Today, we are expanding our communication tool box and launching @SCCampaign on Twitter, so that we can continue to make online connections with others in the field, and also to share our news about teen pregnancy prevention work, research and events.As a self-proclaimed social media junkie, one of the reasons I'm excited about this is that I love to know about things in real time. Just yesterday, Twitter helped me figure out why my cubicle was wobbling. After working in the little graduate assistant closet - ahem, office - with three other people for the last year, I’m used to a variety of ways we can annoy one another in such close quarters.
I peeked around the partition to see what my officemate was doing to cause the mini-disturbance, only to realize it wasn't her moving our desks. She had been wondering the same thing about me! Perplexed, I tweeted that I thought our office building was shaking. Seconds later, I saw messages from friends up and down the East Coast who had experienced the same thing.
As my less social media-addicted coworkers started coming out into the hall to figure out what was happening, I already knew the shaking we felt was probably related to the earthquake reported by my friends who lived states away. And, OK, I’ll admit that updating your status online during a probable natural disaster isn’t the safest way to take action, but in this scenario it helped the news spread literally in an instant.
As I saw yesterday, staying connected not only gives you bragging rights about being the first to know what’s happening, but it also makes it easier to see at a glance what is going on collectively. So, follow @SCCampaign on Twitter (and Facebook!) to stay up-to-date!
- Elizabeth Benfield is a graduate assistant from the USC Arnold School of Public Health. She also tweets for CarolinaTeenHealth.com at @TeenHealthSC. E-mail her at ebenfield@teenpregnancysc.org.
No comments:
Post a Comment