A lesson in Social Media

I'm perhaps the farthest thing from an social media expert. I have a Facebook page, and I tweet fairly regularly. I work in the news media, but we've pretty much proven over time that we're hardly masters of the 'social' aspect of media. I think news organizations that are stuck in the traditional methods of disseminating information find it nearly impossible to relate to the different type of community that grows out of the social media experience.

But this has been my experience with social media: First, I was surprised how quickly a circle of friends pops up. Friends not just in the online, etherial sense, but real flesh-and-blood friends. I got to meet some of these Twitter friends in the flesh, and it was tremendous fun. I hope when my work schedule becomes more sane to be more active at local meetups in Charleston.

Second, social media contains all kinds of people, and predictably, some of them are idiots. But many, many are thoughtful, fun and fascinating.

And they're supportive. My daughter is trying to win a scholarship at college (see the Sunday, July 19, post on this blog if you'd like to know how to help her), and many of my Twitter friends have not only pitched in to give her help, they've even been sweet enough to make comments I can relay to her as encouragement.

If you can spread the word to help a kid win a film scholarship, can you use this tool to achieve even more earth-shaking dreams? You betcha. Ask @hardlynormal. He's a guy who uses Twitter and many other outlets that fall into the social media realm to bring homeless people out of invisibility and into our consciousness.

It's a terrific tool, and I'm glad I live in the era that's seeing it be defined yet still defy definition.

Help Lauren win scholarship!

Hello friends,

Most of you know our youngest daughter, Lauren, who is a film student at Azusa Pacific University in California. Her goal is to create a career that will honor Jesus. This past fall she took an upper-level film production class in which she wrote and directed a brief film that was supposed to tell its story without the help of onscreen dialogue. She did a good job, recruited kids who were talented in dance and music composition to contribute, and now her school has put her film on a special part of YouTube. Featured there are all the films from this class.

To kick off the new Azusa Pacific location on YouTube, the school is offering a $1,000 scholarship to the film student whose film gets 'favorited' most often before Aug. 14. (Yes, gang, that's right, I used favorite as a verb.) If you don't have a YouTube account (they're free, and you get to see things like the lady who took the world by storm on Britain's Got Talent), first go to this site, and set up an account:

http://www.youtube.com/create_account

Once you are officially signed in, follow these steps:

1) Click on the link below. It will take you to the contest page.
2) Click on Lauren's film, which is called 'The Journal' and is located toward the bottom of the list of films. watch it. It will take you to a play window with that film.

3) VERY important: At the bottom left of the 'play film' window is a Favorite button with a heart next to it. Click that. It's very important that you 'favorite' her film, because just a visit won't count toward the scholarship. Thanks so much for the time, which should be about 5-10 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=1AE8E4AB02F49F24

Love,

Marsha