Engaging with social media
greg | January 25, 2010(This is a repost of an article I wrote for txilife.com, a blog of the IT and web consultancy I work for.)
I heard a pastor say that when he and his wife got engaged thirty years ago, they stayed up for hours into the night calling people to share the news, waking up many of their friends and family on the east coast.
Within two hours of Rachel saying “yes”, we made 8 phone calls, all to immediate family. We emailed 20-30 close friends, mostly people living here in Chicago.
And then, with a single post to Facebook, we notified 600 of our friends, family and acquaintances. This included former co-workers, friends from high school whom I haven’t seen in 10 years, the mother of a kid I used to babysit, and cousins I’ve only met once.
Through Facebook we informed people we never would have contacted had we been required to actively do so. We did so without intrusion – they received the news at their convenience when they logged into Facebook. We allowed them to engage with the news at their own level of interest – they could gloss over it, send us a simple “congrats”, or flip through the photo album if so inclined. And the efficiency of it all freed up Rachel and I to enjoy the rest of our evening.
The whole experience struck me as the most convenient use of social media in my life to date.