The Rainbow Connection: the Lovers, the Tweeters, and Me

My comments below are in response to Facebook's Never Lost video introducing users to a new Covid Support community for those who need help and those who can offer it. I love this video, as I, too, love peoples’ faces.

If you need help, or can offer it, visit our support hub: www.facebook.com/covidsupport

I’m about the furthest thing from a healthcare worker. No heroic actions here. Just following the same rules as everyone else, likely with much more privilege, which makes doing so relatively easy. But I am in the business of social media, and I have held my breath for two weeks to see if it would prove its critics right, or rise to the responsibility of its reach.

I am so pleased with the positive stories being shared, and the up-close-and-honest testimonials from individuals on the front lines who wouldn’t have taken a video of themselves even on their best day just two weeks earlier.

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When Pennsylvania first closed public schools then non-essential businesses, I put this graphic together to help clients make sense of how to respond online. Now, after three weeks, some tone-deaf and opportunist posts are starting to creep up and they stick out like sore thumbs. Continue to watch out for this in your own posting. If you are unsure how your message comes off, do the following:

  1. Read the post out loud to yourself again

  2. Read the post as if you were talking to a doctor

  3. Read the post as if you were talking to a janitor

  4. Read the post as if you were talking to a child

  5. Read the post as if it were a front page headline

  6. Ask yourself if you would call your oldest customer on the phone with the same update

  7. Ask yourself if you would call your newest customer on the phone with the same update

If you can picture ANY of those scenarios being awkward or misleading, then edit the message. Start by trying to cut the number of characters in half, we often say the wrong thing by simply saying too much.

After hearing the word “INDEFINITELY” on the news…

I am trying to make sense of some analytics I have seen on the social media accounts I manage. Engagement is up, down and sideways. The only sense I can make of it is that we’re not the same people we were last month, so why would our data look the same? Habits have changed so quickly and measuring anything right now is just weird.

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But I see rainbows in windows, nurses in tears, and masked grandparents with smiling eyes. I’ve always said the numbers don’t matter as much as you think. Your ‘likes’ were possibly on their way out anyway. I suspect if you could have more of one thing right now ‘likes’ wouldn’t even be in the top 15.

Please keep dancing with your kids on video. Please keep driving through your students’ neighborhoods. Please keep washing your hands. Please keep shopping small and eating local. Please keep sharing useful advice. Please keep touring zoos and museums. Please keep our newsfeeds positive. You’re all doing great!! 😘

Kate Kareha