Sunday, October 5, 2014

Follow Us On......

... Facebook.... WWW.... Twitter..... Instagram ..... It seems like everywhere we look, we are reminded about social media. When I joined Facebook 7 years ago, it was because a friend of mine had created a photo album so we could see their new home in a foreign country, an albums that only invited people could see. Back then Facebook was locally still quite unknown. 

In the latter years I maybe visited Facebook once a week, but that all changed during this summer after I got involved with the sailing project. The sailing projects uses social media to attract sponsors, to keep families, MSers, followers updated - in this case as a mean to keep the project running.

It has scared me how much time I actually use now to follow the project, but just because I have already been on board it does not mean that my journey/involvement with the project stops - nor do I want it to end just yet.

Facebook
Bad habit - I know - but I checked my Facebook the other morning on my phone just after the wake-up call and saw my face in an update. To be honest I am the type of person that feels a lot more comfortable behind a camera than in front of it - the smile is there as the professional photographer told jokes while taking photos that day. But my involvement with street art (not the underground street art but public events) and this project have suddenly exposed me to the media. Some projects needs PR to continue and they can get attention by using social media.


The official website keeps the latest news on the page with the teaser of that day's blog post. While on board the MS crew members take turns writing the daily blogs - not all were to happy about writing it but when they saw friends' and families' comments on Facebook afterwards, they felt good about sharing their experience. I was surprised when I was asked last week if I would write a post about my view on the trip now that I have been home for two months - even though I read the updates daily and post comments once in a while to blog posts, the response to this recent post of mine still makes me speechless.


Surprised how easily words came to the email when writing the post as I still have not digested all the things, events, people etc. that I experienced/met on that trip. Have not even started writing the journal from the trip - wrote notes everyday to help me remember - but not everything can be written as a full text yet. The adventure was simply a whole lot bigger than I had even dared to hope.


A Twitter account was created just because of this project, but not using it much - still it makes me a bit uneasy when I see my name mentioned. Participating in a project like this forces you to consider if you are ok with being exposed - part of it is to inspire other MSers (and non- MSers) to dare to dream a little and maybe go out sailing for just for a few hours and that requires the assistance of social media to spread the word. I am ok with it while the project is sailing around the world.

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