It’s a cold and windy day here in my hometown. I am sitting here with my heat on, my new wireless router enabling me to watch Netflix via my Wii console, and I am thinking how darned lucky I am. I am thinking about the people who are outside today, the wind cutting through whatever clothing they have on. Because this is the kind of wind that can get you no matter what you are wearing, no matter where you are. A leaf blew up onto my door and clung there a moment as if even it wanted to get inside. How lucky I am. How unfair it is that so many people do not have a quarter of what I have.
As these thoughts pass through my mind, I sign into the online world. I have always seen so much potential for platforms like Twitter and Facebook and blogging, not necessarily for business alone, but also for just making the world a better place. When people put their minds to it, as they have done before, Social Media can become a force of nature, making the world better, helping people in all sorts of ways. To me, this is the potential magnum opus of the online world. Making a dent in world hunger. Giving homes and voices to the homeless and the sick. The possibilities are endless.
And yet, as I sign into the online world, I feel like I am stepping into a high school cafeteria, not a place where great things can happen. And let’s face it, the high school cafeteria at least had hot pockets. I sit here and watch people take pot shots at each other. The same people. The same arguments. All of that energy thrown into the same efforts. “Hey, make the online world better. Follow me and not that guy.” It’s so boring. It’s so juvenile.
I am feeling like there is too much going on in the world, and honestly, when you get right down to it, I’m feeling a little spoiled that I’m a part of this online world. I feel like we’re sitting on a porch on a house resting on top of a big hill, and below us a town is bursting into flames. We’re sitting there saying, “Boy, someone should really do something about that. Let’s argue with each other about who to follow on Twitter!” I’m just not interested in those conversations anymore. There’s more important stuff going on. So much more important.
I love blogging. I love conversing with you here. But I am thinking that maybe the direction of my blogging needs to change. Maybe it’s time to start using my blog to highlight ways we can improve the world instead of just commenting on how people no longer know how to act with civility online. That’s been made clear, and my writing about it will not change anything. And maybe my writing about real issues going on in the real world will not change anything either, but at least I will feel of the world and not apart from it.
Are you feeling that wind?
Image Credit: http://www.sxc.hu/profile/sarahjjay
First, some backstory.
When I first started doing this whole Social Media thang, as it were, I had a lot of ideas in my head. I wouldn’t say that was particularly my fault. My brain was, well, I don’t want to say it was manure mixed with soil, but the grounds were very fertile for seeds of ideas and concepts. There were many many farmers who came up to me and said, “Hey, look, it is a new person, and her brain is ready to be planted with rows and rows of my ideas! I meant, best practices! Yes!” And so, ideas were planted in my head, and they started to bloom and grow. In a twist that only the makers of Inception could have conceptualized and made into a B-grade movie, these ideas became so engrained in how I did things that I thought they were MY ideas. I’m waiting for you still, Leo DiCaprio.
When you think about marketing on Facebook or business on Facebook, the “page” is what seems to come to mind most quickly. The page sort of epitomizes everything social media was supposed to do for companies. You can see your customers (and prospects), which enables you to put a face to a name and get to know them. The page allows you to integrate images and videos, which are great ways of keeping people interested, if not entranced. You can give news directly to the people connected to your page, and you can use the internal Facebook ads system to drive your target audience to your page. You can even see insights that will tell you how people are using your page and when they’re using your page.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the online world lately. Well, I mean, about the big picture stuff. In various and sundry places, I’ve let little tidbits of these thoughts pop out. I’ve talked about how you shouldn’t sell your soul just because you want to get in with the “in” crowd. I’ve talked about how being mean in the online world just makes you look, well, mean. I’ve talked about how being nice is often equated to being boring. But really, there is one key issue that is at the core of all of those posts.
My biggest fear in the online world has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the safety of children. I think that on Facebook in particular, it’s really easy to do things that could have alarming consequences because everything seems so safe there on the surface. You can lock down your content, you’re talking to your friends and family for the most part…what could go wrong?