By: Steph Yiu
Life

Dear Evelyn: Please Use WordPress?

I’d love for the world to meet my friend Evelyn. She’s probably one of the most interesting people I know. Since I met her in dance class about 4 years ago, she’s gone on to wear funny hats, become a speechwriter at the White House, eat some amazing granola, have her first kiss at her wedding, and teach me that people in Cambridge should be called Cantabrigians.

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Several times a week, Evelyn posts the most interesting things on Facebook, paired with witty (and brutally honest) commentary. She’s like my personal version of Dave Pell. She’s an insanely smart person who voraciously consumes news and decides what her friends need to read.

Last night at dinner, I learned that before Evelyn posts anything on Facebook, she asks herself five questions:

  1. Will this change people’s minds or help my friends to think differently?
  2. Is this different from what other people have posted? (She likes to be contrarian)
  3. Will this inform my friends about a population they do not normally encounter?
  4. Would five out of ten of my friends be interested in reading this?
  5. Is this from a credible news source with primary source data?

Sigh. If only journalists questioned themselves this intensely before passing along information! I love reading her stuff. She makes me smarter. And the debates on her comment threads are amazing.

But here’s the problem. I don’t check Facebook anymore, so I don’t see her updates. They’re private posts, so I can’t subscribe via RSS. I thought about having IFTTT email me when she posts, but there isn’t a trigger for when a friend updates. And then I realized that Evelyn should really be posting to WordPress.

Evelyn! I said at dinner. Here are five reasons you should be posting on WordPress.

  1. Selfishly: I want to read your posts and be able to subscribe to them!
  2. But really, for humanity: The world wants to read your posts, they will love them!
  3. And help us sift: Facebook posts aren’t searchable or archivable. You put so much work into every post, what if you wanted to find all the articles you’ve shared on religion? Or, what if you wanted to find something you posted two years ago (I know you use Timehop)? This is really tough to do on Facebook, but WordPress is searchable and lets you create a tagged archive.
  4. Never lose your work: You’ll never be able to export your content from Facebook. So if you quit, or they change their site dramatically, all your content will be lost. With WordPress, the content is yours to export, migrate, manipulate, and take with you wherever you go.
  5. Share even more: I know. People won’t check your blog like they check Facebook. But, you can syndicate your WordPress posts back to Facebook or Twitter or email or anywhere else with IFTTT…

So please. Share with the world (and me!) your fascinating posts. Use WordPress. :)