I am generally not the most socially savvy person in a room. It's an area I've wanted to improve for some time but haven't had any concrete direction on how to do that. Well, this morning I accidentally took a course on Social Networking while on Team Treehouse learning how to Freelance and I learned a lot of important things.
From a business perspective it is a very good strategy to take full advantage of social networking. Creating, locating, and re-posting relevant content will naturally attract people who are interested in what you are talking about. Do this consistently enough and people will follow you online and look to you as an authority on whatever thing you are talking about. Translate this into career or business language and it's a powerful tool for advancement in a field as well as convincing prospective customers to give your their information and buy from you. It's generating revenue by doing what you love and sharing it.
Now I'm still currently unemployed and am looking at starting up my own freelance web design business (how I stumbled onto this information) and so the marketing strategy outline was interesting in its own right, but I now also find myself looking at social media significantly different on a personal level. I love theology. I have not found an appropriate medium to practically use and hone my skills in theology. Why not social media? Why not blog about it? Why not find and follow other theologians? Why not create, locate, and re-post relevant theological material? I don't have to be hired to do what I love, but doing what I love will probably get me hired one day to continue doing what I love. I seriously never saw this before and now the light bulb has gone off and I wonder at how dull I've been.
I have also come to a realization about blogging. I've been doing it incorrectly. This blog has served as a hodge podge soup of the sort of things I enjoy writing about whether its theology, video games, parenthood, funny stories, or whatever academic topic I was engaged in. If I want to pursue theology for real then I must have a blog dedicated to the creation of theological material, not an electronic journal with theological nuggets buried under layers of other things. I look at my uncle Randy's blog MinistryLift and see how consistency and his creation of material has shaped his career as a key leadership trainer in the Church in Canada and around the world.
Perhaps, if time allows, I will create several blogs, each dedicated to a key interest. Theology because it is what I want to do, Web Design because it will be a business to either live off of or at the very least generate a supplementary income, and gaming because it has been my life-long my hobby.
In any case I will have to create a new theology focused blog and start intentionally engaging on social networks.
And here's an afterthought to show how powerful connecting like this can be. Our cat Sherlock was stuck up a tree for three days unable to get down. I called veterinary clinics, pet hospitals, and the SPCA but nobody could offer any help. (The days of the Fire Department coming down for a cat rescue are pretty much gone unless you live in a rural area). I leveraged Facebook to my cause by posting pictures of the pathetic animal slowly dying in the heat and family and friends shared it on their profiles for others to see. Within a few hours we received a call from someone who knew a professional tree climber and this morning the kitty was saved!
So yeah. Social media. Personal revelations. Good stuff. Greg Out.
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