What is in Kelvin's Head?

How twitter and facebook can save your blog rather than kill it

10/10/2014
One of the things that anyone keeping a blog must be aware of at the moment is that things are not the same as they were. At one time you simply had to put up something even vaguely interesting and people all over the world would read and comment. Blogging was like the Wild West – for the attention seeker there was gold to be mined her.

I remember Mother Ruth saying to me before she started blogging, “All you have to do is ask ‘Who teaches cats yoga?’ and you’ve an audience”. If you could supply an entertaining picture of the cat in question, you were immediately set to dominate the blogging world.

Nowadays, things are more difficult. One-liners like that have long since moved over to social media. Facebook and twitter are a more appropriate place for compact wit and if you are initially trying to reach friends and friends of friends then the social media platforms are the way to go. It is, to a large extent, what they are for.

I made a prediction in one of my new year posts that the number of active bloggers would decrease but the influence of those who remain blogging would continue to increase. I still think that is true and I can see when I look through my blog feeds in a morning that there really are far fewer people making the effort. The fad has past but there are some who continue. Those who continue tend to be those who have learned to harness social media and quite often those who have given up have simply moved to social media instead. Perhaps blogging gave them connections with people that they are happy to retain in a different way.

For some people, starting a blog is about keeping up with those whom you know. For others it is like taking a few tentative steps into the limelight and tottering onto a very public stage. It is the latter type of bloggers who are persisting and they have even greater potential now to become global voices. The blogosphere is becoming free of some of the clutter. Now the cat pictures have moved to facebook and twitter, maybe posts with more substantial thinking matter more.

It is very obvious that quick witty thoughts are going on social media whereas blogs are now being used for more substantial thinking. Successful blogs these days quite often seem to have fewer posts than they once would have done but the posts themselves are more substantial.

Who would have guessed that blogging would have reinvigorated the essay as a writing style?

Anyway, it seems to me that you can write as much as you like these days, if you are not engaging on social media then you are unlikely to see many readers.

Here’s how to make social media work for you and keep the readers flowing in.
- Post links to your latest blog entry on twitter and facebook (it isn’t rocket science, that’s where your readers are).
- Note the plural! – Post a link in the morning to get the morning audience, one in the afternoon (for when America is waking up, if you are in Europe) and another one later in the day.
- Don’t be ashamed to work for your audience.
- Remember that email is a form of social media and offer people the chance to sign up to receive your posts. This way of reading blogs is growing.
- Remember to provide an RSS feed for those who receive blogs that way. (For readers, I recommend Feedly now that Google Reader is long gone).
- A witty link on twitter that gets retweeted is the gold you are chasing
- A photo of a cat doing yoga is never wrong.
- Oh and one last thing. Why do you think it is important to ask questions on a blog?
Picture credit – Mel on Flickr Copyright (CC BY-ND 2.0)

4 responses to “To be an Episcopalian is not to be respectable”

Eamonn

23/08/2017

Superb take on this difficult story from Matthew, and the other stories of Jonathan Daniels and Robin Angus. Thank you.

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Philip Almond

23/08/2017

But Mark records Jesus as saying, ‘Permit first to be satisfied the children;for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to the dogs to throw[it]’. That word ‘first’ tells us that Jesus already knows that there will be a ‘second’, that his ministry will extend beyond the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

These words of Jesus also suggest that ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of [the] house of Israel’ refers to this phase of his ministry.

Also, if the following incidents were earlier in time than the incident of the healing of the woman’s daughter, your

‘In that moment, she seems to know his mission to save the whole world considerably better than he did. And she changes him. He thinks again’.

is disproved.

Luke’s account (chapter 4) of the visit to Nazareth, because Jesus’ reference to Naaman and the widow of Sidon suggest that he was aware that his mission, like that of Elijah and Elisha, would extend beyond the covenant people.
Matthew’s account (chapter 8) of the healing of the centurion’s servant, giving rise to Jesus’ ‘And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
Jesus’ explanation (Matthew 13) of the parable of the tares of the field: the one sowing the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world (my emphasis); the good seed are the sons of the kingdom; the tares are the sons of the evil one.

What are your reasons for being sure that these three events are later in time than the healing of the woman’s daughter?

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Martin Reynolds

23/08/2017

We do not live for the poor, we do not live with the poor, we do not identify with the poor.
We wear silk vestment adorn ourselves with elegant titles and eat at the best tables and are welcome in the highest corridors of power.

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Sarah Lawton

29/11/2017

Kelvin, thank you for your email today pointing back to this sermon. I appreciate your pointing to Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who was a friend of my parents. My mother always felt she had a part in his death, I think, because she was one of the organizers of the seminary group that responded to the Rev. Dr. King’s call for church leaders to go to Selma, and it was she who persuaded Jon to go. One of her last acts on this Earth was to help put his name on our Church’s calendar (first reading, General Convention 1991). But then, we are baptized into Christ and therefore each other, which is I think what you are saying in this sermon. That means we are implicated in the ills of this world but also share in Jon’s martyrdom. We live in the hope of resurrection but the way there is through the utter scandal of the cross. Jon in his latter months of life rejected theologies of complacency and also self-righteousness as he committed himself to a ministry of presence.

Martin Reynolds, there is no question our particular church tradition has some history with money and power. My own little congregation identifies strongly with the poor, the folks sleeping rough right outside our doors, and the immigrant families of our neighborhood. Our Sunday services can be a little chaotic as a consequence of the varieties of folks in various states of mind who come on a Sunday, but our spiritual life as a congregation is pretty good; it honestly feels like a gift to be there in the communion circle. We’re a longtime LGBT congregation, so I think it’s part of who we are to have economic diversity and also a rejection of traditional social masks. We’re also deeply rooted in prayer, which is how we got through worst of the AIDS years and all the funerals.

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