Keeping in Touch with Facebook

Facebook

Twelve million Australians are on Facebook and there are some 850 million worldwide - there must be someone you know amongst those!
Facebook has long lost the image of a fad indulged in by teenagers with time on their hands.  Many families are now keeping in touch through Facebook, grandmas and grandkids, parents with children living away from home, siblings.
Unlike Skype, Facebook is a place where you can observe if you don't want to actively engage with people. You can look at your newsfeed and see what your family and friends are doing. You can drop the odd like or comment to let them know that you are interested and following what they do. It can make a huge difference to how close you feel to these people who you may not get to see on a regular basis. They can share their holiday snaps and you can follow their trip as it happens. New babies, birthdays, weddings or their latest craze, new shoes, a celebration dinner. You can dip into as much or as little as you want of the things your friends and family have shared with you. If you want it to be a bit more of a two way street then you can also post your own updates that your friends and family can see and comment on.
Facebook also has its own message service that works very like email and you can even video call people as you can on Skype and send files etc.

But Facebook is also a place where you can interact with businesses, celebrities and interest groups. By "Liking" pages you can get their latest news, competitions and offers.

And something that people forget when they complain about Facebook changes and glitches - it is a free service!

Google+ - A Ghost Town?

Here's a link to an interesting study about Google+ which suggests that users aren't really engaging with it. Google claim the study is flawed because the study doesn't take into account 'private' content. What do you think? Do you use Google+? Is it the ghost-town that some claim it to be?


Our view is that it was always going to struggle against existing social networks until it offered something that, to the casual user, was different. Pinterest, for example, has done this; it may end up as a passing fad, but by concentrating specifically on the sharing of images organised in a particular way it has created a 'new' form of social media. It allows people to interact with other people in a way that's different to, say, Facebook*. Google+ is different to Facebook, but the differences aren't as immediately obvious to the casual user. This means that they're having to learn how to use a new interface in order to achieve something which, in their mind, they can already do elsewhere.


We'd be interested in your views on this.


*Of interest is the fact that whilst it is easy enough to share Pinterest content on Facebook, it is harder to do the reverse; at the time of writing you can't easily 'pin' images from Facebook to a Pinterest board.

Social Media Stats

If you're interested in social media then you really should be following Cara Pring's 'The Social Skinny'. She's got her finger firmly on the pulse of what's hot and what's not in the world of social media and, being Aussie-based, it's slanted so that it's relevant to you and I.

Anyway, her most recent post is a great one to browse through whilst you have a cup of coffee. It looks at social media statistics for the current year, and it's a real eye-opener:

99 New Social Media Stats For 2012

Essentially it says that if you're a user then your favourite brands, products and organisations are out there trying to engage with you, and you could be missing out on interesting things they have to say or offer. Who would have thought, for example, that I would have got the chance to skydive because I responded to a post on Facebook? And another post has netted us a family day out, on Mother's Day, no less, at the Illawarra Fly. Businesses want to give you stuff, and all you have to do is engage with them on social media.

And if you're a business, then you're missing out on a way to reach, and interact with, customers and potential customers.

Read through the stats and consider what you could be doing to improve how you use social media.

(And, on the subject of Mother's Day, don't forget that we do vouchers for IT coaching - give your favourite mother the gift of computer confidence!)

Blogging

Diaries used to be your own private record of your thoughts and doings. A record of your life kept for your own amusement and enlightenment. Keeping a diary tends to brew thoughts of ladies in lace and lavender writing about the men who set their hearts aflutter.

Of course, there are always those who have written diaries in the form of autobiographies—politicians, sportsmen etc, and then made them public and gained a great deal of money in the process.

Believe it or not there are people who are making money out of online diaries or blogs (short for web log). Some blogs are so popular that publishers have got hold of them and printed them on old-fashioned paper and you can now buy them at your local branch of Angus and Robertson.

It must be said that some blogs are highly amusing or can give insight into the minds and lives of the writers.

Many companies now have blogs which they use to promote their products, or to write articles of interest to their clients. Indeed this blog is an example of that. Politicians, media stars and even governments use blogs as a means of informing and swaying public opinion.

A blog is basically a website used to give regular updates. It may be mainly text but can contain photos, video and music.

So how do you go about setting up a blog? Well, there are a number of sites which will host your blog such as Blogger, (which is, in fact, part of Google). It costs you nothing and is very easy to set up. All you have to do is remember to update the content from time to time. Of course, if you want to have lots of readers then you will need to publicise it by telling people about it and getting other blogs and websites to link to it. You reciprocate by putting links to other blogs and websites on your blog.

Blogs are part of the worldwide web and regularly get trawled by search engines, so you could find a blog amongst your Google search results or you could find strangers coming across your blog if you have some interesting content.

Blogging can be a lot of fun and of course, Facebook and Twitter are themselves specialist blog sites. 

Should you need help setting up a blog or joining Facebook or Twitter then we will be able to sort you out. Of course, you do need the internet, but it does not cost anything to belong to Facebook, Twitter or to run a blog.

Facebook Timeline For Pages

Facebook is changing again. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth. Cue people threatening to leave never to return again. Cue people forgetting what the old site looked like two weeks after the change.

At the end of March 2012 Facebook will be switching all Pages (the things you 'Like', as opposed to people who you add as 'Friends') over to the new Timeline format. In the meantime you can preview how your page will look, but after the 30th March you will have no choice.

So what will the changes be?

Well, if your personal profile has switched to the timeline, then you will have an idea of what the new layout for your business or special interest will look like - they are very similar, with a large banner across teh top of the page, and a timeline of events and posts running down from that.

What else do you get?

There is now a facility to receive private message; people who like your page can send them to you, but you can't send messages to them. You can, however, reply to those you receive. This is good, as it prevents posts getting lost on the wall so that you never respond to them.

You can also pin posts to your timeline for up to a week. This means that they will stay at the top of the page, and not get pushed down by subsequent posts; useful if you want important announcements to remain visible for several days.

A tab at the top of the page gives you access to your 'Admin Panel' which allows you access to page activity, messages and other data. You can also use this to manage posts on your timeline.

The 'About' page has a much neater and more professional layout; excellent if your page is for a business.

As with your personal timeline you can now include a large banner image across the top of your page. This allows you to make a strong visual impression, but there are some serious restrictions on what you can include in that image. For instance the image cannot include text such as URLs or email addresses, invites to 'Like' or 'Share' the page or, indeed, any other call to action. It cannot contain information on pricing.

Pages will also no longer allow their owners to direct visitors to a particular tab on their page; you will always arrive on the profile page. This will tend to devalue custom-designed welcome pages, although some of  these can be made more visible at the top of the page. It's not quite the same, though.

Indeed all links to your photos and other apps are going to be at the top of  the page and more visible, which is nice.

Posts from fans, as opposed to page admins, will have less emphasis. So if the bulk of the traffic is from the page's fans, as opposed to the people who run it, the new layout is going to throw things out a little.

We have switched the AB Computer Training page over to preview the changes, and will publish it over the next few days, so you can see how the new layout works. You can preview changes to your pages HERE - click 'Turn On Preview' next to the page you want to try; it won't publish it to your fans until you click 'Publish', so you can set things up the way you want them first.

As with all Facebook changes this will take some getting used to and, if your are a business, you will find that it will require some changes in the way you use the site and interact with fans of your page. But it's not the end of the world, and, as Facebook is free, it still offers excellent value for money as a promotional tool - you get what you pay for, and more.

Update - We have switched our page over to the new format so that you can get a taste of what it is like. See it HERE.