In today’s current digital age, social networking has become a fundamental part of our lives as both individuals and organisations alike for online communication, information access, and the ability to forge connections worldwide while never moving.
My views on social media have always been somewhat biased with my own personal experiences being that of seeing way too much ‘influencer’ content along with weird mums posting weird minion memes about coffee, kids, going crazy, or all three. I have kept the time I spend on social media fairly low leading to my unawareness of the sheer size and influence these platforms have cultivated.
Social networking and beyond
Upon reviewing that my social media knowledge and experiences are quite limited and unaware of the full magnitude and weight these platforms carry in society, I have now realised there is so much more potential for platforms to be embraced with various strategies and ideas. As our social networking abilities evolve with new technologies and capabilities, so do the ways in which they can support and grow marketing strategies, programs, and further services in a library setting.
With my exploration of social networking for an organisation with regards to marketing and engagement with audiences, I now can understand the thinking and skills behind carefully planned posts, trends, and involvement online that can result in impressive benefits and further connections beyond those formed only in a traditional way in person and through word of mouth.
Social Media Platforms
For this class, I have become well acquainted with various social media platforms in the hopes of developing my skills and knowledge of using them in an information professional setting.
Facebook is embarrassingly enough the platform I am most familiar with as I primarily use it as one of my main forms of communication online. Facebook is one of the largest platforms to date with around 2.93 billion monthly active users and is the third most visited website in the world, only falling behind Google and YouTube (Newberry, 2023). This has made the platform one of the most valuable tools an organisation can utilise to engage and market to their audience and have a much wider reach than with traditional methods of networking in physical locations.
While completing this course, I decided for research purposes for Assessment 1, I created an Instagram account. I’ve not been completely living under a rock, and I’ve had an account before, I just knew if I had yet another social media app on my phone, any productivity I thought I had would immediately go down the drain. As suspected, I was immediately drawn into watching hundreds of reels, posts, and recommended content I suddenly decided was more important than my studies. What can make this platform beneficial to an organisation is the ability it has to interact with a younger demographic that doesn’t typically interact with libraries digitally (Zote, 2023).
TikTok
TikTok is one of the more controversial and unfamiliar social media platforms that has become an overnight sensation among young people as it continues to grow its reach and audience. This platform’s success could be associated with its supposed ‘flipping of the script’ as it heavily promotes the virality of content as well as utilising an AI algorithm to guarantee users receive preferred content that is short, sweet, and immediately locks you in with hours of content easily accessible (Taulli, 2020). Being that this platform is new to social networking strategies, there is great hesitance to use it with the growing security concerns in the United States which is now slowly influencing more places around the world.
Twitter is somewhat of a minefield these days with its rapidly changing online environment with the new ownership being given to Elon Musk. I can’t say I interacted much with this platform, but for the sake of Assessment 1, I investigated the two libraries I had chosen. One organisation had let its Twitter account essentially fall off and did not post regularly, while the other kept up regularly but had the lowest engagement with its audience. Beyond this with the radical changes being made and how its engagement hasn’t quite proven itself useful to an organisation, I believe this platform can almost be left behind with its limited use and a prospectively small audience.
YouTube
YouTube is one of my favourite platforms to spend time on for entertainment, but I hadn’t given much thought to it being utilised for engagement and marketing for an organisation. But, as I investigated library content from my two chosen organisations for Assessment 1 and further libraries taking advantage of the page, I began to see its many uses of online programs and further how-to’s for services users were exploring from home and elsewhere. The chances of an audience just happening upon this content can be small, but its usefulness can be beyond belief when used creatively.
Impact of the social environment
Now as fun as it has been to explore the expansive environment online, there are some undeniable consequences that come with this new digital social space.
Fake news and extreme ideologies
Not just coined as a term Donald Trump uses to argue with just about anybody, fake news is an epidemic we are all stuck in online as more and more false information is being shared and posted across platforms. With the sheer speed of things travelling across internet platforms, misleading and untrue news can circulate and explode online, and it can take a ridiculous amount of time to rectify and promote the correct information. This has been a growing trend online with the sheer amount of information being shared online, with no real countermeasure to combat it, other than to remain vigilant and wary when looking at information online.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying has been steadily increasing as our growing reliance on social media interaction has created an environment that can become malicious and nasty and can have heartbreaking outcomes. Bullying behaviour in some form has always played a role in society with stronger people preying upon those they consider weak and vulnerable, but with an online environment, it has now become widespread. With these digital advantages, it has been harder to resolve and stop these instances, where all we can do is to make sure to spend time away from social platforms and have people around us who are there to support and love us.
Internet addiction
Almost everything we need and want to do these days is online, but with this dependence can come an addiction that is hard to break. Many of us spend plenty of time on the internet browsing social posts, videos and googling plenty of things daily, being something we see as harmless, but when it comes to an internet addiction it is the case where someone spends so much time online it begins to interfere with their daily lives and beyond (Hoeg et al, 2023). This kind of disorder can become damaging to just about anyone as this can lead to a loss of job, relationship troubles, and health issues such as insomnia and vision problems. Only monitoring time online and practising safe and healthy routines of eating, sleeping, and mental health can help with the management of internet habits.
Privacy and security
Finally, privacy and security are one of the more pressing issues that come with the growth of online environments and platforms that many of us spend a substantial amount of time on. As we become more immersed in our online environments, we can become more susceptible to data breaches, identity theft, and online scams. Additionally, many companies online have adopted the practice of collecting and selling user data without proper consent which presents their own set of ethical dilemmas.
My Online Learning Journal
Attempting to make regular postings to my Online Learning Journal (OLJ) proved to be quite the task, as I have now found I am horrible at keeping up to date with my learning and creating a schedule I could persist with. It was daunting to create and make posts to be seen by classmates as I don’t rate my work very highly and found once I had something written down, I wanted to restart and throw away all the effort I had already put into it.
Eventually, I tried to find a middle ground where I attempted my blog posts semi-regularly, but instead of making the posts public, I kept editing and changing my posts in a Word document in hopes I stayed on top of my work while still having the ability to redo and continue working at my own pace. On top of this, I browsed my fellow classmates’ blogs for inspiration but began to feel like my own ideas and information originated from similar posts so I tried to read less to protect my integrity while I worked on them. It’s safe to say blogging is not one of my hidden talents, but I found the prompts and content I was reading and writing about to be significant and meaningful to the trends and changes around us today.
Assessment 1
Assessment 1 was quite plainly a project I found exciting and yet daunting with the content and freedom to explore platforms I believed to be best for a library organisation to utilise. It was extremely useful when it came to exploring and developing my knowledge of social networking as well as understanding its uses from an organisation’s perspective. It took me some time to realise the sheer amount of work and research I had to do, and I soon found I worked better under stress and a fast-approaching deadline.
As I progressed into the heavily researched areas of this assessment, I found many parallels to my current position at my local library service. It was nice to see certain strategies I thought could greatly benefit our own approaches to online engagement which lead to developing my own enthusiasm to create a strong project that I may be able to one day present to my own community engagement department for further use and ideas.
Once this assignment was completed and I had reviewed my feedback, I was able to look back upon the experience as a rewarding experience that has reinforced the social media knowledge I have as well as further educate myself in fields I wasn’t as confident in or had no knowledge of in the first place.
Finally, now that everything has been submitted and I’ve taken my fist breath free from impending deadlines I may have inevitably missed, I can look back on my social networking journey with a relieved and satisfied attitude that my education from extensive readings, intense research, and fascinating blog posts from my peers will only benefit me greatly in the future and beyond. I know there is still so much studying to be done in this degree and furthermore learning I will inevitably complete in the social and online world, I am very happy with the progress and growth I have made in the past months.
References:
Hoeg, N., Parisi, T., & Bhatt, A. (2023). Internet addiction. Addiction Center. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/internet-addiction/
Newberry, C. (2023, January 17). 42 Facebook statistics marketers need to know in 2023. Hootsuite. https://blog.hootsuite.com/facebook-statistics/
Taulli, T. (2020, January 31). TikTok: Why the enormous success? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2020/01/31/tiktok-why-the-enormous-success/?sh=546b5ab765d1
Zote, J. (2023, March 6). Instagram statistics you need to know for 2023. Sproutsocial. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/
