How To: 5 Techniques to Cash in on your Passion with Social Media
Social media has become more and more widespread in our society. Not only do people use it to stay social and connected with their friends, but more importantly, they also share what they are passionate about with others in different social networks. Have you ever felt so compelled about something you believe in that you have to share it on Twitter? I have those sorts of impulses all the time (mostly about social media). With the openness of Web 2.0 tools, now is the time to cash in on our passions. In this post, I will cover 5 techniques that let you share your passion with people you meet on different social networking platforms.
1. Twitter – Create a Hashtag
Hashtags (#) on Twitter have the ability to make your message go viral in an instant. If I wanted to emphasize certain aspects of my message, I usually would add a hashtag to highlight particular words. For example, in the following quote, I wanted to emphasize the the word “Life.” Hence, it goes something like this:
“#Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.”
You see my point here. A hashtag helps other twitterers find relevant tweets easily and quickly. Most importantly, it highlights what your “passion” and helps you establish relationships with your followers.
2. Facebook – Create a New Page
Out of all Facebook’s features, the most I like is its ability to create fan pages.What is so critical about these a fan page is that it draws closer all like-minded people and helps with the development of meaningful communities. For example, there is a Facebook page called “Cooking for Busy People.” Its mission statement is put like this:
“Helping Busy People Have Tastier, Healthier foods in Less Time with award winning recipes made with 7 or fewer ingredients and in less than 30 minutes!“
Simple but powerful, this statement is exactly what bonds 600+ people together (still counting). So if you are passionate about cooking but do not have a lot of time, joining this group seems to be a viable option.
3. Meetup – Organize Focused Conversations Offline
While Facebook gathers people online, the opposite of it is to use Meetup to organize meetings offline. If you do a simple search on the Meetup website for a particular topic, the search results reveal a list of groups sharing the same interests in that topic. In other words, if you are passionate about a certain subject, you can always create a relevant Meetup group . Here are just a couple of examples:
- Sit ‘n’ Knit New York City (Knitting)
- Carolina Smooth Jazz Friends! (Jazz)
- Tea Tour NY (Tea)
- The London Movie Meetup Group (Movie)
