Social Media: It’s Personal

Don’t tell me social media isn’t personal.

Sure, it’s not the same thing as actually sitting down and talking to someone in person, face-to-face. But it’s often the next best thing. And in some cases, it’s the only thing.

Using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like is a great way to connect with people who otherwise might not give you the time of the day because they’re either too busy or have reason to believe they have little in common with you.

Social media is also perfect for keeping in touch with people who it’s impossible to meet up with in person because they simply live or work too far away.

For example, my friend, Amelia, is situated some 3,000 miles away from me in Seal Beach, California. We’re both copywriters. We’re both runners. We’re both former Toastmasters. And she used to live in Sudbury, Massachusetts, where I live now.

Clearly, we have a lot in common. But we hardly ever have the opportunity to see each other anymore. Except — you guessed it — via social media.

In this case, on one of my recent runs, I happened to take and upload a photo of the scene, a meandering trail through the woods that apparently is one that the Lincoln-Sudbury High School cross country teams have been running on for years.

After seeing this photo on Facebook, Amelia left a comment about a steep hill off of that trail that she used to run up and down as a member of the school’s cross country team back in the day.

So the next time I was working out in those woods, I went one step further and recorded a short video clip on my climb up that legendary hill and posted that on Facebook, too…

Well, she was so taken by the memories of seeing that hill again, she wrote a blog post about it, saying…

“Bob posted this on my wall. It was one of the kindest, unexpected random acts a friend has ever done for me.”

What a pleasant surprise that was to me, to see just how much my spontaneous, seemingly small act of sharing on Facebook meant to Amelia.

And when she thanked me for that video on Twitter, I was more than happy to RT her, of course.

Now I’m talking about a real friendship between Amelia and I, as we’ve known each other for years. But whether you’re friends with someone or not, whether you’re a business or an individual, social media can be used to close the gap between distance and anything else that may get in the way of more traditional communications methods. Social media can – and should –  be personal.

By the way, here’s the video I recorded while running up that legendary hill in the woods near Lincoln-Sudbury High School…

If you can’t see the video in this blog post, you can view it on YouTube by clicking here.
To read Amelia Ostroff’s blog, 623 Tries, click here.
To follow Amelia Ostroff on Twitter, click here.

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