From working on the Ryan Meili leadership campaigns, mostly in the area of social media plus my own personal interest in the topic, I know some of the “rules” about what makes tweets/Facebook posts successful.
But ultimately, human nature is a funny thing and no one can truly predict what will make a tweet go viral (just like I always say about financial advisors – if they could actually predict the markets, they likely wouldn’t be working in a 9-5 day job!)
Anyhow, I had that experience yesterday when a tweet about how libraries should still be open (which turned out to have been shared by a bot that retweets stuff submitted to it anonymously) inspired me to dash off a reply where I shared a point I’ve made regularly over the years, long before the COVID-19 crisis about how frustrating it is when I see librarians who act as if the library is as important as fire, police and hospitals.
It really depends on how you define “essential” as I know the library feels like that for many of our patrons who use us for all of their Internet access, their entertainment needs, help finding jobs or even just a large part of their social interactions.
But for my purposes, I see the distinction as being between those things that are essential because they are life & death matters (which is why I put a subsequent tweet – also well-received) saying that there are times when a library can be truly essential (again, I didn’t explain in the limited characters world of Twitter but meaning times when the library could play a part in life and death situations – heat waves, certain natural disasters, power outages, even times of civil unrest.)
Anyhow, since I’m self-isolating, it was nice to feel that connection with the rest of the world as my phone kept buzzing all day with “Likes” and “Retweets” (though I’m also conscious that probably part of the reason my tweet got so much attention was because so many others were at home too!) 😉
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