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.