Tweet with me

Social media isn't scary, it's helpful. In the last several months I have crossed tweet-paths with hundreds of Catholic bloggers, Catholic tweeters, and pro-life activists. The deal is: you follow me, I'll follow you. With my new crop of Catholic followers I traipse on my merry Twitter way and expect we're making an impact.

I'm sure we're making some kind of impact, but I think it's time we make a deal, Catholic blogosphere. Billy Atwell wrote a great piece about the Christian effort in the social media world and I agree with him vehemently. Go read it and if you don't come back, that's okay.

Tweet me!

There are a LOT of Catholic blogs and we all seem to turn inward. These blogs are really great in many cases and I enjoy stumbling across new one after new one.

We get into a pattern of driving traffic, so we visit others' blogs, comment and then move on. We RT (retweet, for non-tweeters -- actually, "retweet" probably means nothing to you either... just know it's a compliment) and @ reply (again, compliment). There are a handful of blogs we read regularly, but the main objective seems to be attracting more people to our own site.

Billy points out that we need to create relationships in this social media realm. Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. Let me repeat: a REPUBLICAN (albeit pro-choice, etc) took a seat formerly held by a Kennedy. Whoa.

And yes, I believe we can give a lot of credit to social media and tweeters spreading the word about Coakey's slip of the tongue that Catholics just shouldn't work in health care. Ahh that fits so nicely in 140 characters: the absurdity of saying that to a state full of Irishmen came across in a short, sweet tweet.

I don't like that Brown is pro-choice and the party affiliation has nothing to do with my point: we should foster the same kind of movement among Catholic blogs. Pick ten or fifteen Twitter buddies at a time, click on their links, read the blog in its entirety, post it to Facebook, ask everyday Catholic questions in your blog like they do on The Practicing Catholic and other blogs, and don't be concerned with coming across as "too" Catholic on your social media forums.

We're in this for a reason and it's a pretty darn good one. Let's grab the torch and RUN!