CDG Interactive Blog

I just returned from two weeks out of the office, and like my fellow author Heidi, I went through a social media detox while I was away. However, while hers was voluntary, mine was more imposed – I was in the countryside of Egypt volunteering with Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program.

While our first hotel in Cairo had a business center, the cost of Internet access prohibited more than a brief Facebook status update to let friends and family know that I was on the ground safely.

My cell phone plan doesn’t have international access (some others did), but everyone tried to avoid using them after the initial arrival messages were delivered. Particularly outside the main cities, everyone in Egypt carries cell phones as their main form of communication since home phones aren’t the norm. (Imagine stringing phone lines across the desert!)

Since I wouldn’t be able to upload my pictures during the trip, at the end of each day I reviewed the pictures I’d taken and  deleted any that didn’t make the cut since I didn’t want to find myself with a suddenly full memory card at the Pyramids or while taking my one and only camel ride.

About halfway through our trip, one of the group members asked, “How are we going to share pictures with each other?”

Immediately I suggested Flickr, saying that as long as we all used an agreed-upon tag, it would be very easy to find all the photos. The difference between me and some of my fellow volunteers quickly became apparent as I was immediately designated as being in charge of the photos, some even deciding it would be easier to send me their cameras. (I’m still hoping they were joking.)

It was a reminder that what’s become a matter of course for me, along with regularTwitter updates and automatically reaching for Google, IMDB or iTunes to answer a question isn’t everyone’s first reflex. And that's something we need to keep in mind every day  - where is our audience, and what's a normal place to find them? It might not always be a Facebook ad or a Twitter post - it could be that time, energy and money is better spent on a flyer campaign or perhaps an event sponsorship that's meaningful to your core audience.

On the other hand, Sharif, our local team leader, happily showed me pictures of his wedding and his six-month old son on his camera phone, so in some ways, it was just like home.