The Facebook Age
[This is one in a series of blog posts written by Charlotte the Intern. Tune in daily to find out about what she’s been up to, what she has been learning about, and all of the crazy things she does as part of the Manna from Devon team.]
Oh my, it’s blog time again. How did that happen so quickly? I’ve spent several hours in Dartmouth today sorting some things out for the food festival (very exciting things, might I add, that you should stay tuned for at the beginning of next week), and then I came back to Manna from Devon HQ a few hours ago to work on some other things and write my blog post. And what have I been doing this whole time? Facebooking, and Twittering, and staying tuned in to that whole social media universe that seems to be swirling around us all the time (ahem…and also being really productive with other things. Hi Holly and David!).
But in all seriousness, I find it very difficult to do work for long periods of time without checking periodically back and forth to all of my social media outlets. A lot of it is genuinely valuable communication, or so I think, like the tweet that I sent to a food blogger that I very much admire, inviting her to come down to the Dartmouth Food Festival, but a lot of it is largely pointless. For example, I now know that it’s Roald Dahl’s birthday, and what a girl that I haven’t spoken to in 8 years is eating for lunch.
Yesterday, David and I went to an event in Bath thrown by Insider magazine for small food and drink businesses in the Southwest. We listened to a very interesting conversation among various industry experts about several different topics related to growing and sustaining a small business in the food and drink industry, and as all things seem to these days, it often came back to social media. It is amazing how powerful these platforms are. Equally amazing is how often people use them just to share pictures of cats.
The question that I keep coming back to is: when it comes to social media, how much is too much? I’d love to hear from some of you on this one. Do you follow anyone on any social media platforms, and if so, what do you like or dislike about their social media presence? No need to name names here if there is something particularly negative you want to share, but it’s interesting to learn what other people like hearing about, and what they don’t.
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I am just as guilty of social media-abuse as the next person. After all, it did allow me to post this amateurish photo of The Crescent to Instagram:
