The process of getting feedback from our training activity isn’t always that easy. Although the results are overwhelmingly positive we don’t always get to the nitty gritty of what people thought or what they expected to get from the experience.
So this post is interesting for two reasons. Firstly it provides details of the dramatic turn around of one of our training delegates, Mrs. Moore To Be, from disinterest in Social Media to avid fan. Secondly it just goes to show that a spark of inspiration is all it takes to become a confident content creator, ready to start communicating with the world at large.
Take it away, Mrs. Moore-to-be
In February I did something that I would never even have considered doing twelve months earlier. I attended the Social Media Masterclass which the National B2B Centre was running in Birmingham City Centre. Now from where you’re standing, I guess it’s not entirely clear why participating in a workshop, even a very good workshop, might represent something of a milestone in my life story. But sometimes it’s the smallest external actions which represent the biggest internal changes. And for me, spending an entire day talking about the business benefits to be wrought from blogging and tweeting signalled what I regard as being a significant shift in my attitude to social media. Put simply, I’ve had a massive change of heart and my position has moved from social media phobe to social media friend.
Lest you pigeon hole me into the technical Luddite category, I should perhaps make it clear that my phobia of social media has never extended to information technology. Au contraire, mes ami! I have been smitten with information technology since the mid-1990s when my beloved Amstrad PCW liberated from having to spend hours re-writing drafts of essays every time I realised that I had forgotten to include some vital piece of information.
And when, some years later, I started to share my home with a computer that offered internet access, my love affair with technology was sealed. Launching the internet web browser was like opening a box of delights. It was love at first click.
And this was no flash in the pan affair: my devotion to IT has continued over the decades as I have continued to embrace emerging technologies. I sleep with my iPad next to my bed, am inseparable from my mobile phone and regularly hang out in the iTunes Store, flirting with the latest art, heritage and history related apps.
In contrast, my relationship with social media was, until recent times, far less convivial. To put it frankly, I avoided the whole cat and caboodle of social media platforms like the plague. Admittedly I did bow to peer pressure and set myself up on Facebook but my page was a threadbare affair and I deliberately kept all interaction to an absolute minimum. My obvious unwillingness to embrace social media provoked one friend to tell me that I needed to abandon my antiquated ways and ‘get down with the kids’. Given that I am a bit of old-fashioned girl, who didn’t have any desire to get down with the kids even 30 years ago when I was a kid, that admonishment did little to persuade me. Indeed much of my resistance to social media was explained by the fact that I aligned social media with youth culture and that want – need even – to share the minutiae of everyday life with all and sundry. For me, the prospect of bearing my soul to the world and his wife made me feel deeply uncomfortable. Even when it was pointed out to me that Facebook offers the facility to control access to my page, I still felt decidedly uneasy.
Part of this reluctance was based on the fact that the diversity of my circle of friends is that I found it difficult to see how I could meaningfully communicate to my friends en masse. Their interests, attitudes, political affiliations and religious beliefs are just so different. Some love philosophical debate, whilst others like talking about the latest trends in fashion and beauty. One friend is ordained, a few are confirmed atheists, most are agnostic. Many are fully paid-up supporters of the liberal left, but others have a leaning towards paternalistic Toryism. Several love ballet, theatre and opera but far more are passionate about The Beautiful Game. My friends have but one thing in common. Me. And these treasured friendships only work so well because I seek to relate to each person on an individual level. Our conversations focus on topics of mutual interest: those areas where our concerns intersect and our lives enmesh. So using social media to communicate to all of these friends simultaneously seemed tantamount to reducing them to little more than homogenous audience with whom I would find it difficult to communicate anything of real depth.
And I took an even dimmer view of Twitter. Being able to fire off bullets of text at the rate of a machine gun which never runs dry of ammunition could, I feared, cause huge emotional carnage. And it was of real concern to me that the immediacy of the Twitter platform isn’t exactly conducive to those age-old virtues of restraint and self-discipline. They might sound dull as ditch-water but they do have the potential to save us from the embarrassment of slavishly acting on some of our less noble instincts. In the Twittersphere with its emphasis upon embracing spontaneity, that old phrase ‘act now, regret later’ has been given a makeover: ‘Tweet now, feel a right Twit later’. I reckoned that non-virtual living gave me more than enough scope for that without adding any other opportunities within the virtual sphere.
My attitude towards blogs was slightly more sanguine but I couldn’t really grasp the motivation behind actually wanting to write one, let alone understand the governing technical parameters. So when a friend suggested that people might be interested if I wrote a blog I was more than sceptical. I was completely bemused. And mention of WordPress, Tweetdeck and hashtags only served to further convince me that social media was part of an alien world where they spoke a foreign language. It simply wasn’t for me.
Given the above, I expect you are questioning why on earth I chose to participate in B2B’s Social Media Master Class and am subsequently typing this post. And you’ll be surprised no doubt, as indeed I am myself, when I tell you that not only do I now have a Twitter account, I have also crafted have my own blog (www.awarwickshirewedding.com) which has attracted nigh on 2600 hits in the last eight months.
Now I’m told that one of the golden rules of good blogging is not to mistake a post for an essay or indeed a novel. In this case of size, or more precisely length, does indeed matter. So for the time being, I’m going to hold back from describing my ‘road to Damascus’ experience but I’ll be back soon to tell you about the moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I decided that the time had come to wave the white flag, extend a conciliatory hand of friendship and get a whole lot better acquainted with my former foe.
Mrs Moore-to-Be
Check out our website for more about the B2B Centre’s range of digital marketing and IT training courses or contact us on 02476 620158 or email info@nb2bc.co.uk
