The Socks philosophy of Social Media Interaction

image:www.nanfangsocks.com

Sitokisi!!!! A few people know what this is, however a small community of bloggers are well acquainted with it! Sitokisi or socks was the habit of bloggers wanting to claim the first comment on a new blog post by a person they were following. Even though there was a scramble for sitokisi, eventually, the post was read and comments were made. Even in it's comic nature there are lessons we can take from it in terms of pushing our social media engagement further on whatever platform.

Blogging was more or less the first form of social media engagement I encountered. It meant that for you to get comments on your own blog, you needed to follow other bloggers and comment. In a way, it was a simple form of community. There were no shortcuts to getting read. You needed to create interest by first showing your presence in other people's work.

Thereafter, you were part of community.

In a way, it should be the same for social media. Engagement. Not a mere following/ following back and then continuing with your posts and ignoring the people following you and their posts. Sitokisi means we need to say something, get involved and not be mere robots posting. The difference between bots and people is that bots get on a platform, follow, post and never do anything after that. They might get a like from you, an RT but they will never do the same.

So whether it is Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook etc.... the key is actually engaging. It is a lot of work but that doesn't mean it should not be fun too!