The assignment for the Zero to Hero Challenge for Day 18 is to ‘explore one or more social networks’.

Link the account to your blog and ‘create a strategy for how you’ll use it’. I have no idea what to do with that. Strategy??? WTH? I’m just fumbling along here…

OK, I have the little share buttons beneath every post so if anyone really likes something and would like to share it, there’s an easy way to do it. (hint, hint!!) 😉

I already have accounts at Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr and they are linked to this blog. You can see the feeds for them along the right side and the bottom of my home page.

The Facebook one just shows people who’ve liked my JP Friedman page instead of the actual feed. I don’t know why it only does that. I still haven’t figured out how to get the Facebook feed to work on here but maybe it’s better to just leave it the way it is.

My blog posts do show up on my Facebook page (most of the time). I do get some comments there, tho it surprises me I don’t get more. 😉

I have a LOT more interesting stuff showing up on my Facebook and Twitter feeds from all kinds of interesting people! I love to go on Facebook and catch up with all my old friends and sometimes I meet new friends through them, or even people who just happen to join in a discussion.

I think it’s a fantastic invention (social media) to keep people informed and interacting with each other, physical location is no barrier.

I post a lot of things to Facebook and Twitter when I don’t have much time to comment personally but still think something is interesting enough to pass along and I think people might get a kick out of it.

I also have accounts at Tumblr and Pinterest and they are also linked here (at least I see things from this blog showing up on my Tumblr feed).

I do also have a Linkedin account but I try to keep that one more focused on work and professional type things. I occasionally share something from my blog there but I’m more concerned about that site potentially harming my job prospects.

More and more places are checking out your online presence both before and during your employment there. I totally disagree with this practice! grrrrr!

I think it is completely wrong that your employer has anything to say about what you do on YOUR time! They pay you for a certain amount of work, they do NOT own you! They do NOT own one more second of your life than that time you are working for them and that they pay you for!

It’s bad enough that most of us are working for somebody else and can’t really do what we would prefer to be doing with our limited time here on this planet. It’s a real shame that our employers want to limit us even more than they already do. 🙁

My Linkedin account is actually where I have the most contacts and some great conversations. According to them, I have a few million people in my ‘network’. 🙂 Too bad I have to (self) censor myself on there in fear for my present and future employment prospects. It’s a real shame!