What just happened?
As a
writer, I try and interact on social media as much as I can, not least to
promote my books. I have three main blogs - one on church history, one on the
current revival in Leicester and my general blog. If I add up the number of ‘hits'
to these sites and to my earlier versions they come to around 500,000 over a twenty
year period.
On Monday,
I posted a small piece on the World Cup on Facebook. I was intrigued by the
picture of the Curaçao and German players praying together after the match. Copying
the picture from another post, I added some commentary, including quotes from
Christian footballers and the amazing story of goalkeeper Alisson Becker's swimming
pool being turned into a baptistry for other footballers.
I began to
notice that quite a few of the ‘likes’ were from people who were not directly
my friends on Facebook. I assumed they were friends of friends. But then
something amazing began to happen - the number of hits on my post began to grow
exponentially. My daughter in South Africa sent me a text, telling me to look
at what was happening.
As I write this, there have been over 91,000 hits
on my post, with nearly 3,000 ‘likes', 150 comments and 250 ‘reposts’. Facebook
tells me that this post is getting 33,907% more views than my typical posts! All
in three days. What just happened?
To be
honest, I have no real idea. Facebook doesn't seem to allow me to look at
whoever it is that is reposting, but my guess is that among those 250, there
are one or two Christian footballers, and it is this that has caused the
interest in the post.
I love
interacting with others. I love communicating. I love telling stories. And I'm
grateful that they are read.
