Sharing stories & expanding communities

Back in August, I started to engage in a few conversations about guest blogging.

Having a relatively short blogging history IMHO (under 40 blogs to date), the idea of contributing to another person's blog was exciting. I could think about the messages that I wanted to share in other places, the tone that I wanted to convey and work on different topics.

At the time that I wrote this post, I had been to Shakespeare by the Sea here in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They do a fantastic job putting on outdoor theatre and working with the audience that I was inspired to draw some links between live theatre and customer service (not a huge stretch, I know).

After I wrote and submitted it, I started to think about what it meant to share content on other blogs - taking my material to the home field of other people. It struck me that this type of sharing and engaging was exactly why I jumped into social media. To share my stories with others while I worked through them myself. To interact and engage with both like-minded and other-minded people. And to expand my community in the process. My new community now includes Daniel Sharkov, a 17 year old blogger that's expanded my education about blogging, sharing and the development of an online network.

Without a doubt, I'll be taking up more guest blogging opportunities. It was great fun. I guess I can also continue to be comfortable with my blog title "The Education of a Prof". I'm still learning.

Purpose determines platform

I am a self-confessed 'active' user of social media.

I’m linked in on LinkedIn. My face is booked on Facebook. I was even able to get an early ‘plus’ during the Google+ beta launch last month. According to my analytics from TweetStats.com, I could possibly have a tweet-diction.

As a result, I find that I’m also having a lot of conversations about social media.

People seem curious about what I’m tweeting and why I’m tweeting so much. For me, it has mostly been about building relationships, having conversations and engaging with some very cool people. My enthusiasm about social media tends to seep through just a wee bit as I talk about what I call my ‘successes’: my conversations with top authors in the social media field, the recent invitations to guest blog on other sites, and especially about the day a wicked poster was hand delivered to my office simply because of a quick conversation (thanks @pirie and @kulapartners!).

From these conversations, some people have said that they would like to give social media a whirl. Lately, I’ve been trying to ask them one small question:

‘Why?’

What is it that you want to accomplish through social media? Before you jump into any particular social media platform, take a few minutes to figure out why you want to be there, what you plan to accomplish, and how you plan on contributing. Your reasons, and the outcomes that flow from those reasons, will determine which platform would best suit your purposes.

Let’s take a look at a few scenarios:

• If you are interested in connecting with people of similar interests, having conversations and perhaps building a community, Twitter is a great platform. I, for one, use Twitter a great deal and plan on having my students use it to engage with their industry community this fall.
• Perhaps you would like to share video content – in this case, a YouTube account might be your platform of choice.
• Are you interested in a more secure environment in which you can share longer posts, photos, links and other content behind some controlled filters? Facebook and Google+ are great platforms for this type of activity.
• What about longer opinions pieces, thoughts or essays that others can read and response to? A blogging platform such as Wordpress or Blogger would be fantastic.

You see, ‘social media’ is a catch-all term; there are dozens of platforms at your fingertips that enable you to engage in various ways. Are you interested in collaborating, conversing, or capturing business? It’s in your best interest to explore as many of these platforms as you can, if only to increase your awareness of the available options. Before you commit to run down the social media highway, take a moment to figure out why you’re running.

Because, at the end of the day, your purpose will determine your platform.