I’ve developed a rhythm to my sharing of items of interest on social media. That includes, but is not at all limited to, my posts on this blog. I am on Facebook (where I have a page for my blog that you can find by searching for ReligionProf) and on Twitter (also as ReligionProf), as well as on LinkedIn and Instagram. I usually use Buffer to space out that sharing, so that it is not all happening just in concentrated bursts. There’s more than one reason for doing it that way. I expect that a sudden barrage of twenty new tweets all at once would annoy most people who follow me, and would result in you actually reading fewer of the tweets even if you weren’t annoyed. It is my understanding that Facebook in fact throttles back your reach if you post too frequently, and so that’s another reason for spacing things out.
But I don’t share precisely the same things in all those places. My blog posts go to all of them. But apart from that common thread, things diverge. First, directly on the blog in a blog post I will share
On Facebook, I share things that I think are particularly worthwhile, so much so that I think it is worth taking the time to quote from the post or article in question or comment on it in some way. On Twitter and LinkedIn I share almost all the same things that I do on Facebook, but also more. If something is even remotely interesting, I’ll send it out via these channels. This includes job openings, calls for papers, and things like that. I share the ones that are directly in my fields of interest, and thus also of interest to most academics I’m connected with, such as biblical studies and science fiction. On Twitter and LinkedIn I’ll happily share anything that I think someone I know might be interested in – peacemaking in South Asia, postcolonial expressions of religion in Africa, whatever. LinkedIn I consider to be a professional networking site, and so Twitter gets some more frivolous things that LinkedIn doesn’t. Of course, I research things that some people consider “frivolous” and thus the distinction is not always completely clear.
Twitter thus gets just about everything that I share – but because of the character limit, it gets headlines and no commentary. And so, if you can and want to, it probably makes sense to connect with me via more than one social media channel, assuming you are on multiple outlets yourself.
I should add that I also have a Facebook profile, and you’re welcome to connect with me there, but there I tend to post more personal comments, and don’t share social media content. Again, my reason for shifting my sharing to a blog page is that there were colleagues and relatives who wanted to stay connected with me, but not see the extensive number of posts from me in their feed. And so the ReligionProf Facebook page is the place to go for my social media sharing. But as I said, you’re welcome to connect with me both via the page and my profile.
Instagram hasn’t been mentioned much, because it is where I fairly infrequently share photos – mostly from events I attend, sometimes of beautiful scenery I happen to see on a walk.
I hope this guide to my social media presence helps you connect with me in a way that leads to you seeing the kinds of things you want to, and neither being inundated with much more than that, or missing out on the things that interest you. Let me know!
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