Just another breezy day. Where thoughts flow like a breeze and the silence of the winds screams across your mind “Look at me! Like me! Tell me I am good!” I ask myself this question – “Am I asking for more?” When I graduated from writing plain text to content writing (that’s what it’s called now a days), I felt something inside me shatter and something being built. What shattered was my attitude of being a #knowitall but what was being built was an ego which said “Is this not enough for you? What more do you need?” Amidst this constructive confusion, I bring to you this week’s #GURUGYAN about – hold on. Have some patience. Read it to find it out.
#GURUGYAN1 – When I shifted base from FB to Insta, little did I know that they both are mischief mongers who appear as strangers during the day but have drinks together at a cheap bar during the night. Though it is a no brainer that Insta reeks of photographs where FB is a sum of all kinds including text, images, links, videos and even GIFs and emoticons. So it took me a while to figure out that the actual reason I shifted from FB to Insta was not how the platform was made or how it treated me. Rather, it was to get away from the crowd of 470 odd virtual friends and find newer and fewer friends. If you are someone who thinks FB stinks and Insta rocks, you need to fact check it once again.
These are just virtual tools we came up with to make our life easier for #networking, #branding, #reachingout across the world and yet we are now being controlled by these tools.
#GURUGYAN2 – Places like Linkedin are strictly for professionals. And that’s true. I have been suggesting fresh graduates to have their profiles updated on Linkedin for more visibility and to make sure they connect with the right people from their field or the field they want to get into. The fun began when weird and random traffic of strangers were viewing my profile and had started sending me messages to connect with them. Mostly fresh graduates aspiring to get a hold into the field of HR and Organisational behaviour. They should have done their homework. I haven’t been active on Linkedin ever since I made my profile couple of years back. Who is at fault now? Beware. Think twice before you stalk or follow someone on social media platforms.
Before you plunge in and follow someone blindly on their social media accounts, check how active that person has been, if that person takes time responding to people or not and what is it that can help you by following the person.
#GURUGYAN3 – Before posting on anything onto your social media platform, be sure you are aware if it is just a cute update about how your cat loves cuddling up to you or it is something that talks about cats and the difference they make in your life. Point here being, consider if you want this post to be ‘an activity out of your diary’ or ‘a fact that you want people to read and learn from.’ It makes a world of difference. If it is something really important, there is no harm in posting it across all your social media platforms. The more the merrier.
No one is going to stop you or push you to post things on your social media accounts. Decide wisely on what you want to post and why.
#GURUGYAN4 – A while back when I was attending an online session about ‘how to make your social media page(s) talk about you?’, I stumbled across ‘what not to do on social media.’ There are many who would advise you to have separate accounts for personal branding and professional branding. It works good if you have a product or an organisation. But imagine a budding or freelance content writer who has accounts across all popular social media platforms and now to double them is not going to be an easy job. Most of them end up getting away from all social media platforms or end up posting their personal stuff on their professional account on the pretext of getting a little more closer to their followers.
Try analysing the kind of followers and traffic you have on each of the social media platforms and pick few for personal branding and the rest for professional branding. This way you will not end up trying to memorise passwords of 24 odd accounts you hold.
#GURUGYAN5 – It is good to be courteous enough to follow everyone who follows you. It’s alright if you know them or are acquaintances. But otherwise this #funda of “you scratch my back and I scratch yours” will not work out always and with everyone. Don’t follow people blindly for the heck of it. Unless you believe that the more the number of followers you have, the more you will be paid, which is not true at all, restrain yourself from following random people who liked one post of yours.
Instead, try to build effective conversation by commenting on their posts and communicating with them through Direct Messages. You could be lucky enough to get their email id for better communication.
#GURUGYAN6 – I personally prefer people commenting on my posts than those who just like them and go away. I can understand if they are people known to me who reach out to me on some other medium to comment on my posts. We follow this #herd mentality that if people who we know have liked it then we should like it too, otherwise, our Netflix password will expire. Or at times we are either plain lazy or don’t probably understand what the post is about, and yet to encourage the person who posted it or to acknowledge the fact that you have read the post, we go ahead and like it. But it is always nice to comment on some post that really moved or inspired you.
Just in case you were not aware, most of the social media platforms have this facility of showing the user the number of views along with the number of likes, comments and shares.
#GURUGYAN7 – Recently I came across a post by a renowned activist who had posted about sustainable menstruation. I was shocked to see the number of comments on it at par to the number of likes it had. And when I scrolled through the comments, it was a whooping bunch of thumbs up emoticons combined with the clapping emoticon. Very few of them actually commented with respect to the post. It is completely ok to post emoticons as comments. After all we live in a democracy and we are entitled to our right to freedom of expression. So why not exercise it here. There were even comments where few of them started a thread on how irresponsible kids these days had become and close to about 8 to 12 of them were actively taking part in that conversation.
Commenting on posts is not just to appreciate or acknowledge the fact that you have read it. It can also be used to mention how you feel about it and what your take is on the post. It just needs a little practice.
We are privileged that we have access to a virtual reality apart from our existing reality. But if we really want to feel entitled about it, we should start being a little more responsible on how we conduct our self in the virtual world. I am sure most of you are already aware of what has been written. It’s time we start practising what we read.
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