Just as I have done with Twitter and Instagram, I have now created a separate Facebook profile for my professional use. Feel free to Friend Me.
Category Archives: Communication
On Instagram
It was almost a year ago that I began to use Instagram for professional purposes, using a separate account from my personal one. I use separate accounts for the same reason that I have separate Twitter accounts for my personal use and professional use: separating out my “brand identities” (for lack of a better term). And, yes, it is unfortunate that RabbiDrew was already taken, so I ended up going with RebDrew 😦
While I know that some rabbis maintain just one twitter account, merging their identities, as it were, in order to enable their voice to get out to a broader audience, rather than splitting up their audience (and obligating them to understand the different “personalities”), I strongly believe that I broadcast different content. For my personal accounts, it’s about what I’m doing, what I’m interested in, about my children, etc. For my professional accounts, it’s about my professional activities, promoting other groups, and other work-related matters.
I decided to write about my professional Instagramming, since I realized that today’s #ThrowBackThursday picture was my third within a month, having posted one three weeks ago and my first four weeks ago. While in my first year (in which I’ve posted ninety pictures thus far), it only occurred to me a month ago while I was sending out a Beach Hillel #TBT picture (I’ve been sending out Beach Hillel’s Instagram photos this summer) that I could utilize my Instagram account like any other Jewish brand should, with the use of #TBT pictures.
With the greater attention that pictures garner on Facebook than just text, I can also send my Instagram pictures over to my Facebook page. Plus, it is very easy for people to browse pictures and does not require much (any?) prior knowledge for understanding what’s going on, so it’s a very low barrier for engaging people.
No More Newsletters, Per Se: Concerning Communications
Since January 2010, I have been putting out newsletters for my job (with Southern California Jewish Student Services and also Southern California Jewish Young Adult Enrichment), however, I have recently realized that I should discontinue doing so. While attending the 2013 Hillel Institute, I realized that not that many people spend the time to read a double-sided 8.5×11 .pdfs I produce (even if some people read the printed copies, it’s still not enough). It just does not seem to make sense to me to continue spending as much time as I do on dealing with the layout of the newsletters, since it’s just a hassle that does not yield enough readership attention. While it did make sense when I was getting issues sponsored, it was worthwhile as a revenue-generator, it’s been a couple of years since I have consistently had it sponsored.
Although I will continue putting out monthly e-mails to communicate my activities, in lieu of linking to the online pdfs of the newsletters, I will be [doing what everyone else does:] linking to articles of content about the events, activities, etc.
In a related matter, I realized yesterday that although the newsletters were up on the SoCalJSS website for anyone to read to discover and get a sense of my activities with SoCalJSS (I started putting pages together for SoCalJYAE), there wasn’t an easy way to quickly discover with which activities SoCalJSS has been involved. So, I put together some pages to detail SoCalJSS’ activities with other organizations. While I need to further work on developing the content therein, at least they’re there 🙂