Following yesterday morning’s excitable, if over-tired post, I decided the best use of my time was, clearly, to redesign the blog. There was some logic to it, since I see the blog becoming quite a key part of the new project, but mostly it was because I couldn’t really focus on anything work-related.
As part of the process, I figured it was about time to move the blog to its own server. Since migrating to olilewington.co.uk from my old blog about my transplant journey, I’ve used a masked-forwarder for the domain to hide the fact that I’ve been hosting it on the server of another of my websites.
To cut a very long (24 hour+) story short, the hosting company went all weird and ‘lost’ the domain, then when it reappeared it was still set up for the old site and the re-direct didn’t work and I’d copied the wrong database over. Deep breath.
In the end, though, it was Twitter that came to my rescue, providing as it did a HUGE volume of helpful responses from my various tech-savvy followers and, eventually, Mike Busson managed to help me get it all squared away.
The whole experience just goes to illustrate what the true power of social media is: helping people.
By offering practical advice and solutions – as was the case with my issues – supporting people having a hard day, celebrating your friends’ successes or RTing people’s good causes or crowdfunding campaigns, you are doing things for other people and forming an active part of a community.
Engagement and involvement is the ultimate key to getting the most not just from social media, but life itself. Only by being willing to give to others will you find others willing to give back.
So next time you’re asking people for a ReTweet, or encouraging people to click on the ‘Share’ buttons on your blog (did you pick up the subliminal message in there?), stop for a second and ask yourself: when was the last time I did this for someone else? What have I given in order for others to give back?
Call it Social Media Karma. Or SMarma. If that didn’t sound so much like smug and smarmy…