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| Dale Mackey discusses Social Media, Redeemer Church, Knoxville, February 2011 |
It had to happen eventually: I finally got some training in this blogging thing. Actually, the workshop, sponsored by the Knoxville Writer’s Guild and presented by Dale Mackey at the Redeemer Church in Fort Sanders was about more than blogging. It was about the changes in the ways that people connect in 2011. Facebook, blogging, Twitter and issues like work flow, content, photographs, building networks and on the list goes. Somewhere around forty people crammed into a room at Redeemer Church at Highland and 17th for the two-and-a-half-hour session.
I attended because I want my blog to do as well as possible. How do you know when a blog is doing well? As of today, thirty-one people are notified about new posts via the registration form in the right-hand column. Another forty-one are followers, meaning they have subscribed to the blog, also available to the right of this post, so they can read it via RSS feeds.
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| Participants discuss their interest in Social Media. |
On average, I have about a hundred people read the blog each day. Many of them are repeat visitors. Of the hundred, five will be from other countries. Twenty will be from out of state. Fifteen will be from Tennessee towns outside of Knoxville. Breaking it down like that says there are about sixty Knoxvillians reading each day and it seems that could be better. There are about two thousand who live downtown alone.
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| Dale Mackey, Social Media Workshop, Knoxville, February 2011 |
I learned that I’m doing some things pretty well and I could definitely do some things better. On the positive side of the ledger, I’ve got a focused topic that I stick to pretty well, I’m posting often, I’m writing as well as I know how and I respond to people pretty quickly. On the other side of the ledger, my photographs could be better, so I’m going to continue working on that. Also, I should probably start producing some video, but that will have to wait for a while. I’m still pondering some of the other pieces we discussed today. I doubt I’ll ever twitter. I probably do, however, need some sort of Facebook presence.
So, there will be some changes. Some will not be obvious, but others may be. If you have suggestions for me, I’d love to read them – either in a comment below, or in a private e-mail here. I want to make this blog the best I can make it. In the meantime, check out this video we viewed in our conference today regarding the explosion of social media. It is a couple of years old, so things have changed a bit, but it is pretty amazing.