“As we entered 2020, there were an estimated 3.5 billion social media users worldwide.” (Lipschultz, 2020). “The 2020 Covid-19 Coronavirus global pandemic raised the stakes on the importance of social media communication. Confined to our homes, we turned to social media for news, information, entertainment, and work functions.” (Lipschultz, 2020). With the advent of the internet and the creation of social media platforms information is share and accessible at an increasing rate and efficiency. In the modern workplace, its usage and mastering are unequivocal. As a poet and writer which are my profession, I use social media platforms, that I consider as a part of my workplace and work environment. I started experimenting with blogs in the year 2000, and I was among the first 200 bloggers in Tehran, Iran. In it, I wrote my articles about women's society, women’s rights, and women’s life in addition to my poetry and short stories. What I gain from that usage was that I had good quality viewers who left me for the most part with productive comments. They also brought some dynamic comments, conversations, and added constructive critics. “Compared to the other two engagement features [like and share], Comment is the highest level of engagement because it requires more effort by the public to directly respond to organizational messages.” (Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014). “Moreover, given that everyone can easily access other commenters’ messages and observe the conversation, publics can participate in ongoing dialogues and engage with not only the organization but also other commenters.” (Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014). But, unfortunately, the blog was attacked and hacked by the Islamic Government in 2010 and I lost all my archives and data. “The importance of the Internet also cannot be ignored within the broader context of political strife. In Iran, for example, about 80 million people were isolated in 2019 when the government blocked access during gasoline price increase protests – a practice of censorship common from Ethiopia to Russia.” (Lipschultz, 2020). The importance of social media and the internet in more broad terms are essential to the work environment and workplace but its meaning and true potential are also well understood by governments. Luckily, one of my followers in Paris saved some of my articles and webpage logo through her proficiency in computer usage. Below are two of my logos and banner.
After those events, I created new blogs (please see attached link) and I also share content via the Facebook platform since 2009 and Instagram since 2015. According to Lipschultz, “Facebook and its more than 2 billion users were ahead of other social media companies in the Western world. The majority of Facebook’s users are now outside of the US and Canada.” He added, “Instagram had an estimated 1 billion active users, and it offered dramatically higher engagement than Facebook, Twitter and other sites.” (Lipschultz, 2020). For the work environment, I engage my audience by announcing my upcoming talks in the U.S. and around the world, past and previous events, newly published articles, and most importantly the news about my published books and book signings events. In addition, I share news about my participation in national and international writer and scholar’s conferences (please see links below).
University of Berkeley
University of Maryland
“Regardless of which specific platforms grow or wane, social media communication ushered in a fundamental shift from one-way mass media to the interactivity of engagement within media audiences.” (Lipschultz, 2020). In order to be productive on social media and create a constructive impact one should take into consideration the following parameters, “the social media honey- comb model and the seven constructs of identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputations and sharing to outline how social media presents challenges for researchers and to discuss their usefulness for advancing our understanding of community relations, corporate social responsibility and political strategy and marketing, among others” (Kietzmann, Silvestre, McCarthy, & Pitt, 2012). This application is useful if writers such as me can sell their books and can have direct communication with their readers. They can also keep their publishing rights without using a third party.
Unhappily, the blog readers are diminishing after the emergence of other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These more recent platforms are reaching billions of people across the world. The professional content and tools available in blogs such as having photos, videos, and link insertion that the bloggers can use on their page, is already available on Facebook with more options and no obstructions for non-English writers. For example, when I wrote in Persian on my previous blog, I had a lot of obstacles for the right to left writing, punctuation issues (putting comma or point middle or end of the sentence) because the blog wasn’t designed for foreign language use. After a while, the blog team upgraded but wasn’t able to reach larger audiences and compete with other more attractive platforms. One of the reasons that I find all of those platforms useful is that we can have a smart sometimes to the extent possible a two-way communication. "This indicates publics are more likely to make comments on organizational message strategies that are based on two-way symmetry, such as fostering dialogue, giving recognition to donors for support, using direct messages to publics with or without tags, compared to public information or two-way asymmetry communication." (Cho, Schweickart, & Haase, 2014).
PS: Here is the link to Iroon.com that published this article.
References:
Lipschultz, J. (2020). Social media communication: Concepts, practices, data, law and ethics. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Communication-Concepts-Practices/dp/1138776459
Kietzmann, J., Silvestre, B., McCarthy, I., & Pitt, L. (2012). Unpacking the social media phenomenon: Towards a research agenda. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2519363
Cho, M., Schweickart, T., & Haase, A. (2014, April 04). Public engagement with nonprofit organizations on facebook. Retrieved March 29, 2021, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0363811114000241
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