At times, the thought of Facebook and Twitter makes me cringe, then at other times when I think about them, I say to myself, “Hey, this gives me something to do to kill five minutes.”
If I had to choose between the two, Facebook wins hands down. Why you ask. It does all the work for you! Facebook has all the statuses of your friends and all their little events happening right there on the front page. A quick read through, and bam! You’re “up-to-date” in a matter of seconds. Now, I use the term “up-to-date” loosely because checking up on Facebook really only tells you so much. All your friends might throw a few song lyrics on their status, or even an entire song on their status, but how is that considered news? I believe all people are doing on Facebook status updates is expressing what’s on their minds. Most of the time there are no “important updates” or anything to keep me remotely interested, but reluctantly, I keep coming back to it.
Now on a positive note, it does succeed in keeping me connected with friends and family. Sending a message and having a conversation couldn’t be as easy as it is on Facebook, even though you have to refresh your page all the time. Having a Facebook account means that you want to have the ability to connect with everyone you know, and some people that you don’t, through little bits of info, and one-line conversations.
When it comes to friends on Facebook, I’m probably real friends with about a third of my Facebook friends. There’s a loose definition of what friends really are on Facebook. Just because you know them, doesn’t make them your friend. But who am I to talk? I got so caught up in the hype of having tons of friends that I didn’t care who sent a request.
Professionally, there’s a huge opportunity using Facebook. You can create a fan page and post all kinds of information and offer videos and articles just like an actual website. The only difference is that when you update the page, your fans will receive notice of these updates. You can’t argue with free publicity. The opportunity for quick feedback from fans is tremendous. It helps you tailor your strategies and marketing plans to your audiences so there is little need for alternative research. That is, if you have a good enough amount of feedback.
I’m a Twitter virgin. I created my account a couple months ago and to date, I have 11 posts. I have never found a use for Twitter and I probably never will. I think the cause of this is that I never have and never do update my Facebook status, which, in my opinion, is essentially all Twitter is. I know you can do all kinds of cool things with Twitter, but I’m not a very outspoken person, so I’ll probably never find a true interest in Twitter. Perhaps it’ll grow on me, but I doubt that.
As long as a have my Facebook page, I’ll be quite satisfied with my connectedness (that’s actually a word?). I can keep in touch with my friends and can communicate any message I need to.
Facebook:
Jordan Johanson likes this
But I've been waiting for your tweets of wisdom for weeks!
ReplyDeleteYour experience on Twitter teaches a good lesson on social media in general: that people want something they find valuable in their social media connections, or they won't be back.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing to keep in mind when we plan to use platforms like Facebook and Twitter for publicity purposes: if-you-say-it-they-will-listen doesn't work here. We need to provide content that people want to receive, or we won't get their attention at all.