media. 

Personally, I found the mission a bit ironic knowing that Facebook was originally created for college students. 

MSU used twitter and phased in different kinds of tweets to increase engagement. The first phase was simply letting people know they existed - a knowledge base. The second phase was to build community - here, they referenced graduation and alumni. Finally the third phase a call to action - inviting people to reach out.

I found this approach interesting. Over my time on the internet, I have come across various small pages where people are trying to create a large community or following. I notice they often jump immediately into the third stage - inviting people to interact. However, there seems to be an invisible barrier for this. People are not always comfortable immediately interacting on social media. I think the missing component for these are phases 1 and 2 that MSU implemented. So instead of inviting you to respond here, I am simply making my presence known today. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Copyright, Creativity, and Generation C

 I love podcasts. I have about an hour commute each way on days I go into the office, and I make the trip three times a week. I find myself gravitating to different podcasts depending on my mood (whenever I'm not listening to Taylor Swift on repeat!) One of the shows I keep in my rotation and will give a listen to whenever a title piques my interest is The New York Times The Daily . This show is about 30 minutes and covers different topics every day. The episode from May 23rd is titled "The Supreme Court vs. Andy Warhol" The summary of this case brought to the Supreme Court is posed around the question  "When is borrowing from an earlier artist an act of inspiration, and when is it theft?" (Adam Liptak, New York Times) The premise of this case is exploring whether or not Andy Warhol 'transformed' the original photograph by Lynn Goldsmith of Prince. The Courts ruled against Warhol, and claimed copyright infringement. However, "J ustice Elena Kagan pe
Read more

Pessimism in Reddit

 I find myself careful to read some of the stuff in r/Instructional Design on Reddit. It seems like many people there are annoyed with shifts caused by the pandemic and by teachers being told this profession is an easy switch. Honestly, it kind of sucks. I am a former teacher who worked hard and left the field and am happy with where I ended up. I feel like I see a few kinds of posts: Hating the field for some reason, recommendations on how to enter, and actual conversations on how to improve whatever they are working on.  It gets exhausting reading discourse about how much people hate what is currently happening. It also makes me curious about the larger conversation around why teachers are leaving the classroom (that is a huge conversation). It just feels so wrong to gatekeep the information simply because someone chose to enter this career first instead of transitioning later in life. Anyone else have thoughts on this?
Read more

Threads and X

 The big news I've seen as of late has been about Instagram launching Threads, and Twitter rebranding to "X".  I listened to a podcast from The Daily this week titled "Will Threads Kill Twitter?" Tinfoil hat time: Do you think the Threads launch influenced the Twitter rebrand? Back to the podcast, there was a line that struck me: "I think humans do have some desire to connect with one another, and it's a real love-hate relationship with how the internet fundamentally works." For me, this hit home. Humans are social and desire connection. I think this is why social media feels so important to us, it allows for connection. However, there's that love-hate relationship. The podcast also mentioned that Threads hopes the norms of the site will evolve organically. That's where the love-hate relationship lies, Twitter has often been associated with negativity and 'doom scrolling', but maybe the new option of Threads will combat that narrati
Read more