Why you need to be strategic on social media

If you are on social media, what you choose to post and react to becomes part of the perception of everyone who’s reading you. Your words matter to people who read your posts; if not, why are you bothering to post?

Any post you react to will be sent out to more people. So, choose what is worth it. 

We have a long way to go until November 5th. If your goal is to encourage people to care about what you care about, social media is one of the places to do that.

When you are on social media, you can save yourself time and stress by following this chart. It was designed for Black people, but it works for everyone.

Let me elaborate:

The Dos

1. Share the positive things.

I will add, check that what you are adding is true. Your credibility matters.

As I said last week, avoid memes that are personal insults and stick to those that are true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, and kind. The more inspiration you can come up with, the more you will energize people to stick with your wavelength.

This means reading a story, checking its authenticity, then re-posting it or another version of the same information.

2. Form rapid response groups

The idea of these groups is to keep positive posts going. Sometimes a group of negative people will come to a positive post and start flooding it with negative comments. You’ve all seen these. They can get pretty nasty. Someone posts that they got married, and haters start calling them homophobic names, or insulting their clothing.

When a member of the group spots a positive post where the comments have gotten toxic, they notify the group. Anyone in the group who has the time will then write a supportive comment related to the positive post. This drowns out the negative and keeps the message alive.

3. Make voting easy

Post helpful information about legal ways to register to vote. Help people navigate the process of registering or confirming their registration. It is important to help people protect their privacy during this process. There are a lot of scam voter registration sites popping up. Some people think they registered, but have not. The graphic posted above suggests I Will Vote to confirm your registration, get information about polling places, or to register.

I have been seeing posts that say something like “Check that your driver’s license is up to date.” This is simple and helpful advice. If someone has an expired ID, they may need to file a provisional ballot on November 5th. We have time to avoid that by reminding people now.

The Don’ts

1. Don’t help a harmful post to go viral

A key social media truth is that the more reactions and comments a post gets, the more it is sent out to more people. That’s how things go viral. If you are incensed by some negative post, be strategic if you plan to object to it. Getting into a multi-person comment battle will spread the negative post more.

2. Don’t amplify lies

When you share or comment on a post, it is seen by more people. Share posts that are consistent with your message. However, check that you are not sharing false information.

How to vet a post: Follow the links in the post. Check the organization, especially if they are asking for money. Don’t just read the headline and click “share.”

3. Don’t accept lies for yourself

When you read something online. Check it out, especially if your instincts tell you that it doesn’t pass the smell test. Googling it or going to a fact checking site will confirm whether something was really said or really happened. If it is not true, forget it. Really forget it; whether is it something positive said about something you care about or something negative said.

At this point, I am getting so cynical that I Google everything. For example, a friend posted that Mt Etna was erupting last week. I Googled it. There was a brief period of bright orange plumes of lava, then lots of smoke and ash. Of course, my friend’s post had the shooting lava. When you check news, look at the date and the source of the news item. In this case, I checked an eruption on August 4, 2024 and found BBC had video of it on August 4, 2024. Check! I know this happened. Not only that, but I found out that Mt. Etna has been erupting, on and off, for years. In the past twelve months, it has erupted five times. So, yes, it’s erupting, but it sort of isn’t news. The airport closed to clean up the ash. The eruption requires clean-up, but there was no news about anything other than how it affects tourists.  No discussion of injuries or property damage.

Were the news something that would make me angry (like so many things that will happen between now and November 5th), it would be good to get false stories out of my head ASAP. Checking gets rid of the ones that someone made up or exaggerated.