Microblogging: should it be feared?
A critical reflection of how I put this into action and whether others use this power too dangerously.
I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of the news circling Donald Trump and the latest on his ban from Twitter. It followed after the recent riots from his supporters in the US Capitol. Hours after, he took to his POTUS account to accuse the site stating:
“As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech.”
Twitter, however, was afraid of the risk of further incitement of violence. If you should take anything from this, it’s to realise that a population having that audience connection could be as dangerous as it is powerful. Following this, today I wanted to talk about Microblogging. For those of you who might not know, this has been defined by David Fiander as:
“The general term for the concept of posting very short status updates as popularised by services like Twitter.”
In other words, it’s a short piece of content designed for quick audience interactions. This allows easier access to your audience. Demonstrating quick conversational connections with your followers. As you can imagine, Twitter is one of the best-known platforms within the microblogging world. With the ability to conveniently share every post, article link, videos and even generate poll questions. Broken news can be surfaced across the globe in the blink of an eye through retweets and hashtags. Shocking I know! It is becoming a very powerful tool of connection. The question we must then ask is, when does this influence become a worry?
Putting Trump aside for one moment…
Have you ever had a favourite footballer you were dying to know more on? Or, if you’re like me, have you ever enjoyed reading up on celebrities and how they built themselves up from nothing. We, as humans, love to follow other’s journeys. To feel connected and close to them so that we are able to understand every lyric, and play-out every goal. The social media world has adapted autobiographies and blogs into a post accessible to a huge range of generations. Putting aside the negatives mentioned earlier, many use this as a way to increase their presence positively.
Although I have many social accounts, during the recent weeks of creating my blog I decided to design a much more professional and engaging social appearance. I set up an Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook page as you know- in order to help stay connected to my audience and allow my followers the chance to keep up to date on what I was doing. If you have visited any of my sites you will have seen that I regularly update my followers on the latest news, to opinions on my research. Another technique I practised was to ask questions within my posts. To engage my audience further and encourage them to communicate back, adding in a URL to my blog site to help advertise this. Below are some examples from my Twitter page:
The first screenshot featured is of a Tweet I had posted in order to get further notice on my recent blog post. Typically, a microblog post will get more views and shares than on the original site itself. With the use of appropriate hashtags and a captivating picture I had hoped this would help to draw in further attention. The second screenshot is of an original Tweet I had composed to update my followers on the recent breaking news. This received 237 impressions (the figure on how many times people saw this), reinforcing just how effective the site can be! This however only received a total of 2 engagements (the times people interacted with this Tweet). The experience shows that microblogging can clearly be very efficient in reaching higher social shares and forming that connectivity with current followers. With retweets and replies helping to relate to my followers. However, there are clear limitations which I faced, such as the small number of followers gained. But I think that with time and further content, reinforcing the clear niche of my posts, this would be built up into a larger audience. I also noticed that certain times could have a greater impact and that by understanding my followers I could post content with similar interests to receive higher engagements.
So, where do we go now?
Think back to how many hours today you have spent scrolling through social media, bored of the constant home scenery from lockdown. Did anything catch your eye? The influence micro bloggers are able to gain over their followers is a powerful sense. Whilst it helps out on professional and personal growth, could it prove as a weapon to people such as Donald Trump? Either way, it is clear that microblogging is taking over the world by storm!
