Social media and self-promotion

I’m absolutely fascinated by social media. I have my own Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts, as well as running the Birdwatch ones for work. In all I must spend several hours a day on such sites.

I think they’re a fantastic resource - for news, contacts, promotion, sharing, information, pretty much everything, in fact. The power of Twitter was demonstrated to me in a quite personal way recently. When I got into work a few weeks ago (23 May) I checked the Birdwatch Twitter feed as I always do. I discovered a link to a blog post about Defra planning on awarding a shooting estate (or estates) nearly £400,000 in taxpayers’ money to use in ‘controlling’ Common Buzzard nests. This ‘control’ could include nest destruction and almost certainly would have led to birds being killed - Common Buzzard has only recently recovered in this country, previously being almost lost (mostly due to persecution from shooting estates).

The Idoru Knits Twitter page. Come follow me!

After a bit of research, we published the story on the Birdwatch website. We were the first ‘official’ news source to do so, beating both the BBC and RSPB. This was a moment of some pride for me. But what was even better was the groundswell of support on Twitter and beyond. The public was outraged and they weren’t afraid to show it. Major newspapers and the BBC picked up the story. Birdwatch had its busiest day ever on its website, with traffic coming from Twitter, Facebook and searches for ‘Common Buzzard’ or ‘buzzard’. As well as the news story, we also produced a downloadable letter that users could then adapt and send to their MPs. The outcome was that only days later Defra changed its mind.

It’s probably vanity to think Birdwatch - and by extension I - really influenced any this, but it does feel good to have had some part in it. What isn’t in doubt, though, is Twitter’s part in it. This kind of grassroots support has always been there, but without Twitter it was unorganised, fragmented. Another, less admirable example might be the use of BBM by rioters in London last year. Twitter and the like provides free, instant communication with a huge audience, a potential audience of millions, in fact - according to Wikipedia, Twitter had more than 500 million active users by April 2012, Facebook had more than 900 million.

The government and its associated departments and organisations (and not just in the UK) still underestimate the power of social media. They don’t understand it and they certainly don’t know how to control it, and this scares them. Defra’s u-turn won’t, I suspect, be the last of its kind. And I love that. I love the fact that the internet, and for the same reason social media, is so very unlegislateable.

Idoru Knits on Facebook.

It’s this grassroots power that makes social media so very important to someone like me. With my various social media activities I can reach many millions of people, and all for free. I enjoy knitting and crochet and I want to make some money out of selling both what I make and the patterns. I haven’t got the money to open a shop or run marketing campaigns in craft magazines. Instead I have to rely on self-promotion.

Think about it: as of today (18 July 2012) I have 130 followers on Twitter. If I tweet a link to my latest blog post and five of my followers retweet it and then five followers of each of them retweet and then five of each of them and so on, just 10 steps would mean that 61,035,155 people had retweeted me. And if each of those people had at least 100 followers, many, many times more will have seen the tweet. This does assume I’ve done the maths right (I’m pretty sure I have) and that there are no overlaps among all the retweeters (I’m pretty sure there would be). But, still, it’s a gobsmacking amount.

If I’m honest, I don’t really know how harness the power of social media - how is that some Twitter accounts get thousands of followers while others only get tens? Fame helps, obviously, and one way of getting my name known among knitters is to get my designs into the various knitting magazines. So one of my next projects is to contact all the relevant UK titles.

Pinterest is the latest addtion to my social media collection.
So far I'm loving it.

But fame isn’t a prerequisite - there are plenty of non-famous people out there with hundreds and even thousands of followers. A reason to be tweeting must help - in my case this is knitting and crochet design. Being witty or interesting - or ideally both - is also important, and I do try.

I do know that people get very tired very quickly of endless self-promotion. Constant links to ones own blog or Folksy page are just boring - you need to engage and interact. Say something funny, something interesting, something controversial, something important, just say something. Retweet and reply. I’m currently following anyone crafty, and hoping they’ll follow me back.

Other than that, I suspect it’s a combination of just keeping at it: being active, trying to keep it interesting (and mostly on topic) and plain old hanging in there. So I’ll be carrying on with my Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking and Pinning. I hope you’ll all join me for the ride.