Before the year turned, I put up the following image on my Facebook page so that I could write a great blog post about my 35-Book Goodreads challenge I did in 2016.
Four of my friends, all people I don’t see very often at all, sent me some really insightful questions. Answering them was a lot of fun, and gave me great content for my personal blog. When I published it, I got to tag those friends so they could see my answers. This back and forth interaction created a community within my newsfeed.
Even more awesome, one of those friends, who also did a Goodreads challenge, took the idea to do for his own blog! Of course, I got to ask him a bunch of questions, which he happily answered. It created a conversation between us that we probably wouldn’t have had. I realized that while we both read lots of non-fiction, my heart is in fiction. Meanwhile, his is 100% in non-fiction. This taught me that while I use reading as a form of pure entertainment and joy, he uses it to learn and develop. Yet we both love books.
We have talked before on this blog about how Dance Floor Theory works online, and not just in person. Treat social media as a way to actually interact with people. No matter their number on your Facebook feed “dance floor”, you create new ways to connect. That means not only connecting yourself to others, but also others to each other.
I would call my little social experiment a “blender event.” This is because the image and question created a pattern interrupt from the normal stream of selfies that my friends might see. Therefore, they chose to get engaged with the post.
I am so glad it worked!
