When Facebook became popular in Australia, I admit to being frivolous with my posts.
I was a novice when it came to understanding what was happening in the online world, to the potential value of ‘online content’.
I admit to posting about a sandwich I was eating.
More specifically:
(Name) is full after a fairly nice tuna sandwich.
Yep that was me: I was (Name).
I broke a cast-in-stone rule not to post about sandwiches on Facebook.
It’s arguable whether my posting was a mistake as such; perhaps more a social media faux pas. The author of the article didn’t ask me whether my Facebook Friends were actually interested in tuna sandwiches (which was all I posted; the others appear to be collected from his additional ‘Friend’ experiences) or if I’d like to explain why I thought that would be relevant to my audience. My guess is that a right-of-reply wouldn’t have made for an interesting article. 
The reason why I’m coming clean all these years later is that all of us, even those who are professionals working in social media or online content, have, at one time or another, had to learn about using new tools and (god forbid) make boo boos – especially in world that is as quickly evolving as social media.
My fateful post, rather than prompting me to shy away from social media, encouraged me to become more acquainted with it; spend more time understanding what its role was and what it could do to further our understanding of how people communicate online. I got over my sandwich post.
The moral of this post is to encourage all new-comers to social media (and anything else in the digital space) to learn from their experiments and experiences; learn from your sandwich post.
Don’t be frightened off by appearing to know nothing about a platform; don’t buy into social media fear – unless you dip your toe, have a go and get into it, you’ll spend your days haunted by your sandwich post, and miss out on the benefits of the growing digital world we live in.
AVM Consulting 