Jan 19, 2018
A Beginner’s Opinion on Microblogging
My thoughts on the process of using Twitter and Facebook to market my blog.
At first I thought it was rather daunting having to use Twitter and Facebook to promote my blog posts and overall reading on the topic that I have focussed on throughout my blog, the perception male’s have on their body image after scrolling through Instagram. However, using these social media platforms enlightened me to the power of connecting with your audience and how important connecting is.
Considering that in the third quarter of 2017, Facebook had 2.07 billion monthly active users, I found Facebook rather difficult in terms of reaching out to my audience. It is common for people to like pages on Facebook, such as, Buzzfeed and people use Facebook to find ‘trending news’ and see what the world is up to. However, my Facebook page only received 26 likes since setting the page up. This could be because I was not active in terms of liking many pages myself. If I tried to market my page to similar pages of interest to attract more audience, it may have increased my page likes and this is something I will look to improve in the future to gain a larger following.
Interestingly, I noticed that my posts and interactivity with Facebook users dramatically increase once I did my first live Facebook video. My live video’s attracted a lot of attention from family and friends who joined in commenting on each video as they went a long, creating a user engagement and making it feel as if there was a real community and connection between my blog and my audience. I also received many comments from people who did not like my page showing that engagement with your audience helps to get your page noticed and create a wider fan base as one live video reached over 237 Facebook users and received 161 views. This surprised me considering my small following. Posts after this live video also reached more Facebook users as a result from this successful live video compared to previous posts.
The increase in activity to my page could have been because it broke up the content on my page and made it easier to interact with rather than the usual written posts and hyperlinks I shared beforehand. I believe that the increase in interactivity is because Facebook live videos are live and as a result, keep up with the fast pased demands of contemporary online users as you are sharing the now. Therefore, in the future I will use the live video tool to my advantage when I want to hear my audience’s values and opinions and to promote what I am currently discussing on my blog.
In terms of Twitter, I have found the social media platform to be highly engaging. When replying to tweets I noticed that people got in contact fairly fast and many other people were interested and interacting with the conversations being had. It has been helpful for me in terms of gathering data and understanding opposing views on debates being had on twitter, as users seem more open to discussion on Twitter than Facebook.
From the positive interaction on Twitter and from following relevant accounts it has helped me in terms of creating ideas for blog posts and including both sides of the argument so my blog posts aren’t bias. It also helped me tweet opposing views of the topic I was sharing, helping to keep the content interesting to people who were interacting. For example, my blog post below where I went to Twitter to see what everyone else thought of the topic.
Although, I did notice that when doing polls, this never seemed to receive feedback on my Twitter account which is a shame as it would have helped me greatly when doing my Facebook live video about Instagram and how it had been a positive impact in my personal life when finding meals for gluten and lactose intolerant people. To tackle this issue in the future I should take more care in poll tweets and research into hashtags to try and receive more response and give the users a better understanding of why I have tweeted the poll.
When live tweeting The Wright Stuff which aired on the 10th of January, I found using the correct hashtag dramatically changed the interaction I was receiving. To begin with I used the hashtag #thewrightstuff, only to discover when I noticed on the screen the programme’s hashtag was #wrightstuff. As soon as I corrected the hashtag the replies to my tweets came flooding in and a conversation began with a select group of people throughout my live tweets about the events that underwent on the programme. Therefore, showing it is crucial to research into what you wish to live tweet about to get the most out of Twitter and what it has to offer.
I noticed that my live tweets received the most feedback when I used more colloquial language. When I attempted to promote my blog via my tweets the notifications stopped flowing. An example of this is in the screen shot below in reverse chronological order.
As you can see from the screen shots above, when talking about the snowflake generation and relating it back to my blog, they only received some interaction, but when talking about relevant content on the programme plenty of Twitter users joined in the conversation with four retweets and 17 likes on my most connected tweet. Many people also replied and a conversation began with people sharing their opinions on the matter as you should,
Overall, I found using social media to promote my blog and discuss my views and opinions to be very rewarding. It is extremely interesting to see what other people feel about the topic you are discussing and it made me feel connected to journalism in a way I have never felt connected before. Using social media as a tool and not a hobby is something that I wish to carry on with in the future, to not only improve my writing content, but my knowledge on what is going on in the world around me.
