Social Media & Me: A trip down the memory lane and a peek to the future

I’ve been using social media way before I even heard the term for the first time. My first actions that I can find records from are from 2005 when I joined Irc-Gallery (The mixture of horror/nostalgia when visiting that page is truly something else!) but I think the first touch for me might have been through the roleplay community/all the different online kennels where you had an animal to “care”. The roleplay sites were usually built wholly on forums and kennels were websites with guestbooks. The main idea was still same in both types. You wrote to the forum/guestbook and created a story, either alone or with other people. They both were a big thing when I was younger (around 2005) and were a prime example of a site where the users created the content.

My usage was pretty low until 2009 when I was in ninth grade. I joined both Facebook and Youtube and truly found my love of the internet. After that I have found several other sites (Twitter 2009, Blogger 2010, Pinterest 2012, Goodreads 2013, We Heart It 2013, Imgur 2014, Twitch 2015, Tumblr 2015, Instagram 2015…..) but those two still shine the brightest.

Facebook, Instagram and WordPress are so far the only one sites that I use for other things outside my private life. I use Facebook to manage different kinds of school projects and all three in my choir's marketing. I am in the marketing committee and also the main updater of our choir's website. Time wise I spend usually several hours a day on different kinds of social media. The bulk of it comes from Youtube but checking Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all take their fair share as well.

I have always been what the internet calls a “lurker” in social media. I mostly watch and curate (collect and manage) content but don’t really create it. I have never truly felt that I could offer people something that they would find interesting. Only recently have I tried to break that way of thinking and for example joined Instagram anyway.

In the future I would like to break that mindset even further. I want to become more confident in myself and become more active in social media. Part of it is due to the fact that social media is also starting to be an essential element in today’s business world. Social media is nowadays one of the most efficient tools in marketing. It is extremely important to use different social media outlets to communicate with the customers. And if I know how to use social media in my private life it’ll be that much easier to use that knowledge and adapt it when the day comes that I need it in my job. Because I would like it to be a part of my job one day. Social media has found its way to my heart and is only tightening its lovely grip with each post!

-Viivi