Some thoughts on being social (AHCJ12)

I’m on:


I am not equally social on all of them:

  • Facebook: 934 friends, locked down to tightest privacy setting
  • LinkedIn: 784 connections; accept all comers
  • Twitter: 7456 followers, 2175 following; need to prune
  • G+: circled by 15,728, have 817 in circles; but haven’t posted since Feb. 12


I use them for different things:

  • public and engaged with others:
    • blog
    • Tumblr
    • Storify
    • Twitter
  • public but one-way
    • LinkedIn and About.me, online resumes
    • Flickr: ongoing personal photo project
  • “private in public”:
    • Pinterest: images relevant to personal life, shared socially
  • actually private:
    • Facebook: only people I know IRL


The core of my online identity is in/on:

  • my blog: my self-directed daily journalism; how I keep my byline in front of my network and others while journalism projects are in-process
  • Tumblr: things relevant to my core topics (plus cute animals); either of interest to my network but not worth a 750-w blog post, or something I want to archive
  • Storify: some archiving, but mostly gift economy, reassembling things that others might  have liked but missed
  • Twitter: probably the heart of my social identity, where I identify, define and engage my network. (Or, you know, have a conversation.)


I make each platform serve the other:

  • when I have a new magazine story out, I write a blog post on it and then tweet it
  • when video or audio of me is posted, I Tumblr it
  • Tumblr auto-posts to Twitter
  • Twitter auto-posts to LinkedIn
  • Twitter widget on blog


I don’t have a strategy but I do have some personal rules:

  • I really do talk to people.
  • I try to be amusing.
  • I try very hard not to over-self-promote (less than 1 tweet in 25)
  • I push things that I think my network will like
  • I attempt to enter the conversation when I know my followers will be there (usually not at midnight)
  • I strive to be generous by:
    • posting things matching others’ interests (cc @)
    • live-tweeting or Storifying things that others might want preserved


My one piece of advice is:

To be in the conversation, you have to be in the conversation. There is no substitute for doing this.