What to do with Facebook?

I barely use Facebook for personal use. I haven’t posted anything in over a year and I only log on occasionally. I don’t like it that much and if it weren’t such a good time waster, I probably wouldn’t use it. But as a journalism student, I guess I’m going to have to get used to it.

It seems every person and business has a Facebook page. Many large enterprises have a social media director or a team of public relations people who deal only with social media. I met the CSU social media director and from what I can tell, she makes a few posts a day and takes some pictures to go with her posts. I know there is much more to it than that, but it seems like a very simple and unsatisfying job.

But as I said, it looks like I’m going to have to get used to it, so maybe I should start considering how and why to use it. You’d think that businesses would use social media sites simply to appeal to young people. But it seems every teenager, their mother and their grandmother is on Facebook.Of  Internet users aged 18-29, 83 percent use Facebook, but 52 percent of 50-64 year old internet users Facebook too (PEW Institute) .  As these younger generations grow up, social media will continue to have to cater to older audiences even more.

Right now, many small businesses use Facebook as their primary website. While I think it’s a great idea to have a Facebook page, especially as a small business, there are plenty of easy ways to make a company website without making Facebook the primary source of company information. Though I don’t use Facebook much, I do get updates from small breweries and other small businesses in the area and will often check them for information on what’s new before I go.

Bigger businesses use it too.  Like company websites, some of them are for separate marketing campaigns, like events or contests, while companies also have company-wide or brand wide Facebook pages. Separating the pages out seems to be very successful. If you’re Coca-Cola and many of your customers are actually obsessed with Sprite, they probably won’t “like” Coke.

So now I have to set up a Facebook page for a literary magazine and figure out what I should post. Mind you, I haven’t written a post in several years. For them, most things come down to the calendar. When the deadlines are, when the magazine comes out, when certain events or meetings are taking place. Facebook has the advantage of being very timely. I don’t see posts about something from 2 weeks ago. I know what’s going on now. For that reason, using Facebook posts as a way to keep those online updated on what is going in the next few days can be a very effective use. That is a primary goal I will use Facebook for.

Screencasts: A great teaching tool

I fell in love with screencasts two years ago. I was taking a introductory journalism class that was meant to teach students how to use several programs in Adobe Suite. At the time, the school had access to a website called Lynda.com where students could go online, select a video and learn how to use the program through screencast tutorials. It was a blast to use and I learned so much more going through the videos at my own pace than I would have had I been expected to pay attention to a teacher during labs. 

The screencast made learning new programs easier because I could watch exactly how they were doing things and I could pause and go back if I didn’t understand something. It made learning new programs less complicated and I got a lot out of the class because of that. 

Technical companies can use screencasts to create tutorials on a variety of subjects on their websites. This tool can be used as a way to introduce new users to programs, teach users how to use them and aid in troubleshooting issues.  There are negatives though. Screencasts can be time consuming to watch and don’t have the portability other learning tools can have.

Good luck creating your screencasts!

For tips on how to create a screencast, visit Smashing Magazine’s Screencasting: How To Start, Tools and Guidelines.

Expense of an App

Since I’m going to create an app for my class project, I wanted to do a bit of research on how this process might work and what the cost would be to submit an app to the different app stores. It seems you don’t have to be a programmer to make an app anymore.

There are lots of free online sites that will allow you to create an app for free. According to Roger Cheng, using the app creator tool is intuitive and much like creating a Wordpress, website or other simple online creation tool (“How to build your own app for free”).  

For a time, the app and mobile website tool Conduit was allowing people to create and submit apps for free.  However it seems that deal has passed and you can now do the basic app and submit on your own; pay $39 a month for the Gold plan or pay $99 a month for the Platinum plan.  It seems to be a good deal since it creates both a mobile website and app and will submit your app to multiple platforms for you.

It turns out submitting your own app can be relatively expensive. Apple charges a one-time fee of $99 to submit apps on their mobile store (How to develop a simple Iphone app and submit it to Itunes). It costs $25 dollars to submit an app on the android store (How to submit an app to the Android market). This can get relatively expensive for a small business or non-profit, especially to put an app on multiple platforms.

It still seems like creating an app would be a good investment for most businesses. It is just important to consider that the upfront cost can be expensive for smaller businesses.

Blogging for everyday

In “What do the best corporate blogs do well,” Arik Hanson points to several corporate blogs have been successful in developing a community around the company. One of my favorites that Hanson talked about was Whole Foods. When I think of a corporate blog, I think of a blog from highly technical or complex businesses. Typically I see them in industries like technology.

I have been on the Whole Foods  blog before, but didn’t actually recognize it as a blog. Hanson points to how the blog deals with diverse subjects, which allows the company to attract attention from various stakeholders. Like Hanson states, the whole foods blog deals with subjects like sustainable technology, recipes, food and much more.

  Whole Foods is a unique grocery store because it is part of a sustainable organic food movement. The blog topics go easily with this business plan. It’s impressive for a grocery store to have a successful blog. Buying groceries is such a regular task; it’s hard to bring a community around such an ordinary activity, but Whole Foods has done it successfully.I find myself using the blog to get information frequently.

One thing that seems to have been used in conjunction with corporate blogs for consumers of everyday products is Pinterest. Things like the recipes and information Whole Foods posts on their site spread quickly on Pinterest. It seems blogging can be successful for everyday products and Pinterest’s can be a way to bring new audiences to an existing blog.

No Foursquare for me

Companies typically use Foursquare as a way to market themselves by offering deals and informing customers of events and updates. Foursquare allows users to look for a place to shop, eat or visit based on friend recommendations. It also allows users to comment and recommend businesses and locations.  Because of this, Foursquare is a great way for businesses to use location marketing to bring new customers in and reward loyal ones.

That being said, I think Foursquare may not be the best investment for most businesses.

I won’t lie, I don’t get it. When working on this post, the first thing I searched was “who uses Foursquare.” I still don’t know the answer to that. I don’t use it. I don’t have any friends who use it. Who is using this Foursquare stuff? I know there are 30 million users (Foursquare), but I’m not sure who these users are. What age range are they? Do most of them actively use Foursquare?

People who use Foursquare only use it when they don’t know where to go. For that reason, Foursquare might not be useful when people are in their hometowns or locations they now well. They already have favorites. Maybe they use it once out of curiosity and find a new favorite, but you only need so many new places to go.

I’ve heard people say it’s great when you’re on vacation, but people don’t vacation that frequently and so they might just delete the app once they get home and never use it again.

I think people want platforms that can do many things, not just single use apps. People use Facebook because they can check-in to locations, communicate with friends and show pictures. Facebook gets the social part and the location information. Foursquare gives you a little less social and a lot of location information.  

I’m interested to see where this will go. People used to be uncomfortable with posting lots of information about themselves on Facebook. Will people become more comfortable with having their location tracked, or will Foursquare be a fad that eventually passes?  Will people be okay with single use apps or veer toward multi-use apps? I’m not sure, but I can assure you I won’t be using Foursquare anytime soon.