As new social media channels emerge, here are the ones bitternepark.info is currently both regularly posting to, and testing.
While the social media landscape explodes with new options, fragmentation makes strategic selection crucial. Here's a breakdown of our current social media presence:
Facebook & Twitter (X)
We've been on Facebook and what was Twitter for a long time, with in relative terms a good number of followers and a strong presence in the city. We continue to post to both very regularly - although we don't post all our stories and listings to either. Both of these platforms still have very large user bases.
But it's increasingly difficult to reach even those who have chosen to follow us, especially on Facebook, as Meta's algorithm seems to de-prioritise news sites these days. And it's possible this de-prioritisation of news will increase in the future. That's why 'shares' and 'likes' of our stories are particularly appreciated at the moment, as they help increase reach.
Mastodon
We're also currently posting most of our stories to Mastodon. It's a bit like Twitter but a decentralised community which enjoys a reputation for being friendlier. You can find us here, and learn more about signing up here.
Instagram
We post a few pics once in a while to our Instagram account (as we also do to Masto), but it's not so great for what we do as it doesn't easily allow links to specific stories. Nonetheless if you're on Insta we'd love to see you there, so give us a follow.
Bluesky
Most recently we've signed up to newcomer Bluesky, at this stage more to put down a marker and to check the lie of the land, rather than to post too much. But if you're one of the circa 2 million users on this network (Twitter is said to have well over 300m!), which looks very similar indeed to Twitter (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sits on the board), feel free to give us a follow - you'll be joining the two who, at the time of writing, already do!
Threads
Threads is yet another social media platform launched by Meta in July 2023 that focuses on text-based conversations similar to Twitter. Meta also owns Facebook and Instagram. Threads holds out the possibility of interoperability with other platformds such as Mastodon and content management system Wordpress (not that we use Wordpress), although this hasn't yet been realised.
According to Google's AI tool Gemini, as of July 2023, "While Threads reported around 13 million daily active users, X had a staggering 106 million daily active users on the Android platform alone.This indicates that X has roughly 8 times the number of daily active users compared to Threads." We're holding off on Threads due its small user base, to also being owned by Meta, its lack of scheduling tool support, and its mobile focus.
It does take a lot of time to maintain a presence across different platforms, even using scheduling tools (which generally cost), so we have to be selective and look at what works and where to invest what is very limited time and budget.
That's our glimpse into how we're currently using social media, and perhaps we'll see you on one of the networks.
But as ever, if you want to avoid 'algorithmic throttling' and read all our stories, the best thing is to visit our website.
Of course, staying tuned to our email digest is also a smart move. And if you tell a friend about it, our eternal gratitude will be yours!
See you ... in lots of places!
Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash
Updated 7/3/23 with section on Threads, and other slight edits