I didn’t quite know why i wanted to get more active with social media this month but 4 days in to my July challenge and i’ve remembered… there’s no more rewarding work than connecting with others & sharing your life online…
The Stats
So far, i’m pretty much on course to hit all of my targets. Formspring is the only one which is proving to be tricky for me not because i can’t answer questions or don’t want to, but because they’re so hard to find! Unless people ask you questions directly, formspring make it very difficult to access random questions or search for questions which is a big mistake for them in my opinion.
Let people browse a database of questions and that would boost interaction overnight. At the minute i’ve a fairly small friends & followers list so really the only way i can find questions to answer is by following other people and see what they’re answering…
Anyway, apart from that, i’m checking in left, right and center on foursquare, i’ve uploaded hundreds of photos to flickr, my youtube account has seen more activity these past few days than it had done in the previous few months and i’m getting in to the habit of boothing.
I’ve also consciously upped my tweetering and of course i’m sticking to the daily blogging so although i’m only 4 days in to the month, i’m sharing much more online with very little extra effort, but it makes me happier. Google+ wasn’t around when i came up with the July challenge but i’m having some fun with it too.
The more i use Google+ the more i think Google have finally cracked social media. It’s not a Facebook alternative, but it does fill a gap. Unlike Google Buzz, the information is natural, organic user-driven stuff rather than recycled, automated feeds which i feel is where Google have learned from their past failures.
The Rewards
The rewards for me come in different shapes and forms. Firstly, seeing view counts rise on photos & videos is always rewarding. I don’t think i’ll ever get sick of studying those stats, it’s like watching traffic rise on google analytics year after year or month after month. The one good thing about view counts is that they can never decrease
On dailybooth i always get the odd new follower & comment which is weird because really just a blow in to that community, but it’s such a live, active community that reputations kind of go out the window there, so everyone is treated as an equal. I’m pretty sure people just study the live stream out of boredom / interest and then comment on whatever happens to be there at the time.
It’s the same on foursquare… apart from the obvious thrill of becoming a mayor & de-mayoring other people, i get the odd friend request there too from people who are checked in at the same place as me, at the same time. I never actually meet these people because usually it’s at some huge event (like in the Aviva) but obviously if we’re both in the same place, we’ve something in common…
So the more information you give, the more contacts & friendships you form. That’s social media in a nutshell and it’ll be interesting to see if i can keep this sudden surge in activity up until the end of the month & beyond.