Social Media School: Social Media Tips

Day 19: Write an Opin­ion Post

Wel­come to Day 19 of the chal­lenge, ladies!
Today’s task is to write an opin­ion post.  Sim­ply put, opin­ions get more clicks.  Maybe the opin­ion is out­ra­geous and you’ll get a lot of click through from peo­ple both sup­port­ing and oppos­ing your view.  Or per­haps your opin­ion isn’t very con­tro­ver­sial at all, but your author­ity on the mat­ter can help influ­ence oth­ers.  It’s impor­tant to let out your opin­ion every once in a while, lest you leave your read­ers won­der­ing if you’re a real person.

Ques­tions!

1. Have you writ­ten opin­ion posts in the past? (LINKS!)  If so, do you notice a dif­fer­ence in the way your writ­ers respond to these posts?

I have avoid opin­ions in my posts because my read­ers range in age and opinions

2. Do you tend to like read­ing opin­ion posts, or do they make you uncomfortable?

I do like read­ing the ones based on facts

Improve your Blog or Web­site with

31 Days to Build a Bet­ter Blog

Writ­ing opin­ions depends on what your job is or whom might be read­ing the opin­ion. Tak­ing a risk here in writ­ing an opin­ion piece. Rants as we have seen are recorded and aired on ExtraTV or make the top News Sta­tions. Writ­ing respect­fully and pro­fes­sion­ally does have a place. Remem­ber Debate Club or Debat­ing Teams. Find­ing the right words and exe­cu­tion. News­pa­pers are no longer the only places for opin­ion pieces.

Tonight a link to an arti­cle about women in Tech appeared on my Face­book page with the per­son post­ing it say­ing she was going to write. Techcrunch author wrote an opin­ion piece about why few women in Tech can’t blame men. Both opin­ion pieces try to address how Tech has tried to get women involved in male dom­i­nated fields.

Is it only Tech? Look at Con­gress. Dom­i­nated by Men. Higher paid than huge per­cent­age of their constituents.

This is sim­i­lar to the same argu­ments many years ago about Women in male dom­i­nated fields. Let me tell you a per­sonal story, laced with some opin­ions about my jour­ney though Tech and back. At one time, I could not get a Draft­ing job in some com­pa­nies because it was a male dom­i­nated field. Specif­i­cally was turned down. A friend had brought my draw­ings into his com­pany and his boss was excited and wanted to hire me until he found out I was a woman. It was not to be.

I found many jobs in Draft­ing at other com­pa­nies. Even­tu­ally I changed fields. My next male dom­i­nated field was Com­puter Field Ser­vice repair. This was a good pay­ing job and to my advan­tage Affir­ma­tive Action opened the door because they were look­ing for women. I loved ham­mers, screw dri­vers, and work­ing with machines. It was a fun job for me.

Most peo­ple were open to hav­ing a female field engi­neer but not all. There were few to share the unusual expe­ri­ence with and unfor­tu­nately some got into the job but did not enjoy the mechan­i­cal parts and work­ings of the com­put­ers as I did. I was excel­lent at com­puter repair but got stumped at times. One thing that hap­pens when you are stumped, you get better.

Even­tu­ally as things got auto­mated and engi­neer­ing jobs were shipped over­seas or peo­ple from other coun­tries were brought here to do the same jobs, we had to move on. How do you encour­age young peo­ple to study engi­neer­ing, math, or sci­ence when we have shipped most of those jobs to other peoples?

Media reports there is a short­age because that is what CEO’s want peo­ple to think yet I saw many who wanted those jobs or were train­ing their replace­ments who were here on J1 visas or H1B visas to take those jobs or take them back overseas.

Is or was there really a shortage?

I don’t think so.

It is a mes­sage being spread while the truth lies beneath. Com­pa­nies don’t want to pay Health Care, Vaca­tion, Hol­i­days, or other ben­e­fits which are higher for those who live here while oth­ers are cov­ered by their home com­pa­nies or their coun­tries. It is cheaper for com­pa­nies to do busi­ness else­where so they do. They have an oblig­a­tion to their share­hold­ers to make them as much money as they can. I remem­ber in the 90’s how stocks would rise as peo­ple were laid off.

Cheers would go up.

The same thing is hap­pen­ing again. Health Care cost have con­tin­ued to expo­nen­tially rise above afford­able so com­pa­nies are send­ing more jobs else­where or vir­tu­ally out­sourc­ing to peo­ple who don’t need Ben­e­fits or won’t get them. Now that peo­ple don’t have the hous­ing ATM to fund their spend­ing they have stopped. Spend­ing is what fuels our cur­rent cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem. With­out pay­checks or Tech jobs, peo­ple are not buying.

Cheers still go up when peo­ple are laid off.

Would you encour­age any­one to go into Tech if you knew they could not get a job here. Not likely. YET tech jobs and male dom­i­nated fields con­tinue to be the higher pay­ing fields. The mes­sages being put out by Cor­po­ra­tions and Media are not nec­es­sar­ily the truth. Women are inter­ested. No one is listening.

Find your own niche. Know this as Truth. Male dom­i­nated fields pay more. Find one you like. Make your next career move into a Male dom­i­nated Field.

This is where Blog­gers, Inter­net, and online come into play. Peo­ple are flock­ing to Social Media and the Inter­net. There is inter­est in Tech­nol­ogy and busi­ness. Maybe these Ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist or other main­stream places need to look in other places. Hav­ing worked recently with women work­ing a 31 Day chal­lenge to Build a Bet­ter Blog, I found a goodly num­ber to be tech­ni­cal or will­ing to learn and help oth­ers learn. They are on a mis­sion. It may not be main­stream but it is build­ing. Alter­na­tive ways of earn­ing income are dri­ving peo­ple to build the skills they need.

Make your next job move into a Male dom­i­nated field or at least one you have a pas­sion for doing.

Resources

1. http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2010/08/27/addressing-the-lack-of-women-leading-tech-start-ups/
2. http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/28/women-in-tech-stop-blaming-me/
3. Day 19 Write an Opin­ion post Task on Dar­ren Rowse Blog site
   • 2010 August Retrieved from Problogger.net Day 19 Forum Posts Day 19