Do you need a Facebook fan page?
Just another day one of my friends rang up and asked me: “do you think it is good to have Fan Page for my brand? Do I need a fan page?”
Before consulting me, he has already consulted many friends who have used Fan Page, and got about 50-50 answers for yes and no. Just like every social media platform, it always suits for some but not for everyone. I can’t give a straightforward answer to my friend on whether he needs a fan page, nor can I give my readers - you, a direct answer. However, I’d love to share some of my experience with fan page here.
My experience on Facebook fan page
I started my Facebook fan page in the middle of September 2009, until now my personal fan page is about 4 months old with over 1400 fans.
I have to confess that when I started my fan page, I didn’t have any clear strategy about it yet. I know that in social media it is always good to have strategy, knowing what you are doing, and allocating time/money resources wisely. However, as you may have read from my previous post, social media is not just a “tool” for me like a “tool” for organisation and company, it has been a way of life for me.
As trying out different social media platforms has been my “hobby” for many years, I always prefer to “try” and “play” without thinking too much. Only through this I feel myself understand the platform better and being able to possibly laying any “strategy” in the future if needed.
So here is the result: my fan page has over 1400 fans right now, not too many, not too few either. I didn’t do any advertisement, nor did I update status too frequently (sometimes even once a week only), however fans just keep growing automatically. Comparing to the little efforts I put in and the result I got, I am happy enough for now.
As you might guess, having 1400+ fans without too much efforts spent do make me say Yes to anybody who asked me whether it is worthwhile to set up a fan page. Below are more elaboration on why fan page can be a great idea to start.
What I like about Facebook fan page
1. Facebook reaches people who don’t normally use social networks
In other social network platforms such as blog, twitter, plurk, youtube, you see a clear division between people who use it and people who don’t. There seems to be always the “same” groups of people who are shifting from one platform to another. Those who don’t use social media, often just don’t use at all no matter what platform is in question.
Except for Facebook.
Having its initial function being connecting old classmates and friends, Facebook has successfully attracted many people who had never been interested in using any social networks, to join the biggest online social network in the world. I bet most of you who are reading this post also have Facebook personal account. I also bet that many of your Facebook contacts are some old classmates, colleagues and friends who had never used other social networks but can’t help to be drawn to use Facebook for contacting with other friends, or nowadays more for playing games?
So, from brand/company/organisation’s point of view, one can reach bigger potential market through having a presence on Facebook.
2. the “word of link”
We all know that the “word of mouth” is a strong power source of social media for marketers. If we can picture ”word of mouth” to be “word of link” in the virtual space, the beauty of Facebook is that it makes the “link” showing automatically everywhere: on your friends’ recent activity updates, on the side bar… and it makes you naturally follow the link to check what your friends have been up to.
For example, if your friend John just joined a fan page, all John’s friends can see from John’s recent activities that “John became a fan of xxxxx”. If John joined a group, then you will see “John joined the group xxxxx”. Even you don’t especially care what John has been doing, Facebook will put a “Suggestion” link in a very obvious place on your sidebar, showing that “John became a fan of xxxxx”. As John is your friend so Facebook “assumes” that what interests John might interest you.
So, if you are a fan page owner, Facebook’s way of putting links everywhere will make you have potential to get more fans from fans’ friends with whom you never had any physical nor virtual contacts.
I believe that most of my fans now belong to this group (they are my fans’ friends’ friends’ friends… ), who happened to see my page link from friend’s status update or sidebar suggestions. Then they clicked the link out of curiosity and became my fan too. This viral process keeps going and going…(which is probably also the “secret” of why I keep getting some fans even though I haven’t been updating contents too diligently yet)
3. it’s people out there. You see it, and they see it too.
I still remember vividly the first day I set up my fan page in last September, and the moments I got the first one or two fans signing up. It felt marvelous! Not simply due to the fact that “I got fans!”, but also from the angle that I could actually see “who” they are.
Most people tend to use their real name in Facebook, or something similar to their real name such as the most commonly used nickname or English names. In other social networks, many don’t often use real names. (At least in Taiwan it is the case, while I know that in the western world people seem to use real names everywhere. I guess this is due to cultural difference).
For example I know that I have 3000+ blog subscribers in my Chinese blog, but since the majority of them subscribe it through RSS feeds, I have no idea who they are. I have also 240+ followers in Twitter and 1000+ followers/friends in Plurk (a social network that is especially popular in Taiwan), but I don’t have their “real names”. I only have their screen names as that’s what most people use.
Only in Facebook, I got to see my fans as each individual with often a profile picture and a real name under it. Although I don’t know most of them, still it means something. You see it’s real people out there, not machine, and you see who they are. They also see who are people around. More than one time my fan wrote message on my fan page, saying that “the world is so small, I noticed that my friends are also your fans!”
Due to the effect of “mouth of link” mentioned above, it is not unusual to find your friends to be fans of the same fan page you follow, as they probably join it after seeing you joined it, or the other way around. However the point is, they are really “looking around”. Joining your fan page, at the same time checking around: who else are here. For people who like to expand their social network contacts, this can go on and on. Further, if you are able to make your fans become friends to each other through your fan page, your fan base will be more solid with groups and groups of raving fans.
4. Facebook fan page or Facebook group?
Finally, you might wonder, should you start a Facebook fan page or Facebook group? There is no definite answer to that, depending on what’s your purpose and how you would like to use them.
While both them give you the benefits stated above, group tends to be more suitable for some private connections on personal level while fan page has more potential for company, organisation, group or individual who want to build their own “brands” or followers. You can have a look on this article first, where the difference between group and fan page are clearly compared.
I myself like fan page much more than group for my own purpose: having a space for personal brand to develop and open interactions for me and my fans. Everybody is welcomed to join and no email sending limits for 5000 persons as the group is. Yes I am confident that in time my fan page will have more than 5000 fans (smile).
Those above are pros for using Facebook fan page, how about cons?
Cons: the interface design is not intuitive and practical enough
Well, honestly I haven’t got much cons for fan page yet as I myself have been most of the time happy with it. However, one clear drawback of fan page is its interface design. As administrator of one fan page I have to say that every now and then it is not very intuitive and can take sometime for you to get around when you set up and arrange your page.
I also have had difficulties with its album functions. There doesn’t seem to have a clear path for fans to submit photos into specific album. Fans can upload photos to your fan page if you allow them, however there is no further control options on how/whether they can upload photos to a specific album, instead all the photos go to the same default album for fans, which makes my idea of having photo contests frequently on different subjects difficult to realise.
Besides, unlike personal profile page, where you always get notification if someone replies to your updates or writes something on your wall, fan page doesn’t seem to notify you anything, nor would you know if some fans have written things on your wall unless you go to the page and check it out.
Back to where we started: I don’t know if my friend has decided to start a fan page, but I hope that this post gives you some inputs to your decision of whether You need a Facebook fan page. In my opinion, if time and resource are allowed, it might be really worthwhile. At least you could try it out, learning by doing is at least one of the best practices in social media.
Oh by the way, here is my fan page. Although my updates are only in Chinese, you are welcomed to have a look and enjoy some photos of Finnish nature.
Welcome to let me know your ideas on fan page. Do you have one? Do you need one? Why and why not?
Links of Facebook Fan Pages Marketing
I have built a Fan Page for myself as a writer for 2 months. At the moment this page has over 1000 members. I will tell more about my own experience with Facebook Fan Page in the coming posts but for now, I want to collect some links on this topic first:
HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
HOW TO: Set Up a Winning Facebook Fan Page
Are Facebook Fan Pages Cutting Your Marketing Off At The Knees? (I especially like the part on the downsides of Fan Pages, worth check it out!)
Do I need a Facebook Fan Page?
How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
Making the Most of a Facebook Fan Page (According to the survey mentioned in the post, my Fan Page belongs to the 33% of Fan Pages that have over 1000 Fans. Nice to know! )
8 Tips For Getting Your Fan Page Found In Facebook Search
SMX East: Facebook Marketing Tactics
HOW TO: Use Facebook Privacy Controls on Your Fan Page
Update 17.1.2010)
TOP 100+ Finnish Brands on Facebook (This is a quite interesting analysis of the presence of Finnish brands on Facebook. As mentioned, I will write more of my observation on Facebook fanpage later in this blog.)
(As I am digging into this topic right now so the list will be continuously updated…)
How social media has changed my life?
This year, social media has been such a hit word more than ever, some people told me
Although I have been always so doubtful about the Internet, looks like I just need to start learn something about it since it is everywhere now!”.
Other said:
This all sounds interesting, but still I found no reason of using it. All the people I meet, I care, I talk to, are all around the corner, it is so easy for me to talk to them face to face, why I bother to go online?”
One can have different attitude and decide his own solution for approaching, or not approaching social media. As for me, I don’t justify for myself why I should use social media, neither do I need any GOOD reason such as marketing or customer service to use it, because I simply CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT.
My Finnish friend found a good explanation for my heavy use on social media:
You live so far away from your family and friends in Taiwan, surely you need to contact them through the Internet.
Well, that might be true, but only partly. In fact, the majority of my social network connections are STRANGERS, while I can’t deny my desire of connecting to the Chinese world, aren’t there more reasons of naturally using it except for the desired brought by physical distance?
One Taiwanese friend who live in Sweden just sent me a message recently saying:
You seem to be so enthusiastic about media, while I also need the Internet in my daily work, I always feel suspicious about it.
Just like me, my friend is a freelancer for Taiwanese media. We both are far away from the world where we originally came from, however we had complete different approaches and attitudes towards social media and online world. Distance is really NOT always the key as most people claim.
I start to look back, think, and realise that the reason I can’t live without social media, is something much more fundamental. Living far away is probably a “condition” that makes me use it more intensively, but the real truth is:
Without Social Media, I wouldn’t even have become ME as ME today. In other words, it practically has changed my life through the years.
How?
2000 - self-expression and online publishing
In year 2000, I started my own newsletter online. It was my last year of studying in Denmark, and I had a sudden desire of writing down all what I have been experienced here in this far north land. Out of this simple desire I started writing. My readership growed from 1 person, 3 persons, to 700, then to 1000, 2000 and even more. For first time in my life, I tasted the beauty of online readership.
Social media (that’s call it so, although this term didn’t exist in 2000) has since then naturally become part of my life, a channel for me to write everything down, to publish them online, to express my thoughts, then share it with the world.
2003-2004 relations from online to offline
In 2003, online writing has gradually become common hobbies for many Taiwanese. With various free online platforms offered by service providers, many have started writing online.
As usual, I kept writing and started to find other Taiwanese who “also” reside in the Nordic countries through writing. We have been like “companions” for each other, discussing, comparing Nordic life and cultures through our writings online. Starting from here my online contact networks grew even further, many online writers eventually became my friends.
Some of them I did get chance to meet in persons, strangely yet totally reasonable, it always felt like we have known each other for a long time in the first meet-up. The person might “look” differently from what I “imagined”, however the connection has always been real. We could jumped immediately to topics shared and cared in our hearts, completely dropping any formality that would have occurred normally between two “strangers”.
Some of them, actually felt lot “closer” to my friends from “offline world”. This experience made me convinced of the fact that relationship between people can be built online without barriers. The Internet and social media is like a channel, through which we find people with similarities or common interests. The friendship built online and started online, has been always as real as those started offline.
In 2004, blog started to be popular in Taiwan, many online writers in different platforms shifted to blog, including me. We officially became bloggers, a fashionable term then.
2005 Through blogging, I got a job that many envy for!
Some says that people are usually more sincere in their writing than their words if you have to compare. Through reading other’s writing, you get to know what kind of person they might be and get to trust them more.
One of my online friend’s husband, happened to need an employee in Finland. Through my online friend’s intuitive recommendation I landed in an interview with her husband, and eventually got this job!
Although in the end this job turned out to be NOT my callings, however, it was honestly a really promising job. Employed by one of the most prestigious, most profitable high-tech companies in Taiwan, be in one of the positions many Taiwanese might be dreaming for, all through my blogging! I was not even blogging about the topic related to my job!
The logic went as simple as: being an online writer, I revealed to my readers/online friends, what kind of person I am. Through this process I gained their trust, one day when an opportunity opened up, they thought of me. No magic, no trick, simply mutual trust built online, between writer and writer, between writer and reader.
Online relations, they are real!
2006-2007 Through blogging, my freelancing and writing career took off!
At this point, the Nordic countries are no longer UNKNOWN lands for Taiwanese. With the growth of popularity of Nordic design in Taiwan, people were eager for any information related to the Nordic countries. As a blogger/online writer who has started as early as 2000, my blog started to get well-known in its own niche - Nordic lifestyle, culture and creativity.
I started to receive many invitations from newspapers, magazines and publishers, for writing columns on various media, even writing book for publishers! Of course, simply because one can blog doesn’t mean one can be a “writer” for whom publishers are willing to invest for. Although I have been always considered good in writing during my school years and have often taken part into school magazine editing works, it still took me quite a while to practice, and to be good in writing for magazines and publishers.
The process wasn’t all smooth and easy, but the fruit it bear was sweet and my dream of publishing my own book has eventually come true after many years of practicing writing online. (Well, the amazing part is, I didn’t even realise that I was practicing, instead I was just having fun, loved to write and share!) Then my first book - Pure Finland - was published in July 2007, elected as one of the best books on design and lifestyle during that year by Chinatimes newspaper from Taiwan. I flew back to Taiwan for participating the making of my “book promotion video” and the award ceremony.
A remarkable moment in life, isn’t it?! All brought by years of blogging!
My second book which compiled many of my blog writings about Finnish education, society, design and culture was published in December 2007. Just as my first book, it received good recommendation by magazines and book critics.
Two books in one year? Well, that was just a co-incidence. Many ideas, drafts, materials have existed years before the actual publishing and being modified along the way. I can even say, without having been writing and blogging online, I would never become a writer, an awarded writer.
2008 - 2009 Community building, a new era for writing career?
During my “online” life, not only strangers have become my friends, aquantences I have from “physical world”, also gradually “found” me and “reconnected” with me through my online presence.
The line between online and offline media has become more and more vague, the two “world” has started to mingle with each other more than ever.
Many long-lost offline acquaintances found me online, many online readers came to meet me offline in book signing events.
Through my book promoting radio programe my old friend “heard” me on his way driving car to work, then he continued to search me online and found my contact email through my blog.
Through Facebook over half of my elementary school and high school classmates are reconnected with me, from offline to online;
Through Facebook fan page my online readers discovered that we graduated from the same offline high school so our relations extend from online to offline.
Similar stories continue, world seems get smaller every day combining the online and offline world.
As a writer/freelancer who has built my career through online presence, being online has been integral part of my identity.
Without social media, none of those would have happened. I would not have got to know so many wonderful people, would not have gotten a promising job out of nowhere, would not have become a writer, a freelancer, would not have got awarded, would not have reconnected with so many people who used to be, and might be again, an important part of my life.
Social media is amazing marketing tool, a new channel of communication, that’s what people buzz about at the moment. For me, it has always meant much more, in the past, present, and the future. It has changed my life in an essential way, by opening my world, yet making the world smaller enough to reach for me.
What’s the next?
I don’t know yet, but I can’t help trying and enjoying the process, as always.
Do you like to do tests?
Lately many of my friends in Facebook have addicted to do tests.
If you have ever used Facebook, you know what I mean.
“What colours are you?”
“Which punk star are you?”
“which Britpop Band are you?”
………..
The list can just go on indefinitely.
And I am exactly one of those who has been doing endless tests without feeling bored. In fact, it’s more like the other way around: when I have plenty of time and kinda of feeling bored, I do tests to have some fun.
So here it goes:
I am red, orange, and red. (Yes, I did THREE different kinds of tests about my true colours! I didn’t intend to, just different friends requested me to do different colour tests.)
I am Patti Smith (didn’t even know who she is before the test!)
And I am Oasis. (if nothing else at least I like this result.:)
Eventually I can’t help asking myself, what’s so fun in doing tests, even test results can be absurd without real indications.
Maybe, as a human being, we just like to keep exploring ourselves and identify ourselves with something? The test accuracy doesn’t really matter. Sometimes the more ridiculous it is, the more fun we get out of it. If there happens to have a slight percentage of correctness, it is “enough” for us to feel: “see, that’s me!”
Maybe, people who like to do test, just LIKE TO DO TEST no matter what, and will always find something out of it for himself.
Simply testing is not enough, the comparison also adds some magic.
In Facebook, we do the test, then we recommend our friends doing the same tests in order to compare, as if those tests can tell us something we don’t know, or could know more, about our friends. Most of the time we just want to have fun, “together”, which is what social media about to most people.
So we have good reasons to create tests, do tests, compare tests, endlessly, tests after tests.
As Darren Rose mentioned in his article of teaching people how to create an elevator pitch, among all the suggestions one caught my eye:
“Consider Using a Question - people are wired to answer and engage with questions. Ask them, even just rhetorical ones, in your pitch and you’ll hook people in.”
Indeed! People are just like that. People like to answer and engage with questions.
In Plurk, whenever somebody casts a question, no matter how “nonsense”, “insignificant” it is, many will opt to answer, time after time, the number of received answers strikes like magic to me.
In blog, if you cast polls, many usually-silent readers will opt to answer, time after time.
Well, surely not everybody care to answer questions and tests, but from this angle we at least get to know some of the reasons behind the popularity of Facebook tests. Through tests we answer question, disclose ourselves, compare and have fun with friends, how simple yet powerful entertainment formula it is!
After all, some Facebook tests do make sense, and give us nice surprises on ourselves.
I just ran into a test called “What moomin charactor are you?” (For those who are not Finns or have never heard of Moomin, it is character created by well-known Finnish writer and illustrator - Tove Jansson. All its characters are beloved by readers worldwide.)
I’ve always considered myself being more like “PikkuMy” in Moomin stories, a jumpy little girl who is bit bad tempered (!), always wants to make her way, even insists on it unreasonably in a funny and energetic way.
The test result? well, it completely went to another extreme: I am “Hemuli”, an older big male fellow (by its look), who is calm and peaceful, pays all his attentions on plants and flowers in a rather nerdy way.
I can’t help laughing. Could this be me?
Well why not?! I do like flowers, I do like plants, I could be a bit nerdy too, otherwise who has been sitting here analysing about social media at late night with sore eyes after already having sat in front of computer all day long? 
Maybe, tests do reveal some truth about ourselves, in a miraculous way.
[quick note] observation on Ning (part 1)
After joining five or six Ning communities established by Taiwanese bloggers, today I joined my first Finnish Ning community - Sometu - a community that discusses the usage of social media in education and learning.
Almost as soon as I joined the community, I found pretty interesting difference between the Taiwanese usage of Ning and Finnish ones. (I didn’t join the community for the purpose of observing the difference, it just came along the way naturally.)
Well, after all I only have joined six Taiwanese Ning communities and one Finnish Ning, with such a small “sample” size hardly any sound conclusion can be drawn. However I figured that any tiny observation and experience in social media experiment is worth mentioning and taking notes, besides the “first impression” always has its own irreplaceable significance.
First of all, as a new member in sometu, I tried to look for a discussion topic/group to introduce myself, but I can’t find any these kind of places. Then I realized that my attempt to find the introduction area was actually a years-long habit developed by Taiwanese communities’ behaviour code. In Taiwan, whenever we join any online communities, be it Ning or other forums, the first thing we do is to go “somewhere” to introduce ourselves, which is usually a separate area of the discussion forum.
“But in the personal profile page you could already introduce yourself?” You might ask.
Indeed, we are not in lack of a place to introduce ourselves in the Ning communities, however, that’s not actually the point. The point is not whether the “personal information has a place to show”, the point is that “we are longing for a place for interaction without any specific reasons.” We don’t join a discussion before introducing who we are, in a proper public space online.
There is no good or bad way of arrangement in this case, simply different, as cultural communication difference reflected on the online community usage.
The second difference I noticed, was the “first impression” the Finnish community gave me. Although not having enough time to dive into the community yet, I can already feel that it is really well-organised, many discussion going on in different subgroups, all focusing around the main theme rather tightly, which is something I really like.
Most of the Taiwanese Ning communities that I have joined, seem to take another approach. Although each has its own focus of main theme, many of a time their subgroups are repeating to each other, maybe partly due to the fact that it is always “certain group os users” who are using Ning communities in Taiwan, so an Apple fan will establish an “Iphone” group in multiple Ning communities he/she joins, disregarding what’s the main theme of that particular communities.
Even the “similar groups” seem to repeat everywhere, It doesn’t seem impropriate against the theme of particular community, because most of the Taiwanese Ning communities are more or less lifestyle-oriented, focusing on how to be more creative, how to learn new things in life, how to share good information to each other, etc. Therefore the same “iPhone experience sharing group” can really fit into several Ning communities perfectly.
As I intended to write only quick note today, I will stop here for now (my full time day job does stop me from writing as much as I love 
There are still several points in this topic to continue, see you soon again.
“Me” image in the Internet era
I have been blogging for many years, using texts and images. One week ago I decided to experiment something new: using podcast to share thoughts with my readers, in other words, with my voice!
This morning I got a really interesting comment from my blog reader about my podcast: “Your voice feels very tender and full of emotion, while your words feels very rational and clean, it really conveys different feelings… ”
In the beginning I can’t help wondering, did I convey incomplete image of me in my Net presence? Am I not “consistent” enough as a person? Am I too clean and rational in my texts, and am I too tender and too emotional in my voice? My real worry is: will I alienate my readers, who have already built a solid image of me and not used to my new presence with my voice?
However, my worries seem to be in vain, as my reader told me in the end of the message:
“Although I have been reading your blog for quite a while, only until now, after having listened to your podcast, I feel like commenting and leaving a message to you.”
So it looks like, despite of the initial possible “surprising” feeling from my new presence, it is after all a good thing for my readers to feel “another side” of me.
Actually this reader is not the only one who has such comments. Many have been pouring feedbacks to my podcast experiment and telling me that “only until now I feel so close to you that I could finally write you a message!”
Of course, some of my regular blog readers still remained silent to my podcast experiment (they might still be on the way to “get used to” the new image of me conveyed from my tendered voice?).
Interesting, isn’t it?
With the advance of Internet technology, we no longer necessarily “meet” a person firstly face to face at the same geographical location, most cases are the other way around. We build relations on the Internet through various social media, through posts, tweets, image, voice, video… the list can just go on and on.
If you just recently start your own presence on the Internet, you might have already been able to incorporated all the different media elements into your personal image building right from the start. In this way the image of “you” in your readers’ mind might also be more complete from the very beginning. However, if you are like me, having been presenting on the Web for many years and wanting to try some new media to present yourself, you might run into similar situation as me: Your reader have already built a “solid, but limited image of you” through those years in their own mind, suddenly “another you” sounds too different (or too real) to believe.
In fact, before the “voice experiment”, I have another experience of coming crushing to my readers’ “imagination” of me.
As a writer who started her writing career and readership from the Web, for many times I needed to face people’s “surprise”, when they get to see me as “a real person”.
“You look so young! Younger than your words!” many said when they saw me, “Is it really you?”, I almost can sense this question from a slight hint of suspicion in their eyes..
Honestly, at that very moment I almost felt ashamed of my “young look” which didn’t seem to match with the maturity of my writing.
And now, my voice wasn’t being spared from this kind of “image crush” either, in my readers’ mind.
As a sincere content creator, I can’t help asking myself: why this keep happening, am I really different person, in different media channel, in my texts, my face, my voice?
In a way, it seems pretty natural that different media brings out different sides, or at least different quality of us. One media can never convey 100% of us, plus readers’ imaginations are influenced by their perception and experience, therefore imagination is not going to be 100% close to the reality.
Having this i mind, is it still a good thing to present oneself through different media? Or should we stick to only one and present ourselves simply through it, to have a more “consistent” image of us?
I guess that each person should try to find his own balance and answer in this matter, if you care to build your presence, a personal brand or identity, on the Internet sphere. You need to ask yourself: what media intrigues you and in what way you’d like to present yourself and to what extent? Maybe not all the media are suitable for each person. While each media inevitably brings out certain quality of us, it is up to us which sides of us we’d like to show more to reach our readers. Only some of it, or all. Funnily, without trying it, you’ll never know.
As for myself, I think different media compensates to each other to bring out different side of me, even contrast to each other, the “Me” image will eventually be made more complete. Like playing a puzzle game, originally people only have one piece of me, and seeing only limited side of me, but now they can get touch with me through putting different puzzle pieces together, eventually they will put together different pieces of me as “Me”, a unique brand of “Me”.
So, I will keep trying, and experiment. I believe, all the uncomfortable surprise will be just temporary, I as a “unique” person in words, in image, in text and in combination of those all will be strenghthened and after that, my visitors/readers/audience will just feel one more step close to me, a real person in the world.
That’s the thing which really matters.
A new chapter about social media
I don’t remember how it got started, how I have ended up being so addicted to the social media world and almost lived in it, day after another.
To many people, social media might be just buzz-word, trend, or phenomena at this moment. To me it is more like a new chapter of life, a new chapter of possibility, which gradually opens to an unknown world in the future.
As a more or less “established” blogger in my own niche among the Chinese speaking world, I recently started to experiment more on the combination of social media and my blog contents. Despite of being in the very beginning of the exploration process, I already start to feel so thrilled about how much social media could teach a content creator about the media channel and media world, how varied application the same social media could have, how social media reflects the human relations and even the different sides of the same person.
When comparing the usage of same social media in different country and in different culture, interesting social aspects can also be spotted. In my case, that would be the comparison between Finland and Taiwan/Chinese speaking world. The former being my current home country, the latter being where I grew up before my 20s.
So I decide to start this blog, to tell about what I think and what I experiment with the social media.
Here it goes.
Tsui-Shan Tu, an awarded writer and blogger from Taiwan, living in Finland.
