Social Media (“M” in capital letter, bold) is the way we communicate today. And that is perhaps the easiest way to have put it. What and how we communicate, is entirely our prerogative. Effective communication is the key to a healthy existence of life !
During various phases of my life, I’ve connected to people based on my requirements. During school days, my English was not very presentable. I used social media to learn English, Blog post and send them to different people for their feedback and thus improve. Later I used the social media to promote my college events and discuss ideas.
Standing today, I use the social media for various purposes. While my blog posts discuss ideas, travelling experiences or promote my work, I use Facebook to converse and stay connected to people.
Anirban Saha | Social Media numbers
When I share ideas with people over Facebook, they often get trashed. At times, people are convinced and that leads to some good work. But these conversations over the social media shape views and opinions and help me ideate further. That is precisely why I use the social media.
1. Ideating & Promoting: I started promoting “Kolkata Bloggers” on my blog, gathering opinions and spreading the word. When we had to conduct “Social Media in Photography”, the entire coordination and promotion was done using social media. We sold 191 out of 195 seats.
2. Conversing: Be it discussing good ideas or Mohan Bhagawat’s comments. At times, conversations go personal with younger friends asking personal questions and solving various coming-of-age problems. When extremely jobless, conversation starters can be “First 3 likes get a TBH…”. Extremely stupid but serves the purpose!
3. Showcasing: My blog has been the only platform where I’ve been posting my photographs. I generally do not take part in competition, exhibition and I’ve never submitted photographs for any Salon or news agency. All my publications and invites to academic institutions has been my Blog’s exposure and people’s love. Click here to know my journey so far.
Example:
Publication and mention in Sunday Metro | The Telegraph.
How did “The Telegraph” get to know me?
After my workshop in Loreto College, a student is in touch with me and follows my blog. She is now in The Telegraph and got me connected to the writer of the story. The writer went through the blog post and contacted me later.
Featured as a Blogger | The Times of India
About this mention in The Times of India:
After Kolkata Bloggers’ work with “The Times of India”, one very senior writer wanted to know more about blogging and make a story on it. He asked me to get him connected to a few bloggers in Kolkata and a week later, we had a one page story on bloggers based in Kolkata, I am featured by default.
—
Over the years, my online profile’s reach has expanded even when I am inactive in various forums like Google+, Twitter. I use Instagram very infrequently and have not yet learned the art of hashtagging there. There are more forums like Pinterest, Linkedin which I do not even use. The probable reason for such inactivity over other social media platforms is my lack of time.
This might be a hindrance to effective communication. If I want to post the same content to various forums for it to reach maximum number of people connected with me, to not post it in different forums only decreases my reach.
This is where applications like Hootsuite chip in and is useful. Applications like Hootsuite lets you manage multiple services at one place without you investing time separately for different services.
Not only does Hootsuite save your time, it also helps you in the following ways :
1. Detailed report of the number of clicks your link had during a week, popular links shared, the user data like location and reference.
2. Once you start using it, you can always use it as it is available on iOS, Android app and is compatible with all of the newer web browsers.
3. Hootsuite is perhaps the only app that allows you to post content from an app to Google+ page. If you are aware of any other service, please let me know!
4. You can make and save a draft or even schedule it for more than one network. It will take care of the posting.
It also has a feature to enable teams to use it, assigning people different roles and responsibilities but it is of no help to me. Perhaps the only negative about Hootsuite is the price. But I believe if I win this contest run by Hootsuite and Sourav Ghosh, I’ll get to use the premium version of it.
If you have any questions regarding why and how I use the social media, please do leave a comment.