Midterm Assignment
Some people might believe that social media is a bit unoriginal with regards to establishing and nurturing relationships with closed ones or even professional chats in general, but in reality, if you know how to use it the right way, meaningful connections can be made through a bunch of social media platforms. Some ways to support a culture of meaningful connection and learning on social media are creating a Facebook community, rise of selfie generation, being an active social listener, and asking questions and gathering feedback.
There are so many ways you can use Facebook to develop connections with social media users. While most organizations now created their own Facebook page on social media platforms, there are many other ways to build your digital presence through websites and apps. One such way is by developing a Facebook community for your social media followers and friends. For organizations, the Facebook app lets you create a free Facebook group. You can also set a privacy whether you want to make it a public, secret, or private group which allows us to choose more privacy. In order to foster a successful community and keep it going, you need to be active on it and make your followers entertain. Meaningful connections are made if you post news and updates in the group regularly, that way people can comment and communicate in the post and make connections with each other. You can also create a facebook group chat and actively communicate with the group members in order to create meaningful connections with them. Also, It’s a great way for your friends, family members, and group members to feel as if they are a part of something that is important and have a sense of community. Lastly, Facebook lets you create a room and share their screen, so you can do connected learning with your classmate and create meaningful connections with them.
Another way to create a culture of meaningful connection is the rise of selfie generation. In today’s world, social networks like Facebook and Instagram grew so popular as a way of using the internet to connect with their friends, family, and closed ones and getting their daily updates. Snapchat is another way to interact with your closed one. All of this can be done by taking selfies and posting a story and post to your profile. Selfies on Snapchat connects you with your closed ones and lets you give updates on your friend’s life. Also, when people take selfies with their friends or family on snapchat, they want to remember that moment and snapchat gives you a notification about the selfie you took a year after saying, “One Year Ago, Today” which allows you to go back at that selfie moment and find the connection that you made with the person. Finally, selfies let you make meaningful connections with your closed ones and look at other people’s selfies on their profile and make meaningful connections with them by commenting on their post or story.
Moreover, social active listening is another way you can make meaningful connections. Social Media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are perfect apps to make connections socially, but the connections have to be involved by both parties. In order to get other parties involved, you need to listen to their voice and what their thoughts and opinions are on some particular things like hearing some posting picture ideas on your page or trying to post the stuff that your followers like. Reading comments on your previous post, listening to them (keep that in mind and hear them out), and executing that demand in your next post would be the best way you can actively listen to your fans and followers and make meaningful connections with them socially. Furthermore, Your aim in maintaining social media conversations should be to proactively engage and connect with the individual posting a relevant term or phrase within a timely manner. An example might be, someone tweets “relocating to Austin.” Searching that term will bring up anyone who uses that phrase within their tweet.
In conclusion, my conception of social media is definitely changing as a result of what we are learning and doing in this course. I never thought of social media and connected learning at all before taking this course. Also, I would think of social media as a time pass or something that we do when we get bored and nothing else to do. I would always look at the social media as a way of distraction, but now that I know that social media also includes apps like mail, zoom, and also many social media websites, I can reflect my thoughts on social media as a way of meaningful connections and learning about many other things that we might’ve not known before. This course helped me think of social media from a good and beneficial perspective. I also learned from this course that how selfie generation can help you make meaningful connections.
References:
How to Build Meaningful Connections Through Social Media. (2019, November 15). Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://quantumdigital.com/blog/how-build-meaningful-connections-through-social-media
Is social media eroding meaningful relationships in real life? (2017, October 05). Retrieved October 25, 2020, from https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/thedigitalage/blog/2017/10/is-social-media-eroding-meaningful-relationships-in-real-life/